Troubled Senses

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Argumentative Structure

This chapter considers the roots of Isaac Newton’s interest in natural and historical knowledge. In the late seventeenth century, experiment-based knowledge remained suspect. Technical chronologers developed systems of concordances and sequences that located events of human history in time by means of their simultaneous occurrences with particular astronomical events, usually eclipses. It is precisely here that Isaac Newton, as a chronologer, differed programatically from his predecessors: he sought to use astronomical tools to mold singular events into a system for understanding ancient history, indeed for grasping the entire development of civilization—what’s more, a system that shared and exemplified the same evidentiary and argumentative structure deployed in his science.

Newton and the Origin of Civilization

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
History Of Mathematics ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Civilizations ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
One Year ◽  
Radical Ideas

Isaac Newton’s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, published in 1728, one year after the great man’s death, unleashed a storm of controversy. And for good reason. The book presents a drastically revised timeline for ancient civilizations, contracting Greek history by five hundred years and Egypt’s by a millennium. This book tells the story of how one of the most celebrated figures in the history of mathematics, optics, and mechanics came to apply his unique ways of thinking to problems of history, theology, and mythology, and of how his radical ideas produced an uproar that reverberated in Europe’s learned circles throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. The book reveals the manner in which Newton strove for nearly half a century to rectify universal history by reading ancient texts through the lens of astronomy, and to create a tight theoretical system for interpreting the evolution of civilization on the basis of population dynamics. It was during Newton’s earliest years at Cambridge that he developed the core of his singular method for generating and working with trustworthy knowledge, which he applied to his study of the past with the same rigor he brought to his work in physics and mathematics. Drawing extensively on Newton’s unpublished papers and a host of other primary sources, the book reconciles Isaac Newton the rational scientist with Newton the natural philosopher, alchemist, theologian, and chronologist of ancient history.

The Curious Eye

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Vision ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
Robert Boyle ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Moment

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.

scholarly journals The Science of Stories:  Human History and the  Narrative Philosophy of Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robert Alexander Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Human History ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
Geological Sciences ◽  
Literary Narrative ◽  
Direct Use

<p>There is a pronounced tendency within contemporary philosophy of history to think of historical knowledge as something apart from the kind of knowledge generated in the sciences. This has given rise to a myriad of epistemological issues. For if historical knowledge is not related to the scientific, then what is it? By what logic does it proceed? How are historical conclusions justified? Although almost the entirety of contemporary philosophy of history has been dedicated to such questions, there has been little real and agreed upon progress. Rather than fire yet another salvo in this rhetorical war, however, this thesis wishes instead to examine what lies beneath the basic presumption of separatism which animates it. Part One examines several paradigmatic examples of twentieth century philosophy of history in order to identify the grounds by which their authors considered history fundamentally different in kind from the sciences. It is concluded that, in each case, the case for separatism fows from the pervasive assumption that any body of knowledge which might rightly be called a science can be recognised by its search for general laws of nature. As history does not seem to share this aim, it is therefore considered to be knowledge of a fundamentally different kind. This thesis terms this the "nomothetic assumption." Part Two argues that such nomothetic assumptions are not an accurate representation of either scientific theory or practice and therefore that any assumption of separatism based upon them is unsound. To do this, examples of acknowledged scientific problems from the biological and geological sciences which do not involve the use of general laws are examined, with the aim of discovering how these historical disciplines are able to do the work of explanation in their absence. They do so, it is concluded, through a mechanism of epistemic (as opposed to literary) narrative. Having thus identified how historical sciences proceed without making direct use of laws, Part Two then generalises this model of scientific narrative and shows how it can be used to model existing practices in human history. This conclusion has far-reaching consequences, for it brings a single definition, method, and logic of confirmation to all studies of the past – whether traditionally acknowledged as scientific or historical. Thus all historical enquiries proceed by a common logic and by a common method. This effectively and definitively places human history among the sciences, without the need for the kind of radical transformation past attempts to do this have required.</p>

The Symbol Master

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Rene Descartes ◽  
Integral Calculus ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
René Descartes

This chapter focuses on the symbols created by Gottfried Leibniz. Alert to the advantages of proper symbols, Leibniz worked them, altered them, and tossed them whenever he felt the looming possibility that some poorly devised symbol might someday unnecessarily complicate mathematical exposition. He foresaw how symbols for polynomials could not possibly continue into algebra's generalizations at the turn of the seventeenth century. He knew how inconvenient symbols trapped the advancement of algebra in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. By the last half of the seventeenth century, symbols were pervasive in mathematics manuscripts, largely due to Leibniz, along with others such as William Oughtred, René Descartes, and Isaac Newton. Among the more than 200 new symbols invented by Leibniz are his symbols for the differential and integral calculus.

Modern DNA and the Ancient Mediterranean

2019 ◽  
pp. 224-248
Author(s):  
Roy J. King ◽  
Peter A. Underhill
Keyword(s):  
Population Genetics ◽  
Dna Sequence ◽  
Genetic Markers ◽  
Human History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Dna Variation ◽  
Mutational Change

This chapter takes a look at genetics and its role in the study of ancient history. Genetics is the study of inheritance, and DNA variation is the essence of heredity. DNA sequence differences underpin genetics overall and population genetics is the study of such diversity in populations and how it changes through time. Reconstructing human history using modern DNA has been a longstanding endeavor rooted in sampling practicality. If a mutational change does not negatively affect the individual's ability to reproduce, it may be passed down to each succeeding generation, eventually becoming established in a population. Such mutations, whether beneficial, harmful, or neutral, can serve as genetic markers.

Books for use and books for show

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-137
Author(s):  
David Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Human History ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Linear Spectrum ◽  
History Of

We may believe that books should be bought to be read and studied, but there is plentiful evidence, through human history, of people being mocked for owning books more for display and self-image. This chapter looks seriously and systematically at motivations for book ownership in the seventeenth century, recognizing that there is a range of attitudes between textual utility and the valuing of books for their aesthetic or luxurious qualities. Bookbindings, bookplates, heraldic markings, wills, and other kinds of evidence are drawn on, through various case studies, to show that for most people a mixture of approaches was probably involved—that we should think more in terms of a matrix than a linear spectrum. Book historians may define the history of reading as the key interface to be explored between books and people, but this is too narrow a focus if we really want to understand why people owned books.

Ireland: Realm of the Four Masters

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Irish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Manuscripts ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Or History

On 9 January 1843, Richard Griffith addressed the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) about some antiquities found in the River Shannon. The river was being dredged to render it navigable, and the artefacts were discovered during the deepening of the old ford at Keelogue. Griffith was the chairman of the Commissioners carrying out the work, and his expertise was in engineering rather than ancient history. He stated that the finds came from a layer of gravel; in its upper part were many bronze swords and spears, while a foot lower were numerous stone axes. Due to the rapidity of the river’s flow there was very little aggradation, so despite the small gap the bronze objects were substantially later than the stone ones. The river formed the border between the ancient kingdoms of Connaught and Leinster. The objects had apparently been lost in two battles for the ford that had taken place at widely differing dates; stressing that he was no expert himself, Mr Griffith wondered whether ancient Irish history might contain records of battles at this spot (Griffith 1844). This was probably the earliest non-funerary stratigraphic support for the Three Age System ever published, but it did not signal the acceptance of the Three Age System. Just as telling as Griffith’s stratigraphic observation was his immediate recourse to ancient history for an explanation; for, as we shall see, ancient history provided the dominant framework for the ancient Irish past until the end of the nineteenth century. The Irish had far more early manuscript sources than the Scots or the English, although wars and invasions had reduced them; the Welsh scholar Edward Lhwyd wrote from Sligo on 12 March 1700 to his colleague Henry Rowlands that ‘the Irish have many more ancient manuscripts than we in Wales; but since the late revolutions they are much lessened. I now and then pick up some very old parchment manuscripts; but they are hard to come by, and they that do anything understand them, value them as their lives’ (in Rowlands 1766: 315). In the seventeenth century various Irish scholars brought together the historical accounts available to them. Geoffrey Keating (Seathrú n Céitinn, in Irish) wrote the influential Foras Feasa ar Éirinn or ‘History of Ireland’ in c.1634, and an English translation was printed in 1723 (Waddell 2005).

Analysis, philosophical issues in

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Grattan-Guinness
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Set Theory ◽  
Integral Calculus ◽  
Analytic Proof ◽  
Isaac Newton ◽  
The Status ◽  
Point Set ◽  
Convergence And Divergence ◽  
Major Branch

The term ‘mathematical analysis’ refers to the major branch of mathematics which is concerned with the theory of functions and includes the differential and integral calculus. Analysis and the calculus began as the study of curves, calculus being concerned with tangents to and areas under curves. The focus was shifted to functions following the insight, due to Leibniz and Isaac Newton in the second half of the seventeenth century, that a curve is the graph of a function. Algebraic foundations were proposed by Lagrange in the late eighteenth century; assuming that any function always took an expansion in a power series, he defined the derivatives from the coefficients of the terms. In the 1820s his assumption was refuted by Cauchy, who had already launched a fourth approach, like Newton’s based on limits, but formulated much more carefully. It was refined further by Weierstrass, by means which helped to create set theory. Analysis also encompasses the theory of limits and of the convergence and divergence of infinite series; modern versions also use point set topology. It has taken various forms over the centuries, of which the older ones are still represented in some notations and terms. Philosophical issues include the status of infinitesimals, the place of logic in the articulation of proofs, types of definition, and the (non-) relationship to analytic proof methods.

Biblical Chronology in the Hellenistic World Chronicles

1968 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Zion Wacholder
Keyword(s):  
Olympic Games ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Human History ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Demarcation Line ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Remote Past

Chronography became a discipline of its own during the Alexandrian age. Herodotus and Thucydides still reckoned the remote past by generations. But from 300 B.C. onward learned men of Alexandria attempted to assign more or less precise dates for notable events. Homeric scholars dated the fall of Troy 407 years prior to the first Olympic games in 776 B.C., i.e., 1184 B.C. Eratosthenes of Cyrene asserted that this was the first datable event of human history, giving an unmistakable demarcation line between mythology and history. For the Orientals, whose records reputedly went back to the time when gods and semi-gods held sway over man, Eratosthenes' Greek-colored view of ancient history appeared myopic. Perhaps to match the Orientals, Greek writers manufactured genealogical tables which traced the pedigrees of famous Greek cities to remote antiquity with their autochthonous progenitors. To create order among the conflicting claims, during the second century B.C., the universal chronicle made its appearance. In the universal chronicles the Greek and Oriental genealogical lists followed each other, were synchronized, or even tabulated.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document