scholarly journals Pierre Duhem and the Continuous Development of Science

Author(s):  
A. Loreti

When attempting to assess what history of science, doubtless an important element of our culture, owes to the French philosopher and scientist Pierre Duhem, one has to emphasise the critical role he played in rethinking the world outlook inherited from the preceding times and in developing a new one more apt to contemporary science. This analysis draws on such key Duhem’s writings as «The World System» («Le système du monde») and «Studies on Leonardo da Vinci» («Études sur Léonard de Vinci»). Two Duhem’s theses deserve particular attention. One is his assertion that Christianity (and the Catholic Church for that) did not impede, but rather contributed to the development of science having dispensed with cosmological assumptions of Greek Paganism incompatible with contemporary science. Secondly, Duhem argues that intuitions to pave way to the scientific revolution were first advocated by such Sorbonne Scholastics as Jean Buridan and Nicholas Oresme. It is noteworthy that the French scientist clearly underestimates the contribution of non-French thinkers to the emerging set of cultural axioms. Duhem’s new ontology of cognition is closely related to the ideas of new epistemology. Viewing evolution of science as a gradual continuous process, he endorsed the holist idea that isolated scientific propositions could neither be verified nor falsified. The truth of any proposition is inseparable from the truth of the system of hypotheses as a whole. Hence science progresses not by rejecting old theories, but by modifying them: in due course old concepts give way to new ones. This topical assumption that progress of science is to be viewed and understood in its specific socio-cultural context delineates the principle on which the answer to the no less topical question of the philosophy of culture, viz. why modern science has emerged in Europe rather than elsewhere, is to be based on.

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (SPS5) ◽  
pp. 21-24
Author(s):  
Rajesh Kochhar

AbstractAny international effort to promote astronomy world wide today must necessarily take into account its cultural and historical component. The past few decades have ushered in an age, which we may call the Age of Cultural Copernicanism. In analogy with the cosmological principle that the universe has no preferred location or direction, Cultural Copernicanism would imply that no cultural or geographical area, or ethnic or social group, can be deemed to constitute a superior entity or a benchmark for judging or evaluating others.In this framework, astronomy (as well as science in general) is perceived as a multi-stage civilizational cumulus where each stage builds on the knowledge gained in the previous stages and in turn leads to the next. This framework however is a recent development. The 19th century historiography consciously projected modern science as a characteristic product of the Western civilization decoupled from and superior to its antecedents, with the implication that all material and ideological benefits arising from modern science were reserved for the West.As a reaction to this, the orientalized East has often tended to view modern science as “their” science, distance itself from its intellectual aspects, and seek to defend, protect and reinvent “our” science and the alleged (anti-science) Eastern mode of thought. This defensive mind-set works against the propagation of modern astronomy in most of the non-Western countries. There is thus a need to construct a history of world astronomy that is truly universal and unselfconscious.Similarly, the planetarium programs, for use the world over, should be culturally sensitive. The IAU can help produce cultural-specific modules. Equipped with this paradigmatic background, we can now address the question of actual means to be adopted for the task at hand. Astronomical activity requires a certain minimum level of industrial activity support. Long-term maintenance of astronomical equipment is not a trivial task. There are any number of examples of an expensive facility falling victim to AIDS: Astronomical Instrument Deficiency Syndrome. The facilities planned in different parts of the world should be commensurate with the absorbing power of the acceptor rather than the level of the gifter.


Xihmai ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Barceló Quintal

RESUMEN Actualmente, para la mayorí­a de los pueblos del planeta, los doce dí­as relacionados con la fiesta de Navidad representan el nacimiento de Jesús en Belén. Sus antecedentes se remontan a casi 4,000 años, cuando estas fiestas estaban relacionadas con la renovación de la naturaleza. Es hasta 345 años después de la muerte de Cristo, cuando el papa Julio I, fijó como fecha del natalicio de Cristo el 25 de diciembre. No sólo la Iglesia católica participó en la historia de esta festividad, en ella entran los pueblos mediterráneos de Europa, Asia y África; y más tarde las culturas americanas hicieron su parte para incorporar nuevos elementos a esta tradición. Abstract For the majority of Christian communities in the world, the twelve days related to the cele­bration of Christmas represent the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The antecedents of this story reach back almost 4,000 years when the celebrations were related to the rebirth of nature. Pope Julius I fixed the 25th of December as Christ’s birth date 345 years after His death. The Catholic Church is not the only participant in the history of the celebration; communities in Mediterranean Europe, Asia and Africa also participated. Later, American cultures have also contributed new elements to the tradition.


Muzealnictwo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-13
Author(s):  
Teresa Grzybkowska

Professor Zdzisław Żygulski Jr. (1921–2015) was one of the most prominent Polish art historians of the second half of the 20th century. He treated the history of art as a broadly understood science of mankind and his artistic achievements. His name was recognised in global research on antique weapons, and among experts on Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci. He studied museums and Oriental art. He wrote 35 books, about 200 articles, and numerous essays on art; he wrote for the daily press about his artistic journeys through Europe, Japan and the United States. He illustrated his publications with his own photographs, and had a large set of slides. Żygulski created many exhibitions both at home and abroad presenting Polish art in which armour and oriental elements played an important role. He spent his youth in Lvov, and was expatriated to Cracow in 1945 together with his wife, the pottery artist and painter Eva Voelpel. He studied English philology and history of art at the Jagiellonian University (UJ), and was a student under Adam Bochnak and Vojeslav Molè. He was linked to the Czartoryski Museum in Cracow for his whole life; he worked there from 1949 until 2010, for the great majority of time as curator of the Arms and Armour Section. He devoted his whole life to the world of this museum, and wrote about its history and collections. Together with Prof. Zbigniew Bocheński, he set up the Association of Lovers of Old Armour and Flags, over which he presided from 1972 to 1998. He set up the Polish school of the study of militaria. He was a renowned and charismatic member of the circle of international researchers and lovers of militaria. He wrote the key texts in this field: Broń w dawnej Polsce na tle uzbrojenia Europy i Bliskiego Wschodu [Weapons in old Poland compared to armaments in Europe and the Near East], Stara broń w polskich zbiorach [Old weapons in Polish armouries], Polski mundur wojskowy [Polish military uniforms] (together with H. Wielecki). He was an outstanding researcher on Oriental art to which he dedicated several books: Sztuka turecka [Turkish art], Sztuka perska [Persian art], Sztuka mauretańska i jej echa w Polsce [Moorish art and its echoes in Poland]. Prof. Zdzisław Żygulski Jr. was a prominent educator who enjoyed great respect. He taught costume design and the history of art and interiors at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, as well as Mediterranean culture at the Mediterranean Studies Department and at the Postgraduate Museum Studies at the UJ. His lectures attracted crowds of students, for whose needs he wrote a book Muzea na świecie. Wstęp do muzealnictwa [Museums in the world. Introduction to museum studies]. He also lectured at the Florence Academy of Art and at the New York University. He was active in numerous Polish scientific organisations such as PAU, PAN and SHS, and in international associations such as ICOMAM and ICOM. He represented Polish art history at general ICOM congresses many times. He was also active on diverse museum councils all over Poland.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-521
Author(s):  
Thomas Albrecht

Thomas Albrecht, “‘That Free Play of Human Affection’: The Humanist Ethics of Walter Pater’s The Renaissance” (pp. 486–521) This essay aims to refute received, persistent misconceptions of Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), and of aestheticism generally, as an asocial and amoral sensualism, and as a deliberate separating of art from human lives and the world. Contrary to these misconceptions, it finds a humanist ethical vision in The Renaissance, specifically in the essays Pater devotes to Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Drawing on an established post-Enlightenment, post-Romantic tradition of Victorian secular humanism, Pater defines this vision in terms of human sympathies for the feelings and suffering of other persons. And he defines it in aesthetic terms, in terms of art’s unique capacity to depict human feelings and suffering, and thereby to arouse sympathies in the viewer. At the same time, the essay contends that Pater in The Renaissance also defines his ethical vision in a more unprecedented, radical way. Beyond the solicitation of human sympathies, he frames it in terms of a fundamental uncertainty and unpredictability, a fundamental freedom and singularity, of human ethical relationships and responses. For Pater, this uncertainty and freedom are the qualities that make an ethics genuinely ethical. Pater finds these qualities, and this kind of genuine ethics, epitomized in the unpredictability and freedom of human aesthetic responses, including his own, to art and beauty.


1905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Светлана Платонова ◽  
Svetlana Platonova

The tutorial discusses the main parts of philosophy: theory of being and matter, theory of conscious and the unconscious, philosophy of knowledge, the problem of person and his being in the world, the nature and dynamics of society, global problems. The author presents philosophical questions, based on the history of philosophy and modern science. The essence of society is analyzed in accordance with the modern social-philosophical theories. The book combines the actual tutorial, issues, topics abstracts, bibliography to each chapter, philosophical dictionary. The book is recommended for students of higher educational institutions, as well as all interested readers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-401
Author(s):  
Jongtae Lim 林宗台

Abstract As they were in other East Asian countries, Joseph Needham and his monumental works were warmly received by Korean historians of science in the late twentieth century. Korean historians appreciated both Needham’s pioneering research on the history of Chinese science and his praise of Korea’s contribution to East Asian scientific tradition, as expressed, for example, in the addenda to volume 3 of Science and Civilisation in China. But the Koreans’ praise of Needham was not unqualified. Needham’s largely favorable remarks on Korean science invited criticism from several prominent Korean historians who noted many factual errors, particularly relating to Korea’s priority over China in several technological inventions. They regarded those errors as indicative of Needham’s deep-rooted historiographical bias, his view of Korea as a mere tributary of China’s scientific tradition. But the Koreans’ criticism of Needham ironically shows that they agreed with the central tenets of Needham’s methodology of crediting scientific achievements to different civilizations, whereby to measure China’s contribution to what Needham termed “universal modern science.” The Koreans only scaled down the scope of comparison from the world of civilizations to a smaller region called East Asia, whereby to compare Korea’s share with that of China. This article thus takes the Korean criticism of Needham as an illuminating case, which invites us to think over a less explored issue in the history of East Asian science: how to write a balanced history of science in a region that is characterized by a stark disparity in power, resources, and achievements between China and its smaller neighbors.


Slovene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 368-391
Author(s):  
Ilya V. Semenenko-Basin ◽  
Stefano Caprio

The article is devoted to the menologion (calendar of saints) compiled in the 20th century for Russian Byzantine Catholics. The latter are a church community with its own Byzantine-Slavic worship and piety, which follow both the Catholic and the Eastern spiritual traditions. Like the entire liturgical literature of the Russian Eastern Catholics, the menologion was created in Rome under the auspices of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, as part of the activities of the Russian Catholic Apostolate, i.e., of the mission of the Catholic Church addressed to Russia and the Russian diaspora in the world. The corpus of service books for Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian Eastern Catholics was called Recensio Vulgata. The menologion under study is contained in the books of Recensio Vulgata and was compiled on the basis of the Orthodox menologia of pre-revolutionary Russia. The compilers of the Byzantine-Catholic menologion did not just select Russian liturgical memories in a certain way, they also included the names of several martyrs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and some additional commemorations of Western saints. According to the compilers of the menologion, the history of Catholic (orthodox) holiness in North-Eastern Russia ended at the turn of the 1440s, when the Principality of Moscow and the Novgorod Republic abandoned the Union of Florence. The menologion reflects the era after the Union of Florence in the events that show the invariable patronage of the Mother of God over the people and the Russian land. The Recensio Vulgata menologion (RVM) contains twelve Russia-specific holidays that honor icons of the Mother of God, nine of which celebrate the events of the period from the late 15th to the 17th centuries. The compilers of the menologion created a well-devised system in which the East Slavic saints, the ancient saints of the Byzantine menologion, the Latin teachers of the Church, the saints of the Byzantine Catholic churches of different eras all are subject to harmonious logic, and harmony serves to organize the whole.


Slovene ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-367
Author(s):  
Alla O. Burtseva

The article is devoted to the menologion (calendar of saints) compiled in the 20th century for Russian Byzantine Catholics. The latter are a church community with its own Byzantine-Slavic worship and piety, which follow both the Catholic and the Eastern spiritual traditions. Like the entire liturgical literature of the Russian Eastern Catholics, the menologion was created in Rome under the auspices of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, as part of the activities of the Russian Catholic Apostolate, i.e., of the mission of the Catholic Church addressed to Russia and the Russian diaspora in the world. The corpus of service books for Russian, Bulgarian and Serbian Eastern Catholics was called Recensio Vulgata. The menologion under study is contained in the books of Recensio Vulgata and was compiled on the basis of the Orthodox menologia of pre-revolutionary Russia. The compilers of the Byzantine-Catholic menologion did not just select Russian liturgical memories in a certain way, they also included the names of several martyrs of the Eastern Catholic Churches and some additional commemorations of Western saints. According to the compilers of the menologion, the history of Catholic (orthodox) holiness in North-Eastern Russia ended at the turn of the 1440s, when the Principality of Moscow and the Novgorod Republic abandoned the Union of Florence. The menologion reflects the era after the Union of Florence in the events that show the invariable patronage of the Mother of God over the people and the Russian land. The Recensio Vulgata menologion (RVM) contains twelve Russia-specific holidays that honor icons of the Mother of God, nine of which celebrate the events of the period from the late 15th to the 17th centuries. The compilers of the menologion created a well-devised system in which the East Slavic saints, the ancient saints of the Byzantine menologion, the Latin teachers of the Church, the saints of the Byzantine Catholic churches of different eras all are subject to harmonious logic, and harmony serves to organize the whole.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Humera Naz ◽  

There is no doubt that there is no corner of civilization in which Muslims have not made significant progress. But most of his accomplishments are reflected in the architecture and its supporting arts. The one and a half thousand year history of Islam is in fact the history of the rise of Islamic architecture. Muslims decorated a large part of the world with beautiful buildings in different periods of their rule. Thus, at different times, Islamic architecture took different forms. Among them, there is diversity due to the differences in the country and the buildings, which is due to the climate, environment and construction issues of this country. But despite this, there is unity and continuity in Islamic architecture. This is a feature of Islamic civilization. In spite of their diversity, Islamic civilization has allowed fusion in all of them, which we call Islamic colors. And the basic element of this unity was the Islamic faith which united the different nations in this one faith. Due to which, whatever religious buildings are built in any part of the world in the future, they are all the same, which was not affected by time and distance. Every building has its own uniqueness. These Islamic buildings have a deep Muslim imprint. This is due to the architectural style and decorative carvings of these buildings and these carvings have a spiritual aspect which has its own distinct identity of Islamic architecture. At the same time, it is a valuable asset that still reflects Islamic civilization. In our article, we have examined this unity of Islamic architecture in a cultural context.


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