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Lenses and Waves
In 1690, Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) published Traité de la Lumière, containing his renowned wave theory of light. It is considered a landmark in seventeenth-century science, for the way Huygens mathematized the corpuscular nature of light and his probabilistic conception of natural knowledge. This book discusses the development of Huygens' wave theory, reconstructing the winding road that eventually led to Traité de la Lumière. For the first time, the full range of manuscript sources is taken into account. In addition, the development of Huygens' thinking on the nature of light is put in the context of his optics as a whole, which was dominated by his lifelong pursuit of theoretical ...
Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion
"Historians of science and the philosophy of science find the substance and stance of Isaac Beeckman's thought highly interesting, for it represented an early attempt to develop a comprehensive picture of the world by means of mechanistic theory, that is, forces acting upon one another. Besides possibly influencing Descartes, this view broke away from medieval religious assumptions and belief in occult forces. Berkel teases out Beeckman's evolving approach to nature by means of his extensive journals, explaining the leading concept of "picturability." Beeckman supplied a stepping stone (one still not widely appreciated) on the path that led to the scientific revolution"--
Transforming Holiness
This fascinating collection of essays addresses the question of how holiness has been represented in English and American literary texts from early saints' lives to the poetry of the mid-twentieth century. The interaction of spiritual ideals with the creative and often worldly imagination is examined in the work of writers as varied as George Herbert, Harriet Beecher Stowe and D.H. Lawrence. The range of genres discussed includes not only devotional poetry and apparently secular prose fiction, but also political ballads, personal conduct books and congregational psalms and hymns. Holiness is set in relation to vital issues such as creativity, gender, Romanticism, translation and visual culture. Together the essays reveal the full meaning of the title of the collection: that holiness, a transforming force, has transformed itself radically as a concept over the centuries, and undergoes dynamic transformation through its expression in literature.
Language and Cultural Change
It is common wisdom that language is culturally embedded. Cultural change is often accompanied by a change in idiom, in language or in ideas about language. No period serves as a better example of the formative influence of language on culture than the Renaissance. With the advent of humanism new modes of speaking and writing arose. But not only did classical Latin become the paradigm of clear and elegant writing, it also gave rise to new ideas about language and the teaching of it. Some scholars have argued that the cultural paradigm shift from scholasticism to humanism was causally determined by the rediscovery, study and emulation of the classical language, for learning a new language ope...
The Body of the Artisan
Since the time of Aristotle, the making of knowledge and the making of objects have generally been considered separate enterprises. Yet during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the two became linked through a "new" philosophy known as science. In The Body of the Artisan, Pamela H. Smith demonstrates how much early modern science owed to an unlikely source-artists and artisans. From goldsmiths to locksmiths and from carpenters to painters, artists and artisans were much sought after by the new scientists for their intimate, hands-on knowledge of natural materials and the ability to manipulate them. Drawing on a fascinating array of new evidence from northern Europe including artisans' objects and their writings, Smith shows how artisans saw all knowledge as rooted in matter and nature. With nearly two hundred images, The Body of the Artisan provides astonishingly vivid examples of this Renaissance synergy among art, craft, and science, and recovers a forgotten episode of the Scientific Revolution-an episode that forever altered the way we see the natural world.
Commercial Visions
In "Commercial Visions," Daniel Margocsy shows how entrepreneurial science has been with us since the Scientific Revolution. Product marketing, patent litigation, and even ghostwriting pervaded natural history and anatomy, the big sciences of the early modern era, and the growth of global trade during the Dutch Golden Age gave rise to a transnational network of such entrepreneurial science, connecting natural historians, physicians, and curiosi in such cities as Amsterdam, London, St. Petersburg, and Danzig. These practitioners were out to do business: they bought and sold exotica, preserved specimens, anatomical prints, and botanical atlases, and in their trade relied on particularly mercan...
Descartes' Natural Philosophy
The most comprehensive collection of essays on Descartes' scientific writings ever published, this volume offers a detailed reassessment of Descartes' scientific work and its bearing on his philosophy. The 35 essays, written by some of the world's leading scholars, cover topics as diverse as optics, cosmology and medicine, and will be of vital interest to all historians of philosophy or science.
Missions of Universities
This book provides an analysis of university missions over time and space. It starts out by presenting a governance framework focusing on the demands on universities set by regulators, market actors and scrutinizers. It examines organizational structures, population development, the fundamental tasks of universities, and internal governance structures. Next, the book offers a discussion of the idea and role of universities in society, exploring concepts such as autonomy and universality, and the university as a transformative institute. The next four chapters deal with the development of universities from medieval times, through the Renaissance, towards the research universities in the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. The following five chapters analyse recent developments of increasing external demands manifested through evaluations, accreditations and rankings, which in turn have had effects on the organization of universities. Topics discussed include markets, managers, globalization, consumer models and competition. The book concludes by a discussion and analysis of the future challenges of universities.
Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers
Richard Baxter, one of the 17th century's most famous Puritans, is known as an author of devotional literature. But he was also skilled in medieval philosophy. In this work, David Sytsma draws on largely unexamined works to present a chronogolical and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-17th-century England
Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
This book argues that we can only understand transformations of nature studies in the Scientific Revolution if we take seriously the interaction between practitioners (those who know by doing) and scholars (those who know by thinking). These are not in opposition, however. Theory and practice are end points on a continuum, with some participants interested only in the practical, others only in the theoretical, and most in the murky intellectual and material world in between. It is this borderland where influence, appropriation, and collaboration have the potential to lead to new methods, new subjects of enquiry, and new social structures of natural philosophy and science. The case for connec...
