The Making of the Humanities

First International Conference on the History of the Humanities

This is the old home page of the 2008 conference, University of Amsterdam

How did the humanities develop from the artes liberales, via the studia humanitatis to modern disciplines?

This is the first of a biennially planned conference that aims to draw the outlines for a comparative history

of the “humanistic sciences”. Although there exist separate histories of single humanities disciplines, a

 comparative history would satisfy a long-felt need and fill a conspicuous gap in intellectual history.

The theme of the current conference is “The Emergence of the Humanities in Early Modern Europe”

(1400-1800). The papers deal with the history of philology, linguistics, logic, rhetoric, music theory,

‘ars historica’ and ‘ars poetica’, with an emphasis on their interrelations as well as their impact on the

other sciences. An edited book is planned, with the provisional title Another History of Science:

The Making of the Humanities.