Das schön gestaltete Buch stellt die Veröffentlichung einer exzeptionellen Handschrift dar: der meisterhaft bebilderten Zusammenstellung von byzantinischen und frühneugriechischen Orakeln, in griechischer und lateinischer Sprache, die exakt zwischen 1575 und 1577 datiert werden kann und deren Herstellungsumstände gut bezeugt sind. Die Handschrift entstand auf Kreta, und zwar auf Wunsch des venezianischen Provveditore der Insel, Giacomo Foscarini. Der einstige General der Seeschlacht von Lepanto verließ im November 1577 Kreta und ging nach Venedig, wo er mehrmals vergeblich für das Dogenamt kandidierte. Die (...) Orakelsammlung wurde von dem bekannten kreto-venezianischen Adeligen und Gelehrten Francesco Barozzi angelegt, der auch die luxuriöse Pergamenthandschrift herstellen ließ. 24 Miniaturen sind ganzseitig den 24 Orakeln gegenübergestellt. Drei der Miniaturen sind von dem begabten kretischen Maler Georgios Klontzas signiert. Zweifellos hat er alle Bilder des Bandes angefertigt. Die Handschrift befindet sich in Privatbesitz in Paris und wurde erst vor einigen Jahren durch einen Bericht von Jeannine Vereecken und durch einen Aufsatz von Manolis Chatzidakis bekannt. Eine gleiche Handschrift, fast ein Duplikat, befindet sich in der Bodleian Library in Oxford (Barocci 170) und ist seit längerem bekannt. (shrink)

The perfect compass, used by al-Qūhī, al-Sijzī and his successors for the continuous drawing of conic sections, reappeared after a long eclipse in the works of Renaissance mathematicians like Francesco Barozzi in Venice. The resurgence of this instrument seems to have depended on its interest to solve new optico-perspective problems. Having reviewed the various instruments designed for the drawing of conic sections, the article is focused on the sole conic compass. Theoretical and empirical applications are detailed. Contrarily to the (...) common thesis of an independant discovery, various elements suggest a direct descent between the birkār al-tāmm of the Arabic mathematical tradition and the Italian conic compass. Then we present the most probable transmission hypothesis involving: 1° Ibn Yūnus and his disciples of Mosul, 2° Sultan Malik al-Kāmil in Damas, 3° Master Theodore and Frederick II at the court of Sicily, 4° Andalò di Negro and Robert of Anjou in Naples, 5° Lorenzo della Volpaia, Vinci, Sangallo and Michelangelo in Florence, 6° Ausonio, Contarini, Thiene and Francesco Barozzi in Venice. (shrink)

«Mettre les faits d’accord avec la philosophie de Platon»: voilà une maxime qui remonte au Commentaire de Proclus au premier livre des Éléments d’Euclide, oeuvre centrale pour la constitution du savoir au Cinquecento et plus particulièrement pour la définition du statut opératoire des mathématiques. Au cours du XVIe siècle, Euclide apparaît en effet comme le véritable médiateur entre platonisme et aristotélisme, au demeurant moins par son oeuvre de géomètre que par son geste épistémologique qui semble tracer l’unique voie possible pour (...) accéder à la connaissance de toutes les choses, soit sensibles soit métaphysiques. Les interprétations de Jacopo Mazzoni ("In universam Platonis et Aristotelis philosophiam praeludia, sive de comparatione Platonis et Aristotelis", 1597) et de Francesco Barozzi ("Opusculum, in quo una oratio, et duae quaestiones: Altera de certitudine, et altera de medietate mathematicarum continentur", 1560), que j’examine dans mon article, offrent deux perspectives différentes, qui redonnent une actualité philosophique au néoplatonisme mathématique de Proclus. (shrink)

The Origin of Scientific Notions in the Circle of the Roman Accademia della Virtù around 1550. Between c. 1537 and 1555 a group of humanists, clerics, architects and philologists known as the so‐called Accademia della Virtù got together in Rome to work on a program which was formulated in a letter by the Sienese humanist Claudio Tolomei in 1542 and published in 1547. Starting out with the intention to understand the only surviving antique book on architecture and architectural theory – (...) Vitruvius’ De architectura libri decem – the program describes a series of 24 books, eleven containing the classical text and its translation with commentaries, 13 books systematically illustrating and documenting all known and available material remains from Roman antiquity. This program for a scientific classical archaeology in a modern sense was not only intended to serve the intellectual curiosity of some humanist antiquarians but to help architects and their patrons to develop a new architecture of the same high quality as the idealized Roman examples. To achieve this practical as well as theoretical goal it was obviously necessary to re‐create the antique vocabulary of architecture and its rules as well as to unify the contemporary usage of notions and norms in a canon. The first results of this project seem to be the In decem Libros M. Vitruvii Pollionis de Architectura Annotationes by Guillaume Philandrier (Rome, 1544) – up to this day a very valuable explanation of ambiguous parts in the Vitruvian text. Until the 1980s, it was believed that this book was the only outcome of the ambitious project; but then two codices of drawings after antique reliefs were identified as preparations for one of the other 23 volumes – and, because of their systematic approach, regarded as the ‘first systematic archaeological book’. Now it seems that there are some other corpora of manuscripts and drawings documenting antique artifacts that should be regarded as results of the Accademia’s work, too, showing antique buildings, inscriptions and coins. Other results of the unfinished project may be the theoretical and practical works of the two most influencial architects of the sixteenth century: Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola and Andrea Palladio. (shrink)

This article analyzes the epistemological legitimation of mathematics in natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. In the Renaissance it was claimed that mathematics does not meet the Aristotelian criteria of scientificity, and that it did not explain the efficient and final causes. So, its critics, inspired by the Aristotelian tradition, rejected the first attempts to mathematize natural philosophy. The epistemological conditions involved in the debate are examined on the scientific nature of mathematics and its relevance to natural philosophy. A historiographical (...) tour of the mathematization of nature is made to provide new weighing elements with respect to a historically and philosophically more conceptual characterization of the emergence of modern science. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza las condiciones a través de las cuales las matemáticas pasan de un estado de subordinación a desempeñar un papel rector frente a la filosofía natural. Esta transformación se manifestó esencialmente en un cambio de actitud frente al pensamiento tradicional, mediante la sustitución de la explicación cualitativa de los fenómenos naturales por una explicación cuantitativa. En el texto se abordarán los aspectos epistemológicos e institucionales que están implicados en el debate sobre la cientificidad de las matemáticas. A su (...) vez, se hará un recorrido historiográfico señalando las diferentes posturas que tuvieron lugar en la polémica, para ofrecer elementos históricos y conceptuales de análisis respecto de las matemáticas como herramienta de la ciencia moderna. (shrink)