Download or read book Optical Magic in the Late Renaissance written by Mark Smith and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume includes the original Latin text of Della Porta's "De Refractione" with English translation. Della Porta's volume explored optics at the time of the late Renaissance."--

Download or read book Optical Magic in the Late Renaissance written by Giambattista della Porta and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume includes the original Latin text of Della Porta's "De Refractione" with English translation. Della Porta's volume explored optics at the time of the late Renaissance."--

Download or read book The Optics of Giambattista Della Porta ca 1535 1615 A Reassessment written by Arianna Borrelli and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-22 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains essays that examine the optical works of Giambattista Della Porta, an Italian natural philosopher during the Scientific Revolution. Coverage also explores the science and technology of early modern optics. Della Porta's groundbreaking book, Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), includes a prototype of the camera. Yet, because of his obsession with magic, Della Porta's scientific achievements are often forgotten. As the contributors argue, his work inspired such great minds as Johanes Kepler and Francis Bacon. After reading this book, researchers, historians, and students will have a better appreciation of this influential scientist. They will also gain a greater understanding of an important period in the history of optics. Readers will learn about Della Porta's experimental method, a process governed by the protocols, aims, and theoretical assumptions of natural magic. Coverage also discusses the material properties and limitations of optical technology in the early 17th century, based on a recently discovered Dutch spyglass. It also demonstrates how diagrams were instrumental in the discovery of the sine law of refraction. In addition, the book includes an in-depth analysis of previously untranslated Latin sources. This makes the material useful to historians of optics unfamiliar with the language. More than 70 illustrations complement the text.

Download or read book Foundations of Optical System Analysis and Design written by Lakshminarayan Hazra and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-02-07 with total page 774 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the incorporation of scientific approach in tackling problems of optical instrumentation, analysis and design of optical systems constitute a core area of optical engineering. A large number of software with varying level of scope and applicability is currently available to facilitate the task. However, possession of an optical design software, per se, is no guarantee for arriving at correct or optimal solutions. The validity and/or optimality of the solutions depend to a large extent on proper formulation of the problem, which calls for correct application of principles and theories of optical engineering. On a different note, development of proper experimental setups for investigations in the burgeoning field of optics and photonics calls for a good understanding of these principles and theories. With this backdrop in view, this book presents a holistic treatment of topics like paraxial analysis, aberration theory, Hamiltonian optics, ray-optical and wave-optical theories of image formation, Fourier optics, structural design, lens design optimization, global optimization etc. Proper stress is given on exposition of the foundations. The proposed book is designed to provide adequate material for ‘self-learning’ the subject. For practitioners in related fields, this book is a handy reference. Foundations of Optical System Analysis and Synthesis provides A holistic approach to lens system analysis and design with stress on foundations Basic knowledge of ray and wave optics for tackling problems of instrumental optics Proper explanation of approximations made at different stages Sufficient illustrations for facilitation of understanding Techniques for reducing the role of heuristics and empiricism in optical/lens design A sourcebook on chronological development of related topics across the globe This book is composed as a reference book for graduate students, researchers, faculty, scientists and technologists in R & D centres and industry, in pursuance of their understanding of related topics and concepts during problem solving in the broad areas of optical, electro-optical and photonic system analysis and design.

Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition—and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic—than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Download or read book A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age written by Carole P. Biggam and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-31 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age covers the period 500 to 1400. The medieval age saw an extraordinary burst of color - from illuminated manuscripts and polychrome sculpture to architecture and interiors, and from enamelled and jewelled metalwork to colored glass and the exquisite decoration of artefacts. Color was used to denote affiliation in heraldry and social status in medieval clothes. Color names were created in various languages and their resonance explored in poems, romances, epics, and plays. And, whilst medieval philosophers began to explain the rainbow, theologians and artists developed a color symbolism for both virtues and vices. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Carole P. Biggam is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Glasgow, UK. Kirsten Wolf is Professor of Old Norse and Scandinavian Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf The Cultural Histories Series A Cultural History of Color is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available as hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a tangible reference for their shelves or as part of a fully-searchable digital library. The digital product is available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access via www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com . Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available in print or digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com .

Download or read book Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe written by Lesley B. Cormack and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that we can only understand transformations of nature studies in the Scientific Revolution if we take seriously the interaction between practitioners (those who know by doing) and scholars (those who know by thinking). These are not in opposition, however. Theory and practice are end points on a continuum, with some participants interested only in the practical, others only in the theoretical, and most in the murky intellectual and material world in between. It is this borderland where influence, appropriation, and collaboration have the potential to lead to new methods, new subjects of enquiry, and new social structures of natural philosophy and science. The case for connection between theory and practice can be most persuasively drawn in the area of mathematics, which is the focus of this book. Practical mathematics was a growing field in early modern Europe and these essays are organised into three parts which contribute to the debate about the role of mathematical practice in the Scientific Revolution. First, they demonstrate the variability of the identity of practical mathematicians, and of the practices involved in their activities in early modern Europe. Second, readers are invited to consider what practical mathematics looked like and that although practical mathematical knowledge was transmitted and circulated in a wide variety of ways, participants were able to recognize them all as practical mathematics. Third, the authors show how differences and nuances in practical mathematics typically depended on the different contexts in which it was practiced: social, cultural, political, and economic particularities matter. Historians of science, especially those interested in the Scientific Revolution period and the history of mathematics will find this book and its ground-breaking approach of particular interest.

Download or read book Measuring Shadows written by Raz Chen-Morris and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Measuring Shadows, Raz Chen-Morris demonstrates that a close study of Kepler’s Optics is essential to understanding his astronomical work and his scientific epistemology. He explores Kepler’s radical break from scientific and epistemological traditions and shows how the seventeenth-century astronomer posited new ways to view scientific truth and knowledge. Chen-Morris reveals how Kepler’s ideas about the formation of images on the retina and the geometrics of the camera obscura, as well as his astronomical observations, advanced the argument that physical reality could only be described through artificially produced shadows, reflections, and refractions. Breaking from medieval and Renaissance traditions that insisted upon direct sensory perception, Kepler advocated for instruments as mediators between the eye and physical reality, and for mathematical language to describe motion. It was only through this kind of knowledge, he argued, that observation could produce certainty about the heavens. Not only was this conception of visibility crucial to advancing the early modern understanding of vision and the retina, but it affected how people during that period approached and understood the world around them.

Download or read book Jews and Health written by Catherine Hezser and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-02-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Health: Tradition, History, Practice investigates the value of health in the Jewish tradition and explores Jewish recommendations and practices to maintain and restore health as a state of physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing.

Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank F. Klaassen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Vanities of the Eye written by Stuart Clark and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-01-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vanities of the Eye investigates the cultural history of the senses in early modern Europe, a time in which the nature and reliability of human vision was the focus of much debate. In medicine, art theory, science, religion, and philosophy, sight came to be characterised as uncertain or paradoxical - mental images no longer resembled the external world. Was seeing really believing? Stuart Clark explores the controversial debates of the time - from the fantasies and hallucinations of melancholia, to the illusions of magic, art, demonic deceptions, and witchcraft. The truth and function of religious images and the authenticity of miracles and visions were also questioned with new vigour, affecting such contemporary works as Macbeth - a play deeply concerned with the dangers of visual illusion. Clark also contends that there was a close connection between these debates and the ways in which philosophers such as Descartes and Hobbes developed new theories on the relationship between the real and virtual. Original, highly accessible, and a major contribution to our understanding of European culture, Vanities of the Eye will be of great interest to a wide range of historians and anyone interested in the true nature of seeing.

Download or read book Renaissance Go Betweens written by Andreas Höfele and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume analyses some of the travelling and bridge-building activities that went on in Renaissance Europe, mainly but not exclusively across the Channel, true to Montaigne's epoch-making program of describing 'the passage'. Its emphasis on Anglo-Continental relations ensures a firm basis in English literature, but its particular appeal lies in its European point of view, and in the perspectives it opens up into other areas of early modern culture, such as pictorial art, philosophy, and economics. The multiple implications of the go-between concept make for structured diversity. The chapters of this book are arranged in three stages. Part 1 ('Mediators') focuses on influential go-betweens, both as groups, like the translators, and as individual mediators. The second part of this book ('Mediations') is concerned with individual acts of mediation, and with the 'mental topographies' they presuppose, reflect and redraw in their turn. Part 3 ('Representations') looks at the role of exemplary intermediaries and the workings of mediation represented on the early modern English stage. Key features High quality anthology on phenomena of cultural exchange in the Renaissance era With contributions by outstanding international experts

Download or read book The Alchemy of Light written by Urszula Szulakowska and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2000 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This re-examination of alchemical engravings of the late Renaissance uses an innovative semiotic method in analysing their geometrical and optical rhetorical devices. The images are contextualised within contemporary metaphysics, specifically, the discourse of light, and in Protestant reformism.

Download or read book Influences written by Mary Quinlan-McGrath and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today few would think of astronomy and astrology as fields related to theology. Fewer still would know that physically absorbing planetary rays was once considered to have medical and psychological effects. But this was the understanding of light radiation held by certain natural philosophers of early modern Europe, and that, argues Mary Quinlan-McGrath, was why educated people of the Renaissance commissioned artworks centered on astrological themes and practices. Influences is the first book to reveal how important Renaissance artworks were designed to be not only beautiful but also—perhaps even primarily—functional. From the fresco cycles at Caprarola, to the Vatican’s Sala dei Pontefici, to the Villa Farnesina, these great works were commissioned to selectively capture and then transmit celestial radiation, influencing the bodies and minds of their audiences. Quinlan-McGrath examines the sophisticated logic behind these theories and practices and, along the way, sheds light on early creation theory; the relationship between astrology and natural theology; and the protochemistry, physics, and mathematics of rays. An original and intellectually stimulating study, Influences adds a new dimension to the understanding of aesthetics among Renaissance patrons and a new meaning to the seductive powers of art.

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 The Nineteenth century Visual Culture Reader written by Vanessa R. Schwartz and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nineteenth century is central to contemporary discussions of visual culture. This reader brings together key writings on the period, exploring such topics as photographs, exhibitions and advertising.

Download or read book The Alchemy of Light written by Urszula Szulakowska and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2000 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This re-examination of alchemical engravings of the late Renaissance uses an innovative semiotic method in analysing their geometrical and optical rhetorical devices. The images are contextualised within contemporary metaphysics, specifically, the discourse of light, and in Protestant reformism.