Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics

Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics
Author: Peter Damerow
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 147573994X

The question of when and how the basic concepts that characterize modern science arose in Western Europe has long been central to the history of science. This book examines the transition from Renaissance engineering and philosophy of nature to classical mechanics oriented on the central concept of velocity. For this new edition, the authors include a new discussion of the doctrine of proportions, an analysis of the role of traditional statics in the construction of Descartes' impact rules, and go deeper into the debate between Descartes and Hobbes on the explanation of refraction. They also provide significant new material on the early development of Galileo's work on mechanics and the law of fall.

Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics

Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics
Author: Peter Damerow
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475739923

The question of when and how the basic concepts that characterize modern science arose in Western Europe has long been central to the history of science. This book examines the transition from Renaissance engineering and philosophy of nature to classical mechanics oriented on the central concept of velocity. For this new edition, the authors include a new discussion of the doctrine of proportions, an analysis of the role of traditional statics in the construction of Descartes' impact rules, and go deeper into the debate between Descartes and Hobbes on the explanation of refraction. They also provide significant new material on the early development of Galileo's work on mechanics and the law of fall.

Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics

Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics
Author: Peter Damerow
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1991-12-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780387976020

The question of when and how the basic concepts that characterize modern science arose in Western Europe has long been central to the history of science. This book examines the transition from Renaissance engineering and philosophy of nature to classical mechanics oriented on the central concept of velocity. For this new edition, the authors include a new discussion of the doctrine of proportions, an analysis of the role of traditional statics in the construction of Descartes' impact rules, and go deeper into the debate between Descartes and Hobbes on the explanation of refraction. They also provide significant new material on the early development of Galileo's work on mechanics and the law of fall.

Thomas Harriot and His World

Thomas Harriot and His World
Author: Robert Fox
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351879197

This second volume of papers on Thomas Harriot edited by Professor Robert Fox is based on the annual Harriot lectures delivered at Oriel College, Oxford between 2000 and 2009. It complements the previous volume, published as Thomas Harriot: An Elizabethan Man of Science in 2000. The focus in several of the papers is on Harriot's outstanding achievements as a mathematician; others consider why he has never received the recognition accorded to his great contemporary, Galileo; others again examine his association with his entrepreneurial patron Walter Ralegh and his contributions to the intensely practical world of exploration and seamanship, as exemplified in his voyage to the coast of present-day North Carolina in 1585. The volume adds significantly to our understanding of a true Renaissance man who wrote accomplished Latin, earned the respect of Europe's leading mathematicians and astronomers, and moved easily in circles close to the English court and whose 'Brief and true report of the new found land of Virginia' (1588) was the first detailed description of America to be published in the English language.

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy
Author: Robert Pasnau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1520
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139952927

The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy comprises over fifty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period. Starting in the late eighth century, with the renewal of learning some centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, a sequence of chapters takes the reader through developments in many and varied fields, including logic and language, natural philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, and theology. Close attention is paid to the context of medieval philosophy, with discussions of the rise of the universities and developments in the cultural and linguistic spheres. A striking feature is the continuous coverage of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian material. There are useful biographies of the philosophers, and a comprehensive bibliography. The volumes illuminate a rich and remarkable period in the history of philosophy and will be the authoritative source on medieval philosophy for the next generation of scholars and students alike.

Reader's Guide to the History of Science

Reader's Guide to the History of Science
Author: Arne Hessenbruch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 965
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134262949

The Reader's Guide to the History of Science looks at the literature of science in some 550 entries on individuals (Einstein), institutions and disciplines (Mathematics), general themes (Romantic Science) and central concepts (Paradigm and Fact). The history of science is construed widely to include the history of medicine and technology as is reflected in the range of disciplines from which the international team of 200 contributors are drawn.

Honoré Fabri and the Concept of Impetus: A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks

Honoré Fabri and the Concept of Impetus: A Bridge between Conceptual Frameworks
Author: Michael Elazar
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-05-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9400716052

This book discusses the impetus-based physics of the Jesuit natural philosopher and mathematician Honoré Fabri (1608-1688), a senior representative of Jesuit scientists during the period between Galileo's death (1642) and Newton's Principia (1687). It shows how Fabri, while remaining loyal to a general Aristotelian outlook, managed to reinterpret the old concept of “impetus” in such a way as to assimilate into his physics building blocks of modern science, like Galileo’s law of fall and Descartes’ principle of inertia. This account of Fabri’s theory is a novel one, since his physics is commonly considered as a dogmatic rejection of the New Science, not essentially different from the medieval impetus theory. This book shows how New Science principles were taught in Jesuit Colleges in the 1640s, thus depicting the sophisticated manner in which new ideas were settling within the lion’s den of Catholic education.

Truthlikeness for Multidimensional, Quantitative Cognitive Problems

Truthlikeness for Multidimensional, Quantitative Cognitive Problems
Author: I.A. Kieseppä
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2013-03-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 940170550X

Philosophers of science have produced a variety of definitions for the notion of one sentence, theory or hypothesis being closer to the truth, more verisimilar, or more truthlike than another one. The definitions put forward by philosophers presuppose at least implicitly that the subject matter with which the compared sentences, theories or hypotheses are concerned has been specified,! and the property of closeness to the truth, verisimilitude or truth likeness appearing in such definitions should be understood as closeness to informative truth about that subject matter. This monograph is concerned with a special case of the problem of defining verisimilitude, a case in which this subject matter is of a rather restricted kind. Below, I shall suppose that there is a finite number of interrelated quantities which are used for characterizing the state of some system. Scientists might arrive at different hypotheses concerning the values of such quantities in a variety of ways. There might be various theories that give different predictions (whose informativeness might differ , too) on which combinations of the values of these quantities are possible. Scientists might also have measured all or some of the quantities in question with some accuracy. Finally, they might also have combined these two methods of forming hypotheses on their values by first measuring some of the quantities and then deducing the values of some others from the combination of a theory and the measurement results.

From Galileo's "Occhialino" To Optoelectronics

From Galileo's
Author: Paolo Mazzoldi
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 962
Release: 1993-09-01
Genre:
ISBN: 981455328X

The aim of the Conference was to emphasize the state-of-art in the development of new materials and processes for use in optoelectronics, the technological innovations and applications of optical materials and systems in different disciplines, the potential and actual transfer of technologies and industrial know-how among different countries, the perspectives of new applications and industrial needs for optical materials and systems, the need for a “forum” for cooperation between Laboratories and Industries of different countries.The papers in the proceedings discuss the complexity in nonlinear optics, potentiality of molecular optoelectronics, the development of novel optical fabrication techniques, such as sol-gel and ion implantation, of glasses and glass ceramics materials for modern optical applications, of active glasses for integrated optics, laser glasses, electrochromic coatings.