Academy
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| In ancient Greece, after the establishment of the original Academy, Plato's colleagues and pupils developed spin-offs of his method. [[Arcesilaus]], a Greek student of Plato established the [[Middle Academy]]. [[Carneades]], another student, established the [[New Academy]]. In 335 BC, [[Aristotle]] refined the method with his own theories and established the [[Lyceum]] in another gymnasium. | In ancient Greece, after the establishment of the original Academy, Plato's colleagues and pupils developed spin-offs of his method. [[Arcesilaus]], a Greek student of Plato established the [[Middle Academy]]. [[Carneades]], another student, established the [[New Academy]]. In 335 BC, [[Aristotle]] refined the method with his own theories and established the [[Lyceum]] in another gymnasium. | ||
| - | ===Africa=== | ||
| The [[library of Alexandria]] in [[Egypt]] was counted as one of the wonders of the ancient world. [[Intellectual]]s from Africa, Europe and Asia studied various aspects of philosophy, language and mathematics. | The [[library of Alexandria]] in [[Egypt]] was counted as one of the wonders of the ancient world. [[Intellectual]]s from Africa, Europe and Asia studied various aspects of philosophy, language and mathematics. | ||
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| - | The [[University of Timbuktu]] was a medieval university in [[Timbuktu]], present-day [[Mali]], which comprised three schools: the Mosque of Djinguereber, the Mosque of Sidi Yahya, and the Mosque of Sankore. During its zenith, the university had an average attendance of around 25,000 students within a city of around 100,000 people. | ||
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| - | ===China=== | ||
| - | In China a higher education institution [[Shang Xiang]] was founded by [[Shun (Chinese leader)|Shun]] in the [[Youyu]] era before the 21st century BC. The Imperial Central Academy at [[Nanjing]], founded in 258, was a result of the evolution of Shang Xiang and it became the first comprehensive institution combining education and research and was divided into five faculties in 470, which later became [[Nanjing University]]. | ||
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| - | In the 8th century another kind of institution of learning emerged, named [[Shuyuan]], which were generally privately owned. There were thousands of Shuyuan recorded in ancient times. The degrees from them varied from one to another and those advanced Shuyuan such as [[Bailudong Shuyuan]] and [[Yuelu Shuyuan]] can be classified as higher institutions of learning. | ||
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| - | ===India=== | ||
| - | [[Nalanda]] was established in the 5th century AD in [[Bihar (India)|Bihar]], [[India]]. It was founded in 427 in northeastern India, not far from what is today the southern border of Nepal. It survived until 1197 when it was set upon, destroyed and burnt by the marauding forces of [[Ikhtiyar Uddin Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji]]. It was devoted to Buddhist studies, but it also trained students in fine arts, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, politics and the art of war. | ||
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| - | ===Islamic world=== | ||
| - | The first universities in the [[Islamic world]] were founded in [[Fes]] ([[University of Al-Karaouine]]) in the 9th century and [[Cairo]] ([[Al-Azhar University]]) in the 10th century. | ||
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| - | The university of Timbukutu was also Islamic in nature. Mustansiriya Madrasah in Baghdad, Iraq. It was the premises of one of the oldest Islamic universities in the world, established in 1227 as a Madrasah by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustansir making it one of the oldest universities in the world.Its library had an initial collection of 80,000 volumes, given by the Caliph. The collection was said to have grown to 400,000 volumes | ||
| ===Medieval Western Europe=== | ===Medieval Western Europe=== | ||
Revision as of 10:13, 16 April 2014
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Academia is a collective term for the scientific and cultural community engaged in higher education and peer-reviewed research, taken as a whole.
The word comes from the akademeia just outside ancient Athens, where the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athene, had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe".
By extension Academia has come to connote the cultural accumulation of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations and its practitioners and transmitters. In the seventeenth century, English and French religious scholars popularized the term to describe certain types of institutions of higher learning. The English adopted the form academy while the French adopted the forms acadème and académie.
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History
Ancient Greece and early Europe
In ancient Greece, after the establishment of the original Academy, Plato's colleagues and pupils developed spin-offs of his method. Arcesilaus, a Greek student of Plato established the Middle Academy. Carneades, another student, established the New Academy. In 335 BC, Aristotle refined the method with his own theories and established the Lyceum in another gymnasium.
The library of Alexandria in Egypt was counted as one of the wonders of the ancient world. Intellectuals from Africa, Europe and Asia studied various aspects of philosophy, language and mathematics.
Medieval Western Europe
In western Europe, the academy dates to the ancient Greeks and Romans in the pre-Christian era. Newer universities were founded in the 12th and 13th centuries, and the European institution of Academia took shape. Monks and priests moved out of monasteries to cathedral cities and other towns where they opened the first schools dedicated to advanced study.
The most notable of these new schools were in Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, while others were opened throughout Europe.
The seven liberal arts — the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic), and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy) — had been codified in late antiquity. This was the basis of the curriculum in western Europe until newly available Arabic texts and the works of Aristotle became more available in Western Europe in the 12th century.
It remained in place even after the new scholasticism of the School of Chartres and the encyclopedic work of Thomas Aquinas, until the humanism of the 15th and 16th centuries opened new studies of arts and sciences.
Academic societies
Academic societies or learned societies began as groups of academics who worked together or presented their work to each other. These informal groups later became organized and in many cases state-approved. Membership was restricted, usually requiring approval of the current members and often total membership was limited to a specific number. The Royal Society founded in 1660 was the first such academy. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was begun in 1780 by many of the same people prominent in the American Revolution. Academic societies served both as a forum to present and publish academic work, the role now served by academic publishing, and as a means to sponsor research and support academics, a role they still serve. Membership in academic societies is still a matter of prestige in modern academia.
Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Academia began to splinter from its Christian roots in 18th-century colonial America. In 1753, Benjamin Franklin established the Academy and Charitable School of the Province of Pennsylvania. In 1755, it was renamed the College and Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia. Today, it is known as the University of Pennsylvania. For the first time, academia was established as a secular institution. For the most part, church-based dogmatic points of view were no longer thrust upon students in the examination of their subjects of study. Points of view became more varied as students were free to wander in thought without having to add religious dimensions to their conclusions.
In 1819, Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and developed the standards used today in organizing colleges and universities across the globe. The curriculum was taken from the traditional liberal arts, classical humanism and the values introduced with the Protestant Reformation. Jefferson offered his students something new: the freedom to chart their own courses of study rather than mandate a fixed curriculum for all students. Religious colleges and universities followed suit.
The Academy movement in the U.S. in the early 19th century arose from a public sense that education in the classic disciplines needed to be extended into the new territories and states that were being formed in the Old Northwest, in western New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. Dozens of academies were founded in the area, supported by private donations.
During the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, the academy started to change in Europe. In the beginning of the 19th century Wilhelm von Humboldt not only published his philosophical paper On the Limits of State Action, but also directed the educational system in Prussia for a short time. He introduced an academic system that was much more accessible to the lower classes. Humboldt's Ideal was an education based on individuality, creativity, wholeness, and versatility. Many continental European universities are still rooted in these ideas (or at least pay lip-service to them). They are, however, in contradiction to today's massive trend of specialization in academia.
See also
