The History of Learning’s Intellectual Properties: The Contribution of Medieval Monasticism

• In Event: Roundtable Session 84
  In Roundtable Session: Intellectual Currents in Educational History

Abstract

As part of a larger historical project on how Western educational institutions have given rise to a distinct class of intellectual property in a legal and economic sense, this paper presents evidence from medieval monasticism on how nuns and monks transformed learning from a narrowly conceived step toward personal salvation into a scholarly source of intellectual properties greatly valued for their contribution to the learning of the community. This study in the history of ideas is intended to introduce the value of thinking about intellectual property as a concept worth introducing to students destined to enter an information economy and to researchers concerned with their rights and control over access to their work.

Author

• John M. Willinsky, Stanford University