Monks, Manuscripts and Sundials

Monks, Manuscripts and Sundials PDF Author: Catherine Eagleton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004176659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Bringing together the surviving material and manuscript evidence, this book looks closely at a fascinating medieval sundial in the form of a ship. It considers who made and used the surviving instruments, as well as studying the scholars who wrote about it.

Monks, Manuscripts and Sundials

Monks, Manuscripts and Sundials PDF Author: Catherine Eagleton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004176659
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Bringing together the surviving material and manuscript evidence, this book looks closely at a fascinating medieval sundial in the form of a ship. It considers who made and used the surviving instruments, as well as studying the scholars who wrote about it.

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science PDF Author: Joshua Nall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108498272
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
A window into cultures of scientific practice drawing on the collection of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Roman Portable Sundials

Roman Portable Sundials PDF Author: Richard J. A. Talbert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190273488
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Talbert investigates miniature sundials which can be adjusted for the owner's whereabouts. They incorporate a list of locations and latitudes for ready reference, data that offers insight into Romans' worldviews. To some perhaps, these sundials were primarily symbols of scientific awareness as well as imperial mastery of time and space.

A General History of Horology

A General History of Horology PDF Author: Turner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198863918
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 777

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Book Description
A General History of Horology describes instruments used for the finding and measurement of time from Antiquity to the 21st century. In geographical scope it ranges from East Asia to the Americas. The instruments described are set in their technical and social contexts, and there is also discussion of the literature, the historiography and the collecting of the subject. The book features the use of case studies to represent larger topics that cannot be completely covered in a single book. The international body of authors have endeavoured to offer a fully world-wide survey accessible to students, historians, collectors, and the general reader, based on a firm understanding of the technical basis of the subject. At the same time as the work offers a synthesis of current knowledge of the subject, it also incorporates the results of some fundamamental, new and original research.

Alle Thyng Hath Tyme

Alle Thyng Hath Tyme PDF Author: Gillian Adler
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789147220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
An insightful account of how medieval people experienced time. Alle Thyng Hath Tyme recreates medieval people’s experience of time as continuous, discontinuous, linear, and cyclical—from creation through judgment and into eternity. Medieval people measured time by natural phenomena such as sunrise and sunset, the motion of the stars, or the progress of the seasons, even as the late-medieval invention of the mechanical clock made time-reckoning more precise. Negotiating these mixed and competing systems, Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm show how medieval people gained a nuanced and expansive sense of time that rewards attention today.

Islamic Astronomy and Geography

Islamic Astronomy and Geography PDF Author: David A. King
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000585158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This volume of 12 studies, mainly published during the past 15 years, begins with an overview of the Islamic astronomy covering not only sophisticated mathematical astronomy and instrumentation but also simple folk astronomy, and the ways in which astronomy was used in the service of religion. It continues with discussions of the importance of Islamic instruments and scientific manuscript illustrations. Three studies deal with the regional schools that developed in Islamic astronomy, in this case, Egypt and the Maghrib. Another focuses on a curious astrological table for calculating the length of life of any individual. The notion of the world centred on the sacred Kaaba in Mecca inspired both astronomers and proponents of folk astronomy to propose methods for finding the qibla, or sacred direction towards the Kaaba; their activities are surveyed here. The interaction between the mathematical and folk traditions in astronomy is then illustrated by an 11th-century text on the qibla in Transoxania. The last three studies deal with an account of the geodetic measurements sponsored by the Caliph al-Ma'mûn in the 9th century; a world-map in the tradition of the 11th-century polymath al-Bîrûnî, alas corrupted by careless copying; and a table of geographical coordinates from 15th-century Egypt.

Illustrating the Phaenomena

Illustrating the Phaenomena PDF Author: Elly Dekker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199609691
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
In this volume all extant celestial maps and globes made before 1500 are described and analysed. It also discusses the astronomical sources involved in making these artefacts in antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Islamic world and the European Renaissance before 1500.

Before Copernicus

Before Copernicus PDF Author: Rivka Feldhay
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773550127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In 1984, Noel Swerdlow and Otto Neugebauer argued that Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) explained planetary motion by using mathematical devices and astronomical models originally developed by Islamic astronomers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Was this a parallel development, or did Copernicus somehow learn of the work of his predecessors, and if so, how? And if Copernicus did use material from the Islamic world, how then should we understand the European context of his innovative cosmology? Although Copernicus’s work has been subject to a number of excellent studies, there has been little attention paid to the sources and diverse cultures that might have inspired him. Foregrounding the importance of interactions between Islamic and European astronomers and philosophers, Before Copernicus explores the multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual context of learning on the eve of the Copernican revolution, determining the relationship between Copernicus and his predecessors. Essays by Christopher Celenza and Nancy Bisaha delve into the European cultural and intellectual contexts of the fifteenth century, revealing both the profound differences between “them” and “us,” and the nascent attitudes that would mark the turn to modernity. Michael Shank, F. Jamil Ragep, Sally Ragep, and Robert Morrison depict the vibrant and creative work of astronomers in the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish worlds. In other essays, Rivka Feldhay, Raz Chen-Morris, and Edith Sylla demonstrate the importance of shifting outlooks that were critical for the emergence of a new worldview. Highlighting the often-neglected intercultural exchange between Islam and early modern Europe, Before Copernicus reimagines the scientific revolution in a global context.

A History of Folding in Mathematics

A History of Folding in Mathematics PDF Author: Michael Friedman
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3319724878
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
While it is well known that the Delian problems are impossible to solve with a straightedge and compass – for example, it is impossible to construct a segment whose length is cube root of 2 with these instruments – the discovery of the Italian mathematician Margherita Beloch Piazzolla in 1934 that one can in fact construct a segment of length cube root of 2 with a single paper fold was completely ignored (till the end of the 1980s). This comes as no surprise, since with few exceptions paper folding was seldom considered as a mathematical practice, let alone as a mathematical procedure of inference or proof that could prompt novel mathematical discoveries. A few questions immediately arise: Why did paper folding become a non-instrument? What caused the marginalisation of this technique? And how was the mathematical knowledge, which was nevertheless transmitted and prompted by paper folding, later treated and conceptualised? Aiming to answer these questions, this volume provides, for the first time, an extensive historical study on the history of folding in mathematics, spanning from the 16th century to the 20th century, and offers a general study on the ways mathematical knowledge is marginalised, disappears, is ignored or becomes obsolete. In doing so, it makes a valuable contribution to the field of history and philosophy of science, particularly the history and philosophy of mathematics and is highly recommended for anyone interested in these topics.

The Changing Face of Early Modern Time, 1550–1770

The Changing Face of Early Modern Time, 1550–1770 PDF Author: Jane Desborough
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030153533
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
This book provides a reinterpretation of early modern clock and watch dials on the basis of use. Between 1550 and the emergence of a standard format in 1770, dials represented combinations of calendrical, lunar and astronomical information using multiple concentric rings, subsidiary dials and apertures. Change was gradual, but significant. Over the course of eight chapters and with reference to thirty-five exceptional images, this book unlocks the meaning embedded within these early combinations. The true significance of dial change can only be fully understood by comparing dials with printed paper sources such as almanacs, diagrams and craft pamphlets. Clock and watch makers drew on traditional communication methods, utilised different formats to generate trust in their work, and tried to be help users in different contexts. The calendar, lunar and astronomical functions were useful as a memory prompt for astrology up until the mid-late seventeenth century. After the decline of this practice, the three functions continued to be useful for other purposes, but eventually declined.