Iwanami, Atsuko

The research is centred on "words" that connect people, analysing as its subjects ① "oaths" in political communication in medieval European society, ② philological studies of administrative documents, ③ changes in time consciousness and historical narration, ④ educational texts from antiquity to the present, particularly the transmission and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Through a comparative analysis of the cultural aspects of 'language' that function as a social bond, it aims to clarify not only its communicative function but also the fundamental power of language and why people trust words. Discourses concerning the mind, such as "memory" and changes in time consciousness, are also research themes, and as a key to understanding changes in time consciousness, the history of time measurement using calendars, astronomical instruments and clocks is considered. As for educational texts, focusing on the history of medieval Europe, the lineage of various sciences from ancient Greece to the present is interpreted through comparative analysis of manuscript texts. The analysis covers texts of the quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music—which form the basis of the liberal arts, alongside texts on optics, mineralogy and metallurgy. It explores the reception of scientific knowledge from the Islamic world, which had the most advanced scientific understanding at the time, and traces the inheritance of natural history and encyclopaedic knowledge from antiquity through the medieval, early modern and modern periods using a philological approach.

• Diplomatik
• /History of Ideas
• /History of Ideas
• /History of Time
• /History of Science