Historiography of Science
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Temps, sciences et empire
Cosmographie et navigation dans les monarchies ibériques au xvi e siècle
Dès la fin du xve siècle les monarchies portugaise et espagnole se lancent au grand large dans un élan de construction impériale qui saisit le globe. Une diversité d’acteurs et de savoirs dont la cosmographie et la navigation sont porteurs de ce processus. Ce dernier transforme à jamais l’image et le concept de la Terre comme espace de l’habitat humain retravaillant les liens entre espace et temps. Pilotes et cosmographes contribuent alors à une reconceptualisation des temporalités et des temps de la Terre. Quels textes ont-ils rédigés et lus quels instruments ont-ils manipulés à cette fin ?
En explorant ces dynamiques à partir d’une pluralité de matériaux le livre embarque le lecteur sur des bateaux naviguant vers les Indes l’invite dans des Casas et des entrepôts portuaires ou dans des universités où résonnent les échos d’une mer transformatrice des connaissances. La création de la chaire de cosmographie à la Casa de la contratación (Séville 1552) et la trajectoire de son premier détenteur Jerónimo de Chaves (1523-1574) servent de « laboratoire » privilégié d’où observer ces problématiques.
Le livre élargit ainsi la manière de comprendre la cosmographie au xvie siècle souvent réduite à son rapport à la cartographie à l’intersection de plusieurs pratiques et savoirs (histoire naturelle théologie astrologie astronomie navigation) et au-delà du clivage « Anciens-Modernes ». En embrassant d’un regard les monarchies ibériques l’ouvrage ancre dans l’Europe méridionale la question plus large de la production des techniques et des sciences à l’époque moderne inscrivant l’espace ibérique dans une première globalisation.
Premodern Translation
Comparative Approaches to Cross-Cultural Transformations
This edited collection offers six essays on translations and their producers and users in premodern societies which explore possibilities for contextualizing and questioning the well-established narratives of translations and translating in history of science and philosophy. To enable such explorations the editors decided to go beyond a conventional focus on Latin and Arabic medieval cultures. Thus a discussion of translation in East Asia that asks questions about the technologies of translation invites readers familiar with Western contexts to reflect on shared cross-cultural practices. Other authors ask new questions concerning mathematical medical or philosophical translations such as the character and the role of ‘submerged’ translations that never made it into any of the traditional histories of translation in medieval societies. A third group of authors offer perspectives on early modern professionals which open up the traditional research on translations to other fields of study and allow us to reflect on changed practices and purposes of translation.
Featuring studies on Old Uyghur translations of Buddhist texts on the fortune of a Latin translation of Arabic mathematics from al-Andalus on Arabic philosophy and the division of the sciences in thirteenth-century Paris and Naples on Albert the Great’s concept of interpretatio as an epistemic practice that combines translation and explanation on translation between classical Arabic and Humanist traditions in early modern Spain and on astronomy in early modern German scholarship this volume offers a unique survey of premodern translations across a variety of languages and disciplines exploring both their technical commonalities and cultural specificities while also addressing the reception of the ideas they transmit.
‘The loss of a minute, is just so much loss of life’
Edward Robinson and Eli Smith, Generators of Change in Holy Land
Perhaps no other Palestine / Holy Land explorer has received as much attention as Edward Robinson the American philologist theologian and historical geographer responsible for laying the foundations for modern historic-geographical study of the Holy Land. Surprisingly to date almost no one has delved into Robinson’s archive to illuminate his Holy Land expeditions the writing of his monumental Biblical Researches and the compilation of his fine maps. Similarly no one has conducted a detailed study of the archive of Eli Smith American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions Beirut missionary and Robinson’s travel companion for the same purposes. Fluent in Arabic and highly familiar with the region and its inhabitants Smith’s contribution to the expedition and to the Biblical Researches was considerable as his archive reveals.
Investigating documents in both Robinson’s and Smith’s archives the author of the present book became quickly convinced that much of the accepted narrative concerning Robinson's Holy Land studies should be re-evaluated and consequently rewritten. Several issues for lack of relevant sources have not yet been addressed by scholars. The story of Robinson and Smith’s expedition and writing of the Biblical Researches that emerges from their extensive correspondence underscores the difficulties they overcame and the accuracy and magnitude of their scholarship in an age bereft of modern technology.
Outsiders and Forerunners
Modern Reason and Historiographical Births of Medieval Philosophy
This book focuses on the emergence and development of philosophical historiography as a university discipline in the 18th and 19th centuries. During that period historians of philosophy evaluated medieval philosophical theories through the lenses of modern leitmotifs and assigned to medieval thinkers positions within an imaginary map of cultural identities based on the juxtaposition of ‘self ’ and ‘other’. Some medieval philosophers were regarded as ‘forerunners’ who had constructively paved the way for modern rationality; whereas others viewed as ‘outsiders’ had contributed to the same effect by way of their struggle against established forms of philosophy. The contributions gathered in this volume each deal with the creative reception of a particular figure in modern history of philosophy. From the 9th century with al-Fārābī to the 16th century these philosophers belong to four historical worlds which have been characterized by European cultural history or have defined themselves as such: the (Jewish-)Arabic world (al-Fārābī Avicenna Maimonides) Latin scholasticism (Roger Bacon Henry of Ghent William of Ockham Marsilius of Padua) medieval lay philosophy (Ramon Lull Petrarch) and Humanism in a broader sense (Nicholas of Cusa Petrus Ramus Andrea Cesalpino).