The Power of Images in Early Modern Science

ISBN-13: 9783764324346 / Angielski / Miękka / 2003 / 320 str.

Wolfgang Lefevre; Jurgen Renn; Urs Schoepflin

Opis

The book is dedicated to the role of visual representations in the history of early modern science. It brings together historical case studies from various fields and discusses epistemological questions such as the role of images as mediatory instances between practical and theoretical knowledge, the interaction between images and texts, and the potential of images to synthesize fragments of knowledge to a global picture.

Spis treści

I. Mechanics Between Practical and Theoretical Knowledge and the Mediatory Function of Images.- The Challenging Images of Artillery: Practical Knowledge at the Roots of the Scientific Revolution.- Ships, Science and the Three Traditions of Early Modern Design.- Art and Artifice in the Depiction of Renaissance Machines.- The Limits of Pictures: Cognitive Functions of Images in Practical Mechanics — 1400 to 1600.- Reframing the Language of Inventions: The First Theatre of Machines.- II. Theories of Matter Between Alchemy and Atomism and the Autonomy of Images.- Alchemical Iconography at the Dawn of the Modern Age: The Splendor solis of Salomon Trismosin.- The Invention of Atomist Iconography.- III. The Classification of Life and the Interaction Between Images and Texts.- Image and Text in Natural History, 1500–1700.- Notes on the Function of Early Zoological Imagery.- Elephant, Mammoth, Unicorn, or What?: Notes on the Interrelations of Pictures and Texts in Leibniz.- IV. Depicting the World at Large and the Hidden Potential of Images.- Planetary Diagrams — Descriptions, Models, Theories: From Carolingian Deployments to Copernican Debates.- Images, Models and Symbols in Copernican Propaganda.- Edmond Halley and Visual Representation in Natural Philosophy.- V. Systems of Knowledge and their Representation by Images.- Encyclopaedias and Architecture in the Sixteenth Century.- The Mathematical Sciences in Raphael’s School of Athens.