IMS Logo Banner
  Institute for Medieval Studies
 

 

 

Past Seminars

Home Academics Events
Upper Image

 

Weekend Seminar
on
Medieval Science and Medicine

2000

Studies in Medieval Mathematical Science:
Optics and Astronom
y
April 24 - 25, 2000
Anthropology Building 163 and Student Union Building, Room 250



The History of Science as a discipline has not reached out sufficiently to the civic community nor to scientists, who in many ways are a natural constituency for this material. This series of talks on Medieval Mathematical Sciences seeks to reach out to both groups by presenting a public lecture on science and religion on Monday, 24 April 2000, and a series of four lectures in a seminar format that are meant as an attempt to reopen the conversation between scientists and the historians of science.

The most recent appraisal of medieval culture is that the Middle Ages formed the basis for the Modern Age, in areas ranging from the establishment of the university, the codification of common law, the development of business law and ethics, to the establishment of the first secular school of medicine, and the foundation and development of scientific disciplines. Among specialists, the notion that the Middle Ages had a scientific tradition of some significance is not quite one hundred years old. The research of the last fifty years in particular has uncovered a host of contributions, dispelling the deeply-ingrained stereotypes of the contrast between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Middle Ages coincide with the birth of two crucial institutions for the growth of science: the university and the observatory. The public lecture on Monday night, April 24th at 7PM and the seminar talks all day Tuesday, April 25th are studies on the foundations of optics and astronomy in the Middle Ages.


The Lecturers

David C. Lindberg, Hilldale Professor at the University of Wisconsin, began his academic career in the sciences, earning B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics, and moved into the history and philosophy of science for his Ph.D. receiving his degree in 1965 from Indiana University. One of his early specialties was the history of medieval and early modern optics, especially theories of vision; he has edited and translated medieval optical texts, including the standard medieval university textbook (the Perspectiva communis of John Pecham) and an influential book on the propagation of images by Roger Bacon. In 1976, he published the definitive book on theories of vision, Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler.

More recently , Lindberg has turned his attention to problems of science and religion in the Middle Ages, publishing a variety of articles on the subject and co-editing a book entitled God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. And finally, Lindberg has addressed many of the broader issues in the history of medieval science in his Science in the Middle Ages and his The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450.

Lindberg has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been a member of the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). He is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and membre effectif of the Academie internationale d'histoire des sciences.

F. Jamil Ragep received his undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is currently associate professor of the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches courses on the history of ancient, medieval and early modern science. His primary research is focused on science in Islamic civilization as well as the sources and influence of that science. He is the author of a major study dealing with Islamic astronomy [Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's Memoir on Astronomy (al- Tadhkira fi `ilm al-hay'a). 2 vols. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993] and the co-editor (with S. P. Ragep) of a collection of essays on the transmission of science between cultures [Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Premodern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996]. He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, most recently a National Science Foundation grant to complete an edition, translation, and study of two Persian astronomical treatises; he has also been designated the winner of the prestigious Kuwait Prize, which is awarded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. From 1999 until 2003, he will direct the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Program at the University of Oklahoma, which will award six postdoctoral fellowships to promote the study of scientific exchanges and interactions between Islam and Europe from 1300 to 1800.

Michael H. Shank is Professor of History of Science and a Senior Member of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches the history of science from antiquity through the early modern period, and for the Integrated Liberal Studies program, a small-enrolment honors course entitled "PreCopernican Astronomy and Cosmology in Cross- Cultural Perspective." His main research interests center on natural philosophy, astronomy, and cosmology in late medieval Europe (1300 to 1500), with a special focus on these traditions at University of Vienna. He is currently co-editing, with David C. Lindberg, volume 2 (The Middle Ages) of The Cambridge History of Science (Cambridge University Press).


Schedule


Monday, 24 April 2000, 7 PM, Anthropology 163
"Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Medieval Church
"
Professor David C. Lindberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison

The stereotypical account of medieval science presents it as a failed opportunity of a thousand years' duration, owing to the overbearing presence of an oppressive church, which valued religious authority above personal experience and rational activity, thereby snuffing out the faint sparks of scientific creativity that had survived the barbarian invasions of late antiquity. However, the reality of the Middle Ages was quite different from this, for critical thought about the natural world and theories to account for natural phenomena were staples of instruction in the medieval universities, of which the church was a major patron. This lecture will use the career of Roger Bacon, 13th-century Franciscan friar, as a vehicle for exploring the nature and strength of the medieval scientific enterprise and its relationship to the church and its theology.

Tuesday, 25 April 2000, 9:30-10:45 AM, Student Union Building 250 B & C
"Roger Bacon and the Ancient Optical Tradition"
Professor David C. Lindberg, University of Wisconsin, Madison

This lecture will examine the actual scientific work of the same Roger Bacon who figured as a representative of religious attitudes toward the natural sciences in the opening lecture of this series on Monday, 24 April. The present lecture focuses on Roger Bacon as a scientist. The scientific subject that Bacon knew best was optics, and he knew it better than any other scholar in the Latin West before the sixteenth century. The lecture will reveal both the scope of optical knowledge in Latin Europe (including light, vision, mirrors, and refracting devices) and Bacon's particular contribution to it.

Tuesday, 25 April 2000, 11:00-12:15, Student Union Building 250 B & C
"From Bacon to Regiomontanus: The Late Medieval Latin Background to Copernicus."

Professor Michael H. Shank, University of Wisconsin, Madison

This talk highlights the Latin astronomical and cosmological traditions from Roger Bacon to the controversies in the generation before Copernicus, with special focus on the importance of Johannes Regiomontanus (1436-1476) as both a theoretician and a printer.

Tuesday, 25 April 2000, 02:00 - 03:15, Student Union Building 250 B & C
"Astronomical Modeling in Islam: The Mathematical and Physical Background
of the Copernican Revolution"

Professor F. Jamil Ragep, University of Oklahoma

Islamic astronomers inherited a rich ancient tradition of mathematical astronomy and physical cosmology from Greek, Persian, and Indian sources. Though the Greek tradition would eventually prevail, it was subject to a number of mathematical and philosophical criticisms that eventually led to alternative astronomical models for explaining the motions of the planets as well as new conceptualizations of astronomy itself. Both types of innovations reached Europe and had profound influences on the astronomy of Copernicus and other early modern astronomers. This paper will deal with these Islamic transformations of ancient astronomy and discuss some of the ways in which they affected the rise of early modern astronomy in Europe.

Tuesday, 25 April 2000, 3:30-4:45, Student Union Building 250 B & C
"The cultural context of fifteenth-century astronomy in Piero della Francesca's
`Flagellation of Christ' "

Professor Michael H. Shank, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Piero della Francesca's `Flagellation of Christ' is a very famous and much contested later fifteenth-century painting. Building on and emending Carlo Ginzburg's interpretation of this work, Shank will argue that the painting reflects in part the aftermath of an important astronomical and patronage controversy that pitted George of Trebizond against Cardinal Bessarion. Although this paper will be largely art historical, the astronomical controversy in the background reinforces themes from Shank's Monday morning paper and illuminates the larger cultural context of fifteenth-century astronomy.

sponsored in part by
the UNM Chemistry, Physics and Astronomy and Mathematics and Statistics departments,

 

Institute for Medieval Studies
University of New Mexico
2045 Mesa Vista Hall | (505) 277-2252 | medinst@unm.edu