ENGLISH

Much Ado about Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution

By Edward Grant

Book information

Publisher
CUP
Year
1981
ISBN
9780521229838, 0521229839
Language
english
Format
DJVU
Filesize
4 MB (4600306 bytes)
Pages
471\471
Topic
Physics
Library
Kolxo3
DPI
300
Time added
2012-08-21 20:00:00
Физика;История физики

Description

The primary objective of this study is to provide a description of the major ideas about void space within and beyond the world that were formulated between the fourteenth and early eighteenth centuries. The second part of the book - on infinite, extracosmic void space - is of special significance. The significance of Professor Grant's account is twofold: it provides a comprehensive and detailed description of the scholastic Aristotelian arguments for and against the existence of void space; and it presents (again for the first time) an analysis of the possible influence of scholastic ideas and arguments on the interpretations of space proposed by the nonscholastic authors who made the Scientific Revolution possible. The concluding chapter of the book is unique in not only describing the conceptualizations of space proposed by the makers of the Scientific Revolution, but in assessing the role of readily available scholastic ideas on the conception of space adopted for the Newtonian world.

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