Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance PDF Author: Kristen Lippincott
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031567862
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance PDF Author: Kristen Lippincott
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031567862
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description


Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: II. An Examination of Their Scientific Content

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: II. An Examination of Their Scientific Content PDF Author: Elly Dekker
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031563301
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: II. An Examination of Their Scientific Content

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: II. An Examination of Their Scientific Content PDF Author: Elly Dekker
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783031563294
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book presents the first detailed scientific examination of Alessandro Piccolomini’s two early astronomical works – De la Sfera del Mondo and De le Stelle Fisse. First published in Venice in 1540, the two treatises are amongst the earliest scientific texts written in the vernacular (Italian) and were specifically composed to make astronomical principles and practices available to a lay reader. Whereas De la Sfera del Mondo is essentially an updated adaptation of the theoretical astronomical material contained in Sacrobosco’s De Sphaera, this book examines his views on a number of key topics – such as precession, the motion of the solar apogee and the size and distance of the planets from Earth. The author also presents a radical reassessment of De le Stelle Fisse, focusing on the innovative methods Piccolomini employed to create a viewer-centric approach for identifying the stars. As such, Piccolomini’s guide to the heavens should be seen as a distant forerunner of the successful genre of elementary handbooks that were developed in the late 18th century, and which remain popular with amateur stargazers even in the 21st century. The book also addresses how Piccolomini’s treatises were used by contemporary astronomers by examining the manuscript notes that were left in various surviving copies of his books. It provides a convincing explanation of the unique directional notation on his stellar maps and assesses the relative accuracy of his stellar co-ordinates against contemporary and modern ephemerides and pictorial sources. It also argues that Piccolomini probably designed his distinctive series of maps of the constellations and the related Tables by using a celestial globe to compile his astronomical data. Finally, the author examines the series of refinements and corrections in the successive editions of Piccolomini’s two treatises, thereby showing the extent to which his two early astronomical treatises remained an on-going enterprise for over 60 years. This book is a companion volume to Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance by Kristen Lippincott in the same series.

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance

Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: I. An Exploration of Their Cultural Significance PDF Author: Kristen Lippincott
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783031567858
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book presents the first interdisciplinary study of Alessandro Piccolomini’s two early astronomical works – De la Sfera del Mondo and De le Stelle Fisse. First published in Venice in 1540, the two treatises are amongst the earliest scientific texts written in the vernacular (Italian) and were specifically composed to make astronomical principles and practices available to a lay reader. The book includes modern editions of the original Italian texts and an English translation of both treatises (all appended as Electronic Supplementary Material to the online edition), while also examining the contents of each treatise in depth. It explores the way in which Piccolomini addresses the theoretical underpinnings of the science of astronomy in his De la Sfera del Mondo by providing a version of Sacrobosco’s De sphaera, which he has expanded and updated to include the views of more recent natural philosophers and astronomers. The book also presents an extended study ofDe le Stelle Fisse and the unique method that Piccolomini devised for observing the stars, as well as explanatory notes on the sources behind his explanations of the mythographic sources of each constellation. In addition to this, the book presents a detailed examination of the cultural context in which Piccolomini wrote his treatises, focussing on such issues as how astronomy was taught in Italian universities in the 16th-century; the on-going debates on the viability of Italian as language as a means for discussing scientific ideas; and how Piccolomini navigated through the competitive and complicated world of book production in 16th-century Venice. Given that Piccolomini originally dedicated both treatises to his female friend, the Sienese aristocrat Laudomia Forteguerri, there is also a discussion of the mysteries behind their personal relationship; of the dynamics of Sienese society at the time; and, in particular, the role that the Sienese Accademia degli Intronati played in Piccolomini’s own intellectual development and the composition of his astronomical treatises. This book is a companion volume to Alessandro Piccolomini’s Early Astronomical Works: II. An Examination of Their Scientific Content by Elly Dekker in the same series.

Galileo's Reading

Galileo's Reading PDF Author: Crystal Hall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110766294X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Galileo (1564–1642) incorporated throughout his work the language of battle, the rhetoric of the epic, and the structure of romance as a means to elicit emotional responses from his readers against his opponents. By turning to the literary as a field for creating knowledge, Galileo delineated a textual space for establishing and validating the identity of the new, idealized philosopher. Galileo's Reading places Galileo in the complete intellectual and academic world in which he operated, bringing together, for example, debates over the nature of floating bodies and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, disputes on comets and the literary criticism of Don Quixote, mathematical demonstrations of material strength and Dante's voyage through the afterlife, and the parallels of his feisty note-taking practices with popular comedy of the period.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution

The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution PDF Author: David Marshall Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108420303
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
A collection of cutting-edge scholarship on the close interaction of philosophy with science at the birth of the modern age.

A History of Design Institutes in China

A History of Design Institutes in China PDF Author: Charlie Q. L. Xue
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135135678X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
A History of Design Institutes in China examines the intricate relationship between design institutes, the state, and, in later periods, the market economy through a carefully situated discussion of significant theoretical and historical issues including socialist utopia, collective and individual design, structural transformation, and architectural exportation, amongst others. It shows how, over the past six decades, China’s design institutes have served the state’s strategy for socialist construction and urbanisation to create socioeconomic and cultural value. Through first-hand research, authors Xue and Ding reveal how the tensions between pragmatism, creativity, collaboration, and resistance have played a crucial role in defining architectural production. Appealing to academics, researchers, and graduate students, this book provides a much-needed contribution to the discourse on architectural history, building practices, and policymaking in contemporary China.

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period PDF Author: Matteo Valleriani
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030308332
Category : Astronomy
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
This open access book explores commentaries on an influential text of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe. It features essays that take a close look at key intellectuals and how they engaged with the main ideas of this qualitative introduction to geocentric cosmology. Johannes de Sacrobosco compiled his Tractatus de sphaera during the thirteenth century in the frame of his teaching activities at the then recently founded University of Paris. It soon became a mandatory text all over Europe. As a result, a tradition of commentaries to the text was soon established and flourished until the second half of the 17th century. Here, readers will find an informative overview of these commentaries complete with a rich context. The essays explore the educational and social backgrounds of the writers. They also detail how their careers developed after the publication of their commentaries, the institutions and patrons they were affiliated with, what their agenda was, and whether and how they actually accomplished it. The editor of this collection considers these scientific commentaries as genuine scientific works. The contributors investigate them here not only in reference to the work on which it comments but also, and especially, as independent scientific contributions that are socially, institutionally, and intellectually contextualized around their authors.

Astronomy

Astronomy PDF Author: Kristen Lippincott
Publisher: DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley)
ISBN: 9780756606558
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
Superb full-color photographs of scientific instruments, experiments, and innovative 3-D models reveal the discoveries and research that have transformed our understanding of the Universe. Learn how space probes photograph planets, what causes a meteor shower, what makes Mars red, why the Sun shines, where the Moon came from, how the first telescopes worked, the stages in the life of a star, and more.

From White to Yellow

From White to Yellow PDF Author: Rotem Kowner
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773596844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 707

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Book Description
When Europeans first landed in Japan they encountered people they perceived as white-skinned and highly civilized, but these impressions did not endure. Gradually the Europeans' positive impressions faded away and Japanese were seen as yellow-skinned and relatively inferior. Accounting for this dramatic transformation, From White to Yellow is a groundbreaking study of the evolution of European interpretations of the Japanese and the emergence of discourses about race in early modern Europe. Transcending the conventional focus on Africans and Jews within the rise of modern racism, Rotem Kowner demonstrates that the invention of race did not emerge in a vacuum in eighteenth-century Europe, but rather was a direct product of earlier discourses of the "Other." This compelling study indicates that the racial discourse on the Japanese, alongside the Chinese, played a major role in the rise of the modern concept of race. While challenging Europe's self-possession and sense of centrality, the discourse delayed the eventual consolidation of a hierarchical worldview in which Europeans stood immutably at the apex. Drawing from a vast array of primary sources, From White to Yellow traces the racial roots of the modern clash between Japan and the West.