Comenian Pansophic Principles

Extract

John Amos Comenius (1592–1670) is best known to the world as the pioneer of modern educational theories and methods. More particularly is he remembered as the author of a series of elementary Latin textbooks for which many generations of schoolboys in the bygone days have called him blessed. But although he has richly deserved the praise he has received for his pedagogical reforms, that contribution by no means exhausts his astonishingly many-sided accomplishments. For he was the author of almost two hundred treatises (some of them rather forbiddingly bulky tomes, not all so far published), dealing with scientific, linguistic, pedagogical, philosophical, political, literary, and above all religious and theological subjects. He was likewise a fervent enthusiast for religious and political peace during one of the most disturbed periods of European history—the era of the Thirty Years' War. And above all, he was a convinced believer in pansophy—the principle of unification of all scientific, philosophical, political, and religious knowledge into one all-embracing, harmonious world-view. Previously, the term pansophy was used by Peter Laurenberg (1585- 1639) for an encyclopaedic compend of universal knowledge. Comenius gave it a deeper connotation, that of correlating all knowledge by means of an unifying principle. Thus he endeavored to produce an encyclopaedic, unified system of education which would fuse into one whole all knowledge, ethics, and religion, and by having all people educated in this system, would ultimately secure universal peace. His pansophy is, therefore, the dominant principle of almost everything he wrote, pervading it either explicitly or implicitly. Surprisingly enough, by reason of the recent discovery of Comenius' long lost pansophic corpus, we hope soon to learn more about this important aspect of his work than we have known hitherto.