Why are professors still warning their students against dogmatism, prejudice, pedantry, and other centuries-old vices? What explains the persistence of these scholarly vices across the ages? With case studies from medieval Europe to twenty-first century America, Vices of the Learned offers a panoramic overview of qualities, habits, and inclinations that scholars at various times and places saw as detrimental to their work. Innovative is the volume’s longue durée approach. The volume breaks new ground in highlighting the importance of “low” genres (aphorisms, proverbs, anecdotes) and stereotypical figures (the pedant, the charlatan, the mammon) in transmitting vices over time.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction 1 The Euthalian Tradition and Its Features 2 Additional Items Not Catalogued 3 The Corpus 4 Using the Catalogue 5 Using the Feature Inventory 6 The Euthalian Tradition and Catenae: A Test Case Catalogue A Substantial Witnesses (22) B Intermediate Witnesses (245) C Chapter Lists and/or Hypotheses Only (264) D In-Text Annotations Only (19) E Miscellaneous Witnesses (40) F Fragmentary Witnesses (37) G Manuscripts with No Euthalian Material (162) H Manuscripts Not Marked in the Catalogue (106) Features Inventory Catena Cross-Reference List Bibliography Gregory-Aland and Ditykon Number Index Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction: towards a Long-Term History of Scholarly Vices Herman Paul Part 1 Vice Terms 2 Tracing the Development of curiositas in Early Condemnations of the University From Academics’ Useless Curiosity to Education for Productive Action Richard Newhauser 3 Notes towards a History of “Prejudice,” Early to Late Modern Sorana Corneanu 4 Dogmatism: the Persistence of an Umbrella Term Alexander Stoeger 5 Scholasticism as a Scholarly Vice Term: from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century Sjang ten Hagen Part 2 Figurations of Vice 6 The Persistence of the Pedant Arnoud Visser 7 The Many Lives of the Charlatan: on the Persistence of an Embodiment of Scholarly Vices Marian Füssel 8 From the Novum Organum to the Forensic Crime Lab: the Modern Afterlives of Francis Bacon’s Idols of the Mind Edurne De Wilde 9 The Mammon Metaphor in American Science: Continuities and Discontinuities, 1890–2010 Pieter Huistra and Herman Paul Part 3 Media of Circulation 10 Medical Vices and Proverbial Expressions in Eighteenth-Century Medical Dissertations on Moderation, Patience, and Trust Sari Kivistö 11 Mocking Medieval Minds: How Modern Histories of Science Transmitted Scholarly Vices Sjang ten Hagen 12 Student Advice Literature and the Vice of Uninformed Studying: from Hodegetik to Study Vlogs Anne Por 13 Conclusion: How and Why Scholarly Vices Persisted over Time Sjang ten Hagen and Herman Paul Index