Download or read book Ptolemy s Science of the Stars in the Middle Ages written by David Juste and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ptolemy s Almagest written by Ptolemy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1998-11-08 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ptolemy's Almagest is one of the most influential scientific works in history. A masterpiece of technical exposition, it was the basic textbook of astronomy for more than a thousand years, and still is the main source for our knowledge of ancient astronomy. This translation, based on the standard Greek text of Heiberg, makes the work accessible to English readers in an intelligible and reliable form. It contains numerous corrections derived from medieval Arabic translations and extensive footnotes that take account of the great progress in understanding the work made in this century, due to the discovery of Babylonian records and other researches. It is designed to stand by itself as an interpretation of the original, but it will also be useful as an aid to reading the Greek text.
Download or read book The Light Ages The Surprising Story of Medieval Science written by Seb Falk and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.
Download or read book The History of Astronomy A Very Short Introduction written by Michael Hoskin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-05-08 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astronomy, perhaps the first of the sciences, was already well developed by the time of Christ. Seventeen centuries later, after Newton showed that the movements of the planets could be explained in terms of gravitation, it became the paradigm for the mathematical sciences. In the nineteenth century the analysis of star-light allowed astrophysicists to determine both the chemical composition and the radial velocities of celestial bodies, while the development of photography enabled distant objects invisible to the human eye, to be studied and measured in comfort. Technical developments during and since the Second World War have greatly enlarged the scope of the science by permitting the study of radiation. This is a fascinating introduction to the history of Western astronomy, from prehistoric times to the origins of astrophysics in the mid-nineteenth century. Historical records are first found in Babylon and Egypt, and after two millennia the arithmetical astronomy of the Babylonians merged with the Greek geometrical approach to culminate in the Almagest of Ptolemy. This legacy was transmitted to the Latin West via Islam, and led to Copernicus's claim that the Earth is in motion. In justifying this Kepler converted astronomy into a branch of dynamics, leading to Newton's universal law of gravity. The book concludes with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century applications of Newton's law, and the first explorations of the universe of stars. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The History of Ptolemy s Star Catalogue written by Gerd Graßhoff and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ptolemy's Almagest shares with Euclid's Elements the glory of being the scientific text longest in use. From its conception in the second century up to the late Renaissance, this work determined astronomy as a science. During this time the Almagest was not only a work on astronomy; the subject was defined as what is described in the Almagest. The cautious emancipation of the late middle ages and the revolutionary creation of the new science in the 16th century are not conceivable without reference to the Almagest. This text lifted European astronomy to the high standard of knowledge on which the new science flourished. Before, the Ptolemaic models of the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the planets had been refined by Arabic astronomers. They provided the structural elements with which Copernicus and Kepler ushered in the era of modern astronomy. The Almagest survived the destruction of its epicyclic representation of the planetary orbits in the conceptual traces left behind in the theories of its successors. The clear separation of the sidereal from the tropical year, the celestial coordinate systems, the concepts of time, the forms of the constellations, and brightness classifications of celestial objects are, among many other things, still part of the astronomical canon even today.
Download or read book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy written by Robert R. Newton and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Newton's view, Ptolemy was "the most successful fraud in the history of science". Newton shows that Ptolemy predominantly obtained the astronomical results described in his work The Almagest by computation, and not by the direct observations that Ptolemy described.
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 Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy written by Marco Sgarbi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 3618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.
Download or read book Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe written by Stephen C. McCluskey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-11-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of the astronomical practices that continued through the so-called "Dark Ages." Like the astronomies of traditional societies, early medieval astronomies established a religious framework of sacred time and ritual calender; here Christian feasts tied to a pre-Christian ritual solar calender, the date of Easter tied to the Hebrew lunar calender; and the timing of monastic prayers in terms of the course of the stars. Coupled with the remnants of ancient geometrical astronomy, these provided the framework for the rebirth of astronomy with the rise of the medieval universities.
Download or read book Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages written by Charles Burnett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After discussing the terminology of talismanic magic (or necromancy) and its position in divisions of science in the Middle Ages, this book traces the history of talismanic texts from the Classical period through the Arabic world to the Latin Middle Ages. The principal authorities are Hermes and Aristotle, and the search for the ’secret knowledge’ of these ancient sages is shown to have been a catalyst for the translating activity from Arabic into Latin in 12th-century Spain. The second half of the volume is devoted to examples of the kinds of divination prevalent in Arabic and Latin-reading societies: chiromancy, onomancy, scapulimancy, geomancy and fortune-telling. The book ends with advice on when to practice alchemy and a prophetic letter of supposed Arabic provenance, warning of the coming of the Mongols. Several editions of previously unedited texts are included, with translations.
Download or read book A Source Book in Medieval Science written by Edward Grant and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Source Book explores a millennium of European scientific thought accompanied by critical commentary and annotation; nearly half the selections appear for the first time in the vernacular. Representing "science" in the medieval sense, selections include alchemy, astrology, logic, and theology as well as mathematics, physics, and biology.
Download or read book Geometrical and Statistical Methods of Analysis of Star Configurations Dating Ptolemy s Almagest written by A.T. Fomenko and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-01-31 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This easy-to-follow book offers a statistico-geometrical approach for dating ancient star catalogs. The authors' scientific methods reveal statistical properties of ancient catalogs and overcome the difficulties of their dating originated by the low accuracy of these catalogs. Methods are tested on reliably dated medieval star catalogs and applied to the star catalog of the Almagest. Here, the dating of Ptolemy's famous star catalog is reconsidered and recalculated using modern mathematical techniques.The text provides necessary information from astronomy and astrometry. It also covers the history of observational equipment and methods for measuring coordinates of stars. Many chapters are devoted to the Almagest, from a preliminary analysis to a global statistical processing of the catalog and its basic parts. Mathematics are simplified in this book for easy reading. This book will prove invaluable for mathematicians, astronomers, astrophysicists, specialists in natural sciences, historians interested in mathematical and statistical methods, and second-year mathematics students.Features:
Download or read book Science in the Middle Ages written by David C. Lindberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, sixteen leading scholars address themselves to providing as full an account of medieval science as current knowledge permits. Designed to be introductory, the authors have directed their chapters to a beginning audience of diverse readers.
Download or read book Ptolemy s Geography written by Ptolemy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ptolemy's Geography is the only book on cartography to have survived from the classical period and one of the most influential scientific works of all time. Written in the second century AD, for more than fifteen centuries it was the most detailed topography of Europe and Asia available and the best reference on how to gather data and draw maps. Ptolemy championed the use of astronomical observation and applied mathematics in determining geographical locations. But more importantly, he introduced the practice of writing down coordinates of latitude and longitude for every feature drawn on a world map, so that someone else possessing only the text of the Geography could reproduce Ptolemy's map at any time, in whole or in part, at any scale. Here Berggren and Jones render an exemplary translation of the Geography and provide a thorough introduction, which treats the historical and technical background of Ptolemy's work, the contents of the Geography, and the later history of the work.
Download or read book Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree written by Jan P. Hogendijk and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays reflects the wide range of David Pingree's expertise in the scientific texts (above all, concerning astronomy and astrology) of Ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, India, Persia, and the medieval Arabic, Hebrew and Latin traditions. Both theoretical aspects and the practical applications of the exact sciences-in time keeping, prediction of the future, and the operation of magic-are dealt with. The book includes several critical editions and translations of hitherto unknown or understudied texts, and a particular emphasis is on the diffusion of scientific learning from one culture to another, and through time. Above all, the essays show the variety and sophistication of the exact sciences in non-Western societies in pre-modern times.
Download or read book The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages written by Edward Grant and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-28 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to prevailing opinion, the roots of modern science were planted in the ancient and medieval worlds long before the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Indeed, that revolution would have been inconceivable without the cumulative antecedent efforts of three great civilisations: Greek, Islamic, and Latin. With the scientific riches it derived by translation from Greco-Islamic sources in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian Latin civilisation of Western Europe began the last leg of the intellectual journey that culminated in a scientific revolution that transformed the world. The factors that produced this unique achievement are found in the way Christianity developed in the West, and in the invention of the university in 1200. As this 1997 study shows, it is no mere coincidence that the origins of modern science and the modern university occurred simultaneously in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages.
Download or read book Magic in the Middle Ages written by Richard Kieckhefer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was magic practised in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterised this fascinating period? In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval times. He examines its relation to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature and politics before introducing us to the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practised magic and the reasoning behind their beliefs. In addition, he shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law. This book places magic at the crossroads of medieval culture, shedding light on many other aspects of life in the Middle Ages.
