Download or read book Medieval Cosmology written by Pierre Duhem and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1987-08-15 with total page 633 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These selections from Le système du monde, the classic ten-volume history of the physical sciences written by the great French physicist Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), focus on cosmology, Duhem's greatest interest. By reconsidering the work of such Arab and Christian scholars as Averroes, Avicenna, Gregory of Rimini, Albert of Saxony, Nicole Oresme, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam, Duhem demonstrated the sophistication of medieval science and cosmology.
Download or read book Planets Stars and Orbs written by Edward Grant and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1996-07-13 with total page 852 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Grant describes the extraordinary range of themes, ideas, and arguments that constituted scholastic cosmology for approximately five hundred years, from around 1200 to 1700. Primary emphasis is placed on the world as a whole, what might lie beyond it, and the celestial region, which extended from the Moon to the outermost convex surface of the cosmos.
Download or read book Medieval Cosmology written by Pierre Duhem and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These selections from Le système du monde, the classic ten-volume history of the physical sciences written by the great French physicist Pierre Duhem (1861-1916), focus on cosmology, Duhem's greatest interest. By reconsidering the work of such Arab and Christian scholars as Averroes, Avicenna, Gregory of Rimini, Albert of Saxony, Nicole Oresme, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam, Duhem demonstrated the sophistication of medieval science and cosmology.
Download or read book Planet Narnia written by Michael Ward and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-15 with total page 655 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over half a century, scholars have laboured to show that C. S. Lewis's famed but apparently disorganised Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia's symbolism has remained a mystery. Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In Planet Narnia he demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets - - Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn - - planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation". Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called 'the kappa element in romance', the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains connaître knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody. Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major revaluation not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook. Ward uncovers a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized, whose central interests were hiddenness, immanence, and knowledge by acquaintance.
Download or read book Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art written by Benjamin Anderson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-28 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states--the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires. As these empires diverged from their Greco-Roman roots between 700 and 1000 A.D. and established distinctive medieval artistic traditions, cosmic imagery created a web of visual continuity, though local meanings of these images varied greatly. Benjamin Anderson uses thrones, tables, mantles, frescoes, and manuscripts to show how cosmological motifs informed relationships between individuals, especially the ruling elite, and communities, demonstrating how domestic and global politics informed the production and reception of these depictions. The first book to consider such imagery across the dramatically diverse cultures of Western Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic Middle East, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art illuminates the distinctions between the cosmological art of these three cultural spheres, and reasserts the centrality of astronomical imagery to the study of art history.
Download or read book Stars Mind Fate written by J. D. North and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1989-07-01 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published over a period of 20 years the essays collected together in this volume all relate to the lasting human preoccupation with cosmological matters and modern responses to them. The eclecticism of the typical medieval scholar might now seem astonishing, regrettable, amusing, or derisory, according to one's view of how rigid intellectual barriers should be. In Stars, Fate & Mind North argues that we will seriously misunderstand ancient and medieval thought if we are not prepared to share a willingness to look across such frontiers as those dividing astrology from ecclesiastical history, biblical chronology from astronomy, and angelic hierarchies from the planetary spheres, theology from the theory of the continuum, celestial laws from terrestrial, or the work of the clockmaker from the work of God himself, namely the universe. Surveying the work of such controversial scholars as Alexander Thom and Immanuel Velikovsky this varied volume brings together current scholarship on cosmology, and as the title suggest considers the confluence of matters of the stars, fate and the mind. The collection is accompanied by further commentary from the author and new illustrations.
Download or read book Sexuality Sociality and Cosmology in Medieval Literary Texts written by J. Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-01-07 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the relation between sexuality and cosmology in a variety of literary texts from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, the essays reveal that medieval authors, whether lay or religious, Christian or Jewish, were grappling with the same sets of questions about sexuality as people are today.
Download or read book Plato s Timaeus and the foundations of cosmology in Late Antiquity the Middle Ages and Renaissance written by Thomas Leinkauf and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Download or read book Tracing Old Norse Cosmology written by Anders Andrén and published by Nordic Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Old Norse religion is considered as one of the best-known pre-Christian religions in Europe, due to the rich and varied Icelandic literature from the 12th to the 14th century. Since the Icelandic texts are Christian there has been an ongoing debate regarding their value as sources for deeper knowledge about pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia. However, with the help of archaeology it is possible to show that some elements in the texts actually have a pagan origin. Archaeology can also be used to outline a history of Old Norse religion through time. The collection of essays is a thorough study of some fundamental cosmological elements in Old Norse religion, such as the sun, the world-tree and the concept of Midgard (i.e. Middle Earth). Andrén argues that representations of all these elements can be traces through images and material culture during different parts of Scandinavian prehistory. By studying the history of these representations it is possible to outline a long-term perspective on Old Norse religion, including periods of fundamental changes.
Download or read book Cosmos written by John North and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-07-15 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of humanity's search to find its place within the universe. North charts the history of astronomy and cosmology from the Paleolithic period to the present day.
Download or read book Knowledge and Cosmos written by Robert K. DeKosky and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Alphanumeric Cosmology From Greek into Arabic written by Juan Acevedo and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juan Acevedo embarks on a semantic journey to track the origin and adventures of the Greek term stoicheion, which for at least eighteen centuries, from Pythagoras to Fibonacci, simultaneously meant "element", "letter", and "numeral". Focusing on this triple meaning and on how it was translated and interpreted in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic - especially in key texts of the Abrahamic faiths- a metaphysical study takes shape. With touches of alchemy and theology, it reveals how a shared fundamental alphanumeric cosmology underlay many basic paradigms of science and faith around the Mediterranean until the advent of the Indo-Arabic numerals broke the "marriage" of letter and numeral. Careful readings of Plato, Philolaos, Nicomachus and Philo, of Genesis and the Sefer Yetsira, of the Qur'an, the Ikhwan al-Safa', and Ibn 'Arabi are all woven together into a synthesis full of implications for many disciplines.
Download or read book Time Matters written by T.M. Rudavsky and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the importance of time and cosmology to Western thought, surprisingly little attention has been paid to these issues in histories of Jewish philosophy. Focusing on how medieval philosophers constructed a philosophical theology that was sensitive to religious constraints and yet also incorporated compelling elements of science and philosophy, T. M. Rudavsky traces the development of the concepts of time, cosmology, and creation in the writings of Ibn Gabirol, Maimonides, Gersonides, Crescas, Spinoza, and others.
Download or read book Medieval Cosmology written by Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tolkien s Cosmology written by Sam McBride and published by Kent State University. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: seeking the divine in Middle-earth -- Tolkien's cosmogony and pantheon -- The Valar in the world -- Divine intervention in the Third Age: visible powers -- Divine intervention in the Third Age: invisible powers -- The problem of evil in Arda -- Death -- Eucatastrophe, Estel, and the end of Arda.
Download or read book Cosmology written by Norriss S. Hetherington and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of contributions examining cosmology from multiple perspectives. It presents articles on traditional Native American and Chinese cosmologies and traces the historical roots of western cosmology from Mesopotamia and pre-Socratic Greece to medieval cosmology.
Download or read book The Unmaking of the Medieval Christian Cosmos 1500 1760 written by W.G.L. Randles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the early Christian era and throughout the Middle Ages, theologians exerted considerable effort to achieve a synthesis bringing together Greek cosmology and the Creation story in Genesis. In the construction of the medieval Empyrean, the dwelling place of the Blessed, Aristotle’s philosophy proved of critical importance. From the Renaissance on, largely in revolt against Aristotle, humanist Bible critics, Protestant reformers and astronomers set themselves to challenge the medieval synthesis. Especially effective in the ensuing dismantlement, from the 16th to 18th centuries, was the pagan concept of an infinite universe, resuscitated from Antiquity by the Italian philosophers Bruno and Patrizi. Indirectly inspired by the latter, the doctrines of the French pre-Enlightenment thinkers Descartes and Gassendi spread throughout Latin Catholic Europe in spite of considerable resistance. By the middle of the 18th century the Roman ecclesiastical authorities were brought to acknowledge an end to the medieval cosmos, allowing Catholics to teach the theory of heliocentrism.
