Search results for ""Author Klaas van Berkel""
Peeters Publishers The Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History
From 22-25 May, 2002, the University of Groningen hosted an international conference on 'The Book of Nature. Continuity and change in European and American attitudes towards the natural world'. From Antiquity down to our own time, theologians, philosophers and scientists have often compared nature to a book, which might, under the right circumstances, be read and interpreted in order to come closer to the 'Author' of nature, God. The 'reading' of this book was not regarded as mere idle curiosity, but it was seen as leading to a deeper understanding of God's wisdom and power, and it culturally legitimated and promoted a positive attitude towards nature and its study. A selection of the papers which were delivered at the conference has been edited in two volumes. The first book was published as "The Book of Nature in Antiquity and the Middle Ages"; this second volume is devoted to the history of that concept after the Middle Ages.
£56.38
Amsterdam University Press The Laboratory Revolution and the Creation of the Modern University, 1830-1940
The modern research university originated in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, largely due to the creation and expansion of the teaching and research laboratory. The universities and the sciences underwent a laboratory revolution that fundamentally changed the nature of both. This revolutionary development began in chemistry, where Justus Liebig is credited with systematically employing his students in his ongoing research during the 1830s. Later, this development spread to other fields, including the social sciences and the humanities. The consequences for the universities were colossal. The expansion of the laboratories demanded extensive new building programs, reshaping the outlook of the university. The social structure of the university also diversified because of this laboratory expansion, while what it meant to be a scientist changed dramatically. This volume explores the spatial, social, and cultural dimensions of the rise of the modern research laboratory within universities and their consequent reshaping.
£128.00
Johns Hopkins University Press Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion: Mechanical Philosophy in the Making
The contribution of the Dutch craftsman and scholar Isaac Beeckman to early modern scientific thought has never been properly acknowledged. Surprisingly free from the constraints of traditional natural philosophy, he developed a view of the world in which everything, from the motion of the heavens to musical harmonies, is explained by reducing it to matter in motion. His ideas deeply influenced Descartes and Gassendi. Klaas van Berkel has succeeded in unearthing and explicating Beeckman's scientific notebooks, allowing us to follow how he developed his new philosophy, almost day by day. Beeckman was almost forgotten until the discovery of his notebooks in the early twentieth century. "Isaac Beeckman on Matter and Motion" is the first full-length study of the ideas and motives of this remarkable figure. Van Berkel's important study first relates Beeckman's life, placing him in the religious, intellectual, educational, and social context of the Dutch Republic in its golden age. Van Berkel then analyzes the notebooks themselves and the nature and development of Beeckman's "mechanical philosophy". He demonstrates how Beeckman's artisanal background and religious convictions shaped his natural philosophy, even as the decisive influence stems from the educational philosophy of the sixteenth-century French philosopher Peter Ramus. Historians of science and the philosophy of science will find the substance of Beeckman's thought and the unraveling of its growth and development highly interesting. Van Berkel's account provides a new and comprehensive interpretation of the origins of the mechanical philosophy of nature, the philosophy that culminated in the work of Isaac Newton.
£37.50
Pallas Publications The University of Groningen in the World: A Concise History
The University of Groningen has been an international university since its foundation in 1614. The first professors formed a rich international community, and many students came from outside the Netherlands, especially from areas now belonging to Germany. Internationalization, a popular slogan nowadays, is therefore nothing new, but its meaning has changed over time. How did the University of Groningen grow from a provincial institution established for religious reasons into a top-100 university with 36,000 students, of whom 25% come from abroad and almost half of the academic staff is of foreign descent? What is the identity of this four-century-old university that is still strongly anchored in the northern part of the Netherlands but that also has a mind that is open to the world? The history of the university, as told by Klaas van Berkel and Guus Termeer, ends with a short paragraph on the impact of the corona crisis.
£25.26
