The Advice to Hartlib was a treatise on education, written by the English economist and philosopher Sir William Petty (1623–1687) in 1647 as a letter to Samuel Hartlib. and published in 1647/8. It was the first printed work by Petty and covers a total of 31 pages.
William Petty was educated in France and in Holland, and returned to England in 1646, to study medicine at Oxford University. By that time he had close contacts with scientists like Thomas Hobbes. He developed an instrument for double-writing and became friends with Samuel Hartlib and Robert Boyle.
Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600 – 1662) had a profound interest in many fields of science and was especially active in creating (written) contacts with a number of persons, often scientists, part of whom were members of the Hartlib Circle. He had a clear vision on the importance of education and the spread of knowledge. In 1644 John Milton (1608–1674) wrote his tract Of Education as a letter to Hartlib. Hartlib himself wrote a pamphlet concerning education in 1647. The Advice to Hartlib was William Petty's contribution to the debate.
Contents
Bibliographical information
Petty, William (1647). The Advice of W.P. to Mr. Samuel Hartlib. for The Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning. London.
26 p.
The pamphlet was reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany, London 1745, vol. vi, pp. 1–13 and London 1810, vol. vi, pp. 1–14.
In 1862 large parts of the text were reissued in Barnard, Henry – English Pedagogy, under the caption of 'Plan of an Industrial School'.
Parts of the Advice were also reproduced in Ulich, Robert (1954) – Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom.
Background
In the days that Petty published his treatise, Samuel Hartlib was the patron of up-and-coming young men. He had a stimulating influence on many others in persuading them to publish their ideas.
In 1644 for instance, John Milton (1608–1674) wrote his tractate Of Education as a letter to Hartlib.
In 1647 Hartlib himself published a tract, advocating the establishment of an 'office of public address'. This office would have as a main function the dissemination of information about new inventions.
William Petty, aged 27, got involved in this debate about education, and published his Advice.
Contents
The first page of Advice to Hartlib is a kind of advertisement for an instrument for "double writing" that was invented by Petty (and that would again be introduced in his pamphlet Double Writing in 1648), "which is not strictly relevant to the rest of the pamphlet."
On the next page, with the title "To his honoured friend Master Samuel Hartlib", Petty dedicates his treatise to Samuel Hartlib, and describes the main issue of his treatise as "the Advancement of Reall Learning."
John William Adamson (1857–1949), who was a professor of education in the University of London in the beginning of the twentieth century, wrote extensively on the history of education and devoted a chapter of his Pioneers of Modern Education 1600–1700 (1905) to the two letters to Hartlib by Milton and Petty. He supposes that Hartlib may have received Milton's Of Education with mixed feelings, "there being in it both strictures and recommendations from which he was bound to dissent." Adamson thinks that Hartlib on the other hand, "must have extended a whole-hearted welcome" to The Advice of W.P. to Mr Samuel Hartlib, for the Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning. Petty was in full sympathy of the "New Philosophy", of which Francis Bacon can be regarded as the founder, and of which Hartlib was an enthusiastic promoter.
Adamson points out that Petty lays some stress on the word "Real", "a significance roughly paralleled by the German use. Petty says that he has "had many flying thoughts, concerning the Advancement of Reall Learning in generall, but particularly of the Education of Youth, Mathematicks, Mechanicks, Physick, and concerning the History of Art and Nature", and he believes that his letter to Hartlib "can please only those few, that are Reall Friends to the Designe of Realities, not those who are tickled only with Rhetoricall Prefaces, Transitions and Epilogues, and charmed with fine Allusions and Metaphors (all of which I do not condemn)."
In the body of the pamphlet, titled 'The Advice for Advancement of some particular Parts of Learning', which has a total of 26 pages, Petty begins with placing himself in the tradition of Francis Bacon ("Lord Verulam").
Adamson splits the "Advice" in four parts:
Ergastula Literaria
The literary work-houses, or 'Ergastula Literaria', which are proposed by Petty in his Advice to Hartlib have become a symbol for the spirit of educational renewal in the seventeenth century. Together with his 'Gymnasium Mechanicum', his 'Noscomium Academicum' and the 'Theatrum Botanicum' they can be found in different studies on the history of education throughout the following ages.
The phrase 'Ergastula Literaria' is meant "to cover a whole theory of Education, and that a revolutionary one."
Petty "anticipates Pestalozzi and Froebel when he insists that instruction must follow the lines indicated by the child's natural propensities for learning, that the child is essentially an active creature, who learns best by doing, and that he must be taught in reference to his powers and needs of the moment, and not by ways which respect his future only."
Critical reception
The only work in which Petty wrote extensively about education has acquired quite some attention in scholarly circles. His concept of the Ergastula Literaria is often mentioned.
Bevan, Wilson Lloyd, in his Sir William Petty: A Study in English Economic Literature (1894) gives a rather extensive description of the Advice to Hartlib, naming it "the Tractate on Education". He considers the work, in its "youthful performance", as a demonstration of Petty's "cast of mind", showing the strength and weakness of his character. He writes among other things about the difference between the visions of Milton and Petty on educational reform.
Anderson, John William, professor of Education in the University of London, mentions Petty as one of the "Pioneers of Modern Education" of the seventeenth century. Anderson gives much attention to the "universal schools" that Petty wanted to establish, the "Ergastula Literaria", "a phrase which is meant to cover a whole theory of Education, and that a revolutionary one."
According to Knox, H. M., professor of Education at Queen's University Belfast, who wrote an essay about The Advice to Hartlib in 1953 the work was difficult to find for a long period, until it was republished in 1876, and again in 1946.
Knox starts his essay with the following statement: "To few it is given to write an enduring treatise on education at the age of twenty-four (he means: twenty-seven), but few possess the versatile genius of Sir William Petty."
Knox also makes a comparison with the tractate Of Education of John Milton, published 1644, and thinks that the Advice to Hartlib is "full of original matter worthy of detailed study".