Nature Learns to Read and Write: Mind, Hand and World in Charles de Bovelles's Liber de Sensu

This article investigates the way in which, according to the French philosopher Charles de Bovelles, human beings construct their worlds of meanings and cultural artefacts by intertwining the process of thinking with the objects of the senses and such practices as reading and writing. At the centre of this model of cultural progress there is a sophisticated theory of micro- and macrocosmic relationships based on the rhetorical figure of transsumptio or metalepsis. The originality of Bovelles's position lies in his unique ability to combine traditional patterns of Platonic ontology with a sensibility towards nature and the material aspects of human experience.