De Visione Stellarum

De Visione Stellarum PDF Author: Dan Burton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004153705
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In this critical edition of Nicole Oresme's 14th-century treatise on atmospheric refraction, Oresme uses optics and infinitesimals to help solve this vexing problem of astronomy, proposing that light travels along a curve through the atmosphere, centuries before Hooke and Newton.

De Visione Stellarum

De Visione Stellarum PDF Author: Dan Burton
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004153705
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In this critical edition of Nicole Oresme's 14th-century treatise on atmospheric refraction, Oresme uses optics and infinitesimals to help solve this vexing problem of astronomy, proposing that light travels along a curve through the atmosphere, centuries before Hooke and Newton.

Nicole Oresme, Questiones in Meteorologica de prima lectura

Nicole Oresme, Questiones in Meteorologica de prima lectura PDF Author: Nicole Oresme
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004689230
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
The open access publication of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Nicole Oresme, a mathematician, philosopher, and theologian, stood as one of the most original and influential thinkers of the Late Middle Ages. This volume presents the critical edition of Oresme's earliest work, his first cycle of lectures on Aristotle's Meteorology (1346). Transcribed directly by one of his students at Paris Arts Faculty, this text explores problems of physics, cosmology, geology, and optics, providing invaluable insights into late medieval philosophy of nature.

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy PDF Author: Robert Pasnau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139952927
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1520

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Book Description
The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with discussions of the rise of the universities and developments in the cultural and linguistic spheres. A striking feature is the continuous coverage of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian material. There are useful biographies of the philosophers, and a comprehensive bibliography. The volumes illuminate a rich and remarkable period in the history of philosophy and will be the authoritative source on medieval philosophy for the next generation of scholars and students alike.

Quantifying Aristotle

Quantifying Aristotle PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004512055
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
This book offers an entirely new perspective on the alleged incompatibility between Aristotelian philosophy and the mathematical methods and principles that form the basis of modern science. It surveys the tradition of the Oxford Calculators from its beginnings in the fourteenth century until Leibniz and the philosophy of the seventeenth century and explores how their various techniques of quantification expanded the conceptual and methodological limits of Aristotelianism.

Early Science and Medicine

Early Science and Medicine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medicine
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description


From Sight to Light

From Sight to Light PDF Author: A. Mark Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652857X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
From its inception in Greek antiquity, the science of optics was aimed primarily at explaining sight and accounting for why things look as they do. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, the analytic focus of optics had shifted to light: its fundamental properties and such physical behaviors as reflection, refraction, and diffraction. This dramatic shift—which A. Mark Smith characterizes as the “Keplerian turn”—lies at the heart of this fascinating and pioneering study. Breaking from previous scholarship that sees Johannes Kepler as the culmination of a long-evolving optical tradition that traced back to Greek antiquity via the Muslim Middle Ages, Smith presents Kepler instead as marking a rupture with this tradition, arguing that his theory of retinal imaging, which was published in 1604, was instrumental in prompting the turn from sight to light. Kepler’s new theory of sight, Smith reveals, thus takes on true historical significance: by treating the eye as a mere light-focusing device rather than an image-producing instrument—as traditionally understood—Kepler’s account of retinal imaging helped spur the shift in analytic focus that eventually led to modern optics. A sweeping survey, From Sight to Light is poised to become the standard reference for historians of optics as well as those interested more broadly in the history of science, the history of art, and cultural and intellectual history.

A History of Natural Philosophy

A History of Natural Philosophy PDF Author: Edward Grant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139461095
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes, functioning totally independently of natural philosophy. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the 'Great Mother of the Sciences', which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the 'Great Mother' and emerge as the multiplicity of independent sciences we know today.

Geoffrey Chaucer in Context

Geoffrey Chaucer in Context PDF Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107035643
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
Provides a rich and varied reference resource, illuminating the different contexts for Chaucer and his work.

Optics, Astronomy and Logic

Optics, Astronomy and Logic PDF Author: A.I. Sabra
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104023142X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Running through the articles in this volume is the theme of the appropriation and subsequent naturalization of Greek science by scholars in the world of medieval Islam. The opening paper presents the historiography of this process, and the focus is then placed on Ibn al-Haytham, one of the most original and influential figures of the 11th century, and in particular in his contribution to the science of optics, both mathematical and experimental, and the psychology of vision. Professor Sabra then continues the analysis of how Greek thought was developed in the Islamic world with two studies of work based on Euclid’s geometry and two on critiques of Ptolemaic astronomy. The final articles turn specifically to questions in the history of logic - Aristotelian syllogism, and Avicenna’s views on the subject - matter of logic.

Distance Points

Distance Points PDF Author: James S. Ackerman
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262510776
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
These essays by one of America's foremost historians of art and architecture range over theory and criticism, the search for connections between art and science in the Renaissance, and specific works of Renaissance architecture. The largest group of essays, dealing with the character of Renaissance architecture, are models of art historical scholarship in their direct approach to identifying the essentials of a building and the social and intellectual context in which they should be viewed. Another group of essays explores encounters between the traditions of artistic practice and early optics and color theory. The three essays that begin this collection bring to light the intellectual and moral concerns that underlie all of Ackerman's art historical work.