Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!

You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.

Sign up

Motion and Genetic Definitions in the Sixteenth-Century Euclidean Tradition
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 306

Motion and Genetic Definitions in the Sixteenth-Century Euclidean Tradition

A significant number of works have set forth, over the past decades, the emphasis laid by seventeenth-century mathematicians and philosophers on motion and kinematic notions in geometry. These works demonstrated the crucial role attributed in this context to genetic definitions, which state the mode of generation of geometrical objects instead of their essential properties. While the growing importance of genetic definitions in sixteenth-century commentaries on Euclid’s Elements has been underlined, the place, uses and status of motion in this geometrical tradition has however never been thoroughly and comprehensively studied. This book therefore undertakes to fill a gap in the history of ...

Ptolemy's Philosophy
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 250

Ptolemy's Philosophy

A stimulating intellectual history of Ptolemy's philosophy and his conception of a world in which mathematics reigns supreme The Greco-Roman mathematician Claudius Ptolemy is one of the most significant figures in the history of science. He is remembered today for his astronomy, but his philosophy is almost entirely lost to history. This groundbreaking book is the first to reconstruct Ptolemy’s general philosophical system—including his metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics—and to explore its relationship to astronomy, harmonics, element theory, astrology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. In this stimulating intellectual history, Jacqueline Feke uncovers references to a complex and...

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 406

De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco in the Early Modern Period

This open access book explores commentaries on an influential text of pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe. It features essays that take a close look at key intellectuals and how they engaged with the main ideas of this qualitative introduction to geocentric cosmology. Johannes de Sacrobosco compiled his Tractatus de sphaera during the thirteenth century in the frame of his teaching activities at the then recently founded University of Paris. It soon became a mandatory text all over Europe. As a result, a tradition of commentaries to the text was soon established and flourished until the second half of the 17th century. Here, readers will find an informative overview of these commentaries comp...

Martianus Capella in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 241

Martianus Capella in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2023-10-09
  • -
  • Publisher: BRILL

In this book, Katie Reid argues that the fifth-century author Martianus Capella was a significant influence in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. His poetic encyclopaedia, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, was a source for writing on the liberal arts, allegory and classical mythology from 1300 to 1650. In fact, writers of this period had much more in common with Martianus Capella than they did with older ancients like Homer and Virgil. As such, we must reshape our understanding of late medieval and Renaissance encounters with the classical world by exploring their roots in Late Antiquity.

Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 147

Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2017-06-29
  • -
  • Publisher: Springer

This book presents a systematic reconstruction of Leibniz’s dynamics project (c. 1676-1700) that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concepts of physical causality in Leibniz’s work and 17th century physics. It argues that Leibniz’s theory of forces privileges the causal relationship between structural organization and physical phenomena instead of body-to-body mechanical causation. The mature conception of Leibnizian force is not the power of one body to cause motion in another, but a kind of structural causation related to the configuration of integral systems of bodies in physical evolution. By treating the immanent philosophy of Leibniz’s dynamics, this book makes explicit the systematic aims and inherent limits of Leibniz's physical project, in addition to providing an alternative vision of the scientific understanding of the physical world in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 421

Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity

In this book, Arthur gives fresh interpretations of Gottfried Leibniz's theories of time, space, and the relativity of motion, based on a thorough examination of Leibniz's manuscripts as well as his published papers. These are analysed in historical context, but also with an eye to their contemporary relevance. Leibniz's views on relativity have been extremely influential, first on Mach, and then on Einstein, while his novel approach to geometry in his analysis situs inspired many later developments in geometry. Arthur expounds the latter in some detail, explaining its relationship to Leibniz's metaphysics of space and the grounding of motion, and defending Leibniz's views on the relativity ...

Mind and Modality
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 402

Mind and Modality

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2006-05-01
  • -
  • Publisher: BRILL

This volume offers a wide-ranging and profound collection of essays on philosophical psychology and conceptions of modality from antiquity to the present day, with some essays on the philosophy of religion as well.

Academic Scepticism in the Development of Early Modern Philosophy
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 386

Academic Scepticism in the Development of Early Modern Philosophy

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2016-12-27
  • -
  • Publisher: Springer

This book explores how far some leading philosophers, from Montaigne to Hume, used Academic Scepticism to build their own brand of scepticism or took it as its main sceptical target. The book offers a detailed view of the main modern key figures, including Sanches, Charron, La Mothe Le Vayer, Bacon, Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, Pascal, Foucher, Huet, and Bayle. In addition, it provides a comprehensive assessment of the role of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern philosophy and a complete survey of the period. As a whole, the book offers a basis for a new, balanced assessment of the role played by scepticism in both its forms. Since Richard Popkin's works, there has been considerable interest in the role played by Pyrrhonian Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy. Comparatively, Academic Scepticism was much neglected by scholars, despite some scattered important contributions. Furthermore, a general assessment of the presence of Academic Scepticism in Early Modern Philosophy is lacking. This book fills the void.

A History of Folding in Mathematics
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 419

A History of Folding in Mathematics

  • Type: Book
  • -
  • Published: 2018-05-25
  • -
  • Publisher: Birkhäuser

While it is well known that the Delian problems are impossible to solve with a straightedge and compass – for example, it is impossible to construct a segment whose length is cube root of 2 with these instruments – the discovery of the Italian mathematician Margherita Beloch Piazzolla in 1934 that one can in fact construct a segment of length cube root of 2 with a single paper fold was completely ignored (till the end of the 1980s). This comes as no surprise, since with few exceptions paper folding was seldom considered as a mathematical practice, let alone as a mathematical procedure of inference or proof that could prompt novel mathematical discoveries. A few questions immediately aris...

On Joachim Jungius’ Texturæ Contemplatio
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 416

On Joachim Jungius’ Texturæ Contemplatio

The book offers an analysis of Joachim Jungius’ Texturæ Contemplatio - a hitherto-unpublished manuscript written in German and Latin that deals with weaving, knitting and other textile practices, attempting to present as well various fabrics and textile techniques in a scientifical and even mathematical framework. The book aims to provide the epistemological, technical and historic framework for Jungius’ manuscript, inspecting fabrics, weaving techniques as well as looms and other textile machines in Holy Roman Empire during the Early Modern Period. It also offers a unique investigation of the notion and metaphor of ‘texture’ during this period, and explores, within the wider context of the ‘meeting’ or ‘trading zones’ thesis, the relations between artisans and natural philosophers during the 17th century. The book is of interest to historians of philosophy and mathematics, as well as historians of technology.