Fifty Years of Medieval Technology and Social Change

Fifty Years of Medieval Technology and Social Change PDF

Author: Steven A. Walton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1317135393

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume brings together a series of papers at Kalamazoo as well as some contributed papers inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962), a slim study which catalyzed the study of technology in the Middle Ages in the English-speaking world. While the initial reviews and decades-long fortune of the volume have been varied, it is still in print and remains a touchstone of an idea and a time. The contributors to the volume, therefore, both investigate the book itself and its fate, and look at new research furthering and inspired by White’s work. The book opens with an introduction surveying White’s career, with a bibliography of his work, as well as some opening thoughts on the study of medieval technology in the last fifty years. Three papers then deal explicitly with the reception and longevity of his work and its impact on medieval studies more generally. Then five papers look at new cast studies areas where White’s work and approach has had a particular impact, namely, medieval technology studies and medieval rural/ ecological studies.

The Worlds of Villard de Honnecourt: The Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments

The Worlds of Villard de Honnecourt: The Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-12-12

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 9004529101

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book charts the past, present, and future of studies on medieval technology, art, and craft practices. Inspired by Villard’s enigmatic portfolio of artistic and engineering drawings, this collection explores the multiple facets of medieval building represented in this manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093). The book’s eighteen essays and two introductions showcase traditional and emergent methods for the study of medieval craft, demonstrating how these diverse approaches collectively amplify our understanding about how medieval people built, engineered, and represented their world. Contributions range from the analysis of words and images in Villard’s portfolio, to the close analysis of masonry, technological marvels, and gothic architecture, pointing the way toward new avenues for future scholarship to explore. Contributors are: Mickey Abel, Carl F. Barnes Jr., Robert Bork, George Brooks, Michael T. Davis, Amy Gillette, Erik Gustafson, Maile S. Hutterer, John James, William Sayers, Ellen Shortell, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Richard Alfred Sundt, Sarah Thompson, Steven A. Walton, Maggie M. Williams, Kathleen Wilson Ruffo, and Nancy Wu.

A Rosetta Key For History

A Rosetta Key For History PDF

Author: Michael A. Susko

Publisher: AllrOneofUs Publishing

Published: 2022-11-10

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This work explores the use of a time chart based on generations as a way to understand history. A sole reliance on yearly dating tends to obscure the historical reality and deter us from further exploration. However, patterns are revealed if we number generations, and we become intrigued by the connections and hypotheses raised. The author uses 15-year intervals to date events and mark when people turn 30 and tend to enter history. The 15-year generational interval was first used by the medieval historian, Bede, and later advocated by Ortega E Gasset, a leading Spanish philosopher of the 20th century. In brief, the phases of history found are: 1) A partly invisible beginning phase; 0-15 generations; 2) An establishment phase at 15/20 generations; 3) A consolidating and opening up stage at 30 generations; 4) A crisis and creativity phase at 40 generations; 5) An empire and inclusionary phase at 50 generations; and 6) Renewal or rigidification phase at the 60 generational node. Importantly, special attention is given to the often neglected 30th generational period, in which an openess to beauty and light prevade. Interestingly, these phases also resonate with the human life cycle. The tour of cultures covered includes ancient Egypt, Israel-Judah, Rome, and the Medieval-Modern. Taking us into contemporary times, America/United States is addressed in a second volume to this work.You are invited to go on an intriguing journey in which generational patterning becomes a Rosetta key for understanding history.

Agriculture in the Middle Ages

Agriculture in the Middle Ages PDF

Author: Del Sweeney

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 151280777X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Explores the cultural framework within which changes in agricultural technology and economic organization occur and the ways in which changes in the social fabric influence attitudes toward rural work and the peasantry.

The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World

The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World PDF

Author: John Peter Oleson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-01-31

Total Pages: 896

ISBN-13: 0199720142

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Nearly every aspect of daily life in the Mediterranean world and Europe during the florescence of the Greek and Roman cultures is relevant to the topics of engineering and technology. This volume highlights both the accomplishments of the ancient societies and the remaining research problems, and stimulates further progress in the history of ancient technology. The subject matter of the book is the technological framework of the Greek and Roman cultures from ca. 800 B.C. through ca. A.D. 500 in the circum-Mediterranean world and Northern Europe. Each chapter discusses a technology or family of technologies from an analytical rather than descriptive point of view, providing a critical summation of our present knowledge of the Greek and Roman accomplishments in the technology concerned and the evolution of their technical capabilities over the chronological period. Each presentation reviews the issues and recent contributions, and defines the capacities and accomplishments of the technology in the context of the society that used it, the available "technological shelf," and the resources consumed. These studies introduce and synthesize the results of excavation or specialized studies. The chapters are organized in sections progressing from sources (written and representational) to primary (e.g., mining, metallurgy, agriculture) and secondary (e.g., woodworking, glass production, food preparation, textile production and leather-working) production, to technologies of social organization and interaction (e.g., roads, bridges, ships, harbors, warfare and fortification), and finally to studies of general social issues (e.g., writing, timekeeping, measurement, scientific instruments, attitudes toward technology and innovation) and the relevance of ethnographic methods to the study of classical technology. The unrivalled breadth and depth of this volume make it the definitive reference work for students and academics across the spectrum of classical studies.

Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Mathematical Practitioners and the Transformation of Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Europe PDF

Author: Lesley B. Cormack

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 3319494309

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book argues that we can only understand transformations of nature studies in the Scientific Revolution if we take seriously the interaction between practitioners (those who know by doing) and scholars (those who know by thinking). These are not in opposition, however. Theory and practice are end points on a continuum, with some participants interested only in the practical, others only in the theoretical, and most in the murky intellectual and material world in between. It is this borderland where influence, appropriation, and collaboration have the potential to lead to new methods, new subjects of enquiry, and new social structures of natural philosophy and science. The case for connection between theory and practice can be most persuasively drawn in the area of mathematics, which is the focus of this book. Practical mathematics was a growing field in early modern Europe and these essays are organised into three parts which contribute to the debate about the role of mathematical practice in the Scientific Revolution. First, they demonstrate the variability of the identity of practical mathematicians, and of the practices involved in their activities in early modern Europe. Second, readers are invited to consider what practical mathematics looked like and that although practical mathematical knowledge was transmitted and circulated in a wide variety of ways, participants were able to recognize them all as practical mathematics. Third, the authors show how differences and nuances in practical mathematics typically depended on the different contexts in which it was practiced: social, cultural, political, and economic particularities matter. Historians of science, especially those interested in the Scientific Revolution period and the history of mathematics will find this book and its ground-breaking approach of particular interest.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes