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Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy, 1300–1700: Tension and Accommodation PDF

322 Pages·1991·8.42 MB·English
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PHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY, 1300-1700: TENSION AND ACCOMMODATION BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editor ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University Editorial Advisory Board ADOLF GRONBAUM, University ofP ittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University ofN ew York VOLUME 126 PHYSICS, COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY, 1300-1700: TENSION AND ACCOMMODATION Edited by SABETAI UNGURU Tel-Aviv University, Tel-A viv, Israel Springer Science+Business Media, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Physlcs. cos.ology. and astrono.y. 1300-1700 : tenslon and acco •• odatlon I edlted by Sabetal Unguru. p. c.. (Boston studles In the phllosophy of sclence v. 128> Papers fro. -a sprlng 1984 International workshop held. under the ausplces of the Israel Acade.y of Sclences and Hu.anltles. by the Institute for the Hlstory and Phllosophy of Sclence and Ideas of Tel -Aviv Unlverslty In cooperat Ion wlth the Van Leer Jerusale. Foundatlon"--Introd. ISBN 978-94-010-5476-8 ISBN 978-94-011-3342-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3342-5 1. Sclence. Renalssance--Congresses. 2. Physlcs--Hlstory -Congresses. 3. Astrono.y--Hlstory--Congresses. 4. Cos.ology- -Hlstory. 1. Unguru. Sabetal. II. A~ade.yah ha-le·u.lt ha -Ylsre'ellt le-.ada'l •. III. Unlverslţat Tel-Aviv, Institute for the Hlstory and Phllosophy of Sclence and Ideas. IV. Mosad Van Llr bl-Yerushalayl.. V. Serles. 0174.B87 voI, 128 [0125.2) 001 ' . O1 s--dc20 [509' ,4' 0902) 90-48538 Printed on acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1991 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS SABETAI UNGURU / Introduction Vll PART ONE ANCIENT BACKGROUND JOHN GLUCKER / Images of Plato in Late Antiquity 3 ABRAHAM WASSERSTEIN / Hunches that did not come off: Some Problems in Greek Science 19 PART TWO ISLAMIC AND JEWISH CONTRIBUTIONS GAD FREUDENTHAL / (Al-)Chemical Foundations for Cosmo- logical Ideas: Ibn Simi on the Geology of an Eternal World 47 BERNARD R. GOLDSTEIN / Levi ben Gerson: On Astronomy and Physical Experiments 75 Y. TZVI LANGERMANN / The Astronomy of Rabbi Moses Isserles 83 PART THREE MEDIEVAL COSMOLOGY, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OPTICS EDWARD GRANT / Celestial Incorruptibility in Medieval Cos- mology 1200-1687 101 EDITH D. SYLLA / The Oxford Calculators and Mathematical Physics: John Dumbleton's Summa Logicae et Philosophiae Naturalis, Parts II and III 129 SABETAI UNGURU / Experiment in Medieval Optics 163 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART FOUR KEPLER: COSMOLOGY, ASTRONOMY, AND LIGHT FRITZ KRAFFT / The New Celestial Physics of Johannes Kepler 185 DAVID c. LINDBERG / Kepler and the Incorporeality of Light 229 PART FIVE SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND POLITICAL POWER JOHN D. NORTH / One Truth or More? Demarcation in the Universe of Discourse 253 MICHAEL SEGRE / Science at the Tuscan Court, 1642-1667 295 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 309 NAME INDEX 313 SABETAIUNGURU INTRODUCTION Habent sua Jata colloquia. The present volume has its ongms in a spring 1984 international workshop held, under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, by The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel-Aviv University in cooperation with The Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation. It contains twelve of the twenty papers presented at the workshop by the twenty-six participants. As Proceedings of conferences go, it is a good representative of the genre, sharing in the main characteristics of its ilk. It may even be one of the rare instances of a book of Proceed ings whose descriptive title applies equally well to the workshop's topic and to the interrelations between. the various papers it includes. Tension and Accommodation are the key words. Thus, while John Glucker's paper, 'Images of Plato in Late Antiqu ity,' raises, by means of the Platonic example, the problem of interpreta tion of ancient texts, suggesting the assignment of proper weight to the creator of the tradition and not only to his many later interpreters in assessing the proper relationship between originator and commentators, Abraham Wasserstein's 'Hunches that did not come off: Some Prob lems in Greek Science' illustrates the long-lived Whiggish tradition in the history of science and mathematics. As those familiar with my work will undoubtedly note, Wasserstein's position is far removed from my stance on ancient Greek mathematics. I chose, therefore, to interfere editorially as little as possible with its conclusions and approach, appealing as they do to many workers in the field, and the paper stands basically as given in its pristine allure. Another hunch that did not come off, one might say. Bernard Goldstein's paper on Levi ben Gerson shows us a man in the fourteenth century who was not reluctant to use a hands-on. 'experi mental' approach in the study of astronomy and who, in doing so, preceded in his understanding and results some of Tycho Brahe's and Johannes Kepler's achievements in the measurement of eclipses and on pinhole images. Gad Freudenthal shows tellingIy the inherent elasticity of theory in saving a cherished world view, specifically the eternity of the world, that seemed to be inconsistent with the geological features of the earth, as accepted by the theory. By postulating generative geologi- s. Unguru (ed.), Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy, 1300-1700, pp. vii-viii. © 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. viii SABETAIUNGURU cal processes compensating for erosion, and by drawing on alchemical and chemical auxiliary concepts, Ibn Simi was able to save Aristotelian natural philosophy from adverse criticism. While Y. Tzvi Langermann deals with the astronomical views of Rabbi Moses Isserles, a sixteenth-century famous legal scholar in Cracow, during a period that witnessed a strengthening of rationalist undercurrents in Jewish intellectual life, Edward Grant writes on 'Celestial Incorruptibility' and shows how a few significant cracks developed within medieval cosmology, leading, eventually, to the aban donment of the sacrosanct Aristotelian principle of celestial incorrupti bility. Edith Sylla uses Parts II and III of Dumbleton's Summa logicae et philosophiae naturalis to show how mathematics could also serve in the hands of the Calculators in handmaiden status, at the pleasure of physics, to deal with physical reality. It is this natural philosophical tradition, striving to achieve an accurate knowledge of physical reality by exploiting the fruitfulness of mathematics, rather than the logico sophismatical tradition that makes the Calculators into an important link between medieval qualitative physics and the new quantitative physics of the seventeenth century. 'Experiment in Medieval Optics' discusses the role and limitations of 'experiment' in Witelo's Perspectiva, while Fritz Krafft's paper focuses of the crucial role of physics in Kepler's new astronomy. David C. Lindberg explores Kepler's ideas on the nature on light and establishes their roots in the ancient and medieval optical tradition. Finally John D. North tackles the problem of intellectual demarcation in connection with a discussion of the issues of creation and eternity of the world, showing the importance, profundity, subtlety, and intellectual pyrotech nics of this medieval strategy of argument; and Michael Segre treats the question of the relation of science and political power at the Tuscan Court after Galileo's death. These are, then, the contents of a volume that is meant to provide the reader with a nontrivial sampling of the variety of interrelations amongst physics, cosmology, and astronomy between, roughly, 1300 and 1700, of their tension, and eventual resolution in the new New tonian science which supplanted medieval natural philosophy. Tel-Aviv University Tel-Aviv, Israel PART ONE Ancient Background JOHN GLUCKER IMAGES OF PLATO IN LATE ANTIQUITY I have chosen my title quite deliberately, for reasons both subjective and objective. Not 'The Image of Plato in Late Antiquity', since it is now a commonplace that at no time has there been anything like one and only kind of Platonism. Various interpretations of the dialogues I existed even among Plato's own pupils. Aristotle, his pupil for the best part of twenty years, took the creation-myth of the Timaeus quite literally as an event in time. Aristotle's friend Xenocrates - a pupil of Plato 'from his youth', who even 'accompanied him on his trip to Sicily' (Diog. Laert. IV, 6) and was his successor's successor as head of the Academy - believed that the myth was merely an 'analysis for the sake of examination' (what one could call geometrical construction), and that the world of the Timaeus was eternal. So, for that matter, did Xenocrates' pupil Crantor - but Crantor disagreed with him on the meaning of the creation of the soul in the Timaeus.2 We shall soon see that in late Antiquity there were at least two main 'images' of Plato which, even though not mutually exclusive, were not quite the same - and there were also relics, at least, of another image, rejected by the upholders of both, but known to be of an ancient and honourable ancestry. Why, then, not 'The Images of Plato .. .' - apart from the awkward English? Here my reasons are, as I have said, both objective and SUbjective. Objective, since our evidence is, in the nature of the case, partial and restricted. If it were not for one manuscript, written in A.D. 925 and miraculously preserved until it reached the library in Vienna, we would have had no knowledge of the anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy,3 which is among other things (as we shall soon see) one of our main sources for the lingering on of sceptic images of Plato into late antiquity. And the one specimen of a Middle Platonic commentary on a dialogue which we possess has been found in a papyrus roll.4 For all we know, there may have been some Stoic or - more probably - sceptic treatises on Plato still extant in late antiquity.s But they have not reached us. My subjective reasons are even simpler. I have neither the equipment nor the preparation for offering a Platonic counterpart to Professor Moreaux's monumental Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen (Berlin: S. Unguru (ed.), Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy, 1300-1700, pp. 3-18. © 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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Habent sua Jata colloquia. The present volume has its ongms in a spring 1984 international workshop held, under the auspices of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, by The Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel-Aviv University in cooperation with The Van Leer
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