I'm writing to ask whether anyone knows of a precedent for Sidney's gloss on 'architectonike' as self-knowledge.
It looks like he's putting together two classical passages: Aristotle on the master-science, which he compares to architecture because other forms of techne are controlled by it as workmen are controlled by the architect; and Plato on the Delphic oracle's "know thyself."
What I'm wondering--if this interpretation passes muster--is whether Sidney is making this leap himself, or repeating something fairly commonplace. It doesn't look to me as if Aristotle's 'architectonike' is really about self-knowledge in Aristotle; and Sidney's way of glossing the term ("which stands as I think, in the knowledge of a man's self") seems to imply that he's the one drawing this conclusion.