The use of mathematical and astronomical instruments played an important part in the development of Jonas Moore's career. Though debates about the nature of mathematics raised questions about the value of instruments, they remained essential to his work as a teacher, as Surveyor of the Fens and as Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. His confidence in them was most fully expressed in his equipping of the Royal Observatory and in his textbook for Christ's Hospital Mathematical School. His belief in the (...) inseparability of mathematical practice from theory meant that, for him, instruments continued to offer a means of putting certain knowledge into practical effect. (shrink)

Our likes and dislikes--our senses and sensibilities--did not fall ready-made from the sky, argues internationally acclaimed author John D. Barrow. We know we enjoy a beautiful painting or a passionate symphony, but what we don't necessarily understand is that these experiences conjure up latent instincts laid down and perpetuated over millions of years. Now, in The Artful Universe, Barrow explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe, challenging the commonly held view that our (...) sense of beauty is entirely free and unfettered. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe, its environments and its astronomical appearance, have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? Who created the cornucopia of constellations in the night sky? And why? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in Nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Barrow reconsiders the question of whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, showing that the benefits (and even the likelihood) that might follow from the discovery of life on other worlds could be very different from what we might have been led to expect. Remarkably, we find that some of the properties of the Universe that are essential for the existence of any form of life play a key role in determining psychological and religious responses to the Cosmos. Drawing on a wide variety of examples, from the theological questions raised by St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis to the relationship between the pure math of Pythagoras and the music of the Beatles, The Artful Universe covers new ground and enters a wide-ranging debate about the meaning and significance of the links between art and science. It will change our view of the creation of art and the way we see the world in which we live. (shrink)

The vivid, dramatic images of distant stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have come to define how we visualize the cosmos. In their immediacy and vibrancy, photographs from the Hubble show what future generations of space travelers might see should they venture beyond our solar system. But their brilliant hues and precise details are not simply products of the telescope's unprecedented orbital location and technologically advanced optical system. Rather, they result from a series of deliberate decisions made (...) by the astronomers who convert raw data from the Hubble into spectacular pictures by assigning colors, adjusting contrast, and actively composing the images, balancing the desire for an aesthetically pleasing representation with the need for a scientifically valid one. In Picturing the Cosmos, Elizabeth A. Kessler examines the Hubble's deep space images, highlighting the remarkable resemblance they bear to nineteenth-century paintings and photographs of the American West and their invocation of the visual language of the sublime. Drawing on art history and the history of science, as well as interviews with astronomers who work on the Hubble Heritage Project, Kessler traces the ways that the sublime, with its inherent tension between reason and imagination, not only forms the appearance of the images, but also operates on other levels. The sublime informs the dual expression—numeric and pictorial—of digital data and underpins the relevance of the frontier for a new era of exploration performed by our instruments rather than our bodies. Through their engagement with the sublime the Hubble images are a complex act of translation that encourages an experience of the universe as simultaneously beyond humanity's grasp and within the reach of our knowledge. Strikingly illustrated with full-color images, this book reveals the scientific, aesthetic, and cultural significance of the Hubble pictures, offering a nuanced understanding of how they shape our ideas—and dreams—about the cosmos and our places within it. (shrink)

Humans, like all organisms, have evolved to survive in specific environments, while some elect or are forced to live and work in extreme environments. Understanding cognition as it relates to environmental conditions, we use 4E cognition as a framework to explore creativity in extreme environments. Our paper examines space arts as a case study through the history, present practices, and future possible arts in the context of humans beyond the Kármán boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere. We develop a proposed taxonomy (...) of space arts, based on prior taxonomies, and provide specific exemplars of space art developed by artists in space or for use by astronauts in space. Using examples of space art since the birth of the space age, we discuss 1) how human survival in extreme environments requires investment in the space arts, driven by consideration of all biopsychosocial factors and 2) how new scientific and engineering discoveries could be consequences or examples of creative thinking driven by artists in the various types of space art. We conclude by discussing possible benefits of space art, future research applications, and advocate that all space actors, government or private, involve artists in all projects beyond the Kármán Boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere. (shrink)

: To honor Bernard Goldstein, this article highlights in the "Defense of Theon against George of Trebizond" by Regiomontanus (1436-1476) themes that resonate with leading strands of Goldstein's scholarship. I argue that, in this poorly-known work, Regiomontanus's mastery of Ptolemy's mathematical astronomy, his interest in making astronomy physical, and his homocentric ideals stand in unresolved tension. Each of these themes resonates with Gold- stein's fundamental work on the Almagest, the Planetary Hypotheses, and al-Bitruji's Principles of Astronomy. I flesh out these (...) tensions with an intriguing interpretation of the history of astronomy, in which Regiomontanus contrasts the two-dimensional "eccentric astronomy" attributed to the Almagest and the Arabs with the three-dimensional spheres of the "later" astronomers. A similar contrast reappears when Regiomontanus portrays as a "fictitious art" an astronomy that does not go beyond the accommodation of computations to the appearances. To conclude, I use Regiomontanus's expression to reinstate (pace Goldstein and Barker in this journal, 1998) fictionalism as an actor's category in Osiander and sixteenth-century astronomy. (shrink)

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies is touted as ushering in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). 4IR, also known as ‘Industry 4.0,’ pertains to the burning internet connectivity, sophisticated analytics and production, and automation’s transformative impacts on the world. The surge of change in the production arena started in the second half of 2010 and has continued to increase astronomically, with a remarkable probability of shaping the future of manufacturing and humanity. The 4IR is thus heralding (...) areas such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, robotics, and 3D technologies amidst many other innovative digital technologies following the first, second and third industrial revolutions. The problem this paper addresses is the role of Arts and humanities (A&H) in the era of AI. Should A&H imbibe the empirical science methodology to stay relevant? How does A&H contribute to 4IR? Leveraging on philosophical tools of arguments and reconstruction of ideas, this paper argues for the significance of Kant’s thoughts in The Contest of the Faculties and that Arts and humanities are instrumental to humanising science and technology, helping to shape interdisciplinary collaboration and fostering understanding of the ethical, social and cultural dimensions of AI. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Question of Style in Philosophy and the ArtsJeffrey R. Di LeoThe Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts, edited by Caroline van Eck, James McAllister and Renée van de Vall; xi & 245 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, $49.95.The question, “Should philosophers concern themselves with questions of style?” motivates this rich collection of twelve essays on the interrelatedness of content and its formal representation in (...) both philosophical writing and the arts. Alongside issues such as aestheticized forms of philosophizing and the relationship between method and style, there are articles on Heinrich von Kleist’s Marionettentheater, the graphic works of William Hogarth, Alexis de Tocqueville’s use of metaphor and paradox, the use of ellipses in Johannes Kepler’s astronomical theories, and eclecticism in eighteenth-century English architecture.Style has been an explicit concern for historians and theorists of the arts long before it came to the fore in philosophy. The editors think philosophers can learn a lot not only about the concept of style but also about philosophical style by looking into the practices of musicians, architects, and painters and by thinking about how styles are formed, transformed, and understood in the arts. By comparing the arts and philosophy, we can move toward something lacking in contemporary discussions, namely stylistic categories specific to philosophy. Richard Wollheim’s essay, for example, offers many categories appropriate to painting that could be relevant to philosophical writing.A provocative point traced here is that until the end of the eighteenth century, “style” had little to do with the meaning of a work of art—the term merely denoted an artwork’s place in the hierarchy of art. Before 1800, there was hardly a question of choice among styles: contributions to a practice were regarded not as belonging to one style or another, but as falling within or being alien to a practice. Only in the early nineteenth century did style become a key element in the meaning of a work, when it took the place previously occupied by nature, antiquity, or absolute standards of reason. With the traditional bearers of meaning gone, one could no longer look to content for meaning, and artists turned to style to create meaningful art—style being that aspect of writing, painting, or building traditionally associated with ornament, that could be varied without changing the content. Gradually, the “variable” element in art became the prime bearer of meaning.The claim here is that an analogous transition from stylistic monism to pluralism occurred in philosophy about a century after it did in art. This shift away from the monistic geometrical and mathematical standards of philosophical reasoning established in the late sixteenth century was brought about by philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. Lambert Weising suggests that, with Wittgenstein, there is a substitution of style for truth—a point which seems equally true of others, notably Nietzsche. A consequence of this new [End Page 187] pluralism is a loosening of what can be called philosophical reasoning, and an increasing receptiveness to and acceptance of a diversity of philosophical styles. Questions of style do tend to arise in connections with philosophers of the literary sort—Plato or Kierkegaard. Now philosophers have much less difficulty regarding as philosophical a work such as Pascal’s Pensées, which has traditionally been treated more as literature than as philosophy.One of the challenges of this collection is to refute the view of those who deny that the content of their philosophical writing depends at all on style. This would give support to a thesis defended by Martha Nussbaum in this journal in 1983: “No stylistic choice can be presumed to be neutral—not even the choice to write in a flat or neutral style” (p. 146). Beryl Lang, who has addressed this question in other books and articles, argues that style is relevant to all philosophical writing, even that professed to be “style-less.” Lang correctly shows that philosophers’ general disregard for expressiveness, and their belief that the proper philosophical method will lead all who follow it to the same results, has itself become a feature of philosophical writing. So “style-less” writing is a philosophical... (shrink)

Picturing Knowledge is a collection of papers on scientific illustration written by historians and philosophers of science. While the philosophers of science tend to focus on the question whether illustrations are more than helpful aids to symbolic proofs and linguistic explications, the historians are interested in the presuppositions attaching to particular modes of representation—the decision what to depict and how to depict it. David Knight discusses the conventions determined what were appropriate and relevant illustrations for textbooks of chemistry. He calls (...) attention to their increasing depersonalization, as pictures of the alchemical laboratory with its furnace and flasks, and then of elegantly clad, unmussed aristocrats gave way to pictures of molecules. Robert J. O’Hara shows how metaphysical assumptions about the organization of nature, in particular the assumption that there existed a system of visible analogies and correspondences across groups of plants and animals, persisted from Linnaeus’s time even into post-Darwinian biology. Stephanie Moser argues that artists’ depictions of australopithecine hominids in semi-popular illustrated magazines of the 1940s and 1950s first reflected, but then entrenched, a view of their mode of life featuring nuclear families, wooden clubs, and homey caves, subsequently rejected as improbable. Other historians investigate the history and problems of scientific representation itself. Bert Hall provides a brief survey of botanical, anatomical, and mechanical illustration, and considers the competing demands of elegance and informativeness. Martin Kemp considers the very different requirements of anatomical and astronomical depictions. Anatomical illustration lends itself to what he calls a “rhetoric of reality” aimed at convincing the viewer that the illustration is what he would see inside an actual human body, while astronomical illustration is unconcerned with the appearances of the heavens, and is a translation of measurements into a scheme representing what cannot literally be seen. (shrink)

It was a strange posthumous fate that awaited the Englishman Robert of Ketton : he was to be both best known and most strenuously criticized for a work that he surely viewed as a sideline to his own interests and career. By trade Robert was a Latin translator of Arabic scientific and mathematical works, one of those remarkable twelfth-century men who, as his contemporary Petrus Alfonsi put it, were willing “to traverse distant provinces and withdraw into remote regions so as (...) to be able to attain fuller knowledge of the astronomical art.” Like other contemporary translators, such as the Italian Gerard of Cremona , Robert had left his birthplace—in his case Rutlandshire—and traveled to Spain in order to have access to the great works of Arabic astronomy and mathematics that could be found in the still very Arab Iberian Peninsula. By 1141 we find him and his close friend Herman of Carinthia studying and translating scientific works together in northeastern Spain, and in later years his astronomical interests and ecclesiastical responsibilities led him to travel widely in Spain and England. As a scientific translator, he is perhaps best known for his Liber algebrae et Almucabola, a Latin version of al-Khwarazmī's great manual of algebra, Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-jabr wa-al-muqābalah. (shrink)

The famous astronomer Fred Hoyle started his research career as an atheist. Hoyle’s most important contribution to astrophysics is the theory of nucleosynthesis, i.e. the idea that chemical elements such as carbon can form in stars on the basis of hydrogen and helium. Essentially here was his prediction that the carbon core has a state with a specific energy which is precisely adapted to the basic fusion process. This result was one of the most important breakthroughs in modern astrophysics, and (...) the so called Hoyle state has become a cornerstone for state-ofthe-art nuclear theory. The calculations he made, eventually revealed a fine-tuning of the universe. Hoyle’s work in this area supported the anthropic principle that the universe was fine-tuned so that intelligent life would be possible. It is said that what really made him conclude that creation demanded intelligence, were his calculations of the special properties of the carbon atom. This shook his atheism fundamentally [1, p. 57]. In this paper we describe this discovery. (shrink)

Seit über 30 Jahren gibt es in den deutschen wie französischen Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften das Bestreben, den Begriff der »Lesbarkeit« von seiner engen Bindung an den geschriebenen Text zu emanzipieren. Die vorliegende Ausgabe von Trivium lässt einige der maßgeblichen Stimmen in dieser Debatte zu Wort kommen. Auf der gemeinsamen Schnittfläche von Mikrohistorie, Semiologie, Psychoanalyse, Kulturgeschichte, Physiognomie und Mantik zeichnet sich ein neues und zugleich altes Verständnis des Lesens ab. Wenn sich in der Moderne die Frage nach dem Lesen von Spuren (...) – und damit im weiteren Sinne von Indizien, Symptomen, Vorzeichen etc. – neu stellt, so wird damit an eine archaische Praxis des Lesens neu angeknüpft, welche uns vor das unabschließbare Problem der Lesbarkeit der Welt stellt. -/- Lire. Voilà une chose que ne réfléchissent plus les sur-alphabétisés que nous sommes, habitués à ingérer les signes sans y prendre garde. Repenser la lecture et l’investir d’une fonction critique suppose de méditer la lettre en revenant à son antériorité : se souvenir que, de tout temps et avant tout livre, il y a eu des lecteurs. Des lecteurs – littéralement – avant la lettre. L’art de la lecture réunit le chasseur lisant les déjections des animaux dans les forêts, l’astronome babylonien scrutant les cartographies stellaires, le pêcheur hawaïen lisant les courants marins en plongeant dans l’eau sa main et l’amant déchiffrant aveuglément le corps de l’aimée. On apprend à lire non seulement des textes, mais encore des partitions de musique, des tableaux de peinture, des cartes à jouer, des notations chorégraphiques, des sillons dans la terre, des tourbillons dans l’eau, des gestes révélateurs ou bien des rêves. (shrink)

"A person is not explainable in molecular, field-theoretical, or physiological terms alone." With that declaration, Nobel laureate Gerald M. Edelman goes straight to the heart of Nature's Imagination, a vibrant and important collection of essays by some of the world's foremost scientists. Ever since the Enlightenment, the authors write, science has pursued reductionism: the idea that the whole can be understood by examining and explaining each of its parts. But as this book shows, scientists in every discipline are reaching for (...) a new paradigm that accounts for the whole--from the individual person to the universe itself. Nature's Imagination gathers together the work of thirteen leading mathematicians, astronomers, neuroscientists, and philosophers, as they discuss the revolution sweeping the sciences. Here Roger Penrose, Oliver Sacks, John Barrow, Gregory Chaitin, Maragret Boden, and others explore how and why classic reductionism is falling by the wayside in their own fields. As Freeman Dyson writes in the introduction, science is an art form, not a philosophical method, and it is always in search of new tools. Reductionism has done its work, and scientists are in search of another. Roger Penrose offers a fascinating account of irreducibility in mathematics, starting with the example of an impossible triangle--a drawing of a triangular object twisted so that could not exist in three dimensions. He breaks the triangle into three parts, showing that each corner is physically possible; only in combination is the triangle impossible. Both Penrose and mathematician Gregory Chaitin explore Godel's incompleteness theorem--as does John Barrow, who explains that Chaitin's proof of the theorem shows that, if we ever arrive at a Theory of Everything, there may be a still deeper and simpler unifying theory beyond that. Other contributors discuss the changing thinking in neuroscience, and the limitations of a mechanical view of the mind: as Oliver Sacks writes, "if we are to have a model or theory of mind as this actually occurs in living creatures in the world, it may have to be radically different from anything like a computational one." In addition, this volume includes staunch defenders of the classic scientific approach, such as Peter Atkins ("The omnicompetence of science, and in particular the simplicity its reductionist insight reveals, should be accepted as a working hypothesis until, if ever, it is proved inadequate"). The advance of science has been so startlingly swift in the last century that it has begun to approach limits never dreamed of before. This remarkable volume captures the latest thinking on where we must turn if we are to truly understand oursevles and the universe we live in. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of scientific (...) knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 169-171 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume, by Adam Potkay; 241 pp. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, $42.50. This book is a sustained attack on the widespread impression that Samuel Johnson and David Hume were antithetical characters, a notion largely nourished by that memorable moment when (...) Boswell brings up Hume "and other skeptical innovators" and Johnson replies, as we all remember, "Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they have gone to milk the bull." Professor Potkay feels that this image has radically distorted our perception of the truth.A large part of the problem, as Potkay sees it, is that the Johnson of the biography is not the same as the Johnson seen in his writings. Boswell, he claims, "superbly fashioned a Johnson after his own heart" (p. 29). Biography is beset with the misapprehensions we all have of another individual, but personal writing is equally subject to rhetorical posturing, selective memory, and other histrionics of the ego.Potkay makes a strong and interesting case for the proposition that Johnson and Hume were in accord as to their ideas of happiness. "Johnson and Hume set forth largely compatible visions of human happiness that, while rooted in Cicero, draw as well on modern authors..." (p. 5). In this view, happiness is intrinsically social, the inverse of Sartre's L'enfer, c'est les autres. We are estimable in our own eyes only if we are so in the eyes of others. The astronomer in Rasselas finally surmounts his delusion that he controls the weather only by leaving his solitude for the society of others. Hume declared that perfect solitude is the greatest punishment that we can suffer (p. 60). Hume and Johnson both agree that cities afford the greatest happiness through a multiplicity of agreeable consciousness--London for Johnson and Paris for Hume.Potkay argues that the chief ethic in the writings of both Hume and Johnson [End Page 169] "is the eclectic, Ciceronian brand of Stoicism Hume delineates in 'the Stoic', a sociable Stoicism whose end is 'the moderating of our passions, the enlightening of our reason'" (p. 77). The path to happiness lies in cultivating reason and moderating passion. However, unlike ethicists that downgrade the passions, Hume and Johnson see the passions as necessary and good. As against the whole duty of man, they think that pride is good, unless it causes pain to others. This is fresh news for those of us who have squirmed in Sunday school classes when pride was severely denounced and humility recommended--squirmed in spite of our reverence for Milton. Johnson and Hume viewed pride and the pleasure derived from praise as inspiring progress in trades, professions, arts, and science. It excites ingenuity. This is what we didn't dare say in Sunday school.Potkay searches indefatigably for parallels between the two men. We are told that they both rejected the hard determinism that some thinkers derived from Newtonian physics. In the midst of all this we have another discussion of tragedy, pity and fear, etc., the sort of thing that requires the reckless exuberance of youth in order to relish. Are we expected to feel astonished that here too we find them in accord? The parallels between the two men are pushed to the point that a reader might begin to suspect that there is a hidden half of the text that is being withheld, perhaps countervailing evidence. We begin to feel that lurking suspicion evoked by someone too zealously dedicated to a thesis.By the middle of the book, a reader is likely to be convinced that far from going forth to milk the bull, Hume was almost an intellectual twin of Johnson. At the same time, though, sepia thoughts begin to seep into the mind. We notice that these parallel thoughts... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Temple as Ship in Odyssey 6.10R. Drew GriffithLike the good eighth-century oecist that he was,1 the founder of Scheria, Phaeacian king Nausithous, son of Poseidon and grandfather of Nausicaa and Clytonaus, adorned his new city with temples of the gods (, Od. 6.10). This phrase, a hapax in Homer, occupies the same metrical seat immediately before the hephthemimeral caesura as the common ship formula (cf., 24.299, also a hapax). (...) It is plausible, therefore, that the bard who described the work of this ship-loving king used the formula as a formal model. The note argues that this bard thought that temples were ships in which gods traveled. Though this claim may seem surprising at first, cultic, architectural, and linguistic aspects of the epics all support it.Let us begin with cult. From Iliad 1 on, epiphanies are common (43-47, 194-95, 359-61).2 While some gods like Apollo work from afar, most need physical contact, for example, in helping suppliants, and human travel to Olympus like that of Otus and Ephialtes or Bellerophon is out of the question. Gods periodically irrupt into the natural world: Zeus comes down in lightning (e.g., Ar. Pax 42); drinkers take in Dionysus and grow giddy (e.g., Soph. Ant. 964); one sees Pan in any sudden skittishness of the flock (e.g., Eur. Med. 1172). The trick, then, is to channel the gods' [End Page 541] strength to make it propitious. Perhaps for this reason, the basic prayer is the cletic hymn (Men. Rhet. 334.25-336.4) that asks the god to come to the worshipper (carm. pop. 871.1 PMG; Sappho fr. 1.5, 25, 2.1 Lobel-Page, Voigt; Anacreon 357.7 PMG = fr. 14.7 Gentili; Pl. Leg. 712B; Apocalypse 22.20) and may describe a magic vehicle for the purpose (Sappho fr. 1.8-9 Lobel-Page, Voigt),3 like the self-moving aerial car, vimāna, of Sanskrit verse to which a boat is compared at Raghuvanśa 16.68.4 Those who pray often do so by the sea (Il. 1.34, 348-51; Od. 2.260-61; Pind. Ol. 1.71-73, 6.58), and ships may be the site of epiphanies (e.g., Hymn. Hom. Dion. 2, etc.; cf. Exekias ABV 146,21; Hymn Hom. Ap. 388-451).When the Trojan women dedicate a robe to Athena (Il. 6.269-78), we are not told that they use a ship to carry it, but in the similar offering at the Panathenaea, such was indeed the case.5 This ship may have been a comparatively late addition to the Athenian festival, but it has a good Bronze Age antecedent as proved by the Theran ship-fresco.6Turning now to architecture, we note that early temples were perhaps quite small, since as adyta (Il. 5.448, etc.) or abata, which worshippers did not enter,7 they have no functional lower size limit. Surviving Greek temples, all of archaic date or later, are imposing stone structures but bear traces of wooden prototypes, pillars having replaced roughhewn logs and decorative guttae treenails. Excavators have found terracotta model-shrines at Perachora and in the Argive Heraeum,8 some of which may have been portable like those of the Egyptian Amun, Mut, and Chonsu, the juggernaut of Puri in Orissa, or the Tent of Meeting, the earliest Israelite shrine (Exod. 33.7, etc.).Greek temples were astronomically oriented, typically facing sunrise on the foundation day (cf. Plut. Num. 14.4; Lucian De Domo 6), while snubbing humbler coordinates like roads or nearby buildings.9 In [End Page 542] this, they resemble Khufu's pyramid in Egypt, the so-called air shafts of which helped the pharaoh's soul sail to its eternal home in the constellation Orion, giving like an alidad the angles between the tomb itself, the pharaoh's "horizon of eternity," (3ḫ.t (nt), Papyrus Abbott 2.2; The Great Harris Papyrus 3.6),10 the pole-star, and his final destination.11 This fact suggests a link with navigation, for Greeks connected ships and stars, thanks to the navigator's art. With both magnetite and iron,12 but... (shrink)

Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim (...) investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Humanist History of Mathematics?Regiomontanus's Padua Oration in ContextJames Steven ByrneIn the spring of 1464, the German astronomer, astrologer, and mathematician Johannes Müller (1436–76), known as Regiomontanus (a Latinization of the name of his hometown, Königsberg in Franconia), offered a course of lectures on the Arabic astronomer al-Farghani at the University of Padua. The only one of these to survive is his inaugural oration on the history and utility (...) of the mathematical arts.1 Regiomontanus tells his audience that the purpose of the oration is torelate first the origin of our arts, and among which nations they first began to be cultivated, in what way they were at last translated from various foreign tongues into Latin, which of our ancestors were famed in these disciplines, and to whom in our lifetimes recognition should be granted.2To this end, he offers a history of the quadrivial arts (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy) and other important mathematical disciplines from [End Page 41] antiquity to his own time, praises their utility, and exhorts his audience to revive the languishing study of mathematics at Padua. Astrology, a discipline with which Regiomontanus himself was closely associated, is singled out for particular praise.Traditionally, Regiomontanus's Padua oration has been seen through the lens of its rather obvious humanism. In particular, the Padua oration has come to be understood as the rhetorical embodiment of the fifteenth-and-sixteenth-century revival of ancient (Greek) mathematics. Just as this revival is inextricable from the rise of humanism, so Regiomontanus has come to be seen as an exemplar of humanist mathematics.3 It is the aim of this paper to examine the Padua oration in the context both of contemporary humanist rhetoric and of Regiomontanus's own intellectual background in order to argue that, while the oration is stylistically consistent with humanist norms, the vision of mathematics presented in it is also deeply grounded in the university mathematical curriculum and in Regiomontanus's own reading of mathematical texts.Regiomontanus was educated primarily at the University of Vienna (he was also briefly at the University of Leipzig), where he enrolled in 1450, completed his baccalaureate in 1452 and became a master in 1457.4 He remained at Vienna until 1461, when the death of his friend and teacher Georg Peurbach prompted him to travel to Italy with his patron, Cardinal Bessarion.5 In Regiomontanus's day Vienna was probably the most important of the German universities, rivaled only by Prague, whose prestige had declined after it was stripped of its theology faculty in the aftermath of the Hussite Wars.6 The curriculum at the University of Vienna was modeled [End Page 42] after that of Paris, and Parisian scholars played a major role both in its founding in 1365 and in its re-establishment (this time with a theology faculty) in 1384.7Most importantly for the purposes of this paper, the Viennese mathematical curriculum of Regiomontanus's day included all of the traditional authorities taught at Paris in the fourteenth century. For arithmetic and algebra, various "algorisms" (prose or poetry instructions for carrying out arithmetical operations that often also included a small amount of number theory) were the basic texts, supplemented in the fourteenth century by the Quadripartitum numerorum of Jean de Murs. Jordanus de Nemorare's De numeris datis and al-Khwarizmi's Algebra were common sources for those engaged in more advanced studies (i.e., they were not normally the subject of ordinary lectures, but were readily available to interested students, and would perhaps have been the subject of occasional extraordinary lectures). Euclid's Elements, supplemented by the commentaries of Pappus and Campanus, was the central text for geometry, and a number of medieval texts on practical and speculative geometry were in circulation as well. For astronomy, the Sphere of Sacrobosco and the Theorica planetarum were the most commonly used teaching texts, sometimes supplemented by al-Farghani's Elements of Astronomy (the subject of Regiomontanus's Padua lectures). Advanced students could read numerous more specific treatises by Arabic and Latin authors. For optics, the Perspectiva communis of John Peckham was the most common basic text, with texts... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetic Experience and Education:Themes and QuestionsDeborah Kerdeman"Being with" music. Attentive responsiveness in teaching. Scholarly learning as engagement with beauty. Three evocative images of aesthetic experience come to light in the essays by Custodero, Hansen, and Neumann. From the musical play of children conducting imaginary orchestras to the vocational aspirations of adults who gaze through telescopes or study paintings at Chicago's Art Institute, aesthetic experience spans a range of activities (...) and ages. No matter the setting or moment, aesthetic experience vitalizes our lives with meaning and joy. Why this is so and what difference this makes for education emerge as overarching concerns in this set of papers. Addressing these issues, the authors articulate a number of commonthemes and reach similar conclusions about the nature and value of aesthetic experience.I want to identify and analyze key ideas that run throughout these essays. Doing so deepens our appreciation of the authors' insights and underscores the importance of the project they undertake. I also want to examine three questions that the essays suggest but do not develop. Exploring these questions, I hope to further enrich our understanding of aesthetic experience and its place in education.First and foremost, aesthetic experience for all three authors integrates multiple ways of knowing and enables individuals to perceive connections that they might otherwise overlook. According to Custodero, aesthetic experience harmonizes imagination, physicality, and "thinking-in-action." [End Page 88] Thinking-in-action, Custodero says, while "critical and consequential," is nonverbal and nonjudgmental — unifying rather than analytic. Synthesizing bodily movement, imagination, and thought, aesthetic experience reveals "surprise relationships between seemingly disparate phenomena." The theme of integration is echoed in Neumann's description of scholarly learning as aesthetic experience. Scholarly learning does not shun feeling or lived experience, Neumann writes. This way of knowing instead is "deeply emotional and personal." Insight fuses with emotion, enabling scholars to "feel the whole picture," as David the astronomer puts it in his interview with Neumann. For Hansen, aesthetic experience connotes heightened perception, a way of being that attends to nuances of gesture that would otherwise remain invisible. "The aesthetic highlights aspects of wonder and of beauty that emerge, spontaneously and unrehearsed," Hansen explains. A form of creativity, aesthetic perception combines with moral and intellectual understanding to fully embrace "the living dynamic gestalt" of teaching and learning.Aesthetic experience thus integrates mind, body, and emotion. Hansen links aesthetic experience to moral judgment as well. Integrating various ways of knowing, aesthetic experience enables individuals to perceive and understand relationships that pulse throughout the social and natural world. Such understanding is pleasurable, the authors agree.Aesthetic experience not only is integrative. It also is interactive. Custodero's musicians interact with instruments, musical scores, and other individuals. Neumann's scholars interact with ideas and scholarly materials. Hansen's preservice teachers interact with works of art, subject matter, students, and one another. Interacting with people and things, individuals become absorbed in what they are doing. "Being with" music is howCustodero puts it. Carmen, the professor of music in Neumann's essay, says that playing music well "is like a complete focus of oneness."Being absorbed in aesthetic interaction does not discount or dissolve the ability to make decisions or direct action. Aesthetic experience rather presumes and promotes "aesthetic agency," to borrow a phrase from Custodero. "To 'be in the moment,'" Custodero writes, "is to encounter the aesthetic — fully engaged in an activity for which one's individual contributions are perceived as vital." Hansen's description of aesthetic perception combines attentiveness and responsiveness in a "dynamic combination of patience, listening, and initiative." Neumann states that scholarly learning is an experience of "deep engrossment." Such engrossment does not extinguish the self, however. In the words of David the astronomer, feeling "the whole picture... is a combination of both what you see, sort of an instinctive or primal thing, and also your knowledge of what, you know, you put together." [End Page 89]The interactive nature of aesthetic experience thus signifies a kind of "agency-in-situ." Aesthetic experience is shaped or directed by the contribution and initiative of individuals. But individuals cannot act in advance of experience or know what to do, unless they are... (shrink)

In the sentence marked DK22 B52, Heraclitus describes a boy playing with small objects. The boy has the entire kingdom at his disposal and he himself is identified with the eon. This famous fragment has been interpreted in numerous ways both by classical philologists and philosophers. Its current interpretation is that it is a metaphor for human life. The child, not yet familiar with rules of social life, introduces elements of randomness and careless play into that life. Meanwhile, comparison of (...) Heraclitus’ sentence with the Old Indic tales, lets recognize in the sentence the mythological theme of the act of creation – God creating and governing the world. Such governing means establishing fundamental mathematical rights – the same rights that are applied in astronomical observations and scientific research as a whole. Hypothesis, that the ancient Indo-European culture affected – through India – Heraclitus, lets better understand this philosopher’s thought which harmonically combines elements of science, religion and arts. The India hypothesis also explains the aura of sublimity and holiness found in our tradition. The aura that was present in the late antiquity thinkers who acknowledged Heraclitus’ sentence and passed it to the Western literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34
ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes INDEX TO RUSSELL’S THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY R H Summerfields, The Glade Escrick, York  , .. @.. he edition of the richly allusioned The Impact of Science on Society Tindexed here is that of George Allen and Unwin, published in London in . The pagination of Simon and Schuster’s edition (New York, ) is (...) different and spans pages – instead of the first British edition’s –. The very first edition of the book (New York: Columbia U. P., ) contained two paragraphs comparing Catholicism and Communism that were overlooked for the British and all subsequent editions. Russell regarded them as important, and Sir Stanley Unwin wrote him that they would be incorporated in the next printing. The next printing was not until , and the paragraphs were again overlooked. They belong just before the paragraph on page  beginning “Every fanatical creed” in Chapter , “Science and Values”. These paragraphs are not indexed.—Ed. I meet many people who think that the evils of Communism can be combated by Catholicism. This seems to me a dangerous error. What are the evils of Communism as it has developed? First, adherence to a rigid and static system of doctrine, of which part is doubtful and part demonstrably false. Second, persecution as a means of enforcing orthodoxy. Third, a belief that salvation is only to be found within the Church and that the True Faith must be spread throughout the world, by force if necessary. (These are the beliefs of Communists.) Fourth, that the priesthood, which alone has the right to interpret the Scriptures, has enormous power, physical east of the Iron Curtain and spiritual over the faithful in partibus. Fifth, that this power is used to secure an undue share of wealth for the priesthood at the expense of the rest of the population. Sixth, that bigotry, and the hostility that it engenders, is a potent source of war. Every one of these evils was exhibited by the Catholic Church when it had power and would probably be exhibited again if it recovered the position it had in the Middle Ages. It is therefore irrational to suppose that much would be gained if, in the defeat of Communism, Catholicism were enthroned in its place. (Pp. –) russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34    Abraham  absolute monarchy  Adler, Alfred  adventure, impulse to ,  vs. rashness  aeroplanes  Africa cotton market  North, and Romans  age, average, in West – agriculture effects of  in history of man  integration into larger economy – wasteful of natural resources – see also soil conservation air power and governments  Alexander the Great and superstition  ambassadors, independence of  America see United States anaesthetics  anarchy  Anaxagoras ,  animals, and man  anthropology  apathy  Arab-Israeli conflict – Arabian Nights slaves of lamp in  Arabs and scientific technique  Archimedes , ,  Argentina agriculture  Arians  Aristotle  and causation – movement of heavenly bodies  armed forces and civil authorities  international, as concentration of power ,  perceptions of own/other nations’  in Russia –,  artillery  arts: authors and artists independence of –, –,  ascetic mentality  Asia: population and prosperity  astrology – astronomers Greek  prospects for life on earth  astronomical events indicating disaster  Atlantic Pact  atom bomb , , ,  atomic energy –, ,  Attica, history  Attlee, Clement  Augustine, Saint scientific argument against astrology – Auschwitz  Australia aborigines ,  agriculture  federal government  Austria: war with Prussia  Authority and the Individual (BR)  authority vs. observation –,  autonomy of physical world , – Aztecs and cannibalism  and infanticide  Babylonians and eclipses  Bacon, Francis and witchcraft  bacteriological war  Baltic–White Sea canal  barbarians, and late Roman Empire ,  Barbarossa (Frederick I)  , independence of  Bede, the Venerable on comets  belief(s) on basis of authority, as unscientific – science as determinant  in superstition  uncivilized peoples  benefits of scientific technique – _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34 Index to Impact of Science on Society  Bentham , ,  Bergson, Henri  Bible, false statements in  see also individual books of biological conditions of stability (of society) –, – biology technique(s) from – birth control and population , , – birth rate, low ,  Black Death , – Blimps, Col., Romans as  breeding, scientific – Bright, John  Britain, happiness in  British Empire... 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The article intends to explore the fruitful intellectual exchange between the historian of art and culture Aby Warburg and the philosopher Ernst Cassirer starting from their first meeting in 1924 and developed over ten years. The author analyses how the Cassirer’s concept of “symbolic form” and the Warburg’s conception that took shape in the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne are deeply linked to the interests of both for the origins of modern physics. The figure of Kepler as a “transitional figure between mythical and (...) mathematical thought” on which they focus on their first meeting has a central role in this reflection. The author wants to demonstrate how the analysis of the theory of symbol is inseparable from the study of the theory of myth, connected to cosmological, astrological and astronomical themes. The principles that inaugurate the scientific revolution of the modern age, present in nuce in the science of physics inaugurated by Kepler, are observed in the more mature results of Einstein's theory of relativity. A theory which played an important role both in Cassirer’s theory and in Warburg’s reflections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hunters, Cooks, and Nooks:Two Interpretations of the Tangled Relationship Between Philosophy and ScienceStefano Franchi (bio)Knowledge is the measure of all things.—Plato, Prot. 361b1Preliminaries: Double QuestioningWhen philosophers ask questions about science, they usually do so in the context of one specific discipline whose latest results or whose historical development seem to pose genuinely philosophical problems: for instance, the nature of space/time, the nature of intelligence, the nature/nurture debate. It is (...) rarer to hear a philosopher asking questions about the general relationship between philosophy and science, even when, as in the cases above, the answer to this question provides the necessary ground for any specific investigation of the allegedly genuine philosophical problems arising in physics, biology, or cognitive science.The main difficulty lies in the intrinsic ambiguity of the term "science." On the one hand, "science" can be considered as a descriptive term: it is the genus of the empirically given, scientific disciplines (the "sciences," in the plural). On the other hand, "science" (episteme, scientia, Wissenschaft) (always in the singular) is a theoretical term that denotes a form of knowledge. More precisely, it refers, as philosophers say, to a "conceptually unified body of objective knowledge." Traditionally, the latter meaning includes philosophy itself within its denotation. Thus, when both meanings of the term "science" are considered, to interrogate the relationship between philosophy and science is always, and preliminarily, to question the nature of philosophy itself, even when the question as such is not explicitly raised. In all these cases, a characterization of the nature of philosophy is presupposed by a philosophical analysis of scientific results.However, unless the specificity of concrete scientific investigations is denied from the outset, the questioning, even when conducted from a circumscribed philosophical standpoint, cannot be reduced to a single gesture that interrogates the scientificity of philosophy. On the contrary, it must also concurrently question the possibility of a specific relation between a determinate philosophical endeavor and specific scientific pursuits. Any questioning of the relationship between philosophy and science will always imply a double gesture: on the one hand, a question about what makes or does not make philosophy a science; on the other, what brings philosophy closer, or moves [End Page 98] it farther apart, from the sciences. Most often, philosophers focus their attention on just one aspect of this double question. In this paper, I would like to address both sides of the issue. In particular, I would like to examine the two very different answers to this general problem given by Plato and by Michel Foucault. Although their answers address fundamentally the same issue, they are so diametrically opposed, as I will show, that they may be considered as the external boundaries of a very broad range of possible responses.2SignpostsLet me begin with Plato. In a well-known passage from the Euthydemus, the main characters are discussing which kind of knowledge is required by wisdom. In this context, to the delighted although belated surprise of Crito, the young Cleinias introduces a crucial distinction between hunters and cooks: the former know how to find the prey, but only the latter know how to use it:No art of actual hunting, [Cleinias] said, extends any further than pursuing and capturing; whenever the hunters catch what they are pursuing they are incapable of using it, but they and the fishermen hand over their prey to the cooks. And again, geometers and astronomers and calculators (who are hunters too, in a way, for none of these make their diagrams; they simply discover those which already exist), since they themselves have no idea of how to use their prey but only how to hunt it, hand over the task of using their discoveries to the dialecticians—at least, those of them who are not completely useless [anoetoi].[290b–c]1Cleinias's account acknowledges the reality and value of the knowledge gained by the sciences, but denies that scientists have full awareness of what they are doing and of the implications of their own work. Scientific knowledge lacks both self-reflexivity and transparency: it does not have the ability to bring to full evidence the principles it rests upon... (shrink)

The new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577 had a major impact on the ways in which astronomical research developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Behind this gradual but significant change there was an extended epistemological reform which placed increasing emphasis on reason and experience and strove to exclude arguments from Scripture and authority from scientific debate. This paper argues that the humanist debate on astrology after 1577, which was initiated by highly prestigious members (...) of a supraconfessional Republic of Letters, can be seen as an element of this process. Unlike earlier detractors of astrology, these new critics chiefly employed philosophical and scientific arguments concerning the legitimation of the entire art. By analysing a variety of accounts, this paper will reveal how great and complex the stakes in the debate over astrology were. They concerned not only the crucial problem of predestination and God’s interventionalism (hence also the possibility of miracles), but also the idea of science, the concept of the human mind, and ultimately the humanist ideal of the virtuous, rational, and responsible citizen. (shrink)

The most striking advances in the knowledge of human anatomy and physiology that the world had ever known—or was to know until the seventeenth century A.D.—took place in Hellenistic Alexandria. The city was founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great. After the tatter's death in 323 B.C. and the subsequent dissolution of his empire, it became the capital of one of his generals, Ptolemy, son of Lagus, who established the Ptolemaic dynasty there. The first Ptolemy, subsequently named Soter (the (...) Saviour), and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus (who succeeded him in 285 B.C.), became immensely enriched by their exploitation of Egypt and raised the city to a position of great wealth and magnificence. Anxious to enhance both their own reputation and the prestige of the kingdom, they sought to rival the cultural and scientific achievements not only of other Hellenistic rulers but even of Athens herself. Their patronage of the arts and sciences, coupled with their establishment of the Museum (an institute for literary studies and scientific research as well as a temple of the Muses), together with the Library, made the city the centre of Hellenistic culture. Philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, artists, poets and physicians were all encouraged to come and work there. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:…duplici modo Daemon homini carnaliter copulatur:Ludovico Maria Sinistrari's Alternative to Apostasy and Sorcery in Human-Incubus IntercourseBert RoestLodovico Maria Sinistrari d'Ameno (1632-1701), who joined the Riformati branch in 1647 in the Pavian Provincia di S. Diego, is one of the many productive seventeenth-century Franciscan authors whose works are not habitually discussed within the world of Franciscan scholarship. According to the existing bibliographical guides, Sinistrari authored under his own name and (...) under various pseudonyms (such as Panfilo, Clodoveo Farvamondi, Nicolò Turris, Lazaro Socio, and Lazaro Agostino Cotta) about 34 works, more or less half of which reached the printing press during his lifetime. These works cover a wide range of genres and topics, including comedies, religious and secular dramas, astrological, astronomical and scientific works (including polemics against works of other scholars, medical and embryological papers), defenses of the religious orders, sermons and funerary orations, treatises of sacramental theology, some atypical hagiographical texts, and works of religious disciplinary law. This production was linked to his acknowledged expertise in a variety of disciplines, which apparently made him a celebrated lecturer in Pavia within the order and in public schools, teaching the liberal arts, geometry, military architecture and theology. Some of his works are connected with his activities as a preacher, advisor, and later censor for the Holy Office, practicing exorcist, consultant for the Franciscan Minister General, and personal theologian of Alessandro Montecatini (Archbishop of Avignon) and Federico Caccia (Cardinal and Archbishop of Milan).1Within the order itself, his most enduring legacy might have been his three volume Practica criminalis illustrata, a work that is both a commentary on penal law within the Franciscan order, and a more wide-ranging manual for dealing with penitential and religious-criminal issues, written [End Page 191] to supplant older handbooks of such kind. He was initially tasked to compile such materials at the Franciscan general chapter celebrated at Rome in 1688. The first two volumes of the Practica criminalis illustrata appeared in print in 1693. They were again published posthumously in 1702.2 In between he finished another volume of the Practica with a somewhat different focus, also known under the title De delictis et poenis tractatus absolutissimus, and which was proposed as a useful guidebook for judges, lawyers, and prelates in ecclesiastical courts, as well as for confessors, exorcists, and lay practitioners of law. This work was issued for the first time in 1700.3Although a wished-for early eighteenth-century re-issue of this multi-volume Practica criminalis illustrata was put on hold when it was placed on the index of forbidden books in March 1709 donec corrigatur for suspicion of laxist tendencies,4 all three volumes did appear again with some modifications in a 1753-1754 opera omnia edition. It could be found in a significant number of Franciscan and non-Franciscan order libraries, and apparently remained for a long time an important resource for penitential and disciplinary policies.5 [End Page 192]Whereas Sinistrari, like so many early modern friars, is not a commanding presence in the scholarly and literary canon of present-day Franciscan order history, he became a figure of some fascination and even notoriety in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century esoteric circles, and also is known by modern scholars of early modern demonology and early modern sexuality. This is mainly due to the publication, in the later nineteenth century, of two of Sinistrari's works on demoniality and sodomy that as such were not printed in full during our friar's lifetime, but parts of which are included in Titulus 4 of his Latin De delictis et poenis tractatus absolutissimus, namely the crimes against chastity (which in De delictis et poenis, alongside of daemonialitas [which comes last], comprises constortium suspectum, sollecitatio ad turpia, fornicatio, stuprum, incestus, raptus, clausurae violatio, sacrilegium cum moniali, mollities, sodomia, and bestialitas).Hence, in 1875, the French book collector and editor Isidore Liseux issued for the first time De la démonialité et des animaux incubes et succubes où l'on prouve qu'il existe sur terre des créatures raisonnables autres que l'homme, ayant comme lui un corps et une âme, naissant et mourant comme... (shrink)

This paper explores the use of new scientific techniques to examine collections of historic scientific apparatus and other technological artefacts. One project under discussion uses interferometry to examine the history of lens development, while another uses X-ray fluorescence to discover the kinds of materials used to make early mathematical and astronomical instruments. These methods lead to surprising findings: instruments turn out to be fake, and lens makers turn out to have been adept at solving the riddle of aperture. Although (...) exciting, in some ways this is neither novel nor particularly unusual. After all, lab techniques have been used in art and archaeological collections for a very long time. In fact, scientific instruments themselves have been examined in this way since at least the 1950s. What, then, is special about the use of new instruments to examine old instruments? We argue that the answer has less to do with measuring historical innovation or establishing priority, and more to do with networks of craft know-how that, typically, have left no other historical traces than those embodied in surviving instruments themselves. We show, in particular, how collections of objects can be mobilised within wider histories of knowledge, placing instruments within a dynamic interplay of craft knowledge, expertise, labour, commerce, and material exchange, over the longue durée. Finally, we suggest that these kinds of lab analyses can be given an extra dimension through the use of computational modelling, and we introduce the “Tools of Knowledge” project, which is designed to bring together XRF with techniques from the digital humanities, in order to tell a new story about the development of scientific instruments from the 16th to the 20th century. (shrink)

Contemporary historiography holds that it was the practices and technologies underpinning both the Great Voyages and the 'New Science', as opposed to traditional book learning, which led to the major epistemic breakthroughs of early modernity. This study, however, returns to the importance of book-learning by exploring how cosmological and cosmographical 'novelties' were explained and presented in Renaissance texts, and discloses the ways in which the reports presented by sailors, astronomers, and scientists became not only credible but also deeply disturbing for (...) scholars, preachers, and educated laymen in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. It is argued here that dialectic--the art of argumentation and reasoning--played a crucial role in articulating and popularizing new learning about the cosmos by providing the argumentative toolkit needed to define, discard, and authorize novelties. The debates that shaped them were not confined to learned circles; rather, they reached a wider audience via early modern vernacular genres such as the essay. Focusing both on major figures such as Montaigne or Descartes, as well as on now-forgotten popularizers such as Belleforest and Binet, this book describes the deployment of dialectic as a means of articulating and disseminating, but also of containing, the disturbance generated by cosmological and cosmographical novelties in Renaissance France, whether for the lay reader in Court or Parliament, for the parishioner at Church, or for the student in the classroom. (shrink)

Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436-1476), better known as Regiomontanus, is widely considered as the most influential astronomer and mathematician of 15th-century Europe. He was active as an astrologer and deemed astrology to be the queen of mathematical sciences. Despite this, Regiomontanus's astrological activity has yet to be fully explored. A brief examination of Regiomontanus's manuscripts shows that his astrological interests were accompanied by interests in the arts and in methods of prognostication. This article studies an unconventional astrological-chiromantical text, whose relevance (...) is threefold: a) it sheds new light on Regiomontanus's astrological interests; b) it enriches our knowledge of Regiomontanus's efforts to learn and understand Greek-Regiomontanus transcribed it into his own manuscript during his sojourn in Italy from 1460-1467; and c) it is the sole extant text in the Greek tradition that provides a system for prognostication from the study of a person's hand, the parts of which are considered as being under the domain of planets. The article provides an English translation of Regiomontanus's transcription, alongside a brief commentary, and studies the intellectual and historical context of that production through manuscript analysis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 66.4 (2005) 557-576 [Access article in PDF] The Writing in the Wittenberg Sky: Astrology in Sixteenth-Century Germany Claudia Brosseder University of Munich It probably was a delightful summer day when the celebrated humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, best known as a friend of Albrecht Dürer and Erasmus of Rotterdam, strolled, with an unknown friend, through the streets of Nuremberg. When they saw a girl standing (...) at the streetside, it occurred to the friend to predict the girl's future by reading her palm. So he did, foretelling a forthcoming marriage and a blissful life. After the girl had passed on, Pirckheimer's unknown friend admitted that, unfortunately, he had not seen the girl's blithe life but her impending death. In order not to scare her, however, he had not revealed this message to the girl; only his learned friend Pirckheimer could know the truth. Some years later, the Nuremberg philologist Joachim Camerarius, who narrated this rather trivial event with great excitement in 1576, does not display any sign of bewilderment that in this instance a chiromantic had told untruths to somebody.1 On the contrary, he praises this art and admires Italy's scholars, who practiced, besides chiromancy, other wonderful divinatory arts based on astrology. Camerarius was perceptibly impressed by Italian astrology and her divinatory stepsisters. Presumably he was thinking about De subtilitate (1554) by Girolamo Cardano who, at least in this work, counted astrology and chiromancy among the arts of natural divination.2 And so, as if inspired by Cardano's acute judgment years afterward, Camerarius [End Page 557] read in Cardano, in the same breath, the idea that there had been only twelve significant scholars in the history of civilization, who were capable of divination: such were, among others, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Alchindi, and Vitruvius. However, no contemporary of Cardano was among them.This anecdote provides but a glimpse of the sixteenth-century enthusiasm for the divinatory art of chiromancy and, relatedly, astrology. My contribution will show that academic Protestant Germany was actually in the grips of an astrology fever. Throughout the sixteenth century, many German scholars were under the spell of astrology. In this, Germany did not essentially differ from Italy and France, but in one specific place astrology presented itself in a peculiar shape.In the sixteenth century astrology flourished particularly in one German site of erudition: in Wittenberg, 51°52' latitude, 12°38' longitude. Particularly here at the University of Wittenberg, attracted by Philipp Melanchthon's pedagogic enterprise, a series of scholars came together who shaped the image of astrology in sixteenth-century Germany. They were humanists, physicians, astronomers, mathematicians, municipal surgeons, and scholars of Greek. There were at least forty-six of them. In one way or another, each of them was interested in astrology. Many of them composed astrological analyses for wealthy clients. "Pene innumberabiles" mathematicians came from the University of Wittenberg, as the Tübingen professor of rhetorics Nikodemus Frischlin grudgingly asserted. By this he meant astrologers, and he did not try to conceal his aversion to them.3 He was unequivocal: astrologers are swindlers.With this opinion, Frischlin joined the ranks of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,4 Martin Luther,5 Erasmus of Rotterdam,6 and others. This is not a novelty, and yet Frischlin's caustic remark can still teach us something today: regarding the history of German astrology, one should resist the temptation to see Melanchthon as the one and only spiritus rector of German sixteenth-century astrology. Instead, it is reasonable to concede much more weight to the sway of Wittenberg and its numerous astronomers, mathematicians, and physicians, who did not only gravitate toward the personality of Melanchthon. The large number of scholars and the variety of ideas preempts any attempt [End Page 558] to reduce the number of astrologers to a so-called Melanchthon circle.7 This circle did not exist, not least because his pupils did not monistically adhere to Melanchthon's thoughts on astrology. In particular, a personality as industrious in publishing as Melanchthon's son-in... (shrink)

In the framework of contemporary cosmology, the age-old aspiration to inquire the outer limits of the universe translates into our effort to observe the initial stages of cosmic history. Thanks to a fortunate combination of astronomical circumstances, and pushing mm-wave technology to its limits, today we are able to image the early universe in great detail, back at a time when cosmic age was only 0.0027% of its present value. The state of the art in the field has been (...) set by the ESA Planck mission, launched in 2009, dedicated to precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background. Planck observed the full sky for 4 years in a wide frequency range, reaching μK sensitivity both in temperature and polarization. The latest results, published by the Planck Collaboration in 2018, are in exquisite agreement with the simplest 6-parameter ΛCDM model and constrain the main cosmological parameters with percent-level accuracy. Furthermore, the Planck data yield insight on the very early universe, opening the way to a new generation of experiments searching for the possible signatures of primordial gravitational waves in the CMB polarization pattern. (shrink)

Introduction Jamie Allen Time, of all the dimensions readily presented to experience, seems to do so most readily through things. Stuff, in supposed counter-valence to the negentropic resilience of living things, appears to us as that which degrades through time, and demarcates a more technical chronometry of sequential events. Situated outside the rotting of fruit and the ticking of clocks, a “deep time” persists. Like the ultra-hearing of the bat, and the infra-vision of the boa-constrictor, there exist living and non-living (...) agents and entities capable of revealing the fixity and finitude of our own perceptual frames for thinking and understanding. The recordings presented here consist of four extracts of documents made in deep geological repository sites (for the storage of nuclear waste). Here re-presented are the Yucca Mountain Repository; HADES, in Mol, Belgium; Gorleben in Germany and a further recording from Forsmark in Sweden (pretty much inaudible behind a loop of a pop song). These recordings are imagined acoustic amplifications of deep time, just as the astronomer’s telescope is (thought of a certain way), also a time machine. Stars and nuclear waste are unapparent objects of temporal thought. Andy Weir is an artist from London researching effects of deprioritised subjectivity and contemporary art. This project draws on work developing sonic fictions, stealthy earworms, and micropolitical agencies. Prompted for further thoughts about the recordings presented here, he offered up the interspersed discussion included. —JA Yucca Mountain Repository, Nevada, USA by continent I became interested in these sites originally as spaces that allude to a time outside of the human (‘deep time’) as they are designed to store waste ‘without future maintenance’. The very fact of thinking about these spaces or working on them—engineering etc.. (as I’m particularly interested them in a kind of practice rather than just an object of thought), in other words, forces a confrontation with thought of the extinction of humanity. I was interested in this as a production of affect at odds with the expected ‘ironic, can be whatever you like’ interpretive condition of contemporary art (art under the condition of neoliberalism, say, where the individual subject is prioritised as a free autonomous producer of the meaning of the work) When I thought about this a bit though it ran into paradoxes—yes, I could allude to deep time, but in doing so I just allude to its un-representability, drawing attention to the limits of representation and so reaffirming it—I was stuck in a representation/non-representational negative dialectic. In trying to somehow create a figure for deep time I was either reducing it to my description of it, or presenting it as irreducible. HADES Facility, Mol, Belgium by continent I don’t think I’ve escaped this in the work but my response to it was to create a sonic-fiction. This was based on the idea of a viral transmission of the affect of deep time (this is the ‘pyroclastic-soaked chrono-dread’) through receiving apparatuses, transforming the screen into an intercessor or mediating lure for the outside, a site of exposure multiplying virulently through its dissemination, invoking as much as trying to represent these spaces, the sounds as durations of exposure to contagious materials, and fictions as a way of excavating the strangeness of a world opaque to subjective reconfiguration... Testing out I suppose ways that art could start thinking about figuring the reality of ecological crisis. Gorleben Repository, Lower Saxony, Germany by continent While everything remains at the level of fiction I think the work is problematic. It doesn’t really model anything, giving too much authority to either romantic abandonment or the recuperation of romantic abandonment under its description by theory/philosophy, all contained and controlled by me within a fairly limited condition of what art can do. Deep Time Contagion is precisely a materialisation of and transmission of this paradox (i.e. with screen-media can only present deep time as unrepresentable or draw attention to an inability to present it) taking the comfort/panic induced by this paradox as its material. I’m working now on some new projects that take this as a point of departure. Forsmark Repository, Sweden (Robitussin Mix) by continent. (shrink)

How does the physics we know today-- a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry-- link back to its origins as a liberal art in ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? John Heilbron's fascinating history of physics introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians, calculating the (...) size of the earth whilst their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the 'House of Wisdom' in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe's first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; the increasingly specialized world of 20th and 21st century science. Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology-- and the implications for humankind's self-understanding-- Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures and societies that have nurtured it over the centuries. (shrink)

Plato argued that knowledge of human nature can be reached through dialogue and dialectical method in accordance with the Socratic heritage. In his philosophy, man can be defined as being capable of rationally answering a rational question. By giving rational answers to himself and others, human also becomes a moral subject. In Plato's philosophy, we see a clear program based on human nature. Issues related to human nature are discussed in the process of applying Plato's theory of ideas to the (...) field of morality, art, politics and education. What emerges in practice, for example, right and fair behavior is a manifestation of the principle of truth and justice. According to Plato, man reflects the character of the state he lives in. To understand a person, it is necessary to consider the society in which he lives. The state is not an institution that people come together and establish with their own will, but an organism, a whole. According to Plato, in order to grasp the true meaning of human society and to arrange it properly, one must first comprehend the astronomical cosmos. Because, knowing the meaning of the concepts of harmony and order is possible only by understanding the astronomical cosmos, which is the expression of an eternal order. While studying the astronomical cosmos, a man comes to the idea of harmony and order itself. Indeed, the infinite canonical and harmonious movements of the stars in this pre-eternal order on their perennials lead to the concept of law itself. People who admire this harmony and order in the sky want to realize a model of it on earth. He concludes that the laws that will rule over the human world must be continuous and compatible, just like the laws in the world of stars. Thus, the state must be an earthly model of the astronomical cosmos. If a person lives in the state, he should realize this harmony and order in the state in his own spirit. (shrink)

Excerpt from Vector Analysis and the Theory of Relativity One of the most striking effects of the publication of Einstein's papers on generalized relativity and of the discussions which arose in connection with the subsequent astronomical observations was to make students of physics renew their study of mathematics. At first they attempted to learn simply the technique, but soon there was a demand to understand more; real mathematical insight was sought. Unfortunately there were no books available, not even papers. (...) Dr. Murnaghan's little book is a most successful attempt to supply what is a definite need. Every physicist can read it with profit. He will learn the meaning of a vector for the first time. He will learn methods which are available for every field of mathematical physics. He will see which of the processes used by Einstein and others are strictly mathematical and which are physical. Every chapter is illuminating, and the treatment of the subject is that of a student of mathematics and is not developed ad hoc. The extension of surface and line integrals is most interesting for physicists and the discussion of the space relations in a four-dimensional geometry is one most needed. This is specially true concerning the case of point-symmetry which forms the basis of Einstein's formulae for gravitation as applied to the solar system. I feel personally that I owe to this book a great debt. I have read it with care and shall read it again. It has given me a definiteness of understanding which I never had before, and a vision of a field of knowledge which before was remote. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

How does the physics we know today-- a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry-- link back to its origins as a liberal art in ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? John Heilbron's fascinating history of physics introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians, calculating the (...) size of the earth whilst their caliphs conquered much of it; to medieval scholar-theologians investigating light; to Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, measuring, and trying to explain, the universe. We visit the 'House of Wisdom' in 9th-century Baghdad; Europe's first universities; the courts of the Renaissance; the Scientific Revolution and the academies of the 18th century; the increasingly specialized world of 20th and 21st century science. Highlighting the shifting relationship between physics, philosophy, mathematics, and technology-- and the implications for humankind's self-understanding-- Heilbron explores the changing place and purpose of physics in the cultures and societies that have nurtured it over the centuries. (shrink)

Few accounts have survived detailing the techniques employed for the production of optical glass for astronomical and microscopical instruments during the seventeenth century in Italy; the period during which the art was being developed in the shops of Eustachio Divini and Giuseppe Campani, and other optical instrument-makers. Indeed, few of the tools of the lens-makers have been described in any detail, and few if any have survived. Consequently, the discovery of a hitherto apparently unknown Italian treatise, or what appears (...) to have been notes for a shop manual of the period, is a contribution to present knowledge of lens-making technology even though the identity and region of the author remain unknown. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Mill as an Act‐Utilitarian Mill as a Rule‐Utilitarian Moral Rules, Justice, and Supererogation Mill's Theory of the Right and “The Art of Life”.

Hard direction, e.g.: Universalese to Organicese. Suggestion: ‘Some chairs wobble’ should become something like ‘If composition were universal, some chairs wobble’ or ‘Assuming that composition is universal, some chairs wobble’ or ‘According to the fiction that composition is universal, some chairs wobble’.

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of appIied ethics in this country-why? The events which face our society today are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beIiefs that set (...) our pubIic policy agenda. Cur beIiefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call "business science," e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own uniqueself in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long. (shrink)

We humans are a curious species. Of all the life forms that inhabit the earth, we alone strive to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves. For thousands of years we understood the world through stories. Our ancestors told stories of how the world began, how our people originated and came to be at this place, and how those people across the river or beyond the mountains came to be where they are. Some stories were of animals (...) and plants in our neighborhood, and their powers to help us, feed us, or cure our ailments. But in the last few centuries, starting in Europe and spreading throughout the world, a new way of understanding began competing with storytelling as a means of comprehending our world. Science supplanted storytelling largely because it empowered us to transform the world in ways that were unimaginable to our ancestors. We understand the world scientifically by describing the world instead of by telling stories about it. The stories our ancestors told no longer explain the world, but are data within the world, part of the world that science describes. Our stories have become myths, cultural artifacts that may be interesting and a subject of study, but cannot possibly be true. Yet even in societies that have thoroughly embraced science as a means of understanding the world, myths remain a powerful force. Myth and science exist side by side, often creating confusion and conflict. (shrink)