Hayton Darin
Haverford College, Haverford, PA 19041, USA.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2010 Jun;41(2):125-34. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.04.008. Epub 2010 May 15.
Historians have used university statutes and acts to reconstruct the official astrology curriculum for students in both the arts and medical faculties, including the books studied, their order, and their relation to other texts. Statutes and acts, however, cannot offer insight into what actually happened during lectures and in the classroom: in other words, how and why astrology was taught and learned in the medieval university. This paper assumes that the astrology curriculum is better understood as the set of practices that constituted it and gave it meaning for both masters and students. It begins to reconstruct what occurred in the classroom by drawing on published and unpublished lecture notes. These offer insight into how masters presented the material as they did, and why. The paper argues three points: first, the teaching of astrology centered on demonstrations involving astrological instruments: specifically, various kinds of paper astrolabes. Second, the astrological instruction focused on conveying the pragmatics of astrology rather than esoteric, theoretical issues. Finally, astrology as it was taught in the arts curriculum was explicitly intended to provide a foundation for students who would advance to study medicine at the university.
历史学家利用大学章程和法令来重构文学院和医学院学生的官方占星术课程，包括所研读的书籍、其顺序以及它们与其他文本的关系。然而，章程和法令无法洞察讲座期间及课堂上实际发生的情况：换句话说，中世纪大学中占星术是如何以及为何被教授和学习的。本文假定，占星术课程可更好地理解为构成该课程并使其对教师和学生都具有意义的一系列实践活动。本文通过借鉴已发表和未发表的讲义开始重构课堂上发生的事情。这些讲义有助于洞察教师为何如此呈现教学内容以及原因。本文提出三点观点：其一，占星术教学以涉及占星仪器（具体而言是各种纸质星盘）的演示为核心。其二，占星术教学侧重于传达占星术的实用知识，而非深奥的理论问题。最后，文学院课程中所教授的占星术明确旨在为将升入大学学习医学的学生奠定基础。
