Elements of the Modernist Creed in Henri Pirenne and George Sarton

Histoire croisée, or as it is sometimes known in English, “entangled history”, deals with questions of comparison, reciprocity, and asymmetry. Werner Michael Zimmermann Bénédicte , “Beyond comparison: Histoire croisée and the challenge of reflexivity”, History and theory, xlv (2006), 30–50. In another formulation, “Histoire croisée … asks that historians understand their categories of analysis as well as their objects of study, as ‘entangled products’ of [trans]national [inter-]crossings”. Cohen Deborah O'Connor Maura , “Introduction: Comparative history, cross-national history, transnational history — Definitions”, in Comparison and history: Europe in cross-national perspective, ed. by Cohen Deborah O'Connor Maura (New York, 2004), pp. ix–xxiv, p. xiv. Entangled history shares at least one important element with comparative methods and research into intellectual transfers: The will to go beyond the perspective of nation-centred history. Jürgen Kocka, “Comparison and beyond”, History and theory, xlii (2003), 2003–44. Schriewer Jürgen , “Comparative social science: Characteristic problems and changing problem solutions”, Comparative education, xlii (2006), 2006–337. Saunier P. Y. , “Learning by doing: About the making of the Palgrave dictionary of transnational history”, Journal of modern European history, vi (2008), 159–80.

Among many measures of the admiration may be cited use of his portrait as a frontispiece for the twenty-second volume of the exhaustive, universal guide to the academic world, Minerva, Jahrbuch der gelehrten Welt, ed. by Beugel J. Lüdtke G. (Leipzig, 1913). The critical literature on Pirenne is considerable. An accessible orientation may be found at: http://digitheque.ulb.ac.be/fr/digitheque-henri-pirenne/orientation-bibliographique/index.html, which contains a bibliography of both primary and secondary sources.

We reject the casual indictment of the historian Eustace Dockray Phillips: ” The difference between the age in which he [Sarton] grew up and the present time appears in his relations with the famous historian Henri Pirenne, who clearly had no high opinion of Sarton's lifelong occupation, and thought that the development of science had little to do with history proper. It may be remarked that the periods of history which chiefly occupied Pirenne were not those in which science had any important effect on events.” Phillips, reviewing George Sarton: De mens en zijn werk uit brieven aan vrienden en kennissen (Brussels, 1965), by Paul van Oye, in The British journal for the history of science, iii (1967), 397.

Gay Peter , Modernism: The lure of heresy (New York, 2007). Modernism has been an object of scrutiny by literary commentators over the past fifteen years. Gay's bibliography provides a survey.

Wohl Robert , “Heart of darkness: Modernism and its historians”, Journal of modern history, lxxiv (2002), 537–621, pp. 603–4, 615.

Saler Michael T. , The avant-garde in interwar England: Medieval modernism and the London underground (New York, 1999), 6.

Gray Jeremy , Plato's ghost: The modernist transformation of mathematics (Princeton, 2008), 1.

Hjärne Harald , director of the Swedish Academy, in his speech presenting the Nobel Prize to Eucken, 10 December 1908, http://nobelprize.org/nobelprizes/literature/laureates/1908/press.

The thesis put forward by Pyenson Lewis , Neohumanism and the persistence of pure mathematics in Wilhelmian Germany (Philadelphia, 1983).

Wils Kaat , De omweg van de wetenschap: Het positivisme en de Belgische en Nederlandse intellectuele cultuur, 1845–1914 (Amsterdam, 2005), 288–94 for Lamprecht and Pirenne outside positivism. Christophe Verbruggen and Lewis Pyenson, “History and the history of science in the work of Hendrik De Man”, Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis, to appear, for Pirenne and Lamprecht.

Marc Boone has recalled the opinion of Jan Dhondt, medievalist and founder of the Ghent seminar of contemporary history, that Henri Pirenne's greatness as a historian lies in his seminal scholarly role for two generations. Boone Marc , “L'automne du Moyen Age: Johan Huizinga et Henri Pirenne ou ‘plusieurs vérités pour la même chose’”, in Autour du XVe siècle: Journées d'étude en l'honneur d'Alberto Varvaro, ed. by Moreno Paola Palumbo Giovanni (Geneva, 2008), 27–51, p. 28. Boone's excellent essay also contrasts the two modernists.

From the epistemological side of modernism, Peter Wagner has suggested that modern knowledge was: (1) “effective, pragmatic and performance-oriented” (2) “more comprehensive than the ‘old’ sciences”; (3) “more widely communicable” than pre-modern knowledge. Wagner, “Introduction to Part I”, in Transnational intellectual networks: Forms of academic knowledge and the search for cultural identities, ed. by Charle Christophe Schriewer Jürgen Wagner Peter (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), 17–25, p. 25. This formulation would surely have been congenial to Denis Diderot in the eighteenth century, although the large volume coedited by Wagner focuses almost exclusively on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For a Marxist interpretation signalling the role of experts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (dating from 1980, when Jürgen Habermas received the Theodor W. Adorno prize from the city of Frankfurt): Habermas, transl. by Ben-Habib Seyla , “Modernity — An incomplete project”, in Postmodern culture, ed. by Foster Hal (London, 1985), 3–15.

Wagner Peter , “Varieties of interpretation of Modernity: On national traditions in sociology and the other social sciences”, in Charle (eds), Transnational intellectual networks (ref. 12), 27–51, p. 49.

Solvay's fortune derived from the manufacture of sodium carbonate. He and Emile Waxweiler vigorously promoted the 8-hour working day. Pyenson Lewis , The passion of George Sarton: A modern marriage and its discipline (Philadelphia, 2007), 28–9.

Topalov Christian , “Les réformateurs et les réseaux: Enjeux d'un objet de recherche”, in Topalov Christian (ed.), Laboratoires du nouveau siècle: La nébuleuse réformatrice et ses réseaux en France, 1890–1914 (Paris, 1999), 11–58. Verbruggen Christophe Carlier Julie , “An entangled history of ideas and ideals: Feminism, social and educational form in children's libraries in Belgium before the First World War”, Paedagogica historica, xlv (2009), 2009–308; Pyenson Lewis Verbruggen Christophe , “Ego and the international: The modernist circle of George Sarton”, Isis, c (2009), 60–78.

For Sarton Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14); Verbruggen Christophe , “Het egonetwerk van Reiner Leven en George Sarton als toegang tot transnational intellectueel engagement”, Belgisch tijdschrift voor nieuwste geschiedenis, xxxviii (2008), 87–129.

For formulating the continuity between Sarton's “anarchistic period” and his future thoughts, see Pels Dick , The intellectual as stranger: Studies in spokespersonship (London, 2000), 131–55.

The manifesto in Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 180–2.

In the Belle Epoque, Sarton most admired Henri Poincaré, and he wrote favourably about Paul Tannery, neither of them positivist. He also admired both the philosopher Emile Boutroux and Emile's son the mathematician Pierre Boutroux, a successor in the Comtean chair in history of science at the Collège de France; neither father nor son was a positivist. Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 30, 95, 169, 199–200, 444–5. Nye Mary Jo , “The Boutroux circle and Poincaré's conventionalism”, Journal of the history of ideas, xl (1979), 1979–20, for non-positivist philosophy in France. Wils , De omweg van de wetenschap (ref. 10), 398, for a letter from Sarton to Cecil Henry Desch in 1926 where Sarton recalled being animated by Comte at the beginning of his scientific life; Sarton also reported that Comte's ideas had a great impact on him around 1912. Sympathy, certainly, but Sarton affirmed in the letter that he was no pure positivist, for his makeup was tempered by a mystical streak.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 152–3.

George Sarton to Henri Pirenne, 25 October 1922 (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Archives Henri Pirenne [hereafter, ULB, Archives Pirenne]), for mention of the appendectomy visit; the appendectomy in Lyon Bryce , Henri Pirenne: A biographical and intellectual study (Ghent, 1974), 189.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 209.

Ibid., 222.

George Sarton to Leo Baekeland, 6 September 1919 (copy sent to Hendrik De Man), International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, De Man Papers.

Generally Paul Forman , “Scientific internationalism and the Weimar physicists: The ideology and its manipulation in Germany after World War I”, Isis, lxiv (1973), 151–80.

Iriye Akira , Cultural internationalism and world order (Baltimore, 1997). Fuchs Eckhardt , “The creation of new international networks in education: The League of Nations and the educational organisations in the 1920s”, Paedagogica historica, xliii (2007), 2007–209. Sapiro Gisèle , “L'internationalisation des champs intellectuels dans l'entre-deux guerres: Facteurs professionels et politiques”, in L'Espace intellectuel en Europe: De la formation des Etats-nations à la mondialisation, XIXe—XXIe siècle, ed. by Sapiro G. (Paris, 2009), 111–46.

Generally David Fisher James , Romain Rolland and the politics of intellectual engagement (Berkeley, 1988). Sarton corresponded with Romain Rolland.

Sarton George , “War and civilisation”, Isis, ii (1919), 315–21.

Sarton George , “Avant-propos”, Isis, ii (1919), 313–14. Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 346.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 201–2.

Crombois Jean-François , “De eugenetica in België vóór 1914: Het Institut de Sociology Solvay (1902–1914)”, in Rasechte wetenschap? Het rasbegrip tussen wetenschap en politiek vóór de Tweede Wereldoorlog, ed. by Beyen Marnix Vanpaemel Geert (Louvain, 1998), 31–41.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 28, 33–4, 95, 209, 287, 344, for Sarton and Waxweiler.

Pirenne Henri , Medieval cities, their origins and the revival of trade, transl. by Halsey Frank D. (Princeton, 1925). He delivered the lectures in French, and the French edition of his book appeared in 1927. Harvard crimson, 26 October 1922, for the first lecture.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 410, note 17. The word race in French is used by Sarton and others to indicate a heritage of ancestors and culture that formed the foundation of nation. On the nineteenth-century background of discussions about race and history, Chris Manias, ” The race prussienne controversy: Scientific internationalism and the nation”, Isis, c (2009), 733–57.

Pirenne Henri , La nation belge, discours prononcé lors de la distribution des prix aux lauréates du concours universitaire et du concours général de l'enseignement moyen en 1899 (Brussels, 1899), 12.

Pirenne Henri , Histoire de Belgique: Des origines à nos jours, vii (Brussels, 1948), 391–3. For situating Pirenne's discourse in Belgium: Marnix Beyen, “Belgium: A nation that failed to be ethnic”, in Statehood before and beyond ethnicity: Minor states in Northern and Eastern Europe, 1600–2000, ed. by Eriksonas Linas Müller Leos (Brussels, 2005), 341–52.

Schöttler Peter , “Henri Pirenne face à l'Allemagne de l'après-guerre ou la (re)naissance du Comparatisme en histoire”, in Une guerre totale? La Belgique dans la Première Guerre Mondiale: Nouvelles tendances de la recherche historique, ed. by Jaumain Serge (Brussels, 2005), 507–17.

Lyon Bryce Lyon Mary , (eds), The journal de guerre of Henri Pirenne (Amsterdam, 1976), 153, 202. Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 275, 280.

Toubert Pierre , “Henri Pirenne et l'Allemagne (1914–1923)”, Moyen âge: Revue d'histoire et de philologie, cvii (2001), 317–20.

Schöttler Peter , “French and German historians' networks: The case of the early Annales”, in Charle (eds), Transnational intellectual networks (ref. 12), 115–34, p. 123.

Pirenne Henri , “Le pangermanisme et la Belgique”, Bulletin de l'Académie Royale de Belgique, Classe des Lettres, no. 5 (1919), long extract on p. 17 of the reprint. Bryce Lyon, “Henri Pirenne's Réflections d'un solitaire and his re-evaluation of history”, Journal of medieval history, xxiii (1997), 285–99, p. 291.

Pirenne Henri , “De la méthode comparative en histoire, discours d'ouverture du cinquième Congrès International des Sciences Historiques”, separately-paginated reprint from Compte-rendu du cinquième Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, ed. by Des Marez G. Ganshof F. L. (Brussels, 1923). On Berr, history, and history of science, Chimisso Cristina , Writing the history of the mind: Philosophy and science in France, 1900 to 1960s (Aldershot, 2008), 93–4.

Henri Pirenne to George Sarton, 25 September 1923 (Houghton Library).

Pirenne Henri , A history of Europe, transl. by Miall Bernard (Garden City, NY, 1958), ii, 74, 198.

Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 449.

George Sarton to Henri Pirenne, 25 October 1922 (ULB, Archives Pirenne).

George Sarton to Henri Pirenne, 29 October 1922, from Hotel Peter Stuyvesant, New York (ULB, Archives Pirenne). Lyon, Pirenne (ref. 21), 302–6 for a succinct summary of Medieval cities.

Pirenne , A history of Europe (ref. 44), i, 225, 234, 250; ii, 62, 333.

Sarton , Introduction to the history of science, i (Baltimore, 1927), 646.

Sarton George Boutroux Pierre , “L'oeuvre de Paul Tannery”, Osiris, iv (1938), 690–705, p. 702.

Pirenne , A history of Europe (ref. 44), ii, 267.

Ibid., ii, 269.

Sarton to Robert S. Woodward, 17 July 1918, in Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 295.

Pirenne , A history of Europe (ref. 44), ii, 264.

Rashed Roshdi Pyenson Lewis , “Otto Neugebauer in the context of early twentieth-century scholarship”, read at the conference, “A mathematician's journeys: Otto Neugebauer between history and practice of exact sciences”, New York University, 12–13 November 2010.

Brown Harcourt , “The Renaissance and historians of science”, Studies in the Renaissance, vii (1960), 27–42, for Sarton's minimization of science in the Renaissance in 1929, in contrast to Panofsky's views about the significance of Renaissance artists for science. George Sarton, “Science in the Renaissance”, in The civilization of the Renaissance, ed. by Thompson James Westfall (New York, 1929), 75–95. In Sarton's view, the Renaissance was “a halfway rest between two revivals”, the first from the eleventh century to the thirteenth century, and the second in the seventeenth century. Apart from excoriating the Renaissance humanists of Italy, whom he took to be hostile to “scientific enlightenment” (p. 93), he was nevertheless clear that the Florentine artists “not only raised their art to a higher level but prepared the creation of a new branch of mathematics” (p. 84), and he emphasized significant mathematicians and mechanicians, astronomers, and anatomists, culminating in Vesalius and Copernicus. Sarton generally saw science and art as two complementary endeavours deriving from a common creative urge, and before 1925 he maintained the view that he expressed in 1910: “I am one of those who think that the enterprise of science is an enterprise of art. I do not think it only, I sense it, with all my being, all my nerves tell me that…. I know that art and science are identical, just as I know that I exist. The two, when they are beautiful enough, produce the same enthusiasm, the same frenzy, the same sacred intoxication, the same rhythms, the same thrills.” Pyenson , Passion (ref. 14), 110.