Violet Moller
autor
The Map of Knowledge
'A lovely debut from a gifted young author. Violet Moller brings to life the ways in which knowledge reached us from antiquity to the present day in a book that is as delightful as it is readable.' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads
In The Map of Knowledge Violet Moller traces the journey taken by the ideas of three of the greatest scientists of antiquity - Euclid, Galen and Ptolemy - through seven cities and over a thousand years. In it, we follow them from sixth-century Alexandria to ninth-century Baghdad, from Muslim Cordoba to Catholic Toledo, from Salerno's medieval medical school to Palermo, capital of Sicily's vibrant mix of cultures, and - finally - to Venice, where that great merchant city's printing presses would enable Euclid's geometry, Ptolemy's system of the stars and Galen's vast body of writings on medicine to spread even more widely.
In tracing these fragile strands of knowledge from century to century, from east to west and north to south, Moller also reveals the web of connections between the Islamic world and Christendom, connections that would both preserve and transform astronomy, mathematics and medicine from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
Vividly told and with a dazzling cast of characters, The Map of Knowledge is an evocative, nuanced and vibrant account of our common intellectual heritage.
Predpredaj
24,95 €
Inside the Stargazers Palace
Enter the mysterious world of sixteenth-century science, where astronomers and alchemists shared laboratories...
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus declared the earth revolved around the Sun, overturning centuries of scholastic presumption. A new age was coming into view - one guided by observation, technology and logic.
But omens and elixirs did not disappear from the sixteenth-century laboratory. Charms and potions could still be found nestled between glistening brass instruments and leather-bound tomes. The line between the natural and supernatural remained porous, yet to be defined.
From the icy Danish observatory of Tycho Brahe, to the smoky, sulphur-stained workshop of John Dee, Violet Moller tours the intellectual heart of early European science. Exploring its rich, multidisciplinary culture, Inside the Stargazer's Palace reveals a dazzling forgotten world, where all knowledge, no matter how arcane, could be pursued in good faith.
Vypredané
18,95 €
Inside the Stargazers Palace
In 1506 a comet appears above Augsburg. As the astronomer Johann Virdung explains, it heralds conflict, the destruction of crops and the death of kings. He concludes his theories with a poem. In 1680 Isaac Newton peers at a comet through a telescope for the first time. He calculates its orbit and distance from the Sun. Of its meaning, he says nothing. No poetry ensues.
Violet Moller takes us through a centuries-long quest for knowledge of the earth and the heavens. In Louvain, Gerard Mercator engraves globes for the Habsburg Emperor, but only narrowly escapes death for heresy. Tycho Brahe catalogues stars on the island of Hven and keeps up a prospering practice in alchemy. In opulent palaces and bustling workshops, the modern astronomical endeavour is born.
Vypredané
24,95 €
