Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds PDF Download

Author: M. de Fontenelle (Bernard Le Bovier)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Plurality of worlds
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Author: Fontenelle (Bernard Le Bovier)
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781016673013
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author: Bernard de Fontenelle
Publisher: Hesperus Press
ISBN: 9781843913665
Category : Plurality of worlds
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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In this charming and witty dialogue translated by the first professional woman writer in English, a 17th century astronomer staying at the chateau of a beautiful Marchioness accompanies her into her garden at night and introduces her to the new discoveries of astronomy Although more than 300 years old, Fontenelle's dialogues in a garden over five nights are still a surprisingly painless way to learn about the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars, even though new planets were later discovered and modern science has filled out many details Fontenelle could not have known. Only the confidence with which he discusses inhabitants of the planets, the moon, and even the sun is now seen as misplaced. This is no lecture, but a conversation with the cut and thrust of intelligent argument as the Marchioness challenges each of the astronomer's assertions and requires him to explain the evidence. Fontenelle's work has been through the hands of many different translators, but Aphra Behn's translation, one of the earliest, adds the feminine wit of a leading dramatist to the work, in the first modern edition of this translation.

Author: Fontenelle
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781019467855
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This book is a collection of dialogues between famous figures from history who are now dead. It offers literary and philosophical insight in these discussions. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in literature, philosophy and history. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Author: Dorothea Heitsch
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146966741X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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How writers respond to a cosmology in evolution in the sixteenth century and how literature and space implicate each other are the guiding issues of this volume in which sixteen authors explore the topic of space in its multiform incarnations and representations. The volume's first section features the early modern exploration and codification of urban and rural spaces as well as maritime and industrial expanses: "Space and Territory: Geographies in Texts" thus contributes to a history of spatial consciousness. The construction of local, national, political, public, and private places is highlighted in "Space and Politics: Literary Geographies"; the contributors in this segment show how built forms as architectural or literary constructions and spatial orientation are intertwined. "Space and Gender: Geopoetical Approaches" traces the experience of gender as political, territorial, and communicative exploration; the essays in this division deal with social organization and its symbolic analysis, resulting in literary texts featuring what could be called psychological production theories. The development of ethical approaches adapted to or critical of colonial expansion is analyzed in "Space and Ethics: Geocritical Ventures"; here we encounter early modern globalization where locals, explorers, immigrants, adventurers, and intellectuals remake themselves in new places, engage in or meet with resistance, or attempt to rework local sociopolitical systems while reassessing those they are familiar with. "The Space of the Book, the Book as Space: Printing, Reading, Publishing" analyzes the tactile object of the book as an arena for commerce, politics, and authorial experimentation.

Author: David Lewis
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631224266
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.

Author: Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400846595
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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The Devil's Tabernacle is the first book to examine in depth the intellectual and cultural impact of the oracles of pagan antiquity on modern European thought. Anthony Ossa-Richardson shows how the study of the oracles influenced, and was influenced by, some of the most significant developments in early modernity, such as the Christian humanist recovery of ancient religion, confessional polemics, Deist and libertine challenges to religion, antiquarianism and early archaeology, Romantic historiography, and spiritualism. Ossa-Richardson examines the different views of the oracles since the Renaissance--that they were the work of the devil, or natural causes, or the fraud of priests, or finally an organic element of ancient Greek society. The range of discussion on the subject, as he demonstrates, is considerably more complex than has been realized before: hundreds of scholars, theologians, and critics commented on the oracles, drawing on a huge variety of intellectual contexts to frame their beliefs. In a central chapter, Ossa-Richardson interrogates the landmark dispute on the oracles between Bernard de Fontenelle and Jean-François Baltus, challenging Whiggish assumptions about the mechanics of debate on the cusp of the Enlightenment. With erudition and an eye for detail, he argues that, on both sides of the controversy, to speak of the ancient oracles in early modernity was to speak of one's own historical identity as a Christian.

Author: Alfred Rupert Hall
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780198503644
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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This new work by one of this century's most eminent Newtonian scholars - Rupert Hall - brings together for the first time the early eighteenth century biographical notices of Sir Isaac Newton. The centrepiece of the book is a brand new translation of Paolo Frisi's biography, the firstpublished on Newton in 1778. Also included are the biographies by Fontenelle (1727), Thomas Birch (1738), Charles Hutton (1795), and John Conduitt. Each translation is accompanied by a commentary by Professor Hall. A brief biography and a bibliography of Newton have also been included for thereader. This book will be an extremely valuable addition to the works on Newton, and provide a fascinating text for historians of science

Author: Charles B. Paul
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520415175
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Author: J.B. Shank
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022650932X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
We have grown accustomed to the idea that scientific theories are embedded in their place and time. But in the case of the development of mathematical physics in eighteenth-century France, the relationship was extremely close. In Before Voltaire, J.B. Shank shows that although the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687 exerted strong influence, the development of calculus-based physics is better understood as an outcome that grew from French culture in general. Before Voltaire explores how Newton’s ideas made their way not just through the realm of French science, but into the larger world of society and culture of which Principia was an intertwined part. Shank also details a history of the beginnings of calculus-based mathematical physics that integrates it into the larger intellectual currents in France at the time, including the Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns, the emergence of wider audiences for science, and the role of the newly reorganized Royal Academy of Sciences. The resulting book offers an unprecedented cultural history of one the most important and influential elements of Enlightenment science.