Editing Johann Heinrich Alsted (section)

==Works==

=== Encyclopedist ===
[[File:Vroomheid, Menselijkheid en het Laatste Oordeel Titelpagina voor Johann Heinrich Alsted, Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta, 1630, RP-P-1982-1217.jpg|thumb|Johann Heinrich Alsted. ''Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta''. Herborn: S.n., 1630]]
Alsted has been called 'one of the most important [[encyclopedist]]s of all time'.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://magyar-irodalom.elte.hu/contentware/marci/alstedfr.htm |title=Johann Heinrich Alsted (1588–1638) |publisher=Magyar-irodalom.elte.hu |access-date=2012-03-15}}</ref> He was a prolific writer, and his ''Encyclopaedia'' (1630) long had a high reputation.  It was preceded by shorter works, including the 1608 ''Encyclopaedia cursus philosophici''. His major encyclopedia of 1630, the ''Encyclopaedia, Septem Tomis Distincta'', was divided into 35 books, and had 48 synoptical tables as well as an index. Alsted described it as "a methodical systemization of all things which ought to be learned by men in this life. In short, it is the totality of knowledge."<ref>{{Cite book|title=A Neglected Educator: Johann Heinrich Alsted|last=Alsted|first=Johann|publisher=W. A. Gullick|year=1910|pages=23}}</ref> In its time it was praised by [[Bernard Lamy (mathematician)|Bernard Lamy]] and [[Cotton Mather]], and it informed the work of Alsted's student [[John Amos Comenius]]. An unfinished encyclopedic project by [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]] began as a plan to expand and modernize it, and the famous diarist [[Samuel Pepys]] purchased a copy in 1660—thirty years after its initial publication.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Literature and Encyclopedism in Enlightenment Britain: the Pursuit of Complete Knowledge|author=Rudy, Seth|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2014|isbn=9781137411532|location=Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England|pages=28|oclc=881655990}}</ref> Although [[Jacob Thomasius]] criticised it for [[plagiarism]] for verbatim copying without acknowledgment,<ref>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Encyclopaedia}}</ref> [[Augustus De Morgan]] later called it "the true parent of all the Encyclopædias, or collections of treatises, or works in which that character predominates".<ref name="s:Budget of Paradoxes/O"/>

''The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy'', p.&nbsp;632, in the context of [[Calvinist metaphysics]], states

<blockquote>"In the works of authors like [[Clemens Timpler]] of Heidelberg and Steinfurt, [[Bartolomaeus Keckermann]] of Heidelberg and Danzig, and Johann Heinrich Alsted of Herborn there appeared a new, unified vision of the encyclopaedia of the scientific disciplines in which ontology had the role of assigning to each of the particular sciences its proper domain."</blockquote>

In his ''The New England Mind'', [[Perry Miller]] writes about the ''Encyclopaedia'':

:"It was indeed nothing short of a summary, in sequential and numbered paragraphs, of everything that the mind of European man had yet conceived or discovered. The works of over five hundred authors, from Aristotle to James I, were digested and methodized, including those of Aquinas, Scotus, and medieval theology, as also those of medieval science, such as ''De Natura Rerum''."<ref>''The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century'' (Harvard, 1982), pp. 102-103.</ref>

It was reissued as a 4-volume facsimile reprint, edited by W. Schmidt-Biggemann (Fromann-Holzboog Press, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1989–1990).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_titelsuche.php |title=frommann-holzboog |publisher=Frommann-holzboog.de |access-date=2012-03-09 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120220101822/http://www.frommann-holzboog.de/site/index_titelsuche.php |archive-date=2012-02-20 }}</ref>

==== Alstedius' Encyclopedia Biblica ====
In 1610, Alstedius published the first edition of his Encyclopedia. In 1630, he published a second edition in a much more comprehensive form, in two large folio volumes. In the second edition, he professes to reduce the several branches of art and science then known and studied into a system. In this work, and his Encyclopedia Biblica, he tries to prove that the foundation and materials of the whole can be found in the Sacred Scriptures. The first four books contain an exposition of the various subjects to be discussed. He devotes six books to philology, ten to speculative philosophy, and four to practical matters. Then follow three on theology, jurisprudence, and medicine; three on mechanical arts, and five on history, chronology, and miscellanies. This work exhibited a great improvement on other published works that purported to be encyclopedias in the latter half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries.<ref>
{{cite book
|title=Proceedings of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society: volumes 6-7
|publisher=Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool
|page=88
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=svQAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA88 |year=1855
}}</ref>

=== Logician ===
Alsted published ''[[Logicae Systema Harmonicum]]'' (1614). In writing a semi-[[Ramism|Ramist]] encyclopedia, he then applied his conception of logic to the [[sum of human knowledge]].<ref name = Ong>{{Google books|ZSeEzVKMghoC|Ong, p. 299.|PA299}}</ref> To do that, he added the Lullist [[topical art of memory]] to Ramist [[topical logic]], indeed reversing one of the original conceptions of Ramus.<ref>Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie (editors), ''Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication'' (2002), p. 47; [https://books.google.com/books?id=GXYEqXxjGlwC&pg=PA47 Google Books].</ref> He had a reputation in his own time as a distinctive methodologist. [[John Prideaux]] in 1639 asked:

<blockquote>Q. Is it true that the seven dialectical theories of method in use today, to wit, i) the Aristotelian, 2) the Lullian, 3) the Ramistic, 4) the Mixt, whether indeed in the manner of Keckermann or of Alsted, 5) the Forensic of [[François Hotman|Hotman]], 6) the Jesuitic, and 7) the Socinian,  differ mostly in respect to manner of treatment, not in respect to 
purpose?</blockquote>

To which the pupil's answer was to be "yes"; as it was to be to the question "Is it true that a Mixt ought to be preferred to a Peripatetic, a Ramist, a Lullian, and the others?"<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/logicandrhetoric011815mbp#page/n325/mode/2up |title=Logic And Rhetoric In England 1500 1700 |access-date=2012-03-09|publisher=Russell & Russell |year=1961 }}</ref> A "Mixt" took elements from both Aristotle and Ramus; [[Philippo-Ramists]], who blended [[Melanchthon]] with Ramus, were a type of "Mixt"; "Systematics" were "Mixts" who followed Keckermann in a belief in system, as Alsted did.<ref name = Ong/>

=== Theologian ===
From his Transylvanian period dates Alsted's ''Prodromus'' (printed 1641, but dated 1635). The ''Prodromus'' was a Calvinist refutation of one of the most influential [[anti-Trinitarian]] works, ''De vera religione'' of [[Johannes Völkel]]. This work was a compendium of the arguments of Völkel's teacher [[Fausto Sozzini]], figurehead of the [[Polish Brethren|Polish Unitarian]] movement.<ref>Hotson, Howard: ''Paradise postponed. Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism''. Dordrecht 2001 p.67</ref>