Download or read book Medieval Views of the Cosmos written by Evelyn Edson and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The medieval view of the wider world around them and their portrayal of it in maps, charts, illuminations and paintings had very little to do geography. This beautifully illustrated volume examines and celebrates the medieval vision of the cosmos as a strictly hierarchial and heavenly sequence of spheres, and of a world, protected by a sky filled with an elaborate array of constellations, with Jerusalem in the centre and mythical beasts on the edge. The scholarly and very accessible discussion is accompanied by many colour illustrations of Christian and Islamic works of art and science, mostly dating from the 12th century to the revolutionary ideas of the 16th. The foreword is by Terry Jones.
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 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 The Human Cosmos written by Jo Marchant and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of 2020 (NPR) A Best Book of 2020 (The Economist) A Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 (Smithsonian) A Best Science and Technology Book of 2020 (Library Journal) A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 (Newsweek) Starred review (Booklist) Starred review (Publishers Weekly) A historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it. For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are—our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost. Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king—the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries, modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe-inspiring view you can ever see: looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life. To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange, Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.
Download or read book The Discarded Image written by C. S. Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This, Lewis's last book, has been hailed as 'the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind'.
Download or read book Wonder Image and Cosmos in Medieval Islam written by Persis Berlekamp and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original book untangles fundamental confusions about historical relationships among Islam, representational images, and philosophy. Closely examining some of the most meaningful and best preserved premodern illustrated manuscripts of Islamic cosmographies, Persis Berlekamp refutes the assertion often made by other historians of medieval Islamic art that, while representational images did exist, they did not serve religious purposes. The author focuses on widely disseminated Islamic images of the wonders of creation, ... Show more This original book untangles fundamental confusions about historical relationships among Islam, representational images, and philosophy. Closely examining some of the most meaningful and best preserved premodern illustrated manuscripts of Islamic cosmographies, Persis Berlekamp refutes the assertion often made by other historians of medieval Islamic art that, while representational images did exist, they did not serve religious purposes. The author focuses on widely disseminated Islamic images of the wonders of creation, ranging from angels to human-snatching birds, and argues that these illustrated manuscripts aimed to induce wonder at God's creation, as was their stated purpose. She tracks the various ways that images advanced that purpose in the genre's formative milieu - the century and a half following the Mongol conquest of the Islamic East in 1258. Delving into social history and into philosophical ideas relevant to manuscript and image production, Berlekamp shows that philosophy occupied an established, if controversial, position within Islam. She thereby radically reframes representational images within the history of Islam.
Download or read book An Eleventh Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 800 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acquired by the Bodleian Library in 2002, the Book of Curiosities is now recognized as one of the most important discoveries in the history of cartography in recent decades. This eleventh-century Arabic treatise, composed in Egypt under the Fatimid caliphs, is a detailed account of the heavens and the Earth, illustrated by an unparalleled series of maps and astronomical diagrams. With topics ranging from comets to the island of Sicily, from lunar mansions to the sources of the Nile, it represents the extent of geographical, astronomical and astrological knowledge of the time. This authoritative edition and translation, accompanied by a colour facsimile reproduction, opens a unique window onto the worldview of medieval Islam. An extensive glossary of star-names and seven indices, on birds, animals and other items have been added for easy reference.
Download or read book City and Cosmos written by Keith D. Lilley and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In City and Cosmos, Keith D. Lilley argues that the medieval mind considered the city truly a microcosm: much more than a collection of houses, a city also represented a scaled-down version of the very order and organization of the cosmos. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, including original accounts, visual art, science, literature, and architectural history, City and Cosmos offers an innovative interpretation of how medieval Christians infused their urban surroundings with meaning. Lilley combines both visual and textual evidence to demonstrate how the city carried Christian cosmological meaning and symbolism, sharing common spatial forms and functional ordering. City and Cosmos will not only appeal to a diverse range of scholars studying medieval history, archaeology, philosophy, and theology; but it will also find a broad audience in architecture, urban planning, and art history. With more of the world’s population inhabiting cities than ever before, this original perspective on urban order and culture will prove increasingly valuable to anyone wishing to better understand the role of the city in society.
Download or read book The Number of the Heavens written by Tom Siegfried and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning former editor of Science News shows that one of the most fascinating and controversial ideas in contemporary cosmology—the existence of multiple parallel universes—has a long and divisive history that continues to this day. We often consider the universe to encompass everything that exists, but some scientists have come to believe that the vast, expanding universe we inhabit may be just one of many. The totality of those parallel universes, still for some the stuff of science fiction, has come to be known as the multiverse. The concept of the multiverse, exotic as it may be, isn’t actually new. In The Number of the Heavens, veteran science journalist Tom Siegfried traces the history of this controversial idea from antiquity to the present. Ancient Greek philosophers first raised the possibility of multiple universes, but Aristotle insisted on one and only one cosmos. Then in 1277 the bishop of Paris declared it heresy to teach that God could not create as many universes as he pleased, unleashing fervent philosophical debate about whether there might exist a “plurality of worlds.” As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, the philosophical debates became more scientific. René Descartes declared “the number of the heavens” to be indefinitely large, and as notions of the known universe expanded from our solar system to our galaxy, the debate about its multiplicity was repeatedly recast. In the 1980s, new theories about the big bang reignited interest in the multiverse. Today the controversy continues, as cosmologists and physicists explore the possibility of many big bangs, extra dimensions of space, and a set of branching, parallel universes. This engrossing story offers deep lessons about the nature of science and the quest to understand the universe.
Download or read book God and the Cosmos written by Harry Lee Poe and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theologian Harry Lee Poe and chemist Jimmy H. Davis argue that God's interaction with our world is a possibility affirmed equally by the Bible and the contemporary scientific record. Rather than confirming that the cosmos is closed to the actions of the divine, advancing scientific knowledge seems to indicate that the nature of the universe is actually open to the unique type of divine activity portrayed in the Bible.
Download or read book God and Cosmos written by John Byl and published by Banner of Truth. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Christian view of time, space and the universe, emphasizing the superiority of Scripture to all other sources of knowledge and dealing helpfully with the Big Bang theory of origins, extraterrestrial intelligence, the spiritual realm, and much else.
Download or read book The Consolation of Philosophy as Cosmic Image written by Myra L. Uhlfelder and published by Renaissance Society of America. This book was released on 2018 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, Uhlfelder (recently deceased) argues convincingly that, in portraying his literary persona as an exemplum of man in his quest for self-knowledge, Boethius has made the whole Consolatio a cosmic image representing man as microcosm. The mental faculties of sensus, imaginatio, ratio, and intellegentia are arranged as a proportion suggesting both Plato's famous "divided line" at the end of Book 6 of the Republic and, at the same time, the four elements of the physical cosmos which, according to the Platonic Timaeus, are connected with one another so as to form a geometrical proportion. The philosophical argument of the Consolatio in books II through V comprises another cosmic image with III. M.9 at its exact center; in addition, the other three cosmic depictions, revolving as concentric circles around III. M.9, may be viewed as forming an image of cosmic order. In its structure, then, Boethius' work is an anagogic eikon which formally depicts its content.
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 The Letter and the Cosmos written by Laurence de Looze and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2016-08-04 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From our first ABCs to the Book of Revelation’s statement that Jesus is “the Alpha and Omega,” we see the world through our letters. More than just a way of writing, the alphabet is a powerful concept that has shaped Western civilization and our daily lives. In The Letter and the Cosmos, Laurence de Looze probes that influence, showing how the alphabet has served as a lens through which we conceptualize the world and how the world, and sometimes the whole cosmos, has been perceived as a kind of alphabet itself. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, he traces the use of alphabetic letters and their significance from Plato to postmodernism, offering a fascinating tour through Western history. A sharp and entertaining examination of how languages, letterforms, orthography, and writing tools have reflected our hidden obsession with the alphabet, The Letter and the Cosmos is illustrated with copious examples of the visual and linguistic phenomena which de Looze describes. Read it, and you’ll never look at the alphabet the same way again.
Download or read book Magic Science and Religion in Early Modern Europe written by Mark A. Waddell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the recovery of ancient ritual magic at the height of the Renaissance to the ignominious demise of alchemy at the dawn of the Enlightenment, Mark A. Waddell explores the rich and complex ways that premodern people made sense of their world. He describes a time when witches flew through the dark of night to feast on the flesh of unbaptized infants, magicians conversed with angels or struck pacts with demons, and astrologers cast the horoscopes of royalty. Ground-breaking discoveries changed the way that people understood the universe while, in laboratories and coffee houses, philosophers discussed how to reconcile the scientific method with the veneration of God. This engaging, illustrated new study introduces readers to the vibrant history behind the emergence of the modern world.
Download or read book Magic in the Cloister written by Sophie Page and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.
Download or read book Burned Alive written by Alberto A. Martinez and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1600, the Catholic Inquisition condemned the philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno for heresy, and he was then burned alive in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Historians, scientists, and philosophical scholars have traditionally held that Bruno’s theological beliefs led to his execution, denying any link between his study of the nature of the universe and his trial. But in Burned Alive, Alberto A. Martínez draws on new evidence to claim that Bruno’s cosmological beliefs—that the stars are suns surrounded by planetary worlds like our own, and that the Earth moves because it has a soul—were indeed the primary factor in his condemnation. Linking Bruno’s trial to later confrontations between the Inquisition and Galileo in 1616 and 1633, Martínez shows how some of the same Inquisitors who judged Bruno challenged Galileo. In particular, one clergyman who authored the most critical reports used by the Inquisition to condemn Galileo in 1633 immediately thereafter wrote an unpublished manuscript in which he denounced Galileo and other followers of Copernicus for their beliefs about the universe: that many worlds exist and that the Earth moves because it has a soul. Challenging the accepted history of astronomy to reveal Bruno as a true innovator whose contributions to the science predate those of Galileo, this book shows that is was cosmology, not theology, that led Bruno to his death.
