The Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest PDF Author: Reviel Netz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107014374
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The Archimedes Palimpsest is the name given to a Byzantine prayer-book which was written over a number of earlier manuscripts. This volume provides colour images and transcriptions of three of the texts recovered from it. Pride of place goes to the treatises of Archimedes, including the only Greek version of Floating Bodies, and the unique copies of Method and Stomachion. This transcription provides many different readings from those made by Heiberg from what he termed Codex C in his edition of the works of Archimedes of 1910-1915. Secondly, fragments of two previously unattested speeches by the Athenian orator Hyperides, which are the only Hyperides texts ever to have been found in a codex. Thirdly, a fragment from an otherwise unknown commentary on Aristotle's Categories. In each case advanced image-processing techniques have been used to create the images, in order to make the text underneath legible.

The Archimedes Codex

The Archimedes Codex PDF Author: Reviel Netz
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 078674538X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
At a Christie's auction in October 1998, a battered medieval manuscript sold for two million dollars to an anonymous bidder, who then turned it over to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore for further study. The manuscript was a palimpsest-a book made from an earlier codex whose script had been scraped off and the pages used again. Behind the script of the thirteenth-century monk's prayer book, the palimpsest revealed the faint writing of a much older, tenth-century manuscript. Part archaeological detective story, part science, and part history, The Archimedes Codex tells the extraordinary story of this lost manuscript, from its tenth-century creation in Constantinople to the auction block at Christie's, and how a team of scholars used the latest imaging technology to reveal and decipher the original text. What they found was the earliest surviving manuscript by Archimedes (287 b.c.-212 b.c.), the greatest mathematician of antiquity-a manuscript that revealed, for the first time, the full range of his mathematical genius, which was two thousand years ahead of modern science.

The Archimedes Codex

The Archimedes Codex PDF Author: Reviel Netz
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1780221983
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
The story of the amazing discovery of Archimedes' lost works Drawings and writings by Archimedes, previously thought to have been destroyed, have been uncovered beneath the pages of a 13th-century monk's prayer book. These hidden texts, slowly being retrieved and deciphered by scientists, show that Archimedes' thinking (2,200 years ago) was even ahead of Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Archimedes discovered the value of Pi, he developed the theory of specific gravity and made steps towards the development of calculus. Everything we know about him comes from three manuscripts, two of which have disappeared. The third, currently in the Walters Art Museum, is a palimpsest - the text has been scraped off, the book taken apart and its parchment re-used, in this case as a prayer book. William Noel, the project director, and Reviel Netz, a historian of ancient mathematics, tell the enthralling story of the survival of that prayer book from 1229 to the present, and examine the process of recovering the invaluable text underneath as well as investigating into why that text is so important.

Eureka Man

Eureka Man PDF Author: Alan Hirshfeld
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802719791
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
Many of us know little about Archimedes other than his "Eureka" exclamation upon discovering that he could immerse an object in a full tub of water and measure the spillage to determine the object's weight. That seemingly simple observation not only proved to King Hieron II of Syracuse that a certain amount of silver had been used in what was supposed to be his solid-gold crown, it established the key principles of buoyancy that govern the flotation of hot-air balloons, ships, and denizens of the sea. Archimedes had a profound impact on the development of mathematics and science: from square roots to irrigation devices; planetariums to the stability of ships; polyhedra to pulleys; number systems to levers; the value of pi to the size of the universe. Yet this same cerebral man developed machines of war so fearsome, they might have sprung from a devil's darkest imagination - indeed, weapons that held at bay the greatest army of antiquity. Ironically, Archimedes' reputation swelled to mythic proportions in the ancient world for his feats of engineering: the hand-cranked irrigation device, commonly known as "Archimedes' screw," and his ingenuous use of levers, pulleys, and ropes to pull, single-handedly, a fully laden ship! His treatises, rediscovered after a thousand years of collective amnesia in Europe, guided nascent thinkers out of the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance. Indeed, Archimedes' cumulative record of achievement-both in breadth and sophistication-places him among the exalted ranks of Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein. Eureka Man brings to life for general readers the genius of Archimedes, offering succinct and understandable explanations of some of his more important discoveries and innovations.

The Secret of Our Success

The Secret of Our Success PDF Author: Joseph Henrich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691178437
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Book Description
How our collective intelligence has helped us to evolve and prosper Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe, more than any other species, while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? This book shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence, but in our collective brains—on the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Drawing insights from lost European explorers, clever chimpanzees, mobile hunter-gatherers, neuroscientific findings, ancient bones, and the human genome, Joseph Henrich demonstrates how our collective brains have propelled our species' genetic evolution and shaped our biology. Our early capacities for learning from others produced many cultural innovations, such as fire, cooking, water containers, plant knowledge, and projectile weapons, which in turn drove the expansion of our brains and altered our physiology, anatomy, and psychology in crucial ways. Later on, some collective brains generated and recombined powerful concepts, such as the lever, wheel, screw, and writing, while also creating the institutions that continue to alter our motivations and perceptions. Henrich shows how our genetics and biology are inextricably interwoven with cultural evolution, and how culture-gene interactions launched our species on an extraordinary evolutionary trajectory. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of both our cultural and social natures produce a collective intelligence that explains both our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.

Les Eschéz d'Amours

Les Eschéz d'Amours PDF Author: Gregory Heyworth
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004250700
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

Book Description
This selection comprises the most influential works written or printed by the Iberian Jews in the major centers of the Western Sephardi Diaspora (e.g., the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, England); it includes all genres and reflects both their religious and their secular culture. Many of the editions included in Meyer Kayserling's bibliography are exceedingly rare and are available only in specialized collections of Judaica. The aim of the present selection is to make the Sephardi heritage generally available in order to meet the needs of modern scholarship.

The Mathematics of Infinity

The Mathematics of Infinity PDF Author: Theodore G. Faticoni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111824382X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
Praise for the First Edition ". . . an enchanting book for those people in computer science or mathematics who are fascinated by the concept of infinity."—Computing Reviews ". . . a very well written introduction to set theory . . . easy to read and well suited for self-study . . . highly recommended."—Choice The concept of infinity has fascinated and confused mankind for centuries with theories and ideas that cause even seasoned mathematicians to wonder. The Mathematics of Infinity: A Guide to Great Ideas, Second Edition uniquely explores how we can manipulate these ideas when our common sense rebels at the conclusions we are drawing. Continuing to draw from his extensive work on the subject, the author provides a user-friendly presentation that avoids unnecessary, in-depth mathematical rigor. This Second Edition provides important coverage of logic and sets, elements and predicates, cardinals as ordinals, and mathematical physics. Classic arguments and illustrative examples are provided throughout the book and are accompanied by a gradual progression of sophisticated notions designed to stun readers' intuitive view of the world. With an accessible and balanced treatment of both concepts and theory, the book focuses on the following topics: Logic, sets, and functions Prime numbers Counting infinite sets Well ordered sets Infinite cardinals Logic and meta-mathematics Inductions and numbers Presenting an intriguing account of the notions of infinity, The Mathematics of Infinity: A Guide to Great Ideas, Second Edition is an insightful supplement for mathematics courses on set theory at the undergraduate level. The book also serves as a fascinating reference for mathematically inclined individuals who are interested in learning about the world of counterintuitive mathematics.

Fourier Methods in Imaging

Fourier Methods in Imaging PDF Author: Roger L. Easton Jr.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119991862
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 1005

Book Description
Fourier Methods in Imaging introduces the mathematical tools for modeling linear imaging systems to predict the action of the system or for solving for the input. The chapters are grouped into five sections, the first introduces the imaging “tasks” (direct, inverse, and system analysis), the basic concepts of linear algebra for vectors and functions, including complex-valued vectors, and inner products of vectors and functions. The second section defines "special" functions, mathematical operations, and transformations that are useful for describing imaging systems. Among these are the Fourier transforms of 1-D and 2-D function, and the Hankel and Radon transforms. This section also considers approximations of the Fourier transform. The third and fourth sections examine the discrete Fourier transform and the description of imaging systems as linear "filters", including the inverse, matched, Wiener and Wiener-Helstrom filters. The final section examines applications of linear system models to optical imaging systems, including holography. Provides a unified mathematical description of imaging systems. Develops a consistent mathematical formalism for characterizing imaging systems. Helps the reader develop an intuitive grasp of the most common mathematical methods, useful for describing the action of general linear systems on signals of one or more spatial dimensions. Offers parallel descriptions of continuous and discrete cases. Includes many graphical and pictorial examples to illustrate the concepts. This book helps students develop an understanding of mathematical tools for describing general one- and two-dimensional linear imaging systems, and will also serve as a reference for engineers and scientists
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