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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
51

Margaret Cavendish and Scientific Discourse in Seventeenth-Century England

Bolander, Alisa Curtis 06 May 2004 (has links)
Although the natural philosophy of Margaret Cavendish is eclectic and uncustomary, it offers an important critique of contemporary scientific methods, especially mechanism and experimentalism. As presented in Observations upon Experimental Philosophy and Blazing World, Cavendish's natural philosophy incorporates rationalistic and subjective elements, urging contemporary natural philosophers to recognize that pure objectivity is unattainable through any method of inquiry and that reason is essential in making sense and use of scientific observation. In addition to its scientific implications, Cavendish's three-tiered model of matter presents interesting sociopolitical associations. Through her own use of metaphor and her theoretical fusion of matter and motion, Cavendish confronts the masculinist metaphors and implications of mechanism. Through the dramatization of her model of matter in the narrative Blazing World, Cavendish exposes the theoretical failings of contemporary methods and legitimizes her alternative to pure experimentalism. By envisioning a new planet to place the utopia of Blazing World, Cavendish actively uses the rational functions of the mind, showing that reason and rational matter are above all else in natural philosophy. Although Cavendish's scientific theory in some ways promotes the participation of women in natural philosophy, it becomes complicated as she simultaneously reinforces her social biases and urges a traditional class system with a monarchical government. Cavendish actively separates the gender constraints in philosophical inquiry from the social limitations placed on the lower classes to promote herself and other aristocratic women in the pursuit of natural philosophy, urging that the rational realm, where all sexes are equal, should govern scientific investigation.
52

Concepts of the 'Scientific Revolution': An analysis of the historiographical appraisal of the traditional claims of the science

Onyekachi Nnaji, John 12 June 2013 (has links)
´Scientific revolution´, as a concept, is both ´philosophically general´ and ´historically unique´. Both dual-sense of the term alludes to the occurrence of great changes in science. The former defines the changes in science as a continual process while the latter designate them, particularly, as the ´upheaval´ which took place during the early modern period. This research aims to demonstrate how the historicists´ critique of the justification of the traditional claims of science on the basis of the scientific processes and norms of the 16th and 17th centuries, illustrates the historical/local determinacy of the science claims. It argues that their identification of the contextual and historical character of scientific processes warrants a reconsideration of our notion of the universality of science. It affirms that the universality of science has to be sought in the role of such sources like scientific instruments, practical training and the acquisition of methodological routines / "Revolución científica", como concepto, se refiere a la vez a algo «filosóficamente general» e « históricamente único". Ambos sentidos del término aluden a la ocurrencia de grandes cambios en la ciencia. El primero define los cambios en la ciencia como un proceso continuo, mientras que el último los designa, en particular, como la "transformación", que tuvo lugar durante la Edad Moderna. Esta investigación tiene como objetivo demostrar cómo la crítica de los historicistas a la justificación de las características tradicionales de la ciencia sobre la base de los procesos y normas científicos de los siglos XVI y XVII, ilustra la determinación histórica y local de los atributos de la ciencia. Se argumenta que la identificación del carácter contextual e histórico de los procesos científicos justifica una reconsideración de nuestra noción de la universalidad de la ciencia. Se afirma que la universalidad de la ciencia se ha de buscar en el papel de tales fuentes como instrumentos científicos, la formación práctica y la adquisición de rutinas metodológicas
53

Peter Guthrie Tait : new insights into aspects of his life and work : and associated topics in the history of mathematics

Lewis, Elizabeth Faith January 2015 (has links)
In this thesis I present new insights into aspects of Peter Guthrie Tait's life and work, derived principally from largely-unexplored primary source material: Tait's scrapbook, the Tait–Maxwell school-book and Tait's pocket notebook. By way of associated historical insights, I also come to discuss the innovative and far-reaching mathematics of the elusive Frenchman, C.-V. Mourey. P. G. Tait (1831–1901) F.R.S.E., Professor of Mathematics at the Queen's College, Belfast (1854–1860) and of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1860–1901), was one of the leading physicists and mathematicians in Europe in the nineteenth century. His expertise encompassed the breadth of physical science and mathematics. However, since the nineteenth century he has been unfortunately overlooked—overshadowed, perhaps, by the brilliance of his personal friends, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) and William Thomson (1824–1907), later Lord Kelvin. Here I present the results of extensive research into the Tait family history. I explore the spiritual aspect of Tait's life in connection with The Unseen Universe (1875) which Tait co-authored with Balfour Stewart (1828–1887). I also reveal Tait's surprising involvement in statistics and give an account of his introduction to complex numbers, as a schoolboy at the Edinburgh Academy. A highlight of the thesis is a re-evaluation of C.-V. Mourey's 1828 work, La Vraie Théorie des quantités négatives et des quantités prétendues imaginaires, which I consider from the perspective of algebraic reform. The thesis also contains: (i) a transcription of an unpublished paper by Hamilton on the fundamental theorem of algebra which was inspired by Mourey and (ii) new biographical information on Mourey.
54

Rubens and the Stoic Baroque: Classical Stoic Ethics, Rhetoric, and Natural Philosophy in Rubens’s Style

Nutting, Catherine M. 18 January 2018 (has links)
Rubens is known as a painter; he should also be defined as an art theorist. Following Robert Williams’ theory that Early Modern art became philosophical, I believe that style can connote art theoretical interests and philosophical models, and that in Rubens’s case, these included the classical Stoic. While it would be possible to trace Rubens’s commitment to Stoicism in his subject matter, I investigate it in his style, taking a Baxandalian approach to inferential criticism. I focus on Rubens’s formal choices, his varied brushwork, and his ability to create a vibrant picture plane. My study is divided into chapters on Ethics, Logic, and Physics. In Chapter One I treat Stoic moral philosophy as an influence in the design of Rubens’s paintings, consider similarities between classical and Early Modern interest in viewer/reader response, and argue that Baroque artists could use style to avoid dogma while targeting viewers’ personal transformation. In Chapter Two I focus on Rhetoric, a section of the Stoic philosophy of Logic. Stoic Logic privileged truth: that is, it centred on investigating existing reality. As such, Stoic rhetorical theory and the classical literature influenced by it promoted a style that is complex and nuanced. I relate this to the Early Modern interest in copia, arguing that this includes Rubens’s painterly style which, apropos copia, should be better termed the Abundant Style. In Chapter Three I explore similarities between Stoic Natural Philosophy and the Early Modern artistic interest in the unified visual field. The Stoics defined the natural world as eternally moving and mixing; with force fields, energy, and elements in constant relationships of cause/effect. The Stoic concept of natural sympathy was a notion of material/energetic interrelatedness in which the world was seen as a living body, and the divine inhered in matter. I consider ways that these classical Stoic concepts of transformation, realism, and vivified matter might be discerned in Rubens’s style. / Graduate / 2023-12-14

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