Galileo's Muse

Galileo's Muse
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 347
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674059726
ISBN-13 : 0674059727
Rating : 4/5 (26 Downloads)

Synopsis Galileo's Muse by : Mark A. Peterson

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.

Nexus Network Journal 14,3

Nexus Network Journal 14,3
Author :
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages : 177
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783034805827
ISBN-13 : 3034805829
Rating : 4/5 (27 Downloads)

Synopsis Nexus Network Journal 14,3 by : Kim Williams

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.

What Galileo Saw

What Galileo Saw
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 331
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780801454844
ISBN-13 : 0801454840
Rating : 4/5 (44 Downloads)

Synopsis What Galileo Saw by : Lawrence Lipking

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.

Galileo's Reading

Galileo's Reading
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 257
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781107662940
ISBN-13 : 110766294X
Rating : 4/5 (40 Downloads)

Synopsis Galileo's Reading by : Crystal Hall

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.

Galileo's Idol

Galileo's Idol
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 211
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226166971
ISBN-13 : 022616697X
Rating : 4/5 (71 Downloads)

Synopsis Galileo's Idol by : Nick Wilding

This book looks at Galileo's friend, student, and patron, Gianfrancesco Sagredo (1571-1620). Sagredo's life brings to light the relationship between the production, distribution, and reception of political information and scientific knowledge.

The Trial of Galileo

The Trial of Galileo
Author :
Publisher : Hackett Publishing
Total Pages : 174
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781624661358
ISBN-13 : 1624661351
Rating : 4/5 (58 Downloads)

Synopsis The Trial of Galileo by :

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.

Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo

Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo
Author :
Publisher : Springer Nature
Total Pages : 483
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9783030771478
ISBN-13 : 3030771474
Rating : 4/5 (78 Downloads)

Synopsis Science, Method, and Argument in Galileo by : Maurice A. Finocchiaro

This book collects a renowned scholar's essays from the past five decades and reflects two main concerns: an approach to logic that stresses argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking and that is informal, empirical, naturalistic, practical, applied, concrete, and historical; and an interest in Galileo’s life and thought—his scientific achievements, Inquisition trial, and methodological lessons in light of his iconic status as “father of modern science.” These republished essays include many hard to find articles, out of print works, and chapters which are not available online. The collection provides an excellent resource of the author's lifelong dedication to the subject. Thus, the book contains critical analyses of some key Galilean arguments about the laws of falling bodies and the Copernican hypothesis of the earth’s motion. There is also a group of chapters in which Galileo’s argumentation is compared and contrasted with that of other figures such as Socrates, Karl Marx, Giordano Bruno, and his musicologist father Vincenzo Galilei. The chapters on Galileo’s trial illustrate an approach to the science-vs-religion issue which Finocchiaro labels “para-clerical” and conceptualizes in terms of a judicious consideration of arguments for and against Galileo and the Church. Other essays examine argumentation about Galileo’s life and thought by the major Galilean scholars of recent decades. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, history of science, history of religion, philosophy of religion, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication studies.

Galileo

Galileo
Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Total Pages : 304
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781501194740
ISBN-13 : 1501194747
Rating : 4/5 (40 Downloads)

Synopsis Galileo by : Mario Livio

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.

Reading Galileo

Reading Galileo
Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
Total Pages : 279
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781421421780
ISBN-13 : 142142178X
Rating : 4/5 (80 Downloads)

Synopsis Reading Galileo by : Renée Raphael

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.

On the Life of Galileo

On the Life of Galileo
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 441
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691185743
ISBN-13 : 0691185743
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis On the Life of Galileo by : Stefano Gattei

The first collection and translation into English of the earliest biographical accounts of Galileo’s life This unique critical edition presents key early biographical accounts of the life and work of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), written by his close contemporaries. Collected and translated into English for the first time and supplemented by an introduction and incisive annotations by Stefano Gattei, these documents paint an incomparable firsthand picture of Galileo and offer rare insights into the construction of his public image and the complex intertwining of science, religion, and politics in seventeenth-century Italy. Here in its entirety is Vincenzo Viviani’s Historical Account, an extensive and influential biography of Galileo written in 1654 by his last and most devoted pupil. Viviani’s text is accompanied by his “Letter to Prince Leopoldo de’ Medici on the Application of Pendulum to Clocks” (1659), his 1674 description of Galileo’s later works, and the long inscriptions on the façade of Viviani’s Florentine palace (1702). The collection also includes the “Adulatio perniciosa,” a Latin poem written in 1620 by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini—who, as Pope Urban VIII, would become Galileo’s prosecutor—as well as descriptive accounts that emerged from the Roman court and contemporary European biographers. Featuring the original texts in Italian, Latin, and French with their English translations on facing pages, this invaluable book shows how Galileo’s pupils, friends, and critics shaped the Galileo myth for centuries to come, and brings together in one volume the primary sources needed to understand the legendary scientist in his time.