Full Description
The studies in this volume present early science in its rich and divergent complexity. Many historians of the Scientific Revolution have used early modern scholasticism to represent pre-seventeenth century science as a whole, but a close look at ancient, medieval, and even early modern scientific writers shows that before the Scientific Revolution - and not only in Europe - there were many and diverse traditions of interpreting the natural world. This book provides a broad range of historical evidence concerning early science, which may be used as a basis for new and more complex historical interpretations.
Originally published as Volume XIV, Nos. 1-3 (2009) of Brill's journal Early Science and Medicine.
Contents
Introduction, William R. Newman & Edith Dudley Sylla
ANCIENT
Modes of Explanation in the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, Jean De Groot
Structures of Argument and Concepts of Force in the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, Mark Schiefsky
ISLAMIC/ARABIC
The Simple Ontology of Kalām Atomism: An Outline, A. I. Sabra
The Footprints of "Experiment" in Early Arabic Optics, Elaheh Kheirandish
THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES
The "Experience-Based Medicine" of the Thirteenth Century, Michael McVaugh
The Intellect Naturalized: Roger Bacon on the Existence of Corporeal Species within the Intellect, Yael Raizman-Kedar
Magic and the Physical World in Thirteenth-Century Scholasticism, Steven P. Marrone
The Debate over the Nature of Motion: John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Albert of Saxony. With an Edition of John Buridan's Quaestiones super libros Physicorum, secundum ultimam lecturam, Book III, q. 7, Johannes M.M.H. Thijssen
John Buridan and Critical Realism, Edith Dudley Sylla
LATE MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, AND EARLY MODERN
The Significance of "Chymical Atomism", William R. Newman
Conjecture, Probabilism, and Provisional Knowledge in Renaissance Meteorology, Craig Martin
Setting up Copernicus? Astronomy and Natural Philosophy in Giambattista Capuano da Manfredonia's Expositio on the Sphere, Michael H. Shank
Copernicus's Mereological Vision of the Universe, André Goddu
From "Dragonology" to Meteorology: Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and the Beginning of the Decline of the Dragon in China, Qiong Zhang
Baroque Fire (A Note on Early-Modern Angelology), Anne A. Davenport
Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific Imagery, Christoph Lüthy & Alexis Smets
Index
