scholarly journals THE TRADITION OF ALCHEMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE WITHIN AND AROUND THEOPHAN PROKOPOVYCH’S LIBRARY

Skhid ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-58
Author(s):  
Kostiantyn RODYHIN ◽  
Mykhailo RODYHIN
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Physical Knowledge ◽  
Baroque Era ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Western Historiography

The important role of the alchemical and astrological tradition in the formation and trans-formation of science as a social institution in the Early Modern period is researched in detail in Western historiography of science. At the same time, the Ukrainian aspect of this pan-European phenomenon needs further intensive study.The article deals with the alchemical and astrological component of Ukrainian science of the High Baroque era on an example of Theophan Prokopovych (1677 – 1736). The analysis of the ca¬talog of Prokopovych’s library confirmed that the alchemical-astrological and magical-physical knowledge belonged to the sphere of interests of the scholar. His activity, in addi-tion to cosmogonic reasoning and mathematical calculations, also had a practical compo-nent. Books from the library’s holdings included works of late alchemy, which allowed Pro-kopovych to be aware of the latest ideas, trends, and achievements in this and related fields of knowledge. This is reflected in the formation of the worldview and creative work of the scholar.A comparison of the facts of biographies, the essence and direction of creativity, and the relationship of the authors mentioned in Prokopovych’s treatise “Natural Philosophy or Physics”, testified to the existence of the united pan-European scientific and information space, within which the tradition of late alchemy was formed and transformed during the 16th-18th centuries. Theophan Prokopovych also belonged to this tradition, and his works reflected the state and essence of Ukrainian alchemical knowledge of the High Baroque era. Prokopovych’s own views on problems of alchemy and astrology are a topic of special re-search.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Heather L. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Administrative Practice ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Universal Rule

This chapter draws on Katip Çelebi's Düstūrü’l-‘amel li ıṣlāhı ’l-ḥalel, or the Guiding Principles for the Rectification of Defects, to outline how attention to genre, to the relationship between conceptual models and administrative practice, to the role of sultanic authority as an anchor for imperial order, and to the significance of comparative historical analysis offers an alternative approach to Ottoman state-making in the early modern period. It further suggests that the “middle years” of the state might best be understood as a tension between principles of universal rule and the practices designed to entice and co-opt regional elites into a coherent sociopolitical order.

scholarly journals Reconciling hydrology with engineering

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Demetris Koutsoyiannis
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Water Storage ◽  
Change Of Direction ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Adverse Impacts ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Autonomous Science

Hydrology has played an important role in the birth of science. Yet practical hydrological knowledge, related to human needs for water storage, transfer and management, existed before the development of natural philosophy and science. In contemporary times, hydrology has had strong links with engineering as its development has been related to the needs of the design and management of water infrastructures. In the 1980s these links were questioned and it was suggested that separating hydrology from engineering would be beneficial for both. It is argued that, thereafter, hydrology, instead of becoming an autonomous science, developed new dependencies, particularly on politically driven agendas. This change of direction in effect demoted the role of hydrology, for example in studying hypothetical or projected climate-related threats. Revisiting past experiences suggests that re-establishing the relationship of hydrology with engineering could be beneficial. The study of change and the implied uncertainty and risk could constitute a field of mutual integration of hydrology and engineering. Engineering experience may help hydrology to appreciate that change is essential for progress and evolution, rather than only having adverse impacts. While the uncertainty and risk cannot be eliminated they can be dealt with in a quantitative and rigorous manner.

Early Modern Theology and Science

2014 ◽  
pp. 607-624
Author(s):  
John Henry
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Mechanical Philosophy ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
Natural Philosophers

This chapter surveys prominent aspects of historical relations between theology and science in the early modern period. It argues that the medieval “handmaiden tradition,” in which natural philosophy was seen as a support to theology, continued throughout the period but with apologetic complications caused by the fragmentation of religious authority, and the proliferation of alternative new philosophies. It considers the mechanical philosophy and the concomitant concept of laws of nature, and their impact on mind-body dualism, and the development of natural theology. It also considers the role of natural philosophy in the rise of atheism, arguing that it did not create atheists, but was appropriated by them. Devout natural philosophers played into the hands of atheists by arguing among themselves as to the best way to combat atheism, and by taking a naturalistic line in their arguments, relegating God to the role of a remote primary cause and increasingly denying Providence. Finally, it considers persistent suggestions that Protestantism played a greater role in the promotion of the natural sciences than Catholicism. We consider here claims about millennialism as a stimulus to science; the effect of Protestant attitudes to the Bible and how it should be read,; and the role of Augustinian post-lapsarian anthropology.

ARISTOTELIANISM, DESCARTES, AND HOBBES

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL EDWARDS
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The historiography of early modern Aristotelian philosophy and its relationship with its seventeenth-century critics, such as Hobbes and Descartes, has expanded in recent years. This article explores the dynamics of this project, focusing on a tendency to complicate and divide up the category of Aristotelianism into multiple ‘Aristotelianisms’, and the significance of this move for attempts to write a contextual history of the relationship of Hobbes and Descartes to their Aristotelian contemporaries and predecessors. In particular, it considers recent work on Cartesian and Hobbesian natural philosophy, and the ways in which historians have related the different forms of early modern Aristotelianism to the projects of the novatores.

Goddess encounters: Mughals, Monsters and the Goddess in Bengal

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1435-1487 ◽  
Author(s):  
KUMKUM CHATTERJEE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Regional Culture ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis paper makes a case for exploring the cultural facets of Mughal rule as well as for a stronger engagement with sources in vernacular languages for the writing of Mughal history. Bengal's regional tradition of goddess worship is used to explore the cultural dimensions of Mughal rule in that region as well as the idioms in which Bengali regional perceptions of Mughal rule were articulated. Mangalkavya narratives—a quintessentially Bengali literary genre—are studied to highlight shifting perceptions of the Mughals from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. During the period of the Mughal conquest of Bengal, the imperial military machine was represented as a monster whom the goddess Chandi, symbolizing Bengal's regional culture, had to vanquish. By the eighteenth century, when their rule had become much more regularized, the Mughals were depicted as recognizing aspects of Bengal's regional culture by capitulating in the end to the goddess and becoming her devotees. This paper also studies the relationship of the Mughal regime with Bengal's popular cultural celebration—the annual Durga puja—and explores its implications for the public performance of religion and for community formation during the early modern period.

The Genders of Citizenship

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEPHEN T. LEONARD ◽  
JOAN C. TRONTO
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Civic Discourse ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Ideal

One important legacy of republicanism is the ideal of good citizenship; a related legacy of republicanism is the equation of citizenship and masculinity. These legacies are at once strange and familiar: today, masculinity and citizenship are often conceptualized as discrete and distinctive identities, and some critics, most notably feminists, suggest that in modern democraciesgoodcitizenship and masculinity may even be contradictory ideals. The source of these conceptual paradoxes is the transformation of gender and civic discourse in the early modern period, particularly the “long eighteenth century.” Understanding the implications of these changes helps us better grasp both the relationship of gender and citizenship today, and how a more effectively engaged and meaningfully egalitarian form of democratic citizenship, for men and women, might be realized.

Wearing Linens

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-142
Author(s):  
Susan North
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Invisible

Chapter 5 begins the exploration of the material culture of clean bodies and clothes in early modern England. What were the ‘linens’ that doctors and moralists insisted must be clean? Linen clothing comprised two main groups: the visible and the invisible. The latter were linen undergarments—shirts, shifts, stockings, and drawers—requiring regular changing but remaining unseen when a person was fully dressed. Accessories worn on the head, around the neck, and at the wrists were the visible linens. Part of fashionable dress in a variety of forms, they were the outward sign that propriety was being observed and maintained. The relationship of visible and invisible linens to prevailing styles of dress is examined and how they changed according to fashion during the early modern period.

The economy of nature in the botany of Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712)

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Anker
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Book Of Nature ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Mechanical Reasoning ◽  
Laboratory Life ◽  
Economy Of Nature

Historians of natural history often point to the emergence of mathematical and mechanical reasoning in the early-modern period as a pivotal episode in scientifi c understanding of the organic world. This paper visits the natural philosophy of one of the chief supporters of this view of nature, the first curator of plants at The Royal Society, Nehemiah Grew. It sets his work within the material world of patronage, medical and mathematical tools, laboratory life, and his views on human virtues, health and the role of women. The view taken is of Grew as a religiously informed natural philosopher whose understanding of the economy of nature acknowledges the wisdom of the Creator and the possibility of gaining spiritual and bodily health from studying the language of the book of nature. The quest to understand nature's language consisted in tempering human will and arrogance so that one could appreciate the Lord's creative power in the world. As representative of The Royal Society's promotion of empirical and mechanical research, Grew mobilized excitement for natural history and botany with an ethos of showing respect to nature's economy.

Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

This volume examines the relationship between the history of scholarship and the history of Christianity in the early modern period. Leading British, American and continental scholars explore the ways in which erudition contributed to—or clashed with—the formation of confessional identities in the wake of the Reformation, at individual, institutional, national and international levels. Covering Catholics and Protestants in equal measure, the essays assess biblical criticism; the study of the church fathers; the ecclesiastical censorship of scholarly works; oriental studies and the engagement with Near Eastern languages, texts and communities; and the relationship between developments in scholarship and other domains, including practical piety, natural philosophy, and the universities and seminaries where most intellectual activity was still conducted. One of the volume’s main strengths is its chronological coverage. It begins with an unprecedentedly detailed and comprehensive review of the scholarly literature in this field and proceeds with case studies ranging from the early Reformation to the eighteenth century. The volume also features the publication of a remarkable new manuscript detailing Isaac Newton’s early theological studies in 1670s Cambridge. It will be of interest not only to early modern intellectual and religious historians, but also to those with broader interests in religious change, the reception of oriental and classical sources and traditions, the history of science, and in the sociology of knowledge.

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