Overview

Why are professors still warning their students against dogmatism, prejudice, pedantry, and other centuries-old vices? What explains the persistence of these scholarly vices across the ages? With case studies from medieval Europe to twenty-first century America, Vices of the Learned offers a panoramic overview of qualities, habits, and inclinations that scholars at various times and places saw as detrimental to their work. Innovative is the volume’s longue durée approach. The volume breaks new ground in highlighting the importance of “low” genres (aphorisms, proverbs, anecdotes) and stereotypical figures (the pedant, the charlatan, the mammon) in transmitting vices over time.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sjang ten Hagen ,  Herman Paul
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Edition:   354 pages
Volume:   362
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.716kg
ISBN:  

9789004725041

ISBN 10:   9004725040
Pages:   356
Publication Date:   16 October 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction  1 The Euthalian Tradition and Its Features  2 Additional Items Not Catalogued  3 The Corpus  4 Using the Catalogue  5 Using the Feature Inventory  6 The Euthalian Tradition and Catenae: A Test Case Catalogue  A Substantial Witnesses (22)  B Intermediate Witnesses (245)  C Chapter Lists and/or Hypotheses Only (264)  D In-Text Annotations Only (19)  E Miscellaneous Witnesses (40)  F Fragmentary Witnesses (37)  G Manuscripts with No Euthalian Material (162)  H Manuscripts Not Marked in the Catalogue (106) Features Inventory Catena Cross-Reference List Bibliography Gregory-Aland and Ditykon Number Index Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: towards a Long-Term History of Scholarly Vices  Herman Paul Part 1 Vice Terms 2 Tracing the Development of curiositas in Early Condemnations of the University  From Academics’ Useless Curiosity to Education for Productive Action  Richard Newhauser 3 Notes towards a History of “Prejudice,” Early to Late Modern  Sorana Corneanu 4 Dogmatism: the Persistence of an Umbrella Term  Alexander Stoeger 5 Scholasticism as a Scholarly Vice Term: from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century  Sjang ten Hagen Part 2 Figurations of Vice 6 The Persistence of the Pedant  Arnoud Visser 7 The Many Lives of the Charlatan: on the Persistence of an Embodiment of Scholarly Vices  Marian Füssel 8 From the Novum Organum to the Forensic Crime Lab: the Modern Afterlives of Francis Bacon’s Idols of the Mind  Edurne De Wilde 9 The Mammon Metaphor in American Science: Continuities and Discontinuities, 1890–2010  Pieter Huistra and Herman Paul Part 3 Media of Circulation 10 Medical Vices and Proverbial Expressions in Eighteenth-Century Medical Dissertations on Moderation, Patience, and Trust  Sari Kivistö 11 Mocking Medieval Minds: How Modern Histories of Science Transmitted Scholarly Vices  Sjang ten Hagen 12 Student Advice Literature and the Vice of Uninformed Studying: from Hodegetik to Study Vlogs  Anne Por 13 Conclusion: How and Why Scholarly Vices Persisted over Time  Sjang ten Hagen and Herman Paul Index

Reviews

Author Information

Sjang ten Hagen is Assistant Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Utrecht University. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the project Scholarly Vices: A Longue Durée History at Leiden University. Herman Paul is Professor of the History of the Humanities at Leiden University. From 2019 to 2025, he led the project Scholarly Vices: A Longue Durée History, out of which this volume has emerged.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions