Science Archive
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The Eternity of the World and Renaissance Historical Thought
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsMedieval and Renaissance controversies over the Aristotelian doctrine of “the eternity of the world” have hitherto been treated as disputes restricted to natural philosophers and theologians. -
Body Mass and Body Mass Index estimation in medieval Switzerland
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of the present study is to test the available BM estimation formulae based on the femoral head breadth (Auerbach and Ruff 2004, Grine et al. 1995, McHenry 1992, Ruff et al. 1991) on skeletal populations from medieval Switzerland and to reconstruct the BM and the BMI within a specific temporal and geographical setting. -
The Trebuchet
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time -
The Use of Gunpowder Weapons in the Wars of the Roses
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsDuring the fourteenth century, while continental gunpowder holdings were largely in local control England's gunpowder weaponry never fell under a similar local control, but was always exclusively a royal possession. -
Observational Archaeoastronomy at Stonehenge: Winter and Summer Solstice Sun Rise and Set Alignments Accurate to 0.2 o in 4000 BP
Posted on December 21, 2012 | No CommentsOur studies since 1980 of Solstice and Equalnight Sun Rise and Set alignments at an ancient site in southern Alberta, the Majorville Medicine Wheel Complex (MMWC), have drawn our attention to Stonehenge (Atkinson 1979; Burl 1976, 1993). While there might have been no ideological or religious similarities between societies in North America and Britain 5000 years ago, we know of no evidence that there was not. Indeed, Sun worship was world-wide at that time. -
An Ecoritical Approach to Chaucer. Representations of the Natural World in the English Literature of the Middle Ages
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe choice to write and present a study of nature in medieval English literature from an ecological perspective has been originated by a personal interest in the urgency of the deep environmental crisis we are faced with and by the drive to expand the eco- oriented study of representations of nature in literature to chronological and spatial areas well beyond those originally typical of ecological criticism. -
Tycho Brahe was not killed by mercury poisoning, tests reveal
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsOne of the most persistent theories has been that he died of mercury poisoning, either because he voluntarily ingested large quantities of mercury for medicinal purposes, or because mercury was used to poison him. -
Why the Scientific Revolution Did Not Take Place in China – or Didn’t It?
Posted on November 11, 2012 | No CommentsWhy, between the first century BC and the fifteenth century AD, Chinese civilization was much more efficient than occidental in applying human natural knowledge to practical human needs -
Science and Religion in the Middle Ages
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsWhy did science and natural philosophy suffer such disparate fates in the two great civilizations of Christendom and Islam? -
Jewish Lightning Rod: Between Magic and Science
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsPeople learned how to “tie up a portion of lightning” only recently. We have no information aboutany experiments of medieval scientists with lightnings, and even the fundamental dictionary of thehistory of science by Mayerhöfer is silent about it. -
Coptic Dress In Egypt: The Social Life Of Medieval Cloth
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsCoptic textiles in most collections present a very rich iconography, somewhat derived from classical traditions, which has also attracted the attention of art historians. Very little of their work, however, has made any headway in our understanding of the contemporaneous meanings of Coptic textile images and other decorations. -
You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsHildegard argues in the beginning of Physica that humans become what they eat. -
Building a Model Astrolabe
Posted on October 15, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper presents a hands-on introduction to the medieval astrolabe, based around a working model which can be constructed from photocopies of the supplied figures. -
Organa doctorum: Gerbert of Aurillac, organbuilder?
Posted on October 11, 2012 | No CommentsHe was born a peasant. Yet, through intelligence, political skill and uncommon good luck he came to be one of the most influential people in the Europe of his time...Pope Sylvester II. -
Solar Eclipses in Medieval Islamic Civilization
Posted on October 8, 2012 | No CommentsIn ancient times, the births and deaths of leaders or dignitaries were often supposed to be associated with celestial omens. However, Islamic theology does not accept that eclipses are indications of events on earth. -
Understanding the Language of Alchemy
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe editing of medieval alchemical texts poses a number of challenges to the modern scholar. -
The Reference Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose
Posted on September 25, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper presents the current status of the project Reference Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose, which pursues the digital editing of hitherto unedited scientific, particularly medical, manuscripts in late Middle English, as well as the compilation of an annotated corpus -
Jewish Collaborators in Alfonso’s Scientific Work
Posted on September 16, 2012 | No CommentsWhat is remarkable about the Jewish translators whose work was sponsored by Alfonso, following an already old tradition of Jewish translation activity, was their concentration almost exclusively on scientific literature and their significant contribution to the development of the Spanish language. -
“A Swarm in July”: Beekeeping Perspectives on the Old English Wið Ymbe Charm
Posted on September 14, 2012 | No CommentsAt the same time, however, their differing responses to the remedy attest both to the variation of beekeeping practices and the multivalence of Wið Ymbe itself. The fact that two beekeepers interviewed within two days and two hundred miles of each other can respond differently to the charm’s advice on swarms suggests that we reevaluate unilateral assertions regarding what the text might have meant across the hundreds of years that we now know as the Anglo-Saxon period. -
St. Isidore and mediaeval science
Posted on September 12, 2012 | No CommentsDid Isidore appear foolish to his contemporaries and immediate mediaeval successors, or is his foolishness a more recent discovery? -
The Virtues of Balm in the Late Medieval Period
Posted on September 8, 2012 | No CommentsThe nature of balsam and its qualities, especially the ability to act as an extraordinarily effective preservative, demands further inquiry. Is this Lydgate’s invention, or instead a reflection of late medieval ideas about a particular natural substance? -
Science and the Medieval University
Posted on September 3, 2012 | No CommentsIt is no exaggeration or distortion to claim that the curriculum of the medieval university was founded on science and largely devoted to teaching about the nature and operation of the physical world. -
One World under the Sun: Cosmography and Cartography in the Liber Floridus
Posted on September 2, 2012 | No CommentsTo a modern cartographer a map should represent geographic reality by means of coordinates such as latitude and longitude. Not one of the cartographic images in the Liber Floridus corresponds to this definition, yet not a single work on historical cartography omits the early-twelfth-century encyclopaedia -
The Lived Experience of the Black Death
Posted on August 29, 2012 | No CommentsTo appreciate the importance of the biological effects of disease on a society’s lived experience, it can be useful to look at modern examples. Polio provides an excellent example. Children who survive an infection of polio – and escape the neurological incapacitation that can result in disability up to paraplegia – have a fifty percent chance of suffering the similar effects of post-polio syndrome later in life. -
The Mandrake Plant and its Legend
Posted on August 27, 2012 | No CommentsThis study focuses on the mandrake legend and its growth in Western Europe.
