The Genesis of the Copernican World PDF Download

Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262022675
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 838

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Book Description
This major work by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg is a monumental rethinking of the significance of the Copernican revolution for our understanding of modernity.

Author: Arne Hessenbruch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134263015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 986

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Book Description
The Reader's Guide to the History of Science looks at the literature of science in some 550 entries on individuals (Einstein), institutions and disciplines (Mathematics), general themes (Romantic Science) and central concepts (Paradigm and Fact). The history of science is construed widely to include the history of medicine and technology as is reflected in the range of disciplines from which the international team of 200 contributors are drawn.

Author: Thomas S. Kuhn
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674171039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
An account of the Copernican Revolution, focusing on the significance of the plurality of the revolution which encompassed not only mathematical astronomy, but also conceptual changes in cosmology, physics, philosophy, and religion.

Author: William T. Vollmann
Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
ISBN: 9780393329186
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
An analysis of the astronomer's pivotal sixteenth-century work traces how his challenge to beliefs about an Earth-centric solar system had a profound influence on the ways in which humanity understands itself and the universe.

Author: Hans Blumenberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501747991
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
History, Metaphors, and Fables collects the central writings by Hans Blumenberg and covers topics such as on the philosophy of language, metaphor theory, non-conceptuality, aesthetics, politics, and literary studies. This landmark volume demonstrates Blumenberg's intellectual breadth and gives an overview of his thematic and stylistic range over four decades. Blumenberg's early philosophy of technology becomes tangible, as does his critique of linguistic perfectibility and conceptual thought, his theory of history as successive concepts of reality", his anthropology, or his studies of literature. History, Metaphors, Fables allows readers to discover a master thinker whose role in the German intellectual post-war scene can hardly be overestimated.

Author: John Banville
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030781713X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes a novel set in sixteenth-century Europe about an obscure cleric who is preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe—while being haunted by his malevolent brother and threatened by the conspiracies raging around him and his ideas. Sixteenth-century Europe is teeming with change and controversy: wars are being waged by princes and bishops and the repercussions of Luther are being felt through a convulsing Germany. In a remote corner of Poland a modest canon is practicing medicine and studying the heavens, preparing a theory that will shatter the medieval view of the universe. In this astonishing work of historical imagination, John Banville offers a vivid portrait of a man of painful reticence. For, in a world that is equal parts splendor and barbarism, an obscure cleric who seeks “the secret music of the universe” poses a most devastating threat.

Author: Elizabeth Brient
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 9780813210896
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Most scholars would agree that there is an epochal threshold between the world of the Middle Ages and the modern world. Agreement on the nature and dynamic structure of that threshold is harder to come by. Hans Blumenberg's original and compelling account of the transition from medieval to modern, given in his 1966 work The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, has received wide attention. Elizabeth Brient begins her own account of the transition with an extensive, critical assessment of central aspects of Blumenberg's work. She elucidates his "dialogical" method of historical explanation, then discusses the shortcomings of his defense of the "legitimacy" of modernity. The transition to the modern world is marked by the process of making infinite the finite medieval cosmos. Whereas Blumenberg focused on the spatial infinitization of the universe, Brient claims that the process must be understood intensively as well as extensively. In the now-infinite universe of the new science, the problem of finding a measure for man's self-assertive activity, and for human knowledge, comes to the fore. The second half of the book focuses on the way in which this difficulty is addressed with conceptual resources developed in the tradition of late medieval Neoplatonism, in particular in the speculative thought of Meister Eckart and Nicholas of Cusa. Specific attention is given to the way in which Cusanus' notion of the immanence of the infinite in the finite responds to the need for a regulative ideal for human knowing. This is the first book-length treatment of Blumenberg to appear in English and will be a most welcome resource for readers engaged by debates concerning the status of modernity. It will be of equal interest to students of Eckhart and Cusanus, and to those generally concerned with the transition between the medieval and the modern world. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Brient is Assistant Professor of philosophy at The University of Georgia. PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Blumenberg could not have wished for a more reverent critique of his achievements or a more exacting textual exegesis regarding the sources of their philosophical content, all written in a lucid style that is forthright in the defense of the depth of thought during the Middle Ages but also pleasing in its subtle irony with respect to Blumenberg's and the author's own metaphysical creed."- Walter F. Veit, Speculum "Brient's analysis of Blumenberg's philosophy sheds significant light in the debate concerning modernity. . . ." --Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona, German Studies Review

Author: Caleb Scharf
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 1846147131
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Though the concept of "the universe" suggests the containment of everything, the latest ideas in cosmology hint that our universe may be just one of a multitude of others-a single slice of an infinity of parallel realities. In The Copernicus Complex, the renowned astrophysicist and author Caleb Scharf takes us on a cosmic adventure like no other, from tiny microbes within the Earth to distant exoplanets and beyond, asserting that the age-old Copernican principle is in need of updating. As Scharf argues, when Copernicus proposed that the Earth was not the fixed point at the center of the known universe (and therefore we are not unique), he set in motion a colossal scientific juggernaut, forever changing our vision of nature. But the principle has never been entirely true-we do live at a particular time, in a particular location, under particular circumstances. To solve this conundrum we must put aside our Copernican worldview and embrace the possibility that we are in a delicate balance between mediocrity and significance, order and chaos. Weaving together cutting-edge science and classic storytelling, historical accounts and speculations on what the future holds, The Copernicus Complex presents a compelling argument for what our true cosmic status is, and proposes a way forward for the ultimate quest: to determine life's abundance not just across this universe but across all realities.

Author: W. Woodruff
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230554660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
By investigating the major changes of world history during the past five hundred years, this book provides the necessary global perspective to understand the geopolitical and geoeconomic changes facing us today. We have reached a crucial transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. The need to take a world view - which this book provides - has become acute.

Author: William Woodruff
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349266639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
By investigating the major changes in world history during the past five hundred years, Woodruff explains to what extent world forces have been responsible for shaping both the past and the present. This extraordinary book tells of the rise and fall of empires and civilizations; it recounts the growing communality and interdependence of nations; it shows how so many problems of the contemporary world are the legacy of an unprecedented era of western domination - the end of which was hastened by the two world wars. In explaining how the world has come to be what it is, the author examines the implications surrounding the end of the cold war, the unravelling of communism in Eastern Europe, and the growing challenge of the non-western world to western superiority. It is Woodruff's belief that we have reached a crucial transitional stage in world history in which the world will no longer be shaped by the single image of western modernism, but increasingly by the image of all cultures and civilizations. With the shift of geopolitical and geoeconomic power to Asia, and with the growing world-wide influence of religious fundamentalism and revolutionary nationalism, the need for a global perspective has become acute. A Concise History of the Modern World encompasses the learning and the insights gleaned by the author from a life-time career as a world historian.