Overcoming Ptolemy

Overcoming Ptolemy

Author: Geoffrey C. Gunn

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1498590144

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Studies on global metageography are enjoying a revival, and in no way is this better referenced than against the geo-world system bequeathed by Claudius Ptolemy almost two thousand years ago. This is all the more important when we consider the longevity of the Ptolemaic construct through and beyond the European age of discovery allowing as well for its eventual revision or refinement. Innovations in navigational science, cartographic representations, and textual description are all called upon to illustrate this theme. With its focus upon the macro-region termed India Extra Gangem, literally the space between India and China, the book unfolds a fourfold agenda. First, it explains the Ptolemaic world system back to classical points of reference as well as to its reception in late medieval Europe from Arabic sources. Second, it tracks the erosion of the Ptolemaic template especially in the light of new empirical data entering Europe from early travel accounts as well as the first voyages of discovery. Third, through selected examples, as with India, Southeast Asia, and China, it seeks to expose textual and cartographic adjustments to the classical models flowing from the scientific revolution.Fourth, through an examination of Jesuit astronomical observations conducted at various points in Asia, it demonstrates how Eurasia was actually measured and sized with respect to its true longitudinal coordinates such had deluded Columbus and even succeeding generations. In short, this work problematizes the creation of geographical knowledge, raises awareness as to the making of region in Asia over long historical time—the Ptolemaic world-in-motion—and, as a more latent agenda, sounds an alert as to the perils of overdetermination in the setting of modern boundaries whether upon land or sea.


First Globalization

First Globalization

Author: Geoffrey C. Gunn

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2003-06-05

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 0742580113

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First Globalization presents an original and sweeping conceptualization of the grand cultural-civilizational encounter between Asia and Europe. Now largely taken for granted, the exchange resonates in multiple ways even today. Offering a 'metageography' of the vast Eurasian zone, Geoffrey C. Gunn shows how between 1500 and 1800, a lively two-way flow in ideas, philosophies, and cultural products brought competing civilizations into serious dialogue and mostly peaceful exchange. In Europe, the interaction was reflected in missionary reporting, cartographic representations, literary productions, and intellectual fashions, alongside the business of commerce and plunder (when it reached the Americas and peripheries). In Asia—-notably China, India, and particularly Japan—-European ideas and their bearers received a remarkably positive hearing when they did not challenge reigning orthodoxies. Ranging from discussions of the natural world, livelihoods, and religious and intellectual encounters to language, play, crime and punishment, gender, and governance, this book replays the themes of enduring hybridity and 'creolization' of cultures dating from the first great encounter between Europe and Asia.


The Seleukid Empire 281-222 BC

The Seleukid Empire 281-222 BC

Author: Kyle Erickson

Publisher: Classical Press of Wales

Published: 2018-12-31

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1910589950

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The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greek-speaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed by historians as inherently weak and doomed to decline after the death of their remarkable first king, Seleukos (281 BC). And yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries, overcoming problems of a multi-ethnic empire. In this book an international team of young, established scholars argues that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.


Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space

Topos in Utopia: A peregrination to early modern utopianism’s space

Author: Sotirios Triantafyllos

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1648892868

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'Topos in Utopia' examines early modern literary utopias' and intentional communities' social and cultural conception of space. Starting from Thomas More's seminal work, published in 1516, and covering a period of three centuries until the emergence of Enlightenment's euchronia, this work provides a thorough yet concise examination of the way space was imagined and utilised in the early modern visions of a better society. Dealing with an aspect usually ignored by the scholars of early modern utopianism, this book asks us to consider if utopias' imaginary lands are based not only on abstract ideas but also on concrete spaces. Shedding new light on a period where reformation zeal, humanism's optimism, colonialism's greed and a proto-scientific discourse were combined to produce a series of alternative social and political paradigms, this work transports us from the shores of America to the search for the Terra Australis Incognita and the desire to find a new and better world for us.


The History of Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue

The History of Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue

Author: Gerd Graßhoff

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-07

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1461244684

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Ptolemy's Almagest shares with Euclid's Elements the glory of being the scientific text longest in use. From its conception in the second century up to the late Renaissance, this work determined astronomy as a science. During this time the Almagest was not only a work on astronomy; the subject was defined as what is described in the Almagest. The cautious emancipation of the late middle ages and the revolutionary creation of the new science in the 16th century are not conceivable without reference to the Almagest. This text lifted European astronomy to the high standard of knowledge on which the new science flourished. Before, the Ptolemaic models of the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the planets had been refined by Arabic astronomers. They provided the structural elements with which Copernicus and Kepler ushered in the era of modern astronomy. The Almagest survived the destruction of its epicyclic representation of the planetary orbits in the conceptual traces left behind in the theories of its successors. The clear separation of the sidereal from the tropical year, the celestial coordinate systems, the concepts of time, the forms of the constellations, and brightness classifications of celestial objects are, among many other things, still part of the astronomical canon even today.


Kings and Colonists

Kings and Colonists

Author: Richard A. Billows

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9789004101777

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This book on Macedonian imperialism in the 4th-2nd centuries BCE looks at the nature and origin of that imperialism, and for the first time examines closely the personnel of imperial control to see what the empire meant to them.


Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

Author: Marco Sgarbi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-10-27

Total Pages: 3618

ISBN-13: 3319141694

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Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.


Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735

Regnum Chinae: The Printed Western Maps of China to 1735

Author: Marco Caboara

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-10-24

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9004530908

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This study reproduces and describes, for the first time, all the maps of China printed in Europe between 1584 and 1735, unravelling the origin of each individual map, their different printing, issues and publication dates.


Chapters on Asia: Selected papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship (2021)

Chapters on Asia: Selected papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship (2021)

Author: Benjamin J.Q. Khoo

Publisher: National Library Board Singapore

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 88

ISBN-13: 9811854971

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Chapters on Asia features selected papers written by scholars who have been awarded the National Library’s Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship. These works examine the history and heritage of Singapore and the region, and contain fresh research based on the collections of the National Library and National Archives of Singapore. Chapter 1. The Circulation of Premodern Knowledge of Singapore and its Straits before 1819 / Benjamin J.Q. Khoo Chapter 2. Europeans in the Press: A Comparative Reading of the Representation of “Deviant” Behaviour in English and Chinese Language Newspapers in Singapore (1923–41)/Zhi Qing Denise Lim Chapter 3. Chinese Newspaper Literary Supplements in Singapore’s Postwar Literary Scene: The Roles of Xing Ying and Yao Zi/seah Cheng Ta


CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub]

CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub]

Author: Common English Bible,

Publisher: Common English Bible

Published: 2010-09-01

Total Pages: 2572

ISBN-13: 1609260856

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Take a fresh look at the Bible while you experience a new translation. The Common English Bible is relevant, readable, and reliable. The result is a new version that the typical reader or worshipper is able to understand. 115 leading biblical scholars from 22 faith traditions and 77 reading specialists in 13 denominations worked on this translation. Contains Apocrypha books.