Cardanos Cosmos

Download or read book Cardano's Cosmos written by Anthony Grafton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Girolamo Cardano was an Italian doctor, natural philosopher, and mathematician who became a best-selling author in Renaissance Europe. He was also a leading astrologer of his day, whose predictions won him access to some of the most powerful people in sixteenth-century Europe. In Cardano's Cosmos, Anthony Grafton invites readers to follow this astrologer's extraordinary career and explore the art and discipline of astrology in the hands of a brilliant practitioner.Renaissance astrologers predicted everything from the course of the future of humankind to the risks of a single investment, or even the weather. They analyzed the bodies and characters of countless clients, from rulers to criminals, and enjoyed widespread respect and patronage. This book traces Cardano's contentious career from his first astrological pamphlet through his rise to high-level consulting and his remarkable autobiographical works. Delving into astrological principles and practices, Grafton shows how Cardano and his contemporaries adapted the ancient art for publication and marketing in a new era of print media and changing science. He maps the context of market and human forces that shaped Cardano's practicesâe"and the maneuvering that kept him at the top of a world rife with patronage, politics, and vengeful rivals.Cardano's astrology, argues Grafton, was a profoundly empirical and highly influential art, one that was integral to the attempts of sixteenth-century scholars to understand their universe and themselves.

Download or read book The Book of My Life written by Girolamo Cardano and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2002-10-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bright star of the Italian Renaissance, Girolamo Cardano was an internationally-sought-after astrologer, physician, and natural philosopher, a creator of modern algebra, and the inventor of the universal joint. Condemned by the Inquisition to house arrest in his old age, Cardano wrote The Book of My Life, an unvarnished and often outrageous account of his character and conduct. Whether discussing his sex life or his diet, the plots of academic rivals or meetings with supernatural beings, or his deep sorrow when his beloved son was executed for murder, Cardano displays the same unbounded curiosity that made him a scientific pioneer. At once picaresque adventure and campus comedy, curriculum vitae, and last will, The Book of My Life is an extraordinary Renaissance self-portrait—a book to set beside Montaigne's Essays and Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography.

Download or read book Leon Battista Alberti written by Anthony Grafton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Visual Poetics of Raymond Carver draws on the study of visual arts to illuminate the short stories of noted author Raymond Carver, in the broader context of vision and visualization in a literary text. Ayala Amir examines Carver's use of the eye-of-the-camera technique. Amir uncovers the tensions that structure his visual aesthetics and examines assumptions that govern scholarly discussions of his work, relating these matters to the complex nature of photography and to the current "visual turn"of cultural studies. The research uses visual approaches to reflect upon traditional issues of narrative study-duration, dialogue, narration, description, frame, character, and meaning. Amir shows how Carver's visual aesthetics shapes the meaning of his stories, while also challenging accepted notions of the boundaries of "the literary."

Download or read book Newton and the Origin of Civilization written by Jed Z. Buchwald and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics

Download or read book The Genesis of Science written by James Hannam and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maybe the Dark Ages Weren’t So Dark Afterall… Here are some facts you probably didn’t learn in school: People in the Middle Ages did not think the world was flat—in fact, medieval scholars could prove it wasn’t The Inquisition never executed anyone because of their scientific ideas or discoveries (actually, the Church was the chief sponsor of scientific research and several popes were celebrated for their knowledge of the subject) It was medieval scientific discoveries, methods, and principles that made possible western civilization’s “Scientific Revolution” If you were taught that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual stagnation, superstition, and ignorance, you were taught a myth that has been utterly refuted by modern scholarship. As a physicist and historian of science James Hannam shows in his brilliant new book, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution, without the scholarship of the “barbaric” Middle Ages, modern science simply would not exist. The Middle Ages were a time of one intellectual triumph after another. As Dr. Hannam writes, “The people of medieval Europe invented spectacles, the mechanical clock, the windmill, and the blast furnace by themselves. Lenses and cameras, almost all kinds of machinery, and the industrial revolution itself all owe their origins to the forgotten inventors of the Middle Ages.” In The Genesis of Science you will discover Why the scientific accomplishments of the Middle Ages far surpassed those of the classical world How medieval craftsmen and scientists not only made discoveries of their own, but seized upon Eastern inventions—printing, gunpowder, and the compass—and improved them beyond the dreams of their originators How Galileo’s notorious trial before the Inquisition was about politics, not science Why the theology of the Catholic Church, far from being an impediment, led directly to the development of modern science Provocative, engaging, and a terrific read, James Hannam’s Genesis of Science will change the way you think about our past—and our future.

Download or read book Fatal Thirst written by Elizabeth Lane Furdell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using unpublished and published sources, this book examines the history of diabetes in Britain from the perspective of healer and sufferer alike, focusing on medieval treatments, Renaissance-era diabetology, and the centuries-long debate among specialists over the site and cure of the disease.

Download or read book God's Philosophers written by James Hannam and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2009-08-07 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. "God's Philosophers" is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.