Somnium

Somnium PDF Author: Johannes Kepler
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781981810031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book Here

Book Description
Somnium is a Latin word for Dream. This novel was written by Johannes Kepler in 1608, in a time when a trip to the ethereal regions of the moon would be possible only with the assistance of supernatural forces. Historians consider this lunar exploration a remarkable and revolutionary text, and one of the most provocative and innovative of Kepler's works. Great authors/scientists such as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan suggested it as the first science fiction story. If it is not, we can at least consider it as the first serious scientific work about lunar astronomy.

Somnium

Somnium PDF Author: Johannes Kepler
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781981810031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52

Get Book Here

Book Description
Somnium is a Latin word for Dream. This novel was written by Johannes Kepler in 1608, in a time when a trip to the ethereal regions of the moon would be possible only with the assistance of supernatural forces. Historians consider this lunar exploration a remarkable and revolutionary text, and one of the most provocative and innovative of Kepler's works. Great authors/scientists such as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan suggested it as the first science fiction story. If it is not, we can at least consider it as the first serious scientific work about lunar astronomy.

Through the Daemon's Gate

Through the Daemon's Gate PDF Author: Dean Swinford
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135515603
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book tells the story of the early modern astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Somnium, which has been regarded by science historians and literary critics alike as the first true example of science fiction. Kepler began writing his complex and heavily-footnoted tale of a fictional Icelandic astronomer as an undergraduate and added to it throughout his life. The Somnium fuses supernatural and scientific models of the cosmos through a satirical defense of Copernicanism that features witches, lunar inhabitants, and a daemon who speaks in the empirical language of modern science. Swinford’s looks at the ways that Kepler’s Somnium is influenced by the cosmic dream, a literary genre that enjoyed considerable popularity among medieval authors, including Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, John of Salisbury, Macrobius, and Alan of Lille. He examines the generic conventions of the cosmic dream, also studying the poetic and theological sensibilities underlying the categories of dreams formulated by Macrobius and Artemidorus that were widely used to interpret specific symbols in dreams and to assess their overall reliability. Swinford develops a key claim about the form of the Somnium as it relates to early science: Kepler relies on a genre that is closely connected to a Ptolemaic, or earth-centered, model of the cosmos as a way of explaining and justifying a model of the cosmos that does not posit the same connections between the individual and the divine that are so important for the Ptolemaic model. In effect, Kepler uses the cosmic dream to describe a universe that cannot lay claim to the same correspondences between an individual’s dream and the order of the cosmos understood within the rules of the genre itself. To that end, Kepler’s Somnium is the first example of science fiction, but the last example of Neoplatonic allegory.

Kepler's Somnium [engl.] The dream, or posthumous work on lunar astronomy

Kepler's Somnium [engl.] The dream, or posthumous work on lunar astronomy PDF Author: Johannes Kepler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description


Kepler's Dream

Kepler's Dream PDF Author: John Lear
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520323203
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

The Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio PDF Author: Iain Pears
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307370887
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 539

Get Book Here

Book Description
Three narratives, set in the fifth, fourteenth, and twentieth centuries, all revolving around an ancient text and each with a love story at its centre, are the elements of this brilliantly ingenious novel, a follow-up to the international bestseller An Instance of the Fingerpost. The centuries are the 5th (the final days of the Roman Empire); the 14th (the years of the Plague — the Black Death); and the 20th (World War II). The setting for each is the same — Provence — and each has at its heart a love story. The narratives intertwine seamlessly, and what joins them thematically is an ancient text — “The Dream of Scipio” — a work of neo-Platonism that poses timeless philosophical questions. What is the obligation of the individual in a society under siege? What is the role of learning when civilization itself is threatened, whether by acts of man or nature? Does virtue lie more in engagement or in neutrality? “Power without wisdom is tyranny; wisdom without power is pointless,” warns one of Pears’s characters. The Dream of Scipio is a bona fide novel of ideas, a dazzling feat of storytelling, fiction for our times.

The Dream of Scipio

The Dream of Scipio PDF Author: Marcus Tullius Cicero
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : la
Pages : 70

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Astronomer & the Witch

The Astronomer & the Witch PDF Author: Ulinka Rublack
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198736770
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 392

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Astronomer and the Witch, Ulinka Rublack pieces together the tale of this extraordinary episode in Kepler's life, one that takes us to the heart of his changing world.

1500 Miles an Hour

1500 Miles an Hour PDF Author: Charles Dixon
Publisher: Jovian Press
ISBN: 1537824201
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Should these manuscripts chance to fall into the hands of any civilised man, it is my earnest wish, though of German extraction myself, that they should be published - if published at all- in the English tongue. Truth shall prevail, and our return to earth shall scatter, like thistle-down before the autumn winds, the scepticism which I mistake not will encircle them, as soon as man may read them. It is my cherished hope to return to my mother world, and to tell in person of that glorious life and those sublime wonders of a New World. Adieu!" This brief extract must suffice as introduction. The next chapter will begin at once with the story proper, omitting the uninteresting preliminary portion of the manuscripts...

Somnium

Somnium PDF Author: Steve Moore
Publisher: Strange Attractor Press
ISBN: 9781907222061
Category : Fantasy fiction, English
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
A jewelled whirlpool of a tale, Somnium is a richly poetic pagan fantasy, a narrative of shifting levels presented in a dazzling array of styles, ranging from that of the medi‘val romance through Elizabethan tragedy to the Gothic novel and the sublime madness of the Decadents. With its delirious and heartbroken text spiralling out from the classical myth of Endymion and the Greek lunar goddess Selene, Somnium is an extraordinary odyssey through love and loss and lunacy, illuminated by the silvery moonlight of its exquisite language.

The Six-Cornered Snowflake

The Six-Cornered Snowflake PDF Author: Johannes Kepler
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589882857
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Get Book Here

Book Description
"In 1611, Kepler wrote an essay wondering why snowflakes always had perfect, sixfold symmetry. It's a simple enough question, but one that no one had ever asked before and one that couldn't actually be answered for another three centuries. Still, in trying to work out an answer, Kepler raised some fascinating questions about physics, math, and biology, and now you can watch in wonder as a great scientific genius unleashes the full force of his intellect on a seemingly trivial question, complete with new illustrations and essays to put it all in perspective."—io9, from their list "10 Amazing Science Books That Reveal The Wonders Of The Universe" When snow began to fall while he was walking across the Charles Bridge in Prague late in 1610, the eminent astronomer Johannes Kepler asked himself the following question: Why do snowflakes, when they first fall, and before they are entangled into larger clumps, always come down with six corners and with six radii tufted like feathers? In his effort to answer this charming and never-before-asked question about snowflakes, Kepler delves into the nature of beehives, peapods, pomegranates, five-petaled flowers, the spiral shape of the snail's shell, and the formative power of nature itself. While he did not answer his original question—it remained a mystery for another three hundred years—he did find an occasion for deep and playful thought. "A most suitable book for any and all during the winter and holiday seasons is a reissue of a holiday present by the great mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler…Even the endnotes in this wonderful little book are interesting and educationally fun to read."—Jay Pasachoff, The Key Reporter —New English translation by Jacques Bromberg —Latin text on facing pages —An essay, "The Delights of a Roving Mind" by Owen Gingerich —An essay, "On The Six-Cornered Snowflake" by Guillermo Bleichmar —Snowflake illustrations by Capi Corrales Rodriganez —John Frederick Nims' poem "The Six-Cornered Snowflake" —Notes by Jacques Bromberg and Guillermo Bleichmar