Optical Magic in the Late Renaissance PDF Download

Author: Mark Smith
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781606180761
Category : Light
Languages : en
Pages :

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"This volume includes the original Latin text of Della Porta's "De Refractione" with English translation. Della Porta's volume explored optics at the time of the late Renaissance."--

Author: Giambattista della Porta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781606180716
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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"This volume includes the original Latin text of Della Porta's "De Refractione" with English translation. Della Porta's volume explored optics at the time of the late Renaissance."--

Author: Arianna Borrelli
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319502158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This volume contains essays that examine the optical works of Giambattista Della Porta, an Italian natural philosopher during the Scientific Revolution. Coverage also explores the science and technology of early modern optics. Della Porta's groundbreaking book, Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), includes a prototype of the camera. Yet, because of his obsession with magic, Della Porta's scientific achievements are often forgotten. As the contributors argue, his work inspired such great minds as Johanes Kepler and Francis Bacon. After reading this book, researchers, historians, and students will have a better appreciation of this influential scientist. They will also gain a greater understanding of an important period in the history of optics. Readers will learn about Della Porta's experimental method, a process governed by the protocols, aims, and theoretical assumptions of natural magic. Coverage also discusses the material properties and limitations of optical technology in the early 17th century, based on a recently discovered Dutch spyglass. It also demonstrates how diagrams were instrumental in the discovery of the sine law of refraction. In addition, the book includes an in-depth analysis of previously untranslated Latin sources. This makes the material useful to historians of optics unfamiliar with the language. More than 70 illustrations complement the text.

Author: Frank Klaassen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271061758
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition—and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic—than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Author: Lakshminarayan Hazra
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1498744958
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 775

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Since the incorporation of scientific approach in tackling problems of optical instrumentation, analysis and design of optical systems constitute a core area of optical engineering. A large number of software with varying level of scope and applicability is currently available to facilitate the task. However, possession of an optical design software, per se, is no guarantee for arriving at correct or optimal solutions. The validity and/or optimality of the solutions depend to a large extent on proper formulation of the problem, which calls for correct application of principles and theories of optical engineering. On a different note, development of proper experimental setups for investigations in the burgeoning field of optics and photonics calls for a good understanding of these principles and theories. With this backdrop in view, this book presents a holistic treatment of topics like paraxial analysis, aberration theory, Hamiltonian optics, ray-optical and wave-optical theories of image formation, Fourier optics, structural design, lens design optimization, global optimization etc. Proper stress is given on exposition of the foundations. The proposed book is designed to provide adequate material for ‘self-learning’ the subject. For practitioners in related fields, this book is a handy reference. Foundations of Optical System Analysis and Synthesis provides A holistic approach to lens system analysis and design with stress on foundations Basic knowledge of ray and wave optics for tackling problems of instrumental optics Proper explanation of approximations made at different stages Sufficient illustrations for facilitation of understanding Techniques for reducing the role of heuristics and empiricism in optical/lens design A sourcebook on chronological development of related topics across the globe This book is composed as a reference book for graduate students, researchers, faculty, scientists and technologists in R & D centres and industry, in pursuance of their understanding of related topics and concepts during problem solving in the broad areas of optical, electro-optical and photonic system analysis and design.

Author: Frank F. Klaassen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780271058290
Category : Magic
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Author: Raz Chen-Morris
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027107731X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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In Measuring Shadows, Raz Chen-Morris demonstrates that a close study of Kepler’s Optics is essential to understanding his astronomical work and his scientific epistemology. He explores Kepler’s radical break from scientific and epistemological traditions and shows how the seventeenth-century astronomer posited new ways to view scientific truth and knowledge. Chen-Morris reveals how Kepler’s ideas about the formation of images on the retina and the geometrics of the camera obscura, as well as his astronomical observations, advanced the argument that physical reality could only be described through artificially produced shadows, reflections, and refractions. Breaking from medieval and Renaissance traditions that insisted upon direct sensory perception, Kepler advocated for instruments as mediators between the eye and physical reality, and for mathematical language to describe motion. It was only through this kind of knowledge, he argued, that observation could produce certainty about the heavens. Not only was this conception of visibility crucial to advancing the early modern understanding of vision and the retina, but it affected how people during that period approached and understood the world around them.

Author: John S. Mebane
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803281790
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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For all their pride in seeing this world clearly, the thinkers and artists of the English Renaissance were also fascinated by magic and the occult. The three greatest playwrights of the period devoted major plays (The Tempest, Doctor Faustus, The Alchemist) to magic, Francis Bacon often referred to it, and it was ever-present in the visual arts. In Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age John S. Mebane reevaluates the significance of occult philosophy in Renaissance thought and literature, constructing the most detailed historical context for his subject yet attempted.

Author: Ioan P. Culianu
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226123162
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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It is a widespread prejudice of modern, scientific society that "magic" is merely a ludicrous amalgam of recipes and methods derived from primitive and erroneous notions about nature. Eros and Magic in the Renaissance challenges this view, providing an in-depth scholarly explanation of the workings of magic and showing that magic continues to exist in an altered form even today. Renaissance magic, according to Ioan Couliano, was a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. Its key principle was that everyone (and in a sense everything) could be influenced by appeal to sexual desire. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imaginations of his subjects. In these respects, Couliano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent. In the course of his study, Couliano examines in detail the ideas of such writers as Giordano Bruno, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola and illuminates many aspects of Renaissance culture, including heresy, medicine, astrology, alchemy, courtly love, the influence of classical mythology, and even the role of fashion in clothing. Just as science gives the present age its ruling myth, so magic gave a ruling myth to the Renaissance. Because magic relied upon the use of images, and images were repressed and banned in the Reformation and subsequent history, magic was replaced by exact science and modern technology and eventually forgotten. Couliano's remarkable scholarship helps us to recover much of its original significance and will interest a wide audience in the humanities and social sciences.

Author: Sophie Page
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271062975
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.