Magni Formica Laboris

Writing Assignment for 28 September, 2016 Summary of two articles September 28, 2016 The reading for this week consisted of two articles: Pamela Long’s “Power, Patronage, and the Authorship of Ars ” [ 2 ] and Jim Bennett’s “Presidential Address: Knowing and doing in the sixteenth century” [ 1 ] . Long’s article is both well written and well organized. Her thesis is that political and military pressures of fifteenth century Italy and southern Germany led to increased patronage and authorship of the mechanical arts, in what she sees as an alliance between techne and praxis . Practitioners of military engineering, architecture, and sculpture wrote about their art and linked it back to ancient traditions, which subsequently gave these texts and their practitioners an elevated status. There are two related points to her thesis: one which she implies, and one which she clearly states herself. The first is that ...

Writing Assignment for 21 September, 2016 On Medical Analogies in Book 2 of Aristotle's Physics September 21, 2016 In this brief paper, I will examine a set of medical analogies made by Aristotle in Book 2 of his Physics . Taken together, these analogies help to define Aristotle’s concept of nature, and connect it to his other concepts about the workings of the world. An important statement is from the eighth chapter, in which he defends his claim that there are purposes, or final causes, in nature: It is absurd to suppose that purpose is not present because we do not observe the agent deliberating. Art ( techn e ) does not deliberate. If the ship-building art were in the wood, it would produce the same results by nature. If, therefore, purpose is present in art, it is present also in nature. The best illustration is a doctor doctoring himself: nature is like that. (Aristotle, Physics 199b26-30) This is just...

Writing Assignment for 12 October, 2016 On Galileo's Method in the Dialogue Galileo’s goal in the Fourth Day of the Dialogo [1], through the voice of Salviati, is to show how the earth’s mobility is required to adequately explain the phenomenon of tidal variation. One of his interlocutors, Simplicio, both denies the motion of the Earth and feels that the tides are already adequately explained. By the Fourth Day, Galileo feels he has already given ample evidence that the Earth moves, so much so that he makes it his chief assumption in explaining the tides. The Earth’s motion, however, is not all that Galileo requires. His account of what he calls the “primary and universal cause” of the tides depends upon an analogy with a moving barge, and from this analogy enters the requirement that the Earth’s motion causes an “uneven motion” on its surface that can explain the tides [1, pp. 444, 461]. Galileo’...