September 2006
Beginner to intermediate
272 pages
6h 52m
English
CHAPTER 3
The Power of Early Theories
Look closely at European paintings from the Middle Ages. You will see numerous portrayals of what, given the creatures’ diminutive stature, are clearly young children. Yet to the modern eye, there is something strange about them. As pointed out many years ago by the French social historian Philippe Ariés,1 the portraits reflect an entirely different set of assumptions about human development. In them, young persons are depicted as miniature adults. Short they are, to be sure; but they dress like adults, they wear adult expressions, and even their physical proportions lack the signs of childhood—no oversized heads, no stubby arms, no bowed legs. Historians like Ariés ...
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