Karel Slavoj Amerling

Karel Slavoj Amerling (1807–1884) is an important figure in the Czech nature philosophy era. He encouraged a deep study of the individual natural sciences and humanities, but always with regard to how they were interconnected to form a harmonious whole. In his (not only pedagogical) deeds and work Amerling followed up on the pansophic legacy of Jan Amos Comenius.

Karel Slavoj Amerling was born in Klatovy on 18 September 1807. After finishing at Klatovy grammar school he went on to study at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Medicine (Karl-Ferdinands-Universität) in Prague, during which he was a zoology and mineralogy assistant to Jan Svatopluk Presl. After completing his studies and defending his dissertation on crystallography, in 1836 he became secretary to Count Kaspar Maria von Sternberg at the National Museum for two years. He later worked as a doctor and gradually prepared to implement his plan to train teachers, both in the natural sciences, physiology, psychology and anthropology, as well as in pedagogy itself. This activity culminated in Amerling establishing the Budeč Educational Institute in Prague’s New Town in 1842. There, he also took the important step of educating women and industrialists and established a hydropathical treatment institute. The Budeč Institute ceased to exist in 1843, however. Amerling published books on the natural sciences – zoology, chemistry and geology, as well as his “biological and harmonious system of nature” and the related “economy of nature”. His ideas about the harmonic qualitative and quantitative correlation in nature and his emphasis on the significance of mathematics in the natural sciences are of crucial importance. Amerling’s school pictures intended for natural and technical science lessons, published in 1851–1865, met with great success. His tendency to link science with its practical aspects led to the foundation of the Physiocratic Society (Gesellschaft für Physiokratie in Böhmen) in 1869. Amerling also sought a unified methodology for the natural and social sciences and formulated the doctrine of orientation, i.e. diasophia, the aim of which was not to create a new science, but to link together existing sciences. He also applied diasophic principles in his work with the mentally ill as director of the Institute of Idiots of St. Anne Association (later the Ernestinum) in Prague from 1871. He worked there until his death in 1884.

Cipro, M.: Karel Slavoj Amerling (1807–1884). Pedagogika 1/1986, č. 1, s. 71–87. 

Janko, J.: Vědy o životě v českých zemích 1750-1950. Praha 1997, s. 175–177. 

Walter, J.: Aus dem Leben des Verfassers. In: Die Orientierungslehre (Diasophia). Prag 1891, s. 1–18.

(Author: )