Reconstruction Synthesis of the Calendrical Subsystem of Antikythera Mechanism

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Sen Yan ◽  
Jian-Liang Lin

The damaged excavation of the Antikythera mechanism presents the oldest astronomical analog computer in ancient Greece. Its interior mechanism is a complicated gear train with many subsystems in which some are unclear, such as the calendrical subsystem. This work focuses on the reconstruction synthesis of the calendrical subsystem and provides a systematic approach to generate all feasible designs. Based on the studies of historical literatures and existing designs, the required design constraints are concluded. Then, according to the concepts of generalization and specialization of mechanisms, two feasible designs and 14 results of teeth counting, including the existing one by Freeth et al. (2002, “The Antikythera Mechanism: 1. Challenging the Classic Research,” Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, 2, pp. 21–35; 2002, “The Antikythera Mechanism: 2. Is It Posidonius Orrery?,” Mediterranean Archaeology & Archaeometry, 2, pp. 45–58; 2006, “Decoding the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculator Known as the Antikythera Mechanism,” Nature (London), 444, pp. 587–591; 2008, “Calendars With Olympiad Display and Eclipse Prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism,” Nature (London), 454, pp. 614–617; 2009, “Decoding an Ancient Computer,” Sci. Am., 301(6), pp. 76–83), which are in consistent with the science theories and techniques of the subject’s time period, are synthesized.

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 2523-2529
Author(s):  
Slobodan Marković ◽  
Zoran Momčilović ◽  
Vladimir Momčilović

This text is an attempt to see sport in different ways in the light of ancient philosophical themes. Philosophy of sports gets less attention than other areas of the discipline that examine the other major components of contemporary society: philosophy of religion, political philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of science. Talking about sports is often cheap, but it does not have to be that way. One of the reasons for this is insufficiently paid attention to the relation between sport and philosophy in Greek. That is it's important to talk about sports, just as important as we are talking about religion, politics, art and science. The argument of the present text is that we can try to get a handle philosophically on sports by examining it in light of several key idea from ancient Greek philosophy. The ancient Greeks, tended to be hylomorphists who gloried in both physical and mental achievement. Тhe key concepts from Greek philosophy that will provide the support to the present text are the following: arete, sophrosyne, dynamis and kalokagathia. These ideals never were parts of a realized utopia in the ancient world, but rather provided a horizon of meaning. We will claim that these ideals still provide worthy standards that can facilitate in us a better understanding of what sports is and what it could be. How can a constructive dialogue be developed which would discuss differences in understanding of sport in Ancient Greece and today? In this paper, the authors will try to answer this question from a historical and philosophical point of view. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section of the paper presents two principally different forms or models of focus in sport competitions – focus on physical excellence or focus on game. The dialectic discourse regarding these two approaches to physical activity is even more interesting due to the fact that these two models take precedence over one another depending on context. In the second section of the paper, the focus shifts to theendemic phenomenon of the Ancient Greek Olympic Games, where the topic is discussed from the perspective of philosophy with frequent historical reflections on the necessary specifics, which observeman as a physical-psychological-social-spiritual being. In the third section of this paper, the authors choose to use the thoughts and sayings of the great philosopher Plato to indicate how much this philosopher wasactually interested in the relationship between soul and body, mostly through physical exercise and sport, because it seems that philosophers who came after him have not seriously dealt with this topic in Plato’s way, although they could.


Author(s):  
George Tridimas

Abstract The paper examines doctrinal and political reasons to explain why the Ancient Greek religion did not feature a distinct class of professional priests as suppliers of religious goods. Doctrinal reasons relate to worshiping a multitude of powerful anthropomorphic gods with flawed characters; absence of a founder of religion and of a scripture; lack of religious doctrine and of a code of moral behaviour and piety manifested as mass participation in rituals. These factors denied religious suppliers the opportunity to form a monopoly acting as an autonomous intermediary between humans and gods. Political reasons relate to the supremacy of the demos which watchfully guarded its decision-making powers and prevented other actors like a priestly interest group to challenge its authority.


Axon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella Erdas ◽  
Anna Magnetto

In recent years the attention of modern scholars to ancient Greek economy has received impetus from a series of newly published documents of undisputed significance. The results have been a deeply renewed examination of consolidated theoretical positions, and a detailed analysis of specific aspects of the economic life of the polis. Within this framework the GEI project aims at providing an online collection of epigraphic documents related to the economy of ancient Greece. Some of these documents, already known or newly discovered, have never been collected in a selection of this kind. The project covers a period from the archaic age to 1st century BC. The selected texts are representative of the different areas of ancient Greek economy, and are marked-up using the EpiDoc encoding conventions. For each document all technical information has been provided along with existing critical editions, bibliography, a critical apparatus, an English translation and a commentary.


2017 ◽  
pp. 78-83
Author(s):  
I. V. Petrova

The analysis features of becoming and development of cultural and leisure practices in Ancient Greece is the goal of the article. The author justifies the preconditions which formed the appropriate hierarchy of life values of ancient Greek and reated the base for leisure development in Ancient Greece. It has been determined the leading preconditions such as absolute kosmolohizm, religiosity and polytheism, mental features of ancient Greeks and agon of Greek life, human cultural activity, polis political system, special perception of freedom as condition of absence of bright expressed domination over the human and strict regulation of the individual behavior, his personality initiative, existence of free time that isn't occupied by routine and care of urgent daily needs. It has been revealed the essence of such cultural and leisure practices as symposiya, gymnasiya, professional, religious and political groups, agons, theatrical performances, visiting of agora and organization of events. It has been argued that the general patriarchal orientation of Greek civilization affected the system of leisure organization in Ancient Greece. It has been justified the opinion that value of leisure was being determined by its role in the aid of social balance: between thetendencies to integration and differentiation of society and to its unification and hierarchy. Therefore, there were coexistent leisure formsconnected with the opposite social tendencies: some leisure demonstrations were acceptable for all (or for most) groups of population, they unitedand consolidated it, and others, limited by some requirements, extended social, cultural and political differences. Consequently there is a distribution of leisure practices on private (in which people could to participate according to their interests), and social (collective); obligatory (the participation was compulsory), and voluntary (choice of which depended only on desires of people); "high" (addressed only to mental and physical development of people), and "inactive" (passiverecreation, entertainment or bodily pleasure).


1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 565-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Sen Yan ◽  
Long-Chang Hsieh

An automotive gear differential is a joint-fractionated planetary gear train with two degrees-of-freedom. We summarize the characteristics of planetary gear trains and the design constraints of noncoupled automotive gear differentials to synthesize their corresponding kinematic graphs. Based on these graphs and the proposed respecializing process, we generate the atlas of design concepts for automotive gear differentials with any types of gear pairs. As a result, there are 4, 25, and 156 design concepts for five-, six-, and seven-bar automotive gear differentials, respectively.


Author(s):  
Victor J. Katz ◽  
Karen Hunger Parshall

This chapter focuses on the mathematicians of Ancient Greece; more specifically, on the elements of geometrical algebra present in the works of Euclid and Apollonius, as well as the propositions of perhaps the greatest of the ancient mathematicians—Archimedes. Only fragmentary documentation exists of the actual beginnings of mathematics in Greece, though the concept and necessity of proofs in mathematics might have come about due to the unique climate of argument and debate fostered in Ancient Greek society. In fact, most of these early developments took place in Athens, one of the richest of the Greek states at the time and one where public life was especially lively and discussion particularly vibrant.


Author(s):  
Emma Scioli

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.


Author(s):  
Lydia Matthews ◽  
Irene Salvo

This chapter analyses women praying for revenge in ancient Greece in literary texts (such as Homer’s Iliad, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus) alongside thirteen prayers for justice written exclusively by women and found in Knidos (Caria, modern Turkey). It argues that because women did not have direct access to legal forms of retribution and often had complaints that fell outside the normal judicial system (such as a husband’s adultery), cursing-prayers prayers had an important psychological and social function for women, providing a legitimate outlet for potentially disruptive feelings through an established ritual that was recognized as meaningful by the civic community. Like lamentation, cursing allowed women to express anger and hatred within socially acceptable roles and practices, providing women with a legitimate, communal medium in which to air grievances and to rectify or revenge the injuries done to them.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1142-1143
Author(s):  
Arlene W. Saxonhouse

Ancient Greece has long exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of modern political science. But until fairly recently, this influence has largely been philosophical, related to the origins of many theoretical concepts—including the concept of politics itself—in the ancient world. In The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Josiah Ober offers a synoptic and ambitious social theoretical account of the ancient Greek world, the sources of its power, the causes of its decline, and the lessons that can be drawn from this story for contemporary social and political science. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on Ober’s account of classical Greece and its relevance to contemporary political inquiry.


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