Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period

Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period PDF Author: Massimo Bucciantini
Publisher: Librarie Droz
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period

Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period PDF Author: Massimo Bucciantini
Publisher: Librarie Droz
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period/ Ed. by Massimo Bucciantini Et Al

Mechanics and Cosmology in the Medieval and Early Modern Period/ Ed. by Massimo Bucciantini Et Al PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Change and Continuity in Early Modern Cosmology

Change and Continuity in Early Modern Cosmology PDF Author: Patrick Bonner
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400700377
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Viewed as a flashpoint of the Scientific Revolution, early modern astronomy witnessed a virtual explosion of ideas about the nature and structure of the world. This study explores these theories in a variety of intellectual settings, challenging our view of modern science as a straightforward successor to Aristotelian natural philosophy. It shows how astronomers dealt with celestial novelties by deploying old ideas in new ways and identifying more subtle notions of cosmic rationality. Beginning with the celestial spheres of Peurbach and ending with the evolutionary implications of the new star Mira Ceti, it surveys a pivotal phase in our understanding of the universe as a place of constant change that confirmed deeper patterns of cosmic order and stability.

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.

Knowledge and Cosmos

Knowledge and Cosmos PDF Author: Robert K. DeKosky
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761874038
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
In Knowledge and Cosmos: Development and Decline of the Medieval Perspective, 2nd Edition, Robert K. DeKosky focuses on issues in astronomy, cosmology, physics, matter theory, philosophy, and theology vital to the “Copernican Revolution.” This book describes efforts among individuals advocating different world views to fit new ideas compatibly into broad perspectives reflecting four traditional patterns of interpretation: teleological, mechanical, occultist, and mathematico-descriptive. These four modes had guided medieval accounts of heavenly phenomena, material process, and motion. The teleological explanation, prevalent in Aristotle’s natural philosophy, posited “final causes” (ends or goals toward which objects strove or attempted to become). Ancient classical atomists had emphasized strictly mechanical explanations, invoking direct material contact and collision of moving matter as agents of physical change. Traditions of astrology, magic, and alchemy embraced an occultist pattern of interpretation—citing hidden forces opaque to both sensual detection and rational understanding as explanations of various phenomena. Finally, the mathematico-descriptive approach interpreted natural phenomena according to geometric or arithmetic relationships; unlike the other three, this did not involve causal explanation of a process. Part I discusses development of the four patterns in the ancient period and their uneasy medieval relationships with each other and with basic Judaeo-Muslim-Christian exigencies of faith. Theory of the heavens follows, including the mathematico-descriptive approach of Ptolemaic astronomy, the teleological and mechanical cosmology of Aristotle, and occultist interpretations of astrologers and magicians. Part I then turns to matter and materiality, discussing differences among the mechanical philosophy of classical atomism, teleological emphases in Aristotle’s material theory, and occultist assumptions of some alchemists. Finally, Part I analyzes conceptions of motion, focusing on Aristotelian interpretations and critical commentaries thereon during the Middle Ages. Part II relates struggles of leading early-modern figures to adapt new concepts (e.g., Copernicus’ heliocentric astronomy/cosmology, Galileo’s inertial theories of motion, and Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbit) to an allegiance to two or more of the four patterns of interpretation. By this approach, it identifies decreasing dependence on teleological explanation of physical phenomena as crucial to decline of medieval interpretations of those phenomena, followed by rejection of teleology in the natural philosophy of Descartes, and subsequent fruitful confluence of the mechanical, mathematico-descriptive, and occultist patterns in the physics and cosmology of Isaac Newton.

Unifying Heaven and Earth. Essays in the History of Early Modern Cosmology

Unifying Heaven and Earth. Essays in the History of Early Modern Cosmology PDF Author: Miguel Á. Granada
Publisher: Edicions Universitat Barcelona
ISBN: 8447539601
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
One of the most significant events in the history of Western civilization was the cosmological revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the most salient factors in this change, described by Alexandre Koyré as the ‘destruction of the cosmos’ inherited from ancient Greece, were Copernican heliocentrism and the substitution of a homogeneous universe for the hierarchical cosmos of the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition. Starting with a new approach to the issue of the presence of Islamic astronomical devices in Copernicus’ work and a thorough reappraisal of the cosmological views of Paracelsus, the book deals mainly with the abolition of cosmological dualism and the ways in which it affected the decline of astrology over the 17th century. Other related topics include planetary order and theories of world harmony, the cause of planetary motion in the Tychonic world system or the discussion on comets in Germany through the first presentation of a manuscript treatise by Michael Maestlin on the great comet of 1618.

Medieval and Early Modern Science: Science in the later Middle Ages and early modern times, XIII-XVII centuries

Medieval and Early Modern Science: Science in the later Middle Ages and early modern times, XIII-XVII centuries PDF Author: Alistair Cameron Crombie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Duncan Liddel (1561-1613)

Duncan Liddel (1561-1613) PDF Author: Pietro Daniel Omodeo
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004310665
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
This collective volume in the history of early-modern science and medicine investigates the transfer of knowledge between Germany and Scotland focusing on the Scottish mathematician and physician Duncan Liddel of Aberdeen. It offers a contextualized study of his life and work in the cultural and institutional frame of the northern European Renaissance, as well as a reconstruction of his scholarly networks and of the scientific debates in the time of post-Copernican astronomy, Melanchthonian humanism and Paracelsian controversies. Contributors are: Sabine Bertram, Duncan Cockburn, Laura Di Giammatteo, Mordechai Feingold, Karin Friedrich, Elizabeth Harding, John Henry, Richard Kirwan, Jane Pirie, Jonathan Regier.

John Wilkins (1614-1672): New Essays

John Wilkins (1614-1672): New Essays PDF Author: William Poole
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004348093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
John Wilkins (1614-72): New Essays presents ten fresh essays on the life and work of the influential English natural philosopher and theologian, John Wilkins. Wilkins, one of the most prominent figures in the scientific revolution in England, and a founder of the Royal Society of London, published widely on astronomy, mechanics, language, and theology, and was also an important churchman and politician. These ten essays review Wilkins’s writings and influence, while also addressing the wider contexts of his activities, including his service as head of house at two successive colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, and his political work. This new collection thus covers all aspects of Wilkins’s career, and functions as a complete reappraisal of this seminal early modern figure. Contributors are: C. S. L. Davies, Mordechai Feingold, Felicity Henderson, Natalie Kaoukji, Rhodri Lewis, Scott Mandelbrote, Jon Parkin, William Poole, Anna Marie Roos, and Richard Serjeantson.

Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution

Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution PDF Author: Andrea Strazzoni
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030198782
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 755

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Book Description
This monograph details the entire scientific thought of an influential natural philosopher whose contributions, unfortunately, have become obscured by the pages of history. Readers will discover an important thinker: Burchard de Volder. He was instrumental in founding the first experimental cabinet at a European University in 1675. The author goes beyond the familiar image of De Volder as a forerunner of Newtonianism in Continental Europe. He consults neglected materials, including handwritten sources, and takes into account new historiographical categories. His investigation maps the thought of an author who did not sit with an univocal philosophical school, but critically dealt with all the ‘major’ philosophers and scientists of his age: from Descartes to Newton, via Spinoza, Boyle, Huygens, Bernoulli, and Leibniz. It explores the way De Volder’s un-systematic thought used, rejected, and re-shaped their theories and approaches. In addition, the title includes transcriptions of De Volder's teaching materials: disputations, dictations, and notes. Insightful analysis combined with a trove of primary source material will help readers gain a new perspective on a thinker so far mostly ignored by scholars. They will find a thoughtful figure who engaged with early modern science and developed a place that fostered experimental philosophy.