Lon R. Shelby

Last updated
Lonnie Royce Shelby
Born 1935 (age 8283)
Texas
Nationality American
Alma mater Southern Illinois University, Vanderbilt University
Scientific career
Fields Speech Communication

Lonnie Royce (Lon. R.) Shelby (born 1935) is an American academic, and Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication and former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the Southern Illinois University. He is known for his work on Mediaeval architects and design, [1] [2] especially on the work of Lorenz Lechler, Mathes Roriczer, Hanns Schmuttermayer, Taccola and Villard de Honnecourt. He is also known for coined the term constructive geometry. [3] [4]

Southern Illinois University State university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, United States

Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, United States, in the southern region of the state, with multiple campuses. Randy Dunn was formerly president of SIU.

Lorenz Lechler was a late 15th-century German master mason who composed Instructions, a booklet on gothic design, and who contributed to the Heidelberg Church. As a master mason, Lechler's writing gives insight into Gothic architecture from the perspective of a builder as opposed to the more common contemporary perspectives written by clerics.

Mathes Roriczer, also Matthäus Roritzer, was a 15th-century German architect and author of several surviving booklets on medieval architectural design.

Contents

Biography

Born in Texas as son of Mr. and Mrs. C.L. Shelby, Shelby attended Irving High School, and obtained his BA in History, [5] his MA from Vanderbilt University, and his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962 with the thesis, entitled "The technical supervision of masonry construction in medieval England."

Texas State of the United States of America

Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U.S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast.

Vanderbilt University Private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States

Vanderbilt University is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of New York shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million endowment despite having never been to the South. Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), also known as UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, or simply Carolina is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. It is the flagship of the 17 campuses of the University of North Carolina system. After being chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolling students in 1795, which also allows it to be one of three schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States. Among the claimants, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the only one to have held classes and graduated students as a public university in the eighteenth century.

After graduation Shelby started his academic career at the Southern Illinois University, where he served his whole career. He started as lecturer in history, became assistant professor of history in 1963, associate professor in history in 1966, and associate dean of the Graduate School in 1968, and eventually Professor of Sociology.

Sociology Scientific study of human society and its origins, development, organizations, and institutions

Sociology is the scientific study of society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture of everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, acceptance, and change or social evolution. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter ranges from the micro-sociology level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and the social structure.

After his retirement in the new millennium he was appointed Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication at the Southern Illinois University.

Work

The geometrical knowledge of mediaeval master masons, 1972

In the 1972 article "The geometrical knowledge of mediaeval master masons," Shelby reconstructed the knowledge of practical geometry in the realm of the mason. [6] About the motivation of this study Shelby (1972) explained that:

Techniques of surveying, Villard de Honnecourt, 1230-35. Villard de Honnecourt.djvu
Techniques of surveying, Villard de Honnecourt, 1230-35.
"...during the past one hundred and fifty years numerous scholars have searched for the geometrical canons which supposedly were used by master masons in the design and construction of mediaeval churches. But in this search for one of the keys to an understanding of mediaeval architecture, these scholars have seldom asked themselves what was the actual character and content of the geometrical knowledge which a mediaeval master mason might have been expected to possess?" [7]

In his paper Shelby attempted to answer this particular question. After reconsidering the normal kind of education in those days with the trivium and quadrivium, Shelby suggested, that it appears, that medieval master masons didn't receive their geometrical knowledge from formal schooling but from oral tradition. [8] This tradition, however, disappeared at the close of the Gothic building in Europe in the 14th century with the dying of the oral tradition in general. Instead little books on the technical aspects of building emerged in the late Middle Ages. Also medieval scholars had an interest in practical geometry, and shared their thoughts on this topic in numerous treatises. [9]

The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Quadrivium liberal arts of astronomy, arithmetic, music and geometry

The quadrivium is the four subjects, or arts, taught after teaching the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning four ways, and its use for the four subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century. Together, the trivium and the quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts, as distinguished from the practical arts.

Gothic architecture style of architecture

Gothic architecture is a style that flourished in Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. Originating in 12th-century France, it was widely used, especially for cathedrals and churches, until the 16th century.

After comparison geometrical works and classical geometry of Euclid and Archimedes Shelby finds hardly any resemblance. According to Shelby (1972):

"Mathematically speaking, it was simple in the extreme; once it is recognized that there was virtually no Euclidean-type reasoning involved, the way is cleared for understanding the kind of geometrical thinking which the masons did employ. This non-mathematical technique I have labelled constructive geometry, to indicate the masons’ concern with the construction and manipulation of geometrical forms. It becomes evident that the “art of geometry” for mediaeval masons meant the ability to perceive design and building problems in terms of a few basic geometrical figures which could be manipulated through a series of carefully prescribed steps to produce the points, lines and curves needed for the solution of the problems. Since these problems ranged across the entire spectrum of the work of the masons — stereotomy, statics, proportion, architectural design and drawings — the search by modern scholars for the geometrical canons of mediaeval architecture is appropriate enough, so long as we keep clearly in mind the kind of geometry that was actually used by the masons. The nature of that geometry suggests that these canons, when recovered, will not be universal laws which will at last provide the key to mediaeval architecture; rather, they will be particular procedures used by particular master masons at particular times and places." [10]

Reception

In the Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals Nolan and Sandron (2016) credited Shelby's translations and commentaries on early medieval works on construction, stating:

"Many scholars have discussed these booklets over the years, but Lon R. Shelby's translation and commentaries remain the primary source to this day..." [11]

Selected publications

Articles, a selection

Related Research Articles

Villard de Honnecourt artist from Picardy in Northern France

Villard de Honnecourt was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing about 250 drawings and designs of a wide variety of subjects.

Sacred geometry

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Medieval university

A medieval university is a corporation organized during the Middle Ages for the purposes of higher education. The first Western European institutions generally considered universities were established in the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Portugal between the 11th and 15th centuries for the study of the Arts and the higher disciplines of Theology, Law, and Medicine. During the 14th century there was an increase in growth of universities and colleges around Europe. These universities evolved from much older Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools, and it is difficult to define the exact date when they became true universities, though the lists of studia generalia for higher education in Europe held by the Vatican are a useful guide.

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Canons of page construction

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Taccola Italian artist and engineer

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Lucien Lagrange French architect

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Lausanne Cathedral cathedral

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Carl Georg Brunius Swedish classical scholar, architect and art historian

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Irving Lavin American art historian

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John Roger Haughton James OAM is a British-born Australian architect and historian.

Sariel Har-Peled is an Israeli–American computer scientist known for his research in computational geometry. He is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

References

  1. Whitney, Elspeth. "Paradise restored. The mechanical arts from antiquity through the thirteenth century." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 80.1 (1990): 1-169.
  2. Gies, Joseph. Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel. Harper Collins, 1995.
  3. Stephen K. Victor, American Philosophical Society. Practical geometry in the high middle ages: : artis cuiuslibet consummatio and the pratike de geometrie, 1979. p. 68
  4. Wolfgang Lefèvre (2004), Picturing Machines 1400-1700. p. 242
  5. The Irving Daily News Texan from Irving, Texas on June 3, 1962.
  6. Glen, Elizabeth Jane. The transmission of medieval mathematics and the origins of gothic architecture. Sweet Briar College, 2005. p. 20
  7. Shelby (1972, 395)
  8. Shelby (1972, 398)
  9. Shelby (1972, 399)
  10. Shelby (1972, 420-421)
  11. Kathleen Nolan, Dany Sandron (2016), Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals: Studies on Architecture, Stained Glass and Sculpture in Honor of Anne Prache. p. 122