Between Demonstration and Imagination: Essays in the History of Science and Philosophy Presented to John D. North(96 Brill's Studies in Intellectual History)

The essays in this volume reflect the wide-ranging interests of John D. North, distinguished historian of science and philosophy. Section one has papers on horoscopes, astrolabes and time-reckoning, and it includes an edition of a 12th century treatise on the astrolabe and surveys of astrolabes. Section two is devoted to the study of the medieval cosmos. These contributions discuss Calcidian astronomy, astronomy in Spain's Jewish community, the role of God in scholastic natural philosophy, and other themes. New information is presented about previously unknown scholars such as Abd al-Masih of Winchester and Simon Bredon. Section three contains essays on philosophy and scholarship in the early modern period, including pieces about commentaries on Boethius's "Consolatio Philosophiae" in the Northern renaissance, Spinozistic philosophy, and the early modern concept of substance. These essays take up the various themes to which John D. North has made important contributions: the development of scientific knowledge and methodology, the style of scientific and philosophical thought, and the uses of scientific knowledge in the making of instruments or the casting of horoscopes.

Table of Contents:
Due North Contributors List of Illustrations Section One: Astrolabes, Horoscopes, and the Division of Time 1. Bringing Astronomical Instruments Back to Earth- The Geographical Data on Medieval Astrolabes (to ca. 1100), David A. king 2. The Treatise on the Astrolabe by Rudolf of Bruges, Richard Lorch 3. Horoscopes and History: Ibn Azzuz and His Retrospective Horoscopes Related to the Battle of El Salado (1340), Julio Samso 4. The Names and Faces of the Horus, Francis Maddison and Anthony Turner Section Two: Medieval Astronomy, Cosmology, and Natural Philosophy 5. Abd al-Masih of Winchester, Charles Burnett 6.Calcidius’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus in Latin Astronomy of the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries, Bruce Eastwood 7. Sacrobosco Illustrated, Owen Gingerich 8. Astronomy in the Medieval Spanish Jewish Community, Bernard R. Goldstein 9. God, Science, and Natural Philosophy in the Late Middle Ages, Edward Grant 10. A Strange Fact About Aristotelian Dynamics, Keith Hutchison 11. The Works and Days of Simon Bredon, a Fourtheenth-Century Astronomer and Physician, K.V. Snedegar Section Three: Early Modern Philosophy and Scholarschip 12. A Humanist Reading of Boethuis’s Consolatio Philosophiae: The Commentary by Murmellius and Agricola (1514), Lodi Nauta 13. Ist Tschirnhaus’ Medicina mentis ein Ableger von Spinozas Methodologie?, Detlev Patzöld 14. ‘Something, I Know Not What‘. The Concept of Substance in Early Modern Thought, Han van Ruler 15. Les Vite di matematici Arabi de Bernardino Baldi (Urbino 1553-1617), G. Federici Vescovini Bibliography of John D. North Index of Personal Names

About the Author :
Lodi Nauta holds a Royal Dutch Academy chair in medieval and Renaissance philosophy at the University of Groningen. He has published an edition of William of Conches' commentary on Boethius' Consolatio Philosophiae and is finishing a book on Lorenzo Valla. He has edited several books, translated Dante's De vulgari eloquentia in Dutch, and is the author of several articles on medieval and Renaissance philosophy and on Thomas Hobbes.