Name: meanest foundations and nobler superstructures
SKU: 3429787
Price: 3355.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: gal
ISBN: 9781402007323

portada meanest foundations and nobler superstructures

meanest foundations and nobler superstructures

Type

Physical Book

Publisher

Springer

Author

gal

Language

English

Pages

256

ISBN

1402007329

ISBN13

9781402007323

Synopsis "meanest foundations and nobler superstructures"

this book is a historical-epistemological study of one the most consequential idea of early modern celestial mechanics: robert hookes proposal to compoun[d] the celestial motions of the planets of a direct motion by the tangent & an attractive motion towards a central body, a proposal which isaac newton adopted and realized in his principia. hookes programme was revolutionary both cosmologically and mathematically. it presented the celestial motions, the proverbial symbol of stability and immutability, as a process of continuous change, and prescribed only parameters of rectilinear motions and rectilinear attractions for calculating their closed curved orbits. yet the traces of hookes construction of his programme for the heavens lead through his investigations in such earthly disciplines as microscopy, practical optics and horology, and the mathematical tools developed by newton to accomplish it appear no less local and goal-oriented than hookes lenses and springs. this transgression of the boundaries between the theoretical, experimental and technological realms is reminiscent of hookes own free excursions in and out of the circles occupied by gentlemen-philosophers, university mathematicians, instrument makers, technicians and servants. it presents an opportunity to examine the social and epistemological distinctions, relations and hierarchies between those realms and their inhabitants, and compels a critical assessment of the philosophical categories they embody.