Teaching through Diagrams

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 201-230
Author(s):  
Renée Raphael
Keyword(s):  

This contribution examines the role of diagrams in early modern pedagogy. It begins with an analysis of images from the 1632 Dialogo and 1638 Discorsi. I claim that Galileo often employed images in a pedagogical context, illustrating to readers through his dialogue how he may have used images in his own teaching. Building on the work of previous historians, I argue that a classification of Galileo’s images should include not only heuristic images and images used for virtual witnessing, but also pedagogical images designed to illustrate to the reader (or student) how to reach conclusions about a given question. I then turn to the way Galileo’s readers at the University of Pisa employed Galileo’s images in their own teaching. I argue that Galileo’s readers employed his images in their own works in ways which reflected their training and the genre in which they wrote and taught.


2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.


This article investigates whether it possible to derive a new narrative about the transformation of early modern natural philosophy from the way in which natural philosophy was systematized in academic writings. It introduces the notion of ‘normalisation’—the mutual adaptation of certain ideas and existing traditions—as a way of studying and explaining conceptual changes during relatively long periods of time. The article provides the methodological underpinnings of this account of normalisation and offers a preliminary application of it by focusing on the role of ‘occasional causality’ in natural philosophy through the writings of four authors: Pierre Sylvain Régis (1632-1707), Johann Christoph Sturm (1635-1703), Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692-1761), and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), who progressively normalise an account of ‘occasional causality’.


2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhavan Parthasarathy ◽  
David Forlani ◽  
Arlen Meyers

In keeping with an emerging literature on the role of business education in the development of entrepreneurially-intentioned biotechnologists, this paper describes the actions and experiences of an entrepreneurship program that began in the late 1990’s. Along the way it illustrates how a business-centric approach can shift the budding entrepreneur’s perspective from a product to a market orientation when considering an innovation’s commercialization. While the developmental timeline and specific stages of the adoption process for biotechnology-based products vary from traditional consumer or industrial products, there many similarities, foremost is the notion that to be successful the market must perceive significant advantage to the new offering. Lastly, this paper provides thoughts on potentially profitable areas for program expansion and new foci, especially regarding the globalization of biotechnology innovation and international opportunities.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Womack

The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Emilee J. Howland-Davis

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] My dissertation argues that medieval and early modern English romances provided magic a safe space where authors and audiences engaged with the ideas of magic and superstition free from the risk of condemnation and the inquisition of medieval and early modern secular and religious authorities. The term safe space is a contemporary idea used to discuss spaces, both literal and figurative, where people who identify as LGTBQ+ are welcomed and free to express themselves. While the modern idea of a safe space has a very specific group of users and uses, it is the figurative idea of a safe space which I argue can be applied to otherworlds in medieval and early modern romances. I discuss late medieval and early modern romances as well as their interaction with and difference from historical records, trials, and treatises on magic. My methodology combines a historicist approach with Marxist and feminist theory in its exploration of magical safe spaces. The later Middle Ages were a time of increased scrutiny of non-religious behaviors, a narrowing of what constituted witchcraft and diabolism, and an upsurge in the numbers of heretical accusations and trials. Similarly, early modern England experienced an increase in accusations and investigations of magic, witchcraft, and heresy. My dissertation draws connections between historical documents and medieval and early modern literature and argues that as societal concerns about feminine heretical practice increased, literature found safe ways to explore these ideas. In doing this, medieval and early modern romance became a safe space for the exploration of magic generally and female magic users specifically.


Author(s):  
G. Sujin Pak

This introduction surveys views of the prophet and prophecy from patristic and early medieval teachings to the eve of the Protestant reformations. Christian leaders across the church’s history simultaneously affirmed understandings of prophecy as foretelling and prophecy as interpretation of Scripture, with a growing emphasis on the latter and a continued emphasis on the role of revelation in both forms. Whereas Augustine’s teachings concerning prophecy tended to restrain apocalyptic expectation, the teachings of Joachim of Fiore introduced a radical shift in connecting biblical prophecy directly with human history. Consequently, on the eve of the Protestant reformations, late medieval conceptions of prophecy paved the way for increasing expectation of a figure who would usher in a new age. All the while early-modern Catholic leaders continued to affirm the ongoing contemporary function of prophecy, even as they sought to constrain such apocalyptic fervor.


2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kelty

In this interview, we discuss what open access can teach us about the state of the university, as well as practices in scholarly publishing. In particular the focus is on issues of labor and precarity, the question of how open access enables or blocks other innovations in scholarship, the way open access might be changing practices of scholarship, and the role of technology and automation in the creation, evaluation, and circulation of scholarly work.


1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Azriel Levy

Alfred Tarski started contributing to set theory at a time when the Zermelo-Fraenkel axiom system was not yet fully formulated and as simple a concept as that of the inaccessible cardinal was not yet fully defined. At the end of Tarski's career the basic concepts of the three major areas and tools of modern axiomatic set theory, namely constructibility, large cardinals and forcing, were already clearly defined and were in the midst of a rapid successful development. The role of Tarski in this development was somewhat similar to the role of Moses showing his people the way to the Promised Land and leading them along the way, while the actual entry of the Promised Land was done mostly by the next generation. The theory of large cardinals was started mostly by Tarski, and developed mostly by his school. The mathematical logicians of Tarski's school contributed much to the development of forcing, after its discovery by Paul Cohen, and to a lesser extent also to the development of the theory of constructibility, discovered by Kurt Gödel. As in other areas of logic and mathematics Tarski's contribution to set theory cannot be measured by his own results only; Tarski was a source of energy and inspiration to his pupils and collaborators, of which I was fortunate to be one, always confronting them with new problems and pushing them to gain new ground.Tarski's interest in set theory was probably aroused by the general emphasis on set theory in Poland after the First World War, and by the influence of Wactaw Sierpinski, who was one of Tarski's teachers at the University of Warsaw. The very first paper published by Tarski, [21], was a paper in set theory.


2020 ◽  
pp. 153-158
Author(s):  
Erin Graff Zivin

The Afterword asks after the role of the university in the age of Trump, in the so-called post-truth era. Specifically, it pursues the possibility of a defense against inventions and untruths that does not, or does not only, rely upon scientific or legal, proof-based knowledge, but also, crucially, that would advance a notion of knowledge, or truths, that pertain to the logic of testimony and witnessing, but which are themselves unprovable in an empirical sense. It may seem a strange moment to turn, or return, to figures such as Jacques Derrida or Paul de Man, thinkers that have been wrongly accused of relativizing truth, or of doing away with truth altogether, but whose work in fact point the way to a different, but no less radical, commitment to the idea of truth.


1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
J. G. Du Plessis

The theologian as academical ‘agent provocateur’ Some thoughts on the relation between Biblical science and the role of traditional Christian beliefs in everyday life. What the Biblical scientist teaches in the university is - and should be seen to be - relevant to the way the Christian tradition is supposed to shape everyday life. The Biblical scientist should live in constant dialogue between classical Christianity and the modern secularist world view in which Biblical science shares to a lesser or larger extent. The essay argues that the Biblical scientist should take classical Christianity as his point of departure. This entails a "theology in exile" within the academic community.


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