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Style as a Historical Category

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Michael Otte
Michael Otte
Affiliation:
Institute for the Didactics of Mathematics, University of Bielefeld
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Abstract

In writing the history of science, the fluctuations between two meanings of the concept of style are of special interest: a simple or direct meaning of this concept referring to a means of expression and of presentation, and a philosophical interpretation of this term referring to “a world of objective spiritual order.” The last two chapters of this paper consider the perspective of the simple meaning of the concept, the first two chapters take the philosophical meaning as their starting point.

The concept of style in its general epistemological meaning emerges within a conceptual space that becomes effective as a totality at the end of the eighteenth century and which is built up of further notions such as: individual, genius, expression, symbol, education, creativity, and others.

The individual and, as believed, the nevertheless infinitely creative subject has taken the place that the concept of god had occupied within rationalism. But it is not only the subject as construction and will, but also the subject who reflected in a new way about the objective foundations of his conscience and tried to bring the object and the means of knowledge into a new relation.

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Science in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1991, pp. 233 - 264
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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