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The modern sciences, including the natural sciences, played a part in 'secularizing' perception and thinking. The objective of this three-volume work is to show how different this scientific contribution was from case to case. It is noted, for instance, that it is often more appropriate to speak of a 'Christianization' of thinking and that even 'libertarianism' did not have a directly secularizing effect. Through examples of early modern science and literature anticipating the early nineteenth century, the concept of secularization is given historical contour. Diverging from a good deal of current research, these volumes portray secularization as a long-term accumulation of knowledge and insight into interrelationships in the natural world.
The first volume is a monograph on early modern processes of secularization in the medical discourse in literature. The second volume offers systematically arranged individual studies on phenomena of secularization in philosophy, law, theology, art, and literature. The third volume examines the ideas of the wholeness and divisibility of bodies which have been given since ancient times. Anatomy provides the preconditions for visualising both the internal and the external constitution of both the textual corpus and the natural body using analysis and anatomia as methodological tools.
Together, these three works thereby create a conceptual and analytical foundation for understanding secularization, a key concept in research on early modern cultural and intellectual history.
