Exploring the stark beauty and harsh realities of the polar regions, this book delves into the effects of climate change on these fragile ecosystems. Through vivid storytelling and compelling imagery, it highlights the resilience of wildlife and the challenges faced by indigenous communities. The narrative intertwines personal experiences with scientific insights, offering a profound reflection on humanity's relationship with nature and the urgent need for environmental stewardship.
From the Arctic Ocean and ice sheets of Greenland, to the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas, to the great frozen desert of Antarctica, this title takes readers on a scientific journey through the shrinking world of ice and snow to tell the story of the expeditions and discoveries that have transformed our understanding of global climate.
Why did linear perspective rise in trecento-quattrocento central Italy rather than in any other cultural context? This book provides new insight into the question of the early Italian pioneership in perspective, building on the fact that many references to optics can be found in Renaissance treatises. The fact that most of the medieval optical manuscripts were written by Franciscan masters - the best known among them being Roger Bacon and John Pecham - suggests the need for a closer look at how the medieval universities (studia generalia) operated. An in-depth study of recruitment highlights the exceptional mobility of masters and lectors throughout Europe. However, through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the closer a university was to central Italy, the more cosmopolitan it was. This is a result of the topology of the academic network, since cosmopolitanism depends on the studium's closeness centrality. This is why, through the masters' mobility, knowledge circulating in the network preferentially flowed into central Italy. This book is a study of the intellectual context in which perspective came to be a key part of visual representation in Western culture and science. It uses a broad spectrum of methods, ranging from the biographies of university scholars and textual concordance to cross-cultural comparison, advanced network analysis and modelling. [4e de couverture].
Optics, Vision and Perspective from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries
This book clarifies the interrelationship between optics, vision, and perspective before the Classical Age, focusing on binocularity. The author illustrates how binocular vision served as a crucial junction among these concepts, emphasizing the importance of understanding historical scholarly approaches. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the term Perspectiva, meaning optics, encompassed various interconnected areas of inquiry that later became separated. Optics evolved into a branch of physics (physical and geometrical optics), vision was seen as a combination of psycho-physiological mechanisms (physiological optics and psychology of vision), and ‘perspective’ became associated solely with the mathematical representation of the external world (linear perspective). The author argues that this division, emerging with the spread of sciences in classical Europe, is an anachronism when viewed through the lens of earlier periods. It is crucial to consider how medieval scholars framed the problem, encompassing all aspects of the term perspectiva, to gain insights into this historical context. This work will attract a diverse readership, including philosophers, historians of science, and professionals in geometry, optics, ophthalmology, and architecture.
The First Experimental Study of the Camera Obscura
This book provides the first critical edition of Ibn al-Haytham’s On the Shape of the Eclipse with English translation and commentary, which records the first scientific analysis of the camera obscura. On the Shape of the Eclipse includes pioneering research on the conditions of formation of the image, in a time deemed to be committed to aniconism. It also provides an early attempt to merge the two branches of Ancient optics—the theory of light and theory of vision. What perhaps most strongly characterizes this treatise is the close interaction of a geometric analysis of light and experimental reasoning. Ibn al-Haytham conducted his experiments in a systematic way by varying all that could be changed: the shape and size of the aperture, the focal length of the camera obscura, the distance and shape of the celestial bodies. This way, he achieved a thorough understanding. This work represents a decisive step in both the history of optics and the application of the experimental method that was just as efficient in medieval Islam as today.