Download or read book Science Art and Nature in Medieval and Modern Thought written by A. C. Crombie and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1990-07-01 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author sees the history of Western Science as the history of a vision and an argument, initiated by the ancient Greeks in their search for principles at once of nature and of argument itself. This scientific vision explored and controlled by argument, and the diversification of both vision and argument by scientific experience and by interaction with the wider contexts of intellectual culture, constitute the long history of European scientific thought. Underlying that development have been specific commitments to conceptions of nature and of science and its intellectual and moral assumptions, accompanied by a recurrent critique; their diversification has generated a series of different styles of scientific thinking and of making theoretical and practical decisions which the work describes.
Download or read book Science Art and Nature in Medieval and Modern Thought written by Alistair Cameron Crombie and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A.C. Crombie sees the history of Western Science as the history of a vision and an argument, initiated by the ancient Greeks in their search for principles at once of nature and of argument itself. This scientific vision explored and controlled by argument, and the diversification of both vision and argument by scientific experience and by interaction with the wider contexts of intellectual culture, constitute the long history of European scientific thought. Underlying that development have been specific commitments to conceptions of nature and of Science and its intellectual and moral assumptions, accompanied by a recurrent critique their diversification has generated a series of different styles of scientific thinking and of making theoretical and practical decisions which he describes and analyses"--Publisher description.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Science Volume 3 Early Modern Science written by David C. Lindberg and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of European knowledge of the natural world, c.1500-1700.
Download or read book Science and the Secrets of Nature written by William Eamon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's Natural Magic (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the "how-to" books written by medieval alchemists, magicians, and artisans that modern science has its roots. These compilations of recipes on everything from parlor tricks through medical remedies to wool-dyeing fascinated medieval intellectuals because they promised access to esoteric "secrets of nature." In closely examining this rich but little-known source of literature, Eamon reveals that printing technology and popular culture had as great, if not stronger, an impact on early modern science as did the traditional academic disciplines.
Download or read book Science Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought written by Alistair Cameron Crombie and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A.C. Crombie is one of the best known writers on the history of Science. Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought brings together a coherent body of essays that complement his books and are of independent value. A.C. Crombie traces general themes in the development of Science: the Aristotelian inheritance and the importance of the search for logical explanation in the middle ages; the ambitions and limitations of experiment and quantification; changing attitudes to scientific progress; the relations between Science and the Arts, and between Mathematics, Music and Medical Science; and the study of the senses. In particular he shows how the mechanistic hypothesis stimulated the experimental and philosophical study of vision.
Download or read book Science and the Secrets of Nature written by William Eamon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-06-02 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In closely examining this rich but little-known source of literature, Eamon reveals that printing technology and popular culture had as great, if not stronger, an impact on early modern science as did the traditional academic disciplines. Medieval interest in the secrets of nature was spurred in part by ancient works such as Pliny's Natural History. As medieval experimenters adapted ancient knowledge to their changing needs, they created their own books of secrets, which expressed the uncritical, empiricist approach of popular culture rather than the subtle argumentation of scholastic science. The crude experimental methodology advanced by the "professors of secrets" became for the "new philosophers" of the seventeenth century a potent ideological weapon in the challenge of natural philosophy.
Download or read book A Brave New World of Knowledge written by B. J. Sokol and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of an extraordinary work of dramatic literature also addresses questions of the nature and dissemination of the scientific revolution. These facets are locked together: although the book does not deny that 'The Tempest' had deep roots in classical literature and elsewhere, it maintains that the play's remarkable dramaturgy and symbolism reflect subtle matters uniquely pertinet to its own fascinating time. A 'Brave New World of Knowledge' uncovers a number of previously little-appreciated connections of 'The Tempest' with specific problems or advances of knowledge, thus showing that the play reflected innovative proto-scientific modes of confronting the physical, biological, and human realms. It also argues that Shakespeare's play mirrored a new tendency to repudiate earlier Renaissance dreams of achieving omniscience and omnipotence. The play reflected a newer hope for knowledge based on speculative boldness linked with close observation, rational and sober precision, and a radical capacity to accept limitation and not-knowing.
Download or read book Homo Faber and Homo Economicus in the Scientific Revolution written by Ahmet Selami Çalışkan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-04-24 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of how the "servile arts" turned into the "mechanical arts," which in turn developed into a kind of philosophical apparatus that made modern science possible. Why did the scientific revolution take place in the West and not in China or the Islamic world? How did humanity’s progress in science and technology, which had been moving along at a relatively steady pace for tens of thousands of years, end up taking such an unprecedented leap? Subjecting the history of thought and technology to a novel interpretation based on the relationship between theory and practice, Ahmet Selami Çalışkan argues that the industrial revolution and modern science—and the scientific revolution that preceded both—did not alone suffice to sort out the philosophical problems of their day or to produce the institutions of the modern age. Both required a new sort of human: Homo economicus faber. Tracing the historical emergence of this figure and its persistence in our own age, this book offers an innovative and holistic assessment of the economic, cultural and political effects of centuries of interaction between East and West and their repercussions in our world today.
Download or read book Rethinking the Concept of Law of Nature written by Yemima Ben-Menahem and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book subjects the traditional concept of law of nature to critical examination. There are two kinds of reasons that invite this reexamination, one deriving from philosophical concerns over the traditional concept, the other motivated by theoretical and practical changes in science. One of the philosophical worries is that the idiom of law of nature, especially when combined with the notion of laws 'governing' individual events and processes, is no longer as intelligible as it used to be in the theistic context in which the formulation of laws became central to science. The traditional concept is also challenged in various ways by contemporary scientific theories such as quantum mechanics, chaos theory and the general theory of relativity. It is no longer clear that there are any universal laws, laws do not always guarantee predictability, and the border between physical and mathematical considerations is constantly shifting. The most difficult challenge, perhaps, is to come up with a scientific explanation of the origin of laws. Wrestling with these intriguing problems, the papers in this volume broaden both our understanding of the natural order and our desiderata of scientific explanation.
Download or read book The Divine Order the Human Order and the Order of Nature written by Eric Watkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains ten new essays focused on the exploration and articulation of a narrative that considers the notion of order within medieval and modern philosophy--its various kinds (natural, moral, divine, and human), the different ways in which each is conceived, and the diverse dependency relations that are thought to obtain among them. Descartes, with the help of others, brought about an important shift in what was understood by the order of nature by placing laws of nature at the foundation of his natural philosophy. Vigorous debate then ensued about the proper formulation of the laws of nature and the moral law, about whether such laws can be justified, and if so, how-through some aspect of the divine order or through human beings-and about what consequences these laws have for human beings and the moral and divine orders. That is, philosophers of the period were thinking through what the order of nature consists in and how to understand its relations to the divine, human, and moral orders. No two major philosophers in the modern period took exactly the same stance on these issues, but these issues are clearly central to their thought. The Divine Order, the Human Order, and the Order of Nature is devoted to investigating their positions from a vantage point that has the potential to combine metaphysical, epistemological, scientific, and moral considerations into a single narrative.
Download or read book The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy written by Sophie Roux and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mechanisation of Natural Philosophy is devoted to various aspects of the transformation of natural philosophy during the 16th and 17th centuries that is usually described as mechanical philosophy . Drawing the border between the old Aristotelianism and the « new » mechanical philosophy faces historians with a delicate task, if not an impossible mission. There were many natural philosophers who actually crossed the border between the two worlds, and, inside each of these worlds, there was a vast spectrum of doctrines, arguments and intellectual practices. The expression mechanical philosophy is burdened with ambiguities. It may refer to at least three different enterprises: a description of nature in mathematical terms; the comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines; the use in natural philosophy of mechanical analogies, i.e. analogies conceived in terms of matter and motion alone.However mechanical philosophy is defined, its ambition was greater than its real successes. There were few mathematisations of phenomena. The machines of mechanical philosophers were not only imaginary, but had little to do with the machines of mecanicians. In most of the natural sciences, analogies in terms of matter and motion alone failed to provide satisfactory accounts of phenomena.By the same authors: Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 254).
Download or read book Spectacle and Topophilia written by David R. Castillo and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Significant places and spaces, from Granada and Catalonia to Buenos Aires and the Chicago Columbian Exposition
Download or read book Signs in the Dust written by Nathan Lyons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern thought is characterized by a dichotomy of meaningful culture and unmeaning nature. Signs in the Dust uses medieval semiotics to develop a new theory of nature and culture that resists this familiar picture of things. Through readings of Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, and John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), it offers a semiotic analysis of human culture in both its anthropological breadth as an enterprise of creaturely sign-making, and its theological height as a finite participation in the Trinity, which can be understood as an absolute 'cultural nature'. Signs in the Dust then extends this account of human culture backwards into the natural depth of biological and physical nature. It puts the biosemiotics of its medieval sources, along with Félix Ravaisson's philosophy of habit, into dialogue with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis that is emerging in contemporary biology, to show how all living things participate in semiosis, so that that a cultural dimension is present through the whole order of nature and the whole of natural history. It also retrieves Aquinas' doctrine of intentions in the medium to show how signification can be attributed in a diminished way to even inanimate nature, with the ontological implication that being as such should be reconceived in semiotic terms. The phenomena of human culture are therefore to be understood not as breaks with a meaningless nature, but instead as heightenings and deepenings of natural movements of meaning that long precede and far exceed us. Against the modern divorce of nature and culture, Signs in the Dust argues that culture is natural and nature is cultural, through and through.
Download or read book Chaucer and the Making of Optical Space written by Peter Brown and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2007 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author links Chaucer's writings with the medieval optical tradition in its various forms (scholastic texts, encyclopedias, exempla, vernacular poetry) both in general cultural terms and through the discussion of specific examples. He shows how the science of optics, or perspectiva, provides an account of spatial perception, including visual error, and demonstrates how these aspects of optical theory impact on Chaucer's poetry. He provides detailed and sustained analysis of the spatial content of narratives across the range of Chaucer's works, relating them to optical ideas and making use of Lefebvre's theory of the production of space. The texts discussed include the Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Knight's Tale, Miller's Tale, Reeve's Tale, Merchant's Tale, Squire's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde.
Download or read book God s Philosophers written by James Hannam and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2009-08-07 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. "God's Philosophers" is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution written by David Marshall Miller and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of cutting-edge scholarship on the close interaction of philosophy with science at the birth of the modern age.
Download or read book Dictionary of Twentieth Century British Philosophers written by Stuart Brown and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 1246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a two-volume work with entries on individuals who made some contribution to philosophy in the period 1900 to 1960 or soon after. The entries deal with the whole philosophical work of an individual or, in the case of philosophers still living, their whole work to date. Typically the individuals included have been born by 1935 and by now have made their main contributions. Contributions to the subject typically take the form of books or journal articles, but influential teachers and people otherwise important in the world of philosophy may also be included. The dictionary includes amateurs as well as professional philosophers and, where appropriate, thinkers whose main discipline was outside philosophy. There are special problems about the term "British" in the twentieth century, partly because of human migration, partly because of decolonialization and the changing denotation of the term. The intention has been to include not only those who were British subjects at least for a significant part of their lives (even if they mostly lived outside what is now the U.K.) but also people who spent a significant part of their lives in Britain itself, irrespective of their nationality or country of origin. In the first category are included, for instance, a number of people who were born and educated in Britain but who subsequently taught in universities abroad. In the second category are included those who were born elsewhere but who came to Britain and contributed to its philosophical culture.
