Texts And Contexts In Ancient And Medieval Science

Written in honor of John E. Murdoch's seventieth birthday, the essays collected here focus on the interpretation of ancient and scientific texts not just as isolated intellectual productions but as responses to particular settings or contexts.

Written in honor of John E. Murdoch's seventieth birthday, the essays collected here focus on the interpretation of ancient and scientific texts not just as isolated intellectual productions but as responses to particular settings or contexts.

Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.

This is the third and final volume of a set of studies on the development of humanism in the northern Netherlands and the adjoining parts of Germany between 1469, when, in the oldest letters preserved of Rudolph Agricola and Rudolph von Langen, first mention is made of a group of early humanist scholars at the Adwert monastery near Groningen, and 1625, when the humanist Ubbo Emmius died, who was the first rector of the university of Groningen. The earlier two volumes are Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius (1444-1485) (1988) and Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489) and Northern Humanism (1993). This last volume has papers on Regnerus Praedinius (1510-1559), Alexander Hegius (ca.1433-1498), Alexander Candidus ( 1555), Wessel Gansfort (1419-1489), the Bremen Gymnasium Illustre between 1560-1630, humanist commentaries on Boethius, scholasticism and humanism, humanism and philosophy, Agricola Latinus, Ubbo Emmius's 'art of description', Agricola's dialectics at Louvain, Agricola on deliberative speech, humanism and reformation, Erasmus and geography, Agricola in Pavia, Dutch students at Italian universities (1425-1575), relations between Heidelberg and the Low Countries in the late 16th century, the Modern Devotion and humanism.Many of the papers were originally presented at a conference in 1996, but they have been extensively rewritten and edited, and a number of new pieces have been included. An updated bibliography in this volume makes the three volumes together an indispensable tool for scholars of philology, literature, history, philosophy and theology of the period.Contributors include: F. Akkerman, J.C. Bedaux, C.P.M. Burger, C.M.A. Caspers, T. Elsmann, M. Goris, M.J.F.M. Hoenen, P. Kooiman, H.A. Krop, Z.R.W.M. von Martels, L.W. Nauta, J. Papy, M. van der Poel, E. Rummel, R.J. Schoeck, A. Sottili, A. Tervoort, A.E. Walter, and A.G. Weiler.

First published in 2005, this encyclopedia demonstrates that the millennium from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance was a period of great intellectual and practical achievement and innovation. In Europe, the Islamic world, South and East Asia, and the Americas, individuals built on earlier achievements, introduced sometimes radical refinements and laid the foundations for modern development. Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine details the whole scope of scientific knowledge in the medieval period in more than 300 A to Z entries. This comprehensive resource discusses the research, application of knowledge, cultural and technology exchanges, experimentation, and achievements in the many disciplines related to science and technology. It also looks at the relationship between medieval science and the traditions it supplanted. Written by a select group of international scholars, this reference work will be of great use to scholars, students, and general readers researching topics in many fields, including medieval studies, world history, history of science, history of technology, history of medicine, and cultural studies.

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

The unifying theme in this second volume of essays by William A. Wallace to be published in the Variorum series is signaled in the title of the opening paper: 'Domingo de Soto and the Iberian roots of Galileo's science'. The seven essays in the first part provide textual studies of Soto's early formulations of the laws of falling bodies, the context in which they were developed in the 16th century, and the ways in which they were transmitted in Spain and Portugal to the early 17th century, mainly by Jesuit scholars. The following essays focus on the young Galileo and his work at Pisa and Padua, leading to his discovery of the law of uniform acceleration in free fall. Textual evidence is presented for an indirect influence of Soto's work on Galileo, mediated by Jesuits who were teaching at Padua in the first decade of the 17th century.

This book explores the changing perspective of astrology from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era. It introduces a framework for understanding both its former centrality and its later removal from legitimate knowledge and practice. The discussion reconstructs the changing roles of astrology in Western science, theology, and culture from 1250 to 1500. The author considers both the how and the why. He analyzes and integrates a broad range of sources. This analysis shows that the history of astrology—in particular, the story of the protracted criticism and ultimate removal of astrology from the realm of legitimate knowledge and practice—is crucial for fully understanding the transition from premodern Aristotelian-Ptolemaic natural philosophy to modern Newtonian science. This removal, the author argues, was neither obvious nor unproblematic. Astrology was not some sort of magical nebulous hodge-podge of beliefs. Rather, astrology emerged in the 13th century as a richly mathematical system that served to integrate astronomy and natural philosophy, precisely the aim of the “New Science” of the 17th century. As such, it becomes a fundamentally important historical question to determine why this promising astrological synthesis was rejected in favor of a rather different mathematical natural philosophy—and one with a very different causal structure than Aristotle's.