Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds PDF full book. Access full book title Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds by M. de (Bernard Le Bovier) Fontenelle. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: M. de (Bernard Le Bovier) Fontenelle Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520071719 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
Surveying the night sky, a charming philosopher and his hostess, the Marquise, are considering thep ossibility of travelers from the moon. "What if they were skillful enough to navigate on the outer surface of our air, and from there, through their curiosity to see us, they angled for us like fish? Would that please you?" asks the philosopher. "Why not?" the Marquise replies. "As for me, I'd put myself into their nets of my own volition just to have the pleasure of seeing those who caught me." In this imaginary conversation of three hundred years ago, readers can share the excitement of a new, extremely daring view of the uinverse. Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (Entretiens sur la pluralit des mondes), first published in 1686, is one of the best loved classics of the early French enlightenment. Through a series of informal dialogues that take place on successive evenings in the marquise's moonlit gardens, Fontenelle describes the new cosmology of the Copernican world view with matchles clarity, imagination, and wit. Moreover, he boldly makes his interlocutor a woman, inviting female participation in the almost exclusively male province of scientific discourse. The popular Fontenelle lived through an entire century, from 1657 to 1757, and wrote prolifically. H. A. Hargreaves's fresh, appealing translation brings the author's masterpiece to new generations of readers, while the introduction by Nina Rattner Gelbart clearly demonstrates the importance of the Conversations for the history of science, of women, of literature, and of French civilization, and for the popularization of culture.
Author: M. de (Bernard Le Bovier) Fontenelle Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520071719 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 136
Book Description
Surveying the night sky, a charming philosopher and his hostess, the Marquise, are considering thep ossibility of travelers from the moon. "What if they were skillful enough to navigate on the outer surface of our air, and from there, through their curiosity to see us, they angled for us like fish? Would that please you?" asks the philosopher. "Why not?" the Marquise replies. "As for me, I'd put myself into their nets of my own volition just to have the pleasure of seeing those who caught me." In this imaginary conversation of three hundred years ago, readers can share the excitement of a new, extremely daring view of the uinverse. Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (Entretiens sur la pluralit des mondes), first published in 1686, is one of the best loved classics of the early French enlightenment. Through a series of informal dialogues that take place on successive evenings in the marquise's moonlit gardens, Fontenelle describes the new cosmology of the Copernican world view with matchles clarity, imagination, and wit. Moreover, he boldly makes his interlocutor a woman, inviting female participation in the almost exclusively male province of scientific discourse. The popular Fontenelle lived through an entire century, from 1657 to 1757, and wrote prolifically. H. A. Hargreaves's fresh, appealing translation brings the author's masterpiece to new generations of readers, while the introduction by Nina Rattner Gelbart clearly demonstrates the importance of the Conversations for the history of science, of women, of literature, and of French civilization, and for the popularization of culture.
Author: François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778) Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 1684482933 Category : Reference Languages : en Pages : 335
Book Description
The author of more than 2,000 books and pamphlets, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) was one of the most prolific writers of the eighteenth century, and also one of the wittiest and most insightful. This unique collection of over 800 of Voltaire’s wisest passages and choicest bons mots runs the gamut on topics from adultery to Zoroaster, in both English and French. Drawing from a wide range of his publications, private letters, and remarks recorded by his contemporaries, The Quotable Voltaire includes material never before gathered in a single volume. English translations appear alongside the original French, and each quote is thoroughly indexed and referenced, with page numbers for both the first known publication edition of each entry and the most recent edition of Voltaire’s works. The book also features over 400 quotes about Voltaire, including commentary by eighteenth-century luminaries like Samuel Johnson, Catherine the Great, Casanova, and John Adams, as well as an eclectic assortment of modern-day personages ranging from Winston Churchill and Jorge Luis Borges to Mae West and Mike Tyson. Lavishly illustrated with nearly three dozen images of Voltaire-related art, this collection opens with a scholarly essay that recounts the great man’s life and reflects on his outsized influence on Western culture. Whether you are a Voltaire scholar or a neophyte, The Quotable Voltaire is the perfect introduction to a brilliant mind.
Author: Philippe Hamou Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198815034 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
Twelve original essays by an international team of scholars investigate the relation of John Locke's thought to Descartes and Cartesianism. They explore not only these philosophers' theories of knowledge, but also their views on natural philosophy, metaphysics, and religion.
Author: Pascal Richet Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226712893 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 487
Book Description
The quest to pinpoint the age of the Earth is nearly as old as humanity itself. For most of history, people trusted mythology or religion to provide the answer, even though nature abounds with clues to the past of the Earth and the stars. In A Natural History of Time, geophysicist Pascal Richet tells the fascinating story of how scientists and philosophers examined those clues and from them built a chronological scale that has made it possible to reconstruct the history of nature itself. Richet begins his story with mythological traditions, which were heavily influenced by the seasons and almost uniformly viewed time cyclically. The linear history promulgated by Judaism, with its story of creation, was an exception, and it was that tradition that drove early Christian attempts to date the Earth. For instance, in 169 CE, the bishop of Antioch, for instance declared that the world had been in existence for “5,698 years and the odd months and days.” Until the mid-eighteenth century, such natural timescales derived from biblical chronologies prevailed, but, Richet demonstrates, with the Scientific Revolution geological and astronomical evidence for much longer timescales began to accumulate. Fossils and the developing science of geology provided compelling evidence for periods of millions and millions of years—a scale that even scientists had difficulty grasping. By the end of the twentieth century, new tools such as radiometric dating had demonstrated that the solar system is four and a half billion years old, and the universe itself about twice that, though controversial questions remain. The quest for time is a story of ingenuity and determination, and like a geologist, Pascal Richet carefully peels back the strata of that history, giving us a chance to marvel at each layer and truly appreciate how far our knowledge—and our planet—have come.
Author: Alan Charles Kors Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316684113 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 253
Book Description
Atheism was the most foundational challenge to early-modern French certainties. Theologians and philosophers labelled such atheism as absurd, confident that neither the fact nor behaviour of nature was explicable without reference to God. The alternative was a categorical naturalism, whose most extreme form was Epicureanism. The dynamics of the Christian learned world, however, which this book explains, allowed the wide dissemination of the Epicurean argument. By the end of the seventeenth century, atheism achieved real voice and life. This book examines the Epicurean inheritance and explains what constituted actual atheistic thinking in early-modern France, distinguishing such categorical unbelief from other challenges to orthodox beliefs. Without understanding the actual context and convergence of the inheritance, scholarship, protocols, and polemical modes of orthodox culture, the early-modern generation and dissemination of atheism are inexplicable. This book brings to life both early-modern French Christian learned culture and the atheists who emerged from its intellectual vitality.
Author: Jacqueline Broad Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192538233 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 391
Book Description
There have been many different historical-intellectual accounts of the shaping and development of concepts of liberty in pre-Enlightenment Europe. This volume is unique for addressing the subject of liberty principally as it is discussed in the writings of women philosophers, and as it is theorized with respect to women and their lives, during this period. The volume covers ethical, political, metaphysical, and religious notions of liberty, with some chapters discussing women's ideas about the metaphysics of free will, and others examining the topic of women's freedom (or lack thereof) in their moral and personal lives as well as in the public socio-political domain. In some cases, these topics are situated in relation to the emergence of the concept of autonomy in the late eighteenth century, and in others, with respect to recent feminist theorizing about relational autonomy and internalized oppression. Many of the chapters draw upon a wide range of genres, including polemical texts, poetry, plays, and other forms of fiction, as well as standard philosophical treatises. Taken as a whole, this volume shows how crucial it is to recover the too-long forgotten views of female and women-friendly male philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the process of recovering these voices, our understanding of philosophy in the early modern period is not only expanded, but also significantly enhanced, toward a more accurate and gender-inclusive history of our discipline.
Author: M. de (Bernard Le Bovier) Fontenelle
Author: M. de (Bernard Le Bovier) Fontenelle
Author: Library of Congress
Author: François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) (1694-1778)
Author: Union University (Schenectady, N.Y.). Library
Author: British museum. Dept. of printed books
Author: Philippe Hamou
Author: Pascal Richet
Author: Alan Charles Kors
Author: Jacqueline Broad
Author: