[PDF] Astronomy And The Imagination eBook

Author : Dometa Wiegand Brothers
Publisher : Springer
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 37,14 MB
Release : 2015-12-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1137474343

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In the nineteenth century the beauty of the night sky is the source of both imaginative wonder in poetry and political and commercial power through navigation. The Romantic Imagination and Astronomy examines the impact of astronomical discovery and imperial exploration on poets including Barbauld, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Rossetti.

Author : Ladina Bezzola Lambert
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 35,59 MB
Release : 2021-09-20
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9004484884

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How is it possible to imagine what is unknown and therefore unimaginable? How can the unimaginable be represented? On what materials do such representations rely? These questions lie at the heart of this book. Copernican theory redefined the role and importance of the imagination even as it implied the moment of its crisis. Based on this claim, Ladina Bezzola Lambert analyzes seventeenth-century astronomical texts – particularly descriptions of the moon and treatises written in support of the theory of the plurality of worlds – to show how early modern astronomers questioned the role of the imagination as a tool to visualize the unknown, but also how, pressed by the need to support their theories with convincing descriptions of other potential worlds, they sought to overcome the limitations of the imagination with a sophisticated rhetoric and techniques more commonly associated with poetic writing. The limitations of the imagination are at once a problem that all of the texts discussed struggle with and their recurrent theme. In the first and last chapter, the focus shifts to a more explicitly literary context: Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and the work of Italo Calvino. The change of focus from science to literature and from the narratives of the past to contemporary ones serves to emphasize that the issues relating to the imagination, its limitations and creative means, are basically the same both in science and literature and that they are still relevant today.

Author : Nicholas Campion
Publisher :
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 15,61 MB
Release : 2018-05-16
Category : Astronomy
ISBN : 9781907767111

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This anthology presents chapters from astronomers, historians and writers who are inspired by the sky. Its topics range from the representation and exploration of the sky in the arts, architecture and literature, and from the ancient world to the digital age.

Author : Scott L. Montgomery
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 10,78 MB
Release : 2022-03-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0816547742

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The Moon is at once a face with a thousand expressions and the archetypal planet. Throughout history it has been gazed upon by people of every culture in every walk of life. From early perceptions of the Moon as an abode of divine forces, humanity has in turn accepted the mathematized Moon of the Greeks, the naturalistic lunar portrait of Jan van Eyck, and the telescopic view of Galileo. Scott Montgomery has produced a richly detailed analysis of how the Moon has been visualized in Western culture through the ages, revealing the faces it has presented to philosophers, writers, artists, and scientists for nearly three millennia. To do this, he has drawn on a wide array of sources that illustrate mankind's changing concept of the nature and significance of heavenly bodies from classical antiquity to the dawn of modern science. Montgomery especially focuses on the seventeenth century, when the Moon was first mapped and its features named. From literary explorations such as Francis Godwin's Man in the Moone and Cyrano de Bergerac's L'autre monde to Michael Van Langren's textual lunar map and Giambattista Riccioli's Almagestum novum, he shows how Renaissance man was moved by the lunar orb, how he battled to claim its surface, and how he in turn elevated the Moon to a new level in human awareness. The effect on human imagination has been cumulative: our idea of the Moon, and therefore the planets, is multilayered and complex, having been enriched by associations played out in increasingly complicated harmonies over time. We have shifted the way we think about the lunar face from a "perfect" body to an earthlike one, with corresponding changes in verbal and visual expression. Ultimately, Montgomery suggests, our concept of the Moon has never wandered too far from the world we know best—the Earth itself. And when we finally establish lunar bases and take up some form of residence on the Moon's surface, we will not be conquering a New World, fresh and mostly unknown, but a much older one, ripe with history.

Author : Paul Hutchins
Publisher : Imagination Publishing
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 34,13 MB
Release : 2008-11
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0981712339

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A pictorial drama of the creation of Heaven and Earth based upon the awe-inspiring photo images from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. Author, Paul Hutchins uncovers a grand drama on a universal scale that has been playing out since the invention of the telescope. He poses the question, is this grand drama merely in response to an ancient invitation recorded in the Book of Isaiah? It states in Isaiah 40:26, ""Look up into the heavens."" Who created all the stars? Through the use of his imagination and the invention of the telescope, man has discovered a once secret doorway to a world beyond imagination. He has now, in this age of cutting edge technology developed flying space telescopes in his quest to know, how did we get here? What he has found has astounded him. Hutchins farther poses the question; if it took over 400 years of man’s imagination from when the telescope was invented, and countless other inventions including the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, to merely take photo images of the universe, then who’s imagination is responsible for the reality those photo images represent? As we peer through this doorway to the heavens and look upon these heavenly cosmic bodies, we find ourselves awed by their grandeur. The pressing question becomes too large to ignore. Who is responsible for all these things? Could it be that we are now peering into the mind of a supreme architect with an imagination far beyond that of mere mortals? Could we be peering into the mind of imagination supreme? Could it be that we have been brought to this point in history unbeknownst to ourselves and given this technology by the one who extended that ancient invitation recorded by Isaiah 2700 years ago?

Author : Arie Altena
Publisher : Sonic Acts Press
Page : 11 pages
File Size : 35,16 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Earth sciences
ISBN : 9082321602

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Inspired by geosciences, Sonic Acts zooms in on planet Earth. Fundamental to 'The Geological Imagination' is the thesis that we live in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Human activity has irreversibly changed the composition of the atmosphere, the oceans, and even the Earth's crust. Humanity has become a geological force. Consequently, the perspective has shifted from the human at the centre of the world to the forces that act on timescales beyond the conceivable. The way we see the world, understand the systems and processes of nature, and our intentions and interactions with the planet are central to this book.