The Senses of Mixed Mathematics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Renaissance Mathematics ◽  
The Senses

How did engagement with the new printed book reshape early modern disciplines? This chapter considers the rapidly changing area of Renaissance mathematics, focusing on two ‘mixed’ mathematical disciplines, cosmography and music. In cosmography, the new paratexts transformed a medieval standby, Sacrobosco’s Sphere, into a cutting-edge handbook that taught students the procedures of calculation. In music, Lefèvre’s sensory experience of sound prompted him to adopt new geometrical tools to solve old arithmetical problems. In both cases, a close attention to the roles of visualization, touch, and hearing in mathematical practice prompted a distinctive approach to the printed page, shifting the very structures of the mathematical disciplines. The underlying mental habits such books were intended to inculcate can be traced through the margins of Beatus Rhenanus’ mathematical books.

scholarly journals Praying with the senses: Examples of icon devotion and the sensory experience in medieval and early modern Balkans

Zograf ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sasa Brajovic ◽  
Jelena Erdeljan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Identity Markers ◽  
Private Devotion ◽  
Early Modern Times

This paper discusses sensory experience in the practice of devotion of two highly venerated icons in medieval and Early Modern Balkans: the mosaic icon of the Virgin Hodegetria from the monastery of Chilandar and the icon of Gospa of Skrpjela (Our Lady of the Reef) from the Bay of Kotor. Although part of two different, albeit historically intertwined and perpetually connected cultural and liturgical spheres, icon veneration in both the Orthodox and the Catholic community of the broader Mediterranean world and the Balkans in medieval and Early Modern times shares the same source. It relies on the traditional Byzantine manner of icon veneration. This is particularly true of highly venerated and often miracle working images of the Mother of God, identity markers of political, social and religious entities, objects of private devotion as well as performative objects around which are centered public rituals of liturgical processions and ephemeral spectacles.

Shakespearean Comedy and the Senses

2018 ◽  
pp. 235-249
Author(s):  
Kevin Curran
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Merchant Of Venice ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Powerful Source ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Merchant Of Venice ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
The Senses

In Shakespeare’s comedies, sensation is both a problem and a solution. It is the source of division and the grounds of unity. This paradox is consistent with the early modern period’s mixed conception of the senses. If antitheatrical tracts and clerical literature denounced sensory experience as an impediment to truth and spiritual understanding, printed defences of theatre and a variety of medical and psychological tracts treated the senses as a powerful source of knowledge and judgement. This essay traces how Shakespeare’s treatment of the senses relates to both of these traditions. It addresses the connection between this double rendering of sensation and comic form and concludes by considering the ethical implications of sensory experience in the theatre. Examples are drawn from a variety of plays, including The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It.

Seeing, Touching, Holding, and Swallowing Tibetan Buddhist Texts

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 137-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Cantwell
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Buddhism ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Tibetan Buddhist ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Book Culture

The iconic dimension of holy books has drawn increasing scholarly attention in recent years (e.g. Iconic Books and Texts, James Watts, ed., London, Equinox, 2013). Asian Buddhism provides rich material for considering the ritualization of engagement with sacred texts. In Tibetan Buddhism, this aspect of book culture is perhaps especially pronounced (see, for instance, Schaeffer 2009, especially Chapter 6; Elliott, Diemberger and Clemente 2014). This paper explores the topic in relation to the engagement of the senses in Tibetan context, through seeing, touching, holding and tasting texts. It would seem that it is not the sensory experience in itself, but rather the physical experience of a transmission and incorporation of the sacred qualities from the books into the person which is emphasized in these practices. Parallels and contrasts with examples from elsewhere are mentioned, and there is some consideration of the breadth of the category of sacred books in the Tibetan context in which Dharma teachings may take many forms.

A Priority and Application: Philosophy of Mathematics in the Modern Period

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Shabel
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Mathematical Reasoning ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Pure Mathematics ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
Mathematical Ontology ◽  
To Come ◽  
Modern Mathematics

The state of modern mathematical practice called for a modern philosopher of mathematics to answer two interrelated questions. Given that mathematical ontology includes quantifiable empirical objects, how to explain the paradigmatic features of pure mathematical reasoning: universality, certainty, necessity. And, without giving up the special status of pure mathematical reasoning, how to explain the ability of pure mathematics to come into contact with and describe the empirically accessible natural world. The first question comes to a demand for apriority: a viable philosophical account of early modern mathematics must explain the apriority of mathematical reasoning. The second question comes to a demand for applicability: a viable philosophical account of early modern mathematics must explain the applicability of mathematical reasoning. This article begins by providing a brief account of a relevant aspect of early modern mathematical practice, in order to situate philosophers in their historical and mathematical context.

Senses of Vibration

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Trower
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cultural Imaginary ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Brain

The study of the senses has become a rich topic in recent years. Senses of Vibration explores a wide range of sensory experience and makes a decisive new contribution to this growing field by focussing not simply on the senses as such, but on the material experience - vibration - that underpins them. This is the first book to take the theme of vibration as central, offering an interdisciplinary history of the phenomenon and its reverberations in the cultural imaginary. It tracks vibration through the work of a wide range of writers, including physiologists (who thought vibrations in the nerves delivered sensations to the brain), physicists (who claimed that light, heat, electricity and other forms of energy were vibratory), spiritualists (who figured that spiritual energies also existed in vibratory form), and poets and novelists from Coleridge to Dickens and Wells. Senses of Vibration is a work of scholarship that cuts through a range of disciplines and will reverberate for many years to come.

scholarly journals The configuration of happiness and unhappiness as part of the auditory landscape: the work of Albert Camus

Cahiers ERTA ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Sofia Chatzipetrou
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Auditory Perception ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Field Recording ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Symbolic Universe

This essay aims to analyze the poetics of the soundscape in Albert Camus’ work, based in the notions of happiness and unhappiness. Our purpose will be to define the characteristics of the symbolism of auditory perception, which are elaborated on the double configuration between happiness and unhappiness. The fact that the symbolic universe of Camus outlines a total sensory experience does no longer need to be demonstrated. Starting from his first lyrical writings to the Notebooks, his writing appeals arouses all the senses. Through a comparative study of examples relating to happiness and unhappiness and while underlining the predominant place of silence in Camus’ aesthetics, we will come off to the conclusion that Camus’s work constitutes a real kind of field recording.

Speaking the End Times: Early Modern Politics and Religion from Iberia to Central Asia

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mayte Green-Mercado
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
End Times ◽  
Sacred History

Abstract This introduction delineates the contours of early modern apocalyptic thought and practice among Christians, Muslims, and Jews by discussing specific themes explored in the five articles included in this special issue. It also situates the articles in the expansive scholarship on apocalypticism, highlighting the contribution of this collection of essays to the field. Paying close attention to and problematizing the importance of the terminology that expressed early modern notions of sacred history and political authority—in a context of intense inter-confessional contact and conflict—this introduction calls for a contextual examination of apocalyptic thought and practice.

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