Mark Peterson makes an extraordinary claim in this fascinating book focused around the life and thought of Galileo: it was the mathematics of Renaissance arts, not Renaissance sciences, that became modern science. Galileo's Muse argues that painters, poets, musicians, and architects brought about a scientific revolution that eluded the philosopher-scientists of the day, steeped as they were in a medieval cosmos and its underlying philosophy. According to Peterson, the recovery of classical science owes much to the Renaissance artists who first turned to Greek sources for inspiration and instruction. Chapters devoted to their insights into mathematics, ranging from perspective in painting to tuning in music, are interspersed with chapters about Galileo's own life and work. Himself an artist turned scientist and an avid student of Hellenistic culture, Galileo pulled together the many threads of his artistic and classical education in designing unprecedented experiments to unlock the secrets of nature. In the last chapter, Peterson draws our attention to the Oratio de Mathematicae laudibus of 1627, delivered by one of Galileo's students. This document, Peterson argues, was penned in part by Galileo himself, as an expression of his understanding of the universality of mathematics in art and nature. It is "entirely Galilean in so many details that even if it is derivative, it must represent his thought," Peterson writes. An intellectual adventure, Galileo’s Muse offers surprising ideas that will capture the imagination of anyone—scientist, mathematician, history buff, lover of literature, or artist—who cares about the humanistic roots of modern science.

The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century has often been called a decisive turning point in human history. It represents, for good or ill, the birth of modern science and modern ways of viewing the world. In What Galileo Saw, Lawrence Lipking offers a new perspective on how to understand what happened then, arguing that artistic imagination and creativity as much as rational thought played a critical role in creating new visions of science and in shaping stories about eye-opening discoveries in cosmology, natural history, engineering, and the life sciences.When Galileo saw the face of the Moon and the moons of Jupiter, Lipking writes, he had to picture a cosmos that could account for them. Kepler thought his geometry could open a window into the mind of God. Francis Bacon's natural history envisioned an order of things that would replace the illusions of language with solid evidence and transform notions of life and death. Descartes designed a hypothetical "Book of Nature" to explain how everything in the universe was constructed. Thomas Browne reconceived the boundaries of truth and error. Robert Hooke, like Leonardo, was both researcher and artist; his schemes illuminate the microscopic and the macrocosmic. And when Isaac Newton imagined nature as a coherent and comprehensive mathematical system, he redefined the goals of science and the meaning of genius.What Galileo Saw bridges the divide between science and art; it brings together Galileo and Milton, Bacon and Shakespeare. Lipking enters the minds and the workshops where the Scientific Revolution was fashioned, drawing on art, literature, and the history of science to reimagine how perceptions about the world and human life could change so drastically, and change forever.

Examines the history of science in light of recent theories of sexuality and the body.

The Winter 2012 (vol. 14 no. 3) issue of the Nexus Network Journal features seven original papers dedicated to the theme “Digital Fabrication”. Digital fabrication is changing architecture in fundamental ways in every phase, from concept to artifact. Projects growing out of research in digital fabrication are dependent on software that is entirely surface-oriented in its underlying mathematics. Decisions made during design, prototyping, fabrication and assembly rely on codes, scripts, parameters, operating systems and software, creating the need for teams with multidisciplinary expertise and different skills, from IT to architecture, design, material engineering, and mathematics, among others The papers grew out of a Lisbon symposium hosted by the ISCTE-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa entitled “Digital Fabrication – A State of the Art”. The issue is completed with four other research papers which address different mathematical instruments applied to architecture, including geometric tracing systems, proportional systems, descriptive geometry and correspondence analysis. The issue concludes with a book review.

In 1633, the Roman Inquisition condemned Galileo as a suspected heretic for defending Copernicus's hypothesis of the earth's motion and denying the scientific authority of Scripture. This book draws upon Maurice A. Finocchiaro's earlier works, especially The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (1989), to provide a brief, new documentary history of Galileo's trial that is simultaneously the most user-friendly and inclusive available.

How did early modern scientists interpret Galileo’s influential Two New Sciences? In 1638, Galileo was over seventy years old, blind, and confined to house arrest outside of Florence. With the help of friends and family, he managed to complete and smuggle to the Netherlands a manuscript that became his final published work, Two New Sciences. Treating diverse subjects that became the foundations of mechanical engineering and physics, this book is often depicted as the definitive expression of Galileo’s purportedly modern scientific agenda. In Reading Galileo, Renée Raphael offers a new interpretation of Two New Sciences which argues instead that the work embodied no such coherent canonical vision. Raphael alleges that it was written—and originally read—as the eclectic product of the types of discursive textual analysis and meandering descriptive practices Galileo professed to reject in favor of more qualitative scholarship. Focusing on annotations period readers left in the margins of extant copies and on the notes and teaching materials of seventeenth-century university professors whose lessons were influenced by Galileo’s text, Raphael explores the ways in which a range of early-modern readers, from ordinary natural philosophers to well-known savants, responded to Galileo. She highlights the contrast between the practices of Galileo’s actual readers, who followed more traditional, “bookish” scholarly methods, and their image, constructed by Galileo and later historians, as “modern” mathematical experimenters. Two New Sciences has not previously been the subject of such rigorous attention and analysis. Reading Galileo considerably changes our understanding of Galileo’s important work while offering a well-executed case study in the reception of an early-modern scientific classic. This important text will be of interest to a wide range of historians—of science, of scholarly practices and the book, and of early-modern intellectual and cultural history.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} On July 20, 1969, half a billion viewers around the world watched as the first television footage of American astronauts on the moon was beamed back to earth—a thrilling turning point in the history of images, satisfying an age-old curiosity about our planet’s only natural satellite. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this captivating volume surveys the role photography has played in the scientific study and artistic interpretation of the moon from the dawn of the medium to the present, highlighting not only stunning photographic works but also related prints, drawings, paintings, and astronomical instruments. Apollo’s Muse traces the history of lunar photography, from newly discovered daguerreotypes of the 1840s to contemporary film and video works. Along the way, it explores nineteenth century efforts to map the lunar surface, whimsical fantasies of life on the moon, the visual language of the Cold War space race, and work created in response to the moon landing by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Graves, and Aleksandra Mir. A delightful introduction by Tom Hanks, star of the award winning 1995 film Apollo 13, delves into the universal fascination with representations of the cosmos and the ways in which space travel has radically expanded the limits of human vision.

An “intriguing and accessible” (Publishers Weekly) interpretation of the life of Galileo Galilei, one of history’s greatest and most fascinating scientists, that sheds new light on his discoveries and how he was challenged by science deniers. “We really need this story now, because we’re living through the next chapter of science denial” (Bill McKibben). Galileo’s story may be more relevant today than ever before. At present, we face enormous crises—such as minimizing the dangers of climate change—because the science behind these threats is erroneously questioned or ignored. Galileo encountered this problem 400 years ago. His discoveries, based on careful observations and ingenious experiments, contradicted conventional wisdom and the teachings of the church at the time. Consequently, in a blatant assault on freedom of thought, his books were forbidden by church authorities. Astrophysicist and bestselling author Mario Livio draws on his own scientific expertise and uses his “gifts as a great storyteller” (The Washington Post) to provide a “refreshing perspective” (Booklist) into how Galileo reached his bold new conclusions about the cosmos and the laws of nature. A freethinker who followed the evidence wherever it led him, Galileo was one of the most significant figures behind the scientific revolution. He believed that every educated person should know science as well as literature, and insisted on reaching the widest audience possible, publishing his books in Italian rather than Latin. Galileo was put on trial with his life in the balance for refusing to renounce his scientific convictions. He remains a hero and inspiration to scientists and all of those who respect science—which, as Livio reminds us in this “admirably clear and concise” (The Times, London) book, remains threatened everyday.

Considered the paradigm case of the troubled interaction between science and religion, the conflict between Galileo and the Church continues to generate new research and lively debate. Richard J. Blackwell offers a fresh approach to the Galileo case, using as his primary focus the biblical and ecclesiastical issues that were the battleground for the celebrated confrontation. Blackwell's research in the Vatican manuscript collection and the Jesuit archives in Rome enables him to re-create a vivid picture of the trends and counter-trends that influenced leading Catholic thinkers of the period: the conservative reaction to the Reformation, the role of authority in biblical exegesis and in guarding orthodoxy from the inroads of "unbridled spirits," and the position taken by Cardinal Bellarmine and the Jesuits in attempting to weigh the discoveries of the new science in the context of traditional philosophy and theology. A centerpiece of Blackwell's investigation is his careful reading of the brief treatise Letter on the Motion of the Earth by Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite scholar, arguing for the compatibility of the Copernican system with the Bible. Blackwell appends the first modern translation into English of this important and neglected document, which was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1616. Though there were differing and competing theories of biblical interpretation advocated in Galileo's time—the legacy of the Council of Trent, the views of Cardinal Bellarmine, the most influential churchman of his time, and, finally, the claims of authority and obedience that weakened the abillity of Jesuit scientists to support the new science—all contributed to the eventual condemnation of Galileo in 1633. Blackwell argues convincingly that the maintenance of ecclesiastical authority, not the scientific issues themselves, led to that tragic trial.

Galileo (1564–1642) incorporated throughout his work the language of battle, the rhetoric of the epic, and the structure of romance as a means to elicit emotional responses from his readers against his opponents. By turning to the literary as a field for creating knowledge, Galileo delineated a textual space for establishing and validating the identity of the new, idealized philosopher. Galileo's Reading places Galileo in the complete intellectual and academic world in which he operated, bringing together, for example, debates over the nature of floating bodies and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, disputes on comets and the literary criticism of Don Quixote, mathematical demonstrations of material strength and Dante's voyage through the afterlife, and the parallels of his feisty note-taking practices with popular comedy of the period.