Science Archive
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Saltpetre in medieval gunpowder: Calcium or Potassium Nitrate?
Posted on February 4, 2015 | No CommentsUntil recently, it has been accepted that the formulation of gunpowder has always been based on variable mixtures of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate. This has recently been challenged. -
A Portal to the Universe: The Astrolabe as a Site of Exchange in Medieval and Early Modern Knowledge
Posted on January 21, 2015 | No CommentsThis essay analyzes the astrolabe and its ability to transfer ideas and culture across traditional geographic boundaries, from the perspective of Europe in the Medieval and Early Modern eras. -
Leonardo da Vinci’s Study of Light and Optics: A Synthesis of Fields in The Last Supper
Posted on January 20, 2015 | No CommentsLeonardo da Vinci’s preoccupation with the natural world led him to the fields of optics and astronomy. -
Assessment of early-modern observations of comets and supernovae: Focus on pre-telescopic European astrometric and physical data
Posted on November 16, 2014 | No CommentsIt will be worth while in this investigation to inquire whether comets have the same nature as the planets and stars ... A comet seems to have certain things in common with them: rising and setting, the same appearance, although a comet is scattered and extends farther. It is also fiery and bright. And so, if all planets are earthy bodies, comets will also have the same condition. ~ Seneca -
High-Tech Feudalism: Warrior Culture and Science Fiction TV
Posted on November 9, 2014 | No Comments"Richard ΠΙ with aliens" is how Cornell (102) describes "Sins of the Father," an episode of Star Trek: TheNext Generation (hereafter TNG) in which the Klingon warrior Worf, son of Mogh, seeks to restore his family's honour by exposing and challenging those responsible for falsely accusing his dead father of treason to the Klingon Empire. -
Remediating Viking Origins: Genetic Code as Archival Memory of the Remote Past
Posted on October 17, 2014 | No CommentsIn this article we explore how the remote past is made relevant in the present for participants in a study of population genetics in the UK. -
The Relationship of Light and Colour in Medieval Thought and Imagination
Posted on October 16, 2014 | No CommentsThe primary point of access for medieval thought concerning visual experience was theology; an overarching set of beliefs concerning the divine significance of light (lux) in accordance with the creation of the world at God’s utterance presented in the first chapter of Genesis. -
Daily Weather Observations in Sixteenth-Century Europe
Posted on September 14, 2014 | No CommentsThirty-two weather diaries written in astronomical calendars in central Europe in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are presented and discussed. -
Ten Medieval Inventions that Changed the World
Posted on August 31, 2014 | No CommentsTen Inventions from the Middle Ages that have had lasting importance, even to the present-day. -
Northern Renaissance? Burgundy And Netherlandish Art In Fifteenth-Century Europe
Posted on August 25, 2014 | No CommentsEveryone who has studied medieval or modern history knows that the periodisation of the eras on either side of the Renaissance provides much food for thought. This contribution aims irst to address the usefulness of the widespread concept of the ‘Northern Renaissance’. -
From Sin to Science: Astrological Explanations for the Black Death, 1347-1350
Posted on August 16, 2014 | No CommentsFew survivors of the plague’s horrors could have remained indifferent to debates over its ultimate cause. The frequent evocation of astrology in these debates helped to increase the circulation of astrological ideas in the later fourteenth century, and contributed to the wider vogue they enjoyed during the early modern period -
A New Set of Fourteenth Century Planetary Observations
Posted on July 27, 2014 | No CommentsThe Astronomy of Levi ben Gerson (d.1344) is unusual for recording 45 observations he made of planetary longitudes and latitudes that are presented here for the first time. -
An Introduction to the Mechanical Arts in the Middle Ages
Posted on June 19, 2014 | No CommentsI plan to present the mechanical arts as they stood in medieval intellectual thought. -
Wax or wane? Insect perspectives on human environmental interactions
Posted on May 19, 2014 | No CommentsThe sites discussed in this paper include a range of sites investigated on national road schemes and other development projects across Ireland, covering a long time-span from the Neolithic period through to the medieval period. -
The Cyrurgia of Albucasis and other works, 1500
Posted on April 12, 2014 | No CommentsFour surgical treatises, printed in the last year of the fifteenth century, make up the oldest illustrated printed book in the Sibbald Library. The second one, the Cyrurgia of Albucasis, is the most interesting and I shall deal only briefly with the others. -
Quasicrystals in Medieval Islamic Architecture
Posted on March 28, 2014 | No CommentsQuasicrystal patterns have remarkable properties: they do not repeat periodically, and have special symmetry---and were not understood in the West until the 1970s. -
A Medieval Multiverse
Posted on March 26, 2014 | No CommentsIdeas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues. -
Medieval Magic Tricks
Posted on March 23, 2014 | No CommentsHow to turn water into wine, make a cross turn by itself, or have worms appear on cooked meat - some fun medieval magic tricks! -
Sickness in the Nidaros Cathedral?
Posted on March 14, 2014 | No CommentsUp towards the ceiling vault of the Nidaros Cathedral, a number of artworks are hidden from public view. Many of the stone sculptures portray mythological animals and other scary creatures. In such company, one would imagine that human faces were also intended to evoke fear and anguish. Do they depict people with diseases? -
The fire that comes from the eye
Posted on February 28, 2014 | No CommentsOne of the earliest ideas about vision is that it depends on light that streams out of the eye and detects surrounding objects. This view was attacked in its own time and finally disproved more than 2000 years later. -
Voynich Manuscript partially decoded, text is not a hoax, scholar finds
Posted on February 20, 2014 | No CommentsA Professor in Applied Linguistics believes he has decoded a few words from the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, a 600-year old work that has baffled scholars for the last hundred years. -
Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers’ locomotor performance
Posted on February 10, 2014 | No CommentsOur findings can predict age-associated decline in Medieval soldiers’ physical performance, and have potential implications in understanding the outcomes of past European military battles. -
‘Royal’ pediculosis in Renaissance Italy: lice in the mummy of the King of Naples Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467-1496)
Posted on February 3, 2014 | No CommentsPediculosis seems to have afflicted humans since the most ancient times and lice have been found in several ancient human remains. Examination of the head hair and pubic hair of the artificial mummy of Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467-1496), King of Naples, revealed a double infestation with two different species of lice... -
Anesthesia Drugs in the Medieval Muslim Era
Posted on January 25, 2014 | No CommentsIn the Middle Ages, Christian Europe was in a state of intellectual stagnation and the theological doctrine that pain serves God's purpose and must not be alleviated militated against the improvement in methods of narcosis. Nuland points out that the Middle Ages in Europe were dark ages so far as advances in the pharmacology of anesthesia were concerned. -
Stature and frailty during the Black Death: the effect of stature on risks of epidemic mortality in London, A.D. 1348-1350
Posted on January 4, 2014 | No CommentsRecent research has shown that pre-existing health condition affected an individual ’ s risk of dying duringthe 14th-century Black Death. However, a previous study of the effect of adult stature on risk of mortality during the epidemic failed to find a relationship between the two; this result is perhaps surprising given the well-documented inverse association between stature and mortality in human populations.
