Reviews for Tallahassee Tradition, Technology, and Teamwork

The average rating for Tallahassee Tradition, Technology, and Teamwork based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-02-20 00:00:00 Stephen Galat Excellent overview of the developments in science and philosophy from the period of the natural philosophers in Antiquity (starting with Thales of Miletus) and ending at the Renaissance. Lindberg puts the scientific and philosopical developments in their situational context. He continuously stresses the importance of viewing the scientific ideas within the social, cultural and religious framework that contemporaries used to understand their world. This is a very fruitful method, and it helps bring the ingenuity of certain thinkers to the fore, who would otherwise be laughed away by us 'moderns'. Natural philosophy, mathematics and philosophy started in Anitquity, flourished for a couple of centuries, then were kept alive in the Roman period. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, these industries were maintained in the Byzantine regions and were incorporated in the later Islamic empires. The West, significantly, lacked most of the important philosophical and scientific works and only started picking up pace again when more and more translations - arabic or greek - entered Europe and were translated into Latin. The period of the Middle Ages was the era when schools and universities as institutions were founded. It is also the period when the first steps towards the mathematization of science were taking, for example by Nicolas Oresme, who tried to apply geometrical representations to motion. (A precursor to what René Descartes would do when he invented analytic geometry.) With the risk of abstracting too much, the early Middle Ages were characterized by Platonism and Christianity, while the later Middle Ages were characterized by Aristotelianism and Christianity. This last marriage was staged by people like Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, who tried to smoothen the rough edges that Aristotle's philosophy had - at least when trying to fit it into a Christian theological framework. Ever since Aquinas, Aristotle has been the philosopher that Christianity looks to. This last point also explains why the Scientific Revolution can rightfully be called a revolution. Aristotle had developed a unique framework with which to understand the world, basically an axiomatix-deductive system of knowledge and a cosmology of the four elements earth, water, air and fire; a distinction between the imperfect sub-lunar and the perfect heavenly spheres; substance as a combination of matter and form; natural places; teleology; prime movers; etc. etc. Aristotelianism simply was incompatible with the empirical, inductive side of science that developed in the seventeenth century - this was a new science, a mechanistic worldview that sought to explain everything in terms of moving particles (even light) in vacui. Lindberg deals extensively with all sorts of sciences: mathematics, cosmology, physics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, medicine, natural history, optics, etc. He deals fairly with all of these topics. For example, he clearly explains how alchemy wasn't the quackery that we make it out to be (usually) - it was firmly grounded in Aristotle's conception of substances and complexes and was simply a logical way of thinking about the world, given the contemporary worldview and availabe knowledge. The same with astrology: this science was rooted in the Platonic conception of a microcosm-macrocosm connection - the universe as a whole is a living organism constituted of organs just like a human being is a living organism constituted of organs. This means that anything that happens in the macrocosm - for example, planetary revolutions - is interconnected with evens on a microcosmic scale, so astronomical knowledge instantaneously leads to very important insights into human affairs. In the final chapter, Lindberg closes the book with offering a compromise between the continuity thesis (science as a continuous development) and the revolutionary thesis (science as a non-continuous development). He does this by arguing that all the events that make up the Scientific Revolution (Galileo, Descartes, Kepler, Brahe, Newton, Boyle, etc. etc.) were not totally new phenomena, but were continuations on earlier insights. So, for example, Lindberg sees sixth century philosopher Philoponus as anticipating Galileo's free fall experiments and Ptolemy's mathematical inventions as the building blocks of Copernicus' heliocentric model. I think Lindberg is right in offering this critique, yet I do think that he slightly underestimates the radical shift in thinking that took place in the seventeenth century - and which continues up to the present moment. The mechanistic worldview simply has literally changed the world forever - its surface, the minds of people, living conditions, etc. etc. - while Aristotle's rationalistic worldview has only inspired mystics, esoterics and muddle-headed philosophers like Heidegger & co. Anyway, this is one of the most inspiring and insightful books that I know of. Not just on the topic covered, but in general. I think Lindberg is a superb educator and a very nuanced story-teller. Read this book to understand the different ways people viewed the world from 600 B.C. to 1400 A.D. The book is a storehouse of interesting knowledge and it certainly enriches our own conceptions of the world. I find it refreshing to understand why people thought so differently about the same old subjects and how their ideas make sense, if only you get the whole picture. Beautiful!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-12-08 00:00:00 phi Llc Maybe I'm just a geek (OK, I am just a geek, and a history-of-science geek at that) but this was one of the most unbelievably interesting books I have ever read.