Download or read book The Unknown Technology in Homer written by S. A. Paipetis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using such terms as science and technology, which have been relatively - cently adopted, to write about situations and events that occurred 2,500 years ago, may be a paradox. The Homeric Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, refer to the Mycenean Era, a civilisation that ?ourished from the 16th to 12th c- tury BCE. The seeming paradox ceases to be one when modern specialists, searching through the ancients texts, discover knowledge and applications so advanced, that can be termed as scienti?c or technological in the modern sense of the words. The present book is based on extensive research performed by the author and his associates at the University of Patras, along with the presentations of other researchers at two international symposia, which he organized in 1 Ancient Olympia. It consists of ?ve parts, of which Part I is introductory, including such chapters as Homer and Homeric Epics, Troy and the mythological causes of the War, Achilles and his wrath, the siege and fall of Troy, Odysseus’ long way home, the Trojan war and the cultural tradition, scienti?c knowledge in the Homeric Epics and ?nally an account on science and technology. Part II includes three chapters on applications of principles of natural s- ence, including chariot racing and the laws of curvilinear motion, creep in wood and hydrodynamics of vortices and the gravitational sling.

Download or read book Science and Technology in Homeric Epics written by S. A. Paipetis and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-10-22 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Homeric Epics, important references to specific autonomous systems and mechanisms of very advanced technology, such as automata and artificial intelligence, as well as to almost modern methods of design and production are included. Even if those features of Homeric science were just poetic concepts (which on many occasions does not explain the astonishing details of design and manufacture, like the ones included in the present volume), they seem to prove that these achievements were well within human capability. In addition, the substantial development of machine theory during the early post-Homeric age shows that the Homeric descriptions were a kind of prophetic conception of these machines, and scientific research must be a quest for the fundamental principles of knowledge available during the Late Bronze Age and the dawn of the Iron Age. Such investigations must of necessity be strongly interdisciplinary and also proceed continuously in time, since, as science progresses, new elements of knowledge are discovered in the Homeric Epics, amenable to scientific analysis. This book brings together papers presented at the international symposium Science and Technology in Homeric Epics, which took place at Ancient Olympia in 2006. It includes a total of 41 contributions, mostly original research papers, covering diverse fields of science and technology, in the modern sense of these words.

Download or read book A Study Guide for Homer s Odyssey written by Gale, Cengage Learning and published by Gale, Cengage Learning . This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Artificial Intelligence in Greek and Roman Epic written by Andriana Domouzi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-05-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first scholarly exploration of concepts and representations of Artificial Intelligence in ancient Greek and Roman epic, including their reception in later literature and culture. Contributors look at how Hesiod, Homer, Apollonius of Rhodes, Moschus, Ovid and Valerius Flaccus crafted the first literary concepts concerned with automata and the quest for artificial life, as well as technological intervention improving human life. Parts one and two consider, respectively, archaic Greek, and Hellenistic and Roman, epics. Contributors explore the representations of Pandora in Hesiod, and Homeric automata such as Hephaestus' wheeled tripods, the Phaeacian king Alcinous' golden and silver guard dogs, and even the Trojan Horse. Later examples cover Artificial Intelligence and automation (including Talos) in the Argonautica of Apollonius and Valerius Flaccus, and Pygmalion's ivory woman in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Part three underlines how these concepts benefit from analysis of the ekphrasis device, within which they often feature. These chapters investigate the cyborg potential of the epic hero and the literary implications of ancient technology. Moving into contemporary examples, the final chapters consider the reception of ancient literary Artificial Intelligence in contemporary film and literature, such as the Czech science-fiction epic Starvoyage, or Small Cosmic Odyssey by Jan Kr?esadlo (1995) and the British science-fiction novel The Holy Machine by Chris Beckett (2004).

Download or read book Prosthetics and Assistive Technology in Ancient Greece and Rome written by Jane Draycott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-22 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive study of prosthetics and assistive technology in classical antiquity, integrating literary, documentary, archaeological, and bioarchaeological evidence to provide as full a picture as possible of their importance for the lived experience of people with disabilities in classical antiquity. The volume is not only a work of disability history, but also one of medical, scientific, and technological history, and so will be of interest to members of multiple academic disciplines across multiple historical periods. The chapters cover extremity prostheses, facial prostheses, prosthetic hair, the design, commission and manufacture of prostheses and assistive technology, and the role of care-givers in the lives of ancient people with impairments and disabilities. Lavishly illustrated, the study further contains informative tables that collate the aforementioned different types of evidence in an easily accessible way.

Download or read book Distinguished Figures in Mechanism and Machine Science written by Marco Ceccarelli and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses technological developments by distinguished figures in the history of MMS (mechanism and machine science). It includes biographies of well-known scientists, describing their efforts, experiences and achievements and offering a modern interpretation of their legacy. This volume includes scientists from a wide range of time periods, academic disciplines, and geographical backgrounds, such as Giovanni Bianchi, Homer, Taqi Al-Din, Jacques de Vaucanson, Ma Jun, Xu Baosheng, Alexander Alexandrovich Golovin, Francesco di Giorgio and Cesare Rossi. Covering a wide range of figures within the field of history of mechanical engineering, with a particular focus on MMS, this fourth volume is of interest to, and will inspire the work (historical or not) of many.

Download or read book The Antikythera Mechanism written by Evaggelos G. Vallianatos and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Antikythera Mechanism: The Story Behind the Genius of the Greek Computer and Its Demise, Evaggelos Vallianatos, historian and ecopolitical theorist, shows that after the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BCE, the Greeks, especially in Egypt, reached unprecedented heights of achievements in science, technology, and civilization. The Antikythera Mechanism, an astronomical computer probably crafted in Rhodes in the second century BCE, was proof of that prowess. It’s the grandfather of our computers. Greek sponge divers discovered the Antikythera Mechanism in 1900 on a 2,100-year-old Roman-era shipwreck. The hand-powered device reveals a sophisticated Greek technology previously unknown to scholars and historians, not seen and understood again until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The book not only describes how the sophisticated political and technological infrastructure of the Greeks after Alexander the Great resulted in the Antikythera celestial computer, and the bedrock of science and technology we know today, but also how the influence of Christianity on Greek civilization destroyed the nascent computer age of ancient Greece. Vallianatos, born in Greece and educated in America, is a historian, author, and journalist. He is a passionate champion of Greek culture and a well-suited guide to this historical account. Vallianatos explains how and why Greek scientists employed advanced engineering in translating the beautiful conception of the Antikythera Mechanism into an astronomical computer of genius: a bronze-geared device of mathematical astronomy, predicting the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon; calculating the risings and settings of important stars and constellations, and the movements of the planets around the Sun; while mechanizing the predictions of scientific theories. The computer’s accurate calendar connected these cosmic phenomena to the Olympics and other major Panhellenic religious and athletic celebrations, bringing the Greeks closer to their gods, traditions, and the Cosmos.

Download or read book Gods and Robots written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.

Download or read book Tin and Global Capitalism 1850 2000 written by Mats Ingulstad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For most of the twentieth century tin was fundamental for both warfare and welfare. The importance of tin is most powerfully represented by the tin can - an invention which created a revolution in food preservation and helped feed both the armies of the great powers and the masses of the new urban society. The trouble with tin was that economically viable deposits of the metal could only be found in a few regions of the world, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, while the main centers of consumption were in the industrialized north. The tin trade was therefore a highly politically charged economy in which states and private enterprise competed and cooperated to assert control over deposits, smelters and markets. Tin provides a particularly telling illustration of how the interactions of business and governments shape the evolution of the global economic trade; the tin industry has experienced extensive state intervention during times of war, encompasses intense competition and cartelization, and has seen industry centers both thrive and fail in the wake of decolonization. The history of the international tin industry reveals the complex interactions and interdependencies between local actors and international networks, decolonization and globalization, as well as government foreign policies and entrepreneurial tactics. By highlighting the global struggles for control and the constantly shifting economic, geographical and political constellations within one specific industry, this collection of essays brings the state back into business history, and the firm into the history of international relations.

Download or read book Themes of the Trojan Cycle written by Miguel Carvalho Abrantes and published by Miguel Carvalho Abrantes. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Trojan War presented in the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer, is incomplete. This book completes it. Originally presented as a thesis in the University of Coimbra (Portugal), this book reconstructs the plot of the Trojan War between the Iliad and the Odyssey. In order to do so, it uses the direct knowledge the authors of the Antiquity had of those subjects, but also iconographic sources, presenting them all and showing how they contribute to a faithful reconstruction of the Trojan Cycle, as it was known over 2000 years ago. Among the episodes reconstructed here are, for example, the battle against Penthesilea, the death of Achilles and the famous ruse of the Trojan Horse. This is a work interesting not only for those who already read the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also for everyone who has some interest in Greek and Roman Mythology.

Download or read book Exact Sciences in Greek Antiquity written by John G. Dellis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book consists of 24 papers on ancient Greek science and technology. It covers such areas as mathematics, physics, engineering, astronomical methods and instruments, and environmental issues. A great variety of topics are discussed, including medical care in ancient Olympiads, mathematical concepts in Plato, the concept of the rate of change in various mathematical areas and the concept of symmetry in ancient Greece. Aristotle’s Physics on free falling bodies, world-structure formation and matter according to the Presocratics, acoustic phenomena in archaeological sites, Trojan Horse reconstruction, offensive and defensive weapons in Homer’s epics, and telecommunications in ancient Greece are also some of the issues addressed here. This book will be an important resource to physicists, mathematicians, engineers, archaeologists, historians, and philologists.

Download or read book Universe and Inner Self in Early Indian and Early Greek Thought written by Seaford Richard Seaford and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the sixth century BCE onwards there occurred a revolution in thought, with novel ideas such as such as that understanding the inner self is both vital for human well-being and central to understanding the universe. This intellectual transformation is sometimes called the beginning of philosophy. And it occurred - independently it seems - in both India and Greece, but not in the vast Persian Empire that divided them. How was this possible? This is a puzzle that has never been solved. This volume brings together Hellenists and Indologists representing a variety of perspectives on the similarities and differences between the two cultures, and on how to explain them. It offers a collaborative contribution to the burgeoning interest in the Axial Age and will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the big questions inspired by the ancient world.

Download or read book Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity written by Maria Gerolemou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative and wide-ranging volume is the first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity. It examines the conception of the body and bodily processes in mechanical terms in ancient medical writings, and looks into how artificial bodies and automata were equally configured in human terms; it also investigates how this knowledge applied to the treatment of the disabled and the diseased in the ancient world. The volume examines the pre-history of what develops, at a later stage, and more specifically during the early modern period, into the full science of iatromechanics in the context of which the human body was treated as a machine and medical treatments were devised accordingly. The volume facilitates future dialogue between scholars working on different areas, from classics, history and archaeology to history of science, philosophy and technology.

Download or read book Prostheses in Antiquity written by Jane Draycott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, a prosthesis is an artificial device that replaces a missing body part, generally designed and assembled according to the individual’s appearance and functional needs with a view to being both as unobtrusive and as useful as possible. In classical antiquity, however, this was not necessarily the case. The ancient literary and documentary evidence for prostheses and prosthesis use is contradictory, and the bioarchaeological and archaeological evidence is enigmatic, but discretion and utility were not necessarily priorities. So, when, howand why did individuals utilise them? This volume, the first to explore prostheses and prosthesis use in classical antiquity, seeks to answer these questions, and will be of interest to academics and students with specialistinterests in classical archaeology, ancient history and history, especially those engaged in studies of healing, medical and surgical practices, or impairment and disability in past societies.

Download or read book The Industrial Revolution Lost in Antiquity Found in the Renaissance written by Cort MacLean Johns, Ph.D.-HSG and published by Cort MacLean Johns Ph.D.- HSG. This book was released on 2021-02-18 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever increasing research evidence continues to mount. Having started my research on the connection of the Hydraulis to the roots of the more recent Industrial Revolution at the University of St. Gallen in 1989 over 30 years ago, I continue to identify additional support for it. We do not know whether the beginnings of an Industrial Revolution in Hellenistic Greece would have continued if not cut off by the Roman Empire's conquests. Neither do we know whether the more recent (latent) Industrial Revolution could have risen up again in the 17th-century without Vitruvius or Hero of Alexander's preserved writings. The point of this book is to emphasize with new findings that had the Romans not stopped the growth of science and technology in the Hellenistic Period that it would have likely continued to develop into a full-fledged Industrial Revolution. Secondly, the more recent Industrial Revolution borrowed heavily on the technology and science of the Hellenistic Period. In the true sense of the "Renaissance" 17th-century industrial progress largely picked up the written remnants of Antiquity to be able to continue on after a centuries long caesura.

Download or read book Industrial Revolutions written by Cort MacLean Johns and published by Pumbo. This book was released on 2021-05-23 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With reference to artefactual archaeological evidence and surviving manuscript documentation of the Hydraulis, I find that a new dialectical discussion might better analyze and address the underlying understanding of the Steam Engines' longitudinal provenance, and therefore, requires a redefinition the origins of Industrial Revolutions themselves from Ctesibius to the exploration of Mars.

Download or read book The Cambridge Guide to Homer written by Corinne Ondine Pache and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 974 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its ancient incarnation as a song to recent translations in modern languages, Homeric epic remains an abiding source of inspiration for both scholars and artists that transcends temporal and linguistic boundaries. The Cambridge Guide to Homer examines the influence and meaning of Homeric poetry from its earliest form as ancient Greek song to its current status in world literature, presenting the information in a synthetic manner that allows the reader to gain an understanding of the different strands of Homeric studies. The volume is structured around three main themes: Homeric Song and Text; the Homeric World, and Homer in the World. Each section starts with a series of 'macropedia' essays arranged thematically that are accompanied by shorter complementary 'micropedia' articles. The Cambridge Guide to Homer thus traces the many routes taken by Homeric epic in the ancient world and its continuing relevance in different periods and cultures.