The Android of Albertus Magnus

AI Narratives ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 72-94
Author(s):  
Minsoo Kang ◽  
Ben Halliburton
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Gerbert Of Aurillac ◽  
Insight Into

In medieval and early modern writings, there is a cluster of stories concerning an artificial construct in the shape of a human body or a head that is animated for the purpose of divination, associated with such figures as Gerbert of Aurillac, Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon. Among them, the Albertus legends have been retold numerous times in interesting variations that provide insight into the changing attitudes towards intellectual magic. Given the fact that the wondrous object is described as being able to converse and even reason, its nature as a kind of medieval AI has made it an object of interest in recent books on AI, robotics, and posthumanity. In this article, the major appearances of Albertus’s speaking statue/head story will be examined in detail to show that the explanation for the wonder moved from astrology to demonic agency, as well as to pure mechanics.

Salvage

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-859
Author(s):  
EVAN CALDER WILLIAMS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Insurance Law ◽  
Future Possibility ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Personal Risk ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
History Of

This essay develops a history of salvage both as particular activity and as concept, arguing that it has quietly become one of the fundamental structures of thought that shape how we envision future possibility. However, the contemporary sense of the word, which designates the recuperation or search for value in what has already been destroyed, is a recent one and represents a significant transformation from the notion of salvage in early modern European maritime and insurance law. In that earlier iteration, salvage denoted payment received for helping to avert a disaster, such as keeping the ship and its goods from sinking in the first place. Passing through the dislocation of this concept into private salvage firms, firefighting companies, military usage, avant-garde art, and onto the human body itself in the guise of “personal risk,” the essay argues that the twentieth century becomes indelibly marked by a sense of the disaster that has already occurred. The second half of the essay passes into speculative culture, including fiction, video games, and film, to suggest that the most critical approaches to salvage have often come under the sign of science fiction but that the last decade in particular has shown how recent quotidian patterns of gentrification and defused antagonism have articulated stranger shifts in the figure of salvage than any speculative imaginary can currently manage.

Race and Labor in Sixteenth-Century Seville through the Prism of Accounting Books (Hijuelas) from the Reales Alcázares

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1272-1297
Author(s):  
Lauren Beck
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Working Life ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractHijuelasfurnish scholars with more than account balances and bills paid: ledgers such as the ones that detailed the expenses of Seville’s sixteenth-century Alcázar also yield important insight into the facility’s work environment. These hardly studied ledgers describe the workers’ backgrounds, including their wages and any special accommodations they required, as well as the transaction of material goods, which in this period included slaves. The following examination ofhijuelasuncovers the racial and labor realities of a royal property. These documents also challenge established scholarly observations about working life in early modern Seville in important ways.

scholarly journals ‘An Honest Pair of Oars’: Players, Watermen, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside

Early Theatre ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christi Spain-Savage
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern London ◽  
King's Men ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Key Industry

<p>This essay offers insight into two playing companies’ ties to a key industry in early modern London and the ways such interconnections shaped the neighbourhoods adjacent to the Thames. It examines Touchwood Senior’s speech in Thomas Middleton’s <em>A Chaste Maid in Cheapside</em> in relation to the Swan, the Blackfriars, and watermen’s trade to argue that this moment highlights sympathies for the watermen’s plight from the Lady Elizabeth’s Men and exposes underlying tensions between the watermen and the King’s Men in 1613 and 1614.</p>

The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Yael Even ◽  
Victor I. Stoichita ◽  
Anne-Marie Glasheen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Self ◽  
Insight Into

scholarly journals An Insight into Creeping Electromagnetic Waves around the Human Body

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Branimir Ivsic ◽  
Davor Bonefacic ◽  
Zvonimir Sipus ◽  
Juraj Bartolic
Keyword(s):  
Wave Propagation ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Electromagnetic Waves ◽  
Electromagnetic Wave Propagation ◽  
Axial Magnetic Field ◽  
Magnetic Dipoles ◽  
Wearable Antennas ◽  
Field Decay ◽  
Theoretical Considerations ◽  
Insight Into

The electromagnetic wave propagation around human body torso is modelled by considering elementary electric and magnetic dipoles over an infinite muscle-equivalent cylinder. The poles in the spectral domain Green’s function with smallest imaginary part are found to correspond to creeping wave propagation coefficients which predict the general trend in propagation around human body. In addition, it was found that axial magnetic field component is crucial for communication via creeping waves since it generates modes with smaller field decay compared to axial electric field. The developed model may thus serve as a practical guideline in design of on-body wearable antennas. The theoretical considerations are verified with simulations and measurements on the prototype of PIFA antenna placed on the human body.

Ecclesiastical Monuments of Brașov/Kronstadt/Brassó and the (Imagined) Topography of a Transylvanian City in Late Medieval and Early Modern Times

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 59-64
Author(s):  
Liviu Cîmpeanu
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

By definition, a monument has extraordinary features that mark landscape and human minds alike. Without any doubt, the Medieval and Early Modern World of Europe was marked by ecclesiastical monuments, from great cathedrals and abbeys to simple chapels and altars at crossroads. A very interesting case study offers Braşov/ Kronstadt/Brassó, in the south-eastern corner of Transylvania, where historical sources attest several ecclesiastic monuments, in and around the city. Late medieval and early modern documents and chronicles reveal not only interesting data on the monasteries, churches and chapels of Braşov/Kronstadt/Brassó, but also on the way in which citizens and outsiders imagined those monuments in their mental topography of the city. The inhabitants of Braşov/ Kronstadt/Brassó and foreign visitors saw the monasteries, churches and chapels of the city, kept them in mind and referred to them in their (written) accounts, when they wanted to locate certain facts or events. The present paper aims in offering an overview of the late medieval and early modern sources regarding the ecclesiastical monuments of Braşov/Kronstadt/Brassó, as well as an insight into the imagined topography of a Transylvanian city.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Methodological Framework ◽  
Early Modern Catholicism ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter discusses the historiographical context in which this book is situated, and the scholarly debates to which it seeks to contribute. The chapter also presents the methodological framework of the book and examines the historical and historiographical benefits of a microhistorical analysis. The chapter shows that the story of Carlo Calà and his allegedly holy ancestor enables us to understand better important political, cultural, and theological aspects of early modern Catholicism. The chapter also puts the past in conversation with the present by suggesting that studying how the Roman Inquisition dealt with the problem of discerning the truth from the fake can provide insight into the relationship between truth, authenticity, and belief.

scholarly journals Why Śrīdhara Svāmī? The Makings of a Successful Sanskrit Commentary

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 436
Author(s):  
Ravi M. Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Bhāgavata Purāṇa ◽  
Bhagavata Purana ◽  
Insight Into

Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, called Bhāvārtha-dīpikā and composed sometime between the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, has exerted extraordinary influence on later Bhāgavata commentaries, and indeed, on Vaiṣṇava traditions more generally. This article raises a straightforward question: “Why Śrīdhara?” Focusing on the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, particularly Jīva Gosvāmī, for whom Śrīdhara is foundational, we ask, “What is it about Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary—both stylistically and theologically—that made it so useful to Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas and other Bhāgavata commentators?” This question, to the extent that it can be answered, has implications for our understanding of Śrīdhara’s theology as well as the development of the early Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, but it can also lend insight into the reasons for Śridhara’s influence more generally in early modern India.

The great collector and his man in Rome

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-442
Author(s):  
Stefano Dall’Aglio
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Principal Agent ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Point Of Reference

Abstract This article analyses the relationship between one of early modern Italy’s most illustrious collectors, Prince and Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (1617–1675), and his principal agent in Rome, Ottavio Falconieri (1636–1675). It draws on an extraordinary new source: a volume containing 350 original letters sent by Leopoldo to Ottavio, never before seen by any other scholar. Letters written by Leopoldo are rare documents: they provide a unique insight into his expectations, instructions and reactions, showing the active role he always played in the collecting process. These new letters also demonstrate that Falconieri was far more than just an art agent: he was Leopoldo’s point of reference in Rome, a man with whom the cardinal shared many interests, ranging from literature to astronomy, from poetry to natural science, and Falconieri’s indefatigable collecting work went well beyond antiquities to include books, scientific instruments, curiosities and much more.

scholarly journals Corona Angelica Pannoniae: ‘...ecce Angelus Domini’

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Eszenyi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
English Language ◽  
Current State ◽  
International Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

The article examines the Hungarian corona angelica tradition, according to which the Holy Crown of Hungary was delivered to the country by an angel. In order to embed Hungarian results into international scholarship, it provides an English language summary of previous research and combines in one study how St. Stephen I (997–1038), St. Ladislaus I (1074–1095), and King Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490) came to be associated with the tradition, examining both written and visual sources. The article moves forward previous research by posing the question whether the angel delivering the Crown to Hungary could have been identified as the Angelus Domini at some point throughout history. This possibility is suggested by Hungary’s Chronici Hungarici compositio saeculi XIV and an unusually popular Early Modern modification of the Hartvik Legend, both of which use this expression to denote the angel delivering the Crown. While the article leaves the question open until further research sheds more light on the history of early Hungarian spirituality; it also points out how this identification of the angel would harmonize the Byzantine and the Hungarian iconography of the corona angelica, and provides insight into the current state of the Angelus Domini debate in angelology.

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