Martin Waldseemüller’s 'Carta marina' of 1516


Book Description

This open access book presents the first detailed study of one of the most important masterpieces of Renaissance cartography, Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina of 1516. By transcribing, translating into English, and detailing the sources of all of the descriptive texts on the map, as well as the sources of many of the images, the book makes the map available to scholars in a wholly unprecedented way. In addition, the book provides revealing insights into how Waldseemüller went about making the map -- information that can’t be found in any other source. The Carta marina is the result of Waldseemüller’s radical re-evaluation of what a world map should be; he essentially started from scratch when he created it, rejecting the Ptolemaic model and other sources he had used in creating his 1507 map, and added more descriptive texts and a wealth of illustrations. Given its content, the book offers an essential reference work not only on this map, but also for anyone working in sixteenth-century European cartography.




The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68)


Book Description

The Dutch-German Communist Left, represented by the German KAPD-AAUD, the Dutch KAPN and the Bulgarian Communist Workers Party, separated from the Comintern (1921) on questions like electoralism, trade-unionism, united fronts, the one-party state and anti-proletarian violence. It attracted the ire of Lenin, who wrote his Left Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder against the Linkskommunismus, while Herman Gorter wrote a famous response in his pamphlet Reply to Lenin. The present volume provides the most substantial history to date of this tendency in the twentieth-century Communist movement. It covers how the Communist left, with the KAPD-AAU, denounced 'party communism' and 'state capitalism' in Russia; how the German left survived after 1933 in the shape of the Dutch GIK and Paul Mattick’s councils movement in the USA; and also how the Dutch Communistenbond Spartacus continued to fight after 1942 for the world power of the workers councils, as theorised by Pannekoek in his book Workers’ Councils (1946).




Words of Ecstasy in Sufism


Book Description

This is the first in-depth study in English of the import and impact of ecstatic utterances (shathiyat) in classical Islamic mysticism. It makes available an important body of mystical aphorisms and reveals not only the significance of these sayings in the Sufi tradition, but also explains their controversial impact on Islamic law and society. This study descrives the development and interpretation of shathiyat in classical Sufism and analyzes the principal themes and rhetorical styles of these sayings, using as a basis the authoritative Commentary on Ecstatic Sayings by Ruzbihan Baqli of Shiraz. The special topic of mystical faith and infidelity receives particular emphasis as a type of ecstatic expression that self-reflectively meditates on the inadequacy of language to describe mystical experience. The social impact of ecstatic sayings is clarified by an analysis of the political causes of Sufi heresy trials (Nuri, Hallaj, and 'Ayn al-Qudat) and the later elaboration of Sufi martyrologies. This study also examines the attitudes of Islamic legal scholars toward shathiyat, and concludes with a comparison of Sufi ecstatic expressions with other types of inspired speech.




The Light of Nature


Book Description

This volume of essays is meant as a tribute to Alistair Crombie by some of those who have studied with him. The occasion of its publication is his seven tieth birthday - 4 November 1985. Its contents are a reflection - or so it is hoped - of his own interests, and they indicate at the same time his influence on subjects he has pursued for some forty years. Born in Brisbane, Australia, Alistair Cameron Crombie took a first degree in zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1938, after which he moved to Je sus College, Cambridge. There he took a doctorate in the same subject (with a dissertation on population dynamics - foreshadowing a later interest in the history of Darwinism) in 1942. By this time he had taken up a research position with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in the Cambridge Zoological La boratory, a position he left in 1946, when he moved to a lectureship in the his tory and philosophy of science at University College, London. H. G. Andrewa ka and L. C. Birch, in a survey of the history of insect ecology (R. F. Smith, et al. , History of Entomology, 1973), recognise the importance of the works of Crombie (with which they couple the earlier work of Gause) as the principal sti mulus for the great interest taken in interspecific competition in the mid 194Os.







Descriptive Geometry, The Spread of a Polytechnic Art


Book Description

This book seeks to explore the history of descriptive geometry in relation to its circulation in the 19th century, which had been favoured by the transfers of the model of the École Polytechnique to other countries. The book also covers the diffusion of its teaching from higher instruction to technical and secondary teaching. In relation to that, there is analysis of the role of the institution – similar but definitely not identical in the different countries – in the field under consideration. The book contains chapters focused on different countries, areas, and institutions, written by specialists of the history of the field. Insights on descriptive geometry are provided in the context of the mathematical aspect, the aspect of teaching in particular to non-mathematicians, and the institutions themselves.







Taxonomic Literature


Book Description




Bibliographia Cartesiana


Book Description

This book offers a new type of working tool for Cartesian studies. It presents the literature of the last 160 years in alphabetical order (Part Two), combined with a systematic analytical survey (Part One) and a detailed topical index to the whole (Part Three). This organization makes it possible to turn bibliogra phy from a repository of references into a workshop of research. The system atic survey of Part One and the topical index of Part Three, together, offer a mise au point of Descartes studies over their full historical and topical range. The results have often been surprising and illuminating to the author, and if his experience is any guide, the reader, too, will begin to wonder about certain seemingly well-settled points, or marvel at the Protean shapes which our elusive philosopher assumes when mighty commentators force him to reveal his true nature. A work which has been in the making for fifteen years must show the traces of expansion in scope, and changes in evaluation. Bibliographia cartesiana amends my Descartes chapter in A Critical Bibliography of French Literature, v. 3, 1961 (see no. I9a), and supersedes an earlier version of Parts One and Two, published in 1959 under the main title Descartes and his Philosophy, v. 1 (set: no. I8a). Part I (Introduction to Descartes Studies) divides the field into eleven broad areas.




Deaf History Unveiled


Book Description

Since the early 1970s, when Deaf history as a formal discipline did not exist, the study of Deaf people, their culture and language, and how hearing societies treated them has exploded. Deaf History Unveiled: Interpretations from the New Scholarship presents the latest findings from the new scholars mining this previously neglected, rich field of inquiry. The sixteen essays featured in Deaf History Unveiled include the work of Harlan Lane, Renate Fischer, Margret A. Winzer, William McCagg, and twelve other noted historians who presented their research at the First International Conference on Deaf History in 1991.