A “Practique Discipline”? Mathematical Arts in John Blagrave's<i>The Mathematical Jewel</i>(1585)

Taylor, Katie

doi:10.1177/002182861004100304

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

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‘Sundials and Other Cosmographical Instruments’: Historical Categories and Historians’ Categories in the Study of Mathematical Instruments and Disciplines

Mosley¹

2019

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science

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In 1635, the Scots-born Jesuit Hugh Sempill published a twelve-book text on the mathematical disciplines. 1 Sempill devoted book seven of this work to the subject of cosmography; subsequent books consider what he described as the constituent elemental and celestial parts of that discipline, namely geography (book eight), hydrography and meteorology (book nine), astronomy (book ten), and astrology and calendrics (books eleven and twelve). Chapter eleven of book ten is entitled 'Of Sundials and Other Cosmographical Instruments'. 2 This one chapter, easily overlooked amid the wealth of material regarding the mathematical disciplines in the early modern period, is of considerable interest to historians of science and curators of scientific instruments. At first sight, it constitutes an extraordinary vindication of the claim, advanced by former Whipple Museum Curator Jim Bennett, that sundials were cosmographical devices in the long sixteenth century. 3 Bennett presents the Renaissance discipline of cosmography as a key to unlocking the true meaning of these objects, all too frequently understood merely as time-telling devices.

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‘Sundials and Other Cosmographical Instruments’: Historical Categories and Historians’ Categories in the Study of Mathematical Instruments and Disciplines

Mosley¹

2019

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science

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The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

Jardine

2020

BJHS Themes

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Early modern books about mathematical instruments are typically well illustrated and contain detailed instructions on how to make and use the tools they describe. Readers approached these texts with a desire to extract information – and sometimes even to extract illustrations which could be repurposed as working instruments. To focus on practical approaches to these texts is to bring the category of ‘making’ to the fore. But here care needs to be taken about who could make what, about the rhetoric of craft, and about the technique of working with diagrams and images. I argue that we should read claims about making instruments cautiously, but that, conversely, we should be inquisitive and open-minded when it comes to the potential uses of printed diagrams in acquiring skill and knowledge: these could be worked on directly, or cut out or copied and turned into working instruments. Books were sites of mathematical practice, and in certain disciplines this was central to learning through doing.

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Training the Intelligent Eye: Understanding Illustrations in Early Modern Astronomy Texts

Crowther

Barker

2013

Isis

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Throughout the early modern period, the most widely read astronomical textbooks were Johannes de Sacrobosco's De sphaera and the Theorica planetarum, ultimately in the new form introduced by Georg Peurbach. This essay argues that the images in these texts were intended to develop an "intelligent eye." Students were trained to transform representations of specific heavenly phenomena into moving mental images of the structure of the cosmos. Only by learning the techniques of mental visualization and manipulation could the student "see" in the mind's eye the structure and motions of the cosmos. While anyone could look up at the heavens, only those who had acquired the intelligent eye could comprehend the divinely created order of the universe. Further, the essay demonstrates that the visual program of the Sphaera and Theorica texts played a significant and hitherto unrecognized role in later scientific work. Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler all utilized the same types of images in their own texts to explicate their ideas about the cosmos.

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A “Practique Discipline”? Mathematical Arts in John Blagrave'sThe Mathematical Jewel(1585)

Cited by 4 publications

References 12 publications

‘Sundials and Other Cosmographical Instruments’: Historical Categories and Historians’ Categories in the Study of Mathematical Instruments and Disciplines

‘Sundials and Other Cosmographical Instruments’: Historical Categories and Historians’ Categories in the Study of Mathematical Instruments and Disciplines

The book as instrument: craft and technique in early modern practical mathematics

Training the Intelligent Eye: Understanding Illustrations in Early Modern Astronomy Texts

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