Recovery in progress

Posted on January 17, 2023 by admin

ALERT: Links to pages, resources, PDFs and images mostly do not work. The Lynx Open Ed drupal website became corrupted and is now in a process of recovery. I am converting it to a WordPress site called “kerrymagruder.com” — “lynx-open-ed.org” will redirect to “kerrymagruder.com” for a while but eventually go away. Lynx Open Ed textual content is being restored first, then links, then images, and finally PDFs will be re-established. I’ll be gathering additional materials together here as well (see About).

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PPP Conference

Posted on October 1, 2024 by admin

PPP conference

This October 4-6, Oklahoma City will welcome a firmament of stellar speakers and a Milky Way of radiant participants to the Painters, Prophets, Poets conference, subtitled “Imagining New Creation Together.”

Hosted by Travis Lowe and Hannah Anderson, speakers are Malcolm Guite, Makoto Fujimura, Haejin Shim Fujimura, Beth Moore, and Miroslav Volf. Around 400 people have registered from 30 states plus Canada. Most of the top 10 states lie between the Rockies and the Appalachians. An explicit goal is to encourage the growth of collaborative communities in the central plains.

Learn more and follow conference updates at Facebook and Instagram.

After registration, conference participants hear about various auxiliary events. One of those is touring the OU History of Science Collections…

Invitation:

Today, you are a researcher. This is a privilege and a dare.

Beware, the books will change you. Let him who has ears to hear…

I pray you will find one that speaks to you.
One that rouses your imagination like the Oklahoma winds.
One that strengthens you with the comfort of the companionship of a true friend.

Enter in hope, all ye who enter here.

Captions

Experiencing the History of Science Collections as part of this conference will not be like visiting a museum; our conversation together will be much more personal than that. Come with your heart open to allow the beauty of these physical traces to draw you into the invisible reality of the communion of the saints, the communities of scientists, artists, and lovers of creation who have gone before. Bring your journal notebook (pencils good, but no pens). Phone photos welcome. Space is limited. Register first, then you can sign up. With apologies, no rain checks; it is not available on other dates.

Recommendation: Download a copy before the tour, and read the first few pages to orient you to the History of Science Collections and what we’ll be doing. First we’ll enjoy a whirlwind tour; then after that you can go back and look at one or two books with greater care and attention (consulting the meditations if you wish just for those select items). This PDF contains all the meditations that are set next to the books during the tour, but don’t try to read them all at once.

In the weeks after the tour, read the meditations at leisure, like a book of poems, selectively, and as you have time to inwardly digest them.**

Then, as the desire to know and the love of understanding wells up as courage within you, come back, register as a researcher, and ask to see the original books in the Reading Room!

At the conference I look forward to meeting you in person. Before then, I hope to read your introduction on the private Facebook group. See you soon… I can’t wait!

** Note: The meditations are not written to be read in an informational mode like one might employ to scan an article at Wikipedia. They are not what Siri might speak back if you asked her for a caption. Read them like poems. Within the frame of a given form or structure the creativity of a poem emerges; it is the same for these reflections. Think of the materiality of the books and historical knowledge of the events as analogous to the form or structure of a poem. While writing within that frame to the best of my ability, these are meditations, interpretations, my gifts of gratitude to the speakers, organizers, and participants of this conference. Tip: You may find it helpful to read them aloud.

PS: Yes, you are welcome to come back as a researcher. You do not need to be an academic scholar. There is a registration process. After that, the books will be brought to you in the Reading Room (max of five at a time). It’s good to request the books in advance so they can be pulled and waiting for you. All this is explained on the web page for the History of Science Collections. The information at the top of each page in the reflections PDF is sufficient to make a book request. Go to the University of Oklahoma Libraries website (libraries.ou.edu) and navigate to the page for the History of Science Collections. There you can register online, request the books you want to see ahead of time, and ask any questions you have for Collections staff. And then come and sit with the books.

PPP speakers.

  • George MacDonald bookmarks.

    • Auxiliary educational resources for the weeks AFTER the tour:

    If your time among the books on this visit prompts you to explore further, numerous excellent educational resources are available online and in your library and local bookstore. Depending on your interests, I’ll be happy to make some recommendations if you want to get in touch. To help you get started diving deeper into any of the topics raised by these books, the following educational resources of my own are keyed to the number of the book as indicated in the meditations PDF.

    1. Earth
    2. Heavens
    3. Music of the Spheres
    4. Art and Astronomy
    5. Hope for All Creation: From Cycles to History
      • #66 Augustine, City of God
        • Video: On “contingent history” see my video lecture “Contingent Order.”
      • #70 Burnet and #71 Scheuchzer
        • I discuss Scheuchzer, Burnet, and others here and here, etc.
    6. Anatomy: From Taboo to Glory
    7. Interpretation: The Bible and Science
      • #78-#81 Galileo.
      • #82-#83 Isaac Newton.
        • Video: Newton is a complex figure. For an intro to Newton’s spirituality and beliefs see the “Newton” section in my video lecture “Dualism.”
        • Video: For his problematic “ancient wisdom” approach to interpreting the Bible and science, see the “Genesis” section in my video lecture “Relational Physics.”
    8. Bibles: Echoes of the Word Made Flesh

    General resources:

    • kerrysloft.com: my personal blog; search for any names or topics.
    • kerrymagruder.com: my professional blog (under construction). See the “videos” tab. It also has a bio page.
    • skytonight.org: my star atlas digital project.
    • lynx-open-ed.org: When you see references to “lynx-open-ed.org,” those resources will eventually reappear at kerrymagruder.com. The Lynx Open Ed website crashed and no longer exists. I am slowly reconstructing it at kerrymagruder.com but right now only the videos section is useful.
    • kerrymagruder.com/hsci: Some of the brief videos from my OU undergraduate survey class, “History of Science, Beginning to Newton,” may be relevant (partial list of brief course videos; course playlist at youTube).
    • Love and the Cosmos: Some of the above videos are from my online course “Love and the Cosmos: Trinitarian Perspectives on Science with T. F. Torrance and C. S. Lewis.” The link is to the landing page with all the videos for that course.

    None of my own educational resources above, including the meditations PDF, represent the University of Oklahoma. The views and interpretations expressed are all my own.

    University web pages:

    All rare book images in the meditations PDF are from the History of Science Collections and the Bizzell Bible Collection of the University of Oklahoma Libraries.

    • repository.ou.edu: Many of the books displayed for this tour are digitized and available in the library’s open access online library.
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    Plato 1491

    Posted on September 4, 2024 by admin

    Plato, Diuus Plato (Venice, 1491), ed. Marsilio Ficino (“The Divine Plato”).

    In his dialogue entitled The Timaeus, Plato taught that the cosmos is constructed from regular geometrical figures known as the Pythagorean solids.

    Whenever one finds an emphasis upon mathematical demonstrations in science, one may credit Plato and the Pythagoreans.  Alfred North Whitehead wrote that the history of philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato.  Some have said the same about the history of science.

    This early edition of Plato’s works was edited by Marsilio Ficino, the leading scholar of the Italian Quattrocento (Renaissance).  It includes Ficino’s own essays on theology and Platonic love.  Under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, Ficino founded the Florentine Platonic Academy.

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    Digges 1605

    Posted on September 4, 2024 by admin

    Leonard Digges, A Prognostication Everlasting of Right Good Effect…; Lately corrected and augmented by Thomas Digges his sonne (London, 1605)

    This Sun-centered cosmic section represents the first published defense of Copernicus in England, and it was printed in a work of meteorology. The Earth carries its meteorological regions of water, air and fire along with it, as a single “globe of mortalitye.” The fixed stars, each far larger than the Sun, extend “infinitely up” in a “Pallace of Foelicitye.”

    Leonard Digges wrote this prognostication in a genre known as “astro-meteorology.” Astro-meteorologies were early modern versions of The Farmer’s Almanac. They attempted to provide annual guidance for agricultural activities and other events on the basis of meteorological and astronomical patterns. 

    Thomas, his son, published an updated edition in which he substituted the Copernican system for his father’s reliance upon the Ptolemaic. An appendix includes the first English translation of Book 1 of Copernicus’ On the Revolutions.

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    Geneva Bible 1560

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Geneva Bible (1560)

    The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, hand-sized, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is evident in the way its verse divisions have endured to this day.

    The Printing Revolution

    The first thing one notices about the Geneva Bible is the small size: it fits in your hand. Second, it’s written not in Latin, but in English. Its design is both portable and accessible for the lay reader.

    The title page indicates that it is translated not from Latin but from the original languages, reflecting up-to-date scholarship, with “most profitable annotations upon all the hard places.”

    Contrast the readable typeface of this Bible to the gothic fonts of the other Bibles. Its clear, readable type appealed to lay readers. In contrast to large altar Bibles like Gutenberg’s or Koberger’s, the small typeface made the Geneva Bible portable and affordable. The Geneva Bible was made not to sit on an altar, but to be taken in hand and read, and carried to church and to the pub.

    On a typical page one might notice introductory comments at the beginning of any biblical book. The text is broken up by numbered verses. These are the first verse divisions to appear in an English Bible. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is reflected in the fact that its verse divisions endure; they’re the ones used today.

    Marginal explanations on all the “hard places” didn’t hesitate to promote the theology of the Protestant Reformation.

    The verse divisions and cross-references encouraged a profound change in the act of reading. Readers began to pay less attention to the art of storytelling, reading from a single unbroken text, and to place more emphasis on comparing and contrasting short passages from diverse contexts, moving back and forth between different chapters and verses at will.

    Across Europe, vernacular publications energized emerging nationalist and religious movements. The Protestant Reformation, like the “Scientific Revolution,” would hardly be conceivable apart from printing. Many therefore suggest that the printing press then caused greater cultural changes in Europe than the computer has yet wrought in ours, until we see political transformation on a super-continental or global scale equivalent to the Reformation.

    For all these reasons, the Geneva Bible represents the subversive potential of the Printing Revolution. Lay study of the Geneva Bible, often in small groups at local pubs, helps explain why English translations of the Bible vexed Henry VIII. The king lamented that ordinary peasants, instead of accepting what they were taught by bishops, now disputed, rhymed, sang and jangled the scripture in every alehouse and tavern across the land.

    Biblical Interpretation

    Employing the principle of accommodation, the Reformer Jean Calvin elsewhere commented on Psalm 78:65, which depicts God as a drunken man: “The figure of a drunken man may seem somewhat harsh, but the propriety of using it will appear when we consider that it is employed in accommodation to the stupidity of the people. Had they been of a pure and clear understanding, God would not have transformed himself and assumed a character foreign to his own.”

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    Galileo 1632

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Galileo, Dialogo sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Florence, 1632)

    This is Galileo’s witty and entertaining dialogue in defense of Copernicus. In the frontispiece, Aristotle and Ptolemy hold an Earth-centered armillary sphere (left). Copernicus holds a Sun-centered model of the universe (right). Just two systems appear in the Dialogo; Galileo nowhere mentions the Tychonic system then favored by most astronomers.

    Galileo inserted statements about the hypothetical character of the work in the preface and conclusion. Nevertheless, the book as a whole was anything but even-handed, contrary to instructions issued to Galileo in 1616. Once published, Urban VIII gave orders for the Dialogo to be recalled and summoned Galileo to Rome for trial.

    This copy is one of four first editions of Galileo held by OU which contain Galileo’s own handwriting.

    – Salviati, named for a close friend of Galileo’s, defends the Copernican system with scientific brilliance and legendary wit. Master of both quantitative argument and experimental evidence, Salviati always seems ten steps ahead of anyone else. Never at a loss for words, Salviati clearly directs the flow of conversation.

    – Sagredo, named after another friend of Galileo’s, represents an open-minded reader. As an inquisitive and bright student, he is not intimidated by Salviati, but comes up with insightful questions. Sagredo is the man in the middle; he desires neither to discard traditional authorities nor to embrace novelties unless there is compelling evidence.

    – Simplicio, named after an ancient Greek commentator on Aristotle, ineptly defends the Earth-centered system. Simplicio frequently admits that he doesn’t understand an argument, and his requests for additional explanations provide comic relief along the way.

    Galileo placed greatest emphasis in this book upon an argument for Copernicanism from the ebb and flow of the tides. This argument was physical in nature, based on causal explanation, rather than mathematical. It was an attempt to achieve a level of certainty which had proven elusive for mathematical methods alone. Unfortunately, the argument was not persuasive, then or now.

    Most astronomers at the time were neither Ptolemaic nor Copernican, so Galileo displayed some chutzpah in rigging the debate as an exclusive choice between only two of the contemporary systems (see Cosmological Systems, Part 1).

    One page displays a new sentence by Simplicio, handwritten in the margin, to go before a long paragraph by Salviati.  This sentence is included in the second edition.  Here it is written in Galileo’s own hand.

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    Galileo 1661

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Galileo, “The Ancient and Modern Doctrine of Holy Fathers,” in Mathematical Collections (London, 1661), ed. Thomas Salusbury

    This volume contains the first English translations of any of Galileo’s works, including Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, the book for which he was put on trial. It also includes the most important documents related to Scripture and Copernicanism, including Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (shown here); similar essays by Kepler and Foscarini, a Carmelite monk; and an excerpt from Diego de Zuniga’s commentary on Job.

    The volume is charred and blackened around the edges. Many copies perished in the Great Fire of London in 1665.

    This volume contains the first English editions of: Galileo’s Dialogo; Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina; Kepler’s discussion of interpreting Scripture; Diego de Zuñiga’s Copernican commentary on Job; the Letter of Foscarini, and the hydraulics of Castelli.

    Note on the provenance of this copy: The inside end-paper bears the name of “Thomas Wo” at Cambridge. A survey of all those in Alumni Cambridiensis to 1751 with surnames beginning with “Wo” reveals that Thomas was not a common Christian name and provides only one candidate, Thomas Worlich, who entered Jesus College in 1700, migrated to Trinity, and graduated MA in 1708.

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    Galileo 1967

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Galileo, Lettera Madama Cristina di Lorena (Milan, 1967)

    Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina provides a modern example of the book arts. The outer case opens to show a smaller case, the size of a miniature version published a century ago. The 1967 edition fits entirely within the circumference of a nickel. A magnifying glass to read it is included in the smaller case, along with one of the plates used to print it. This is no. 27 of 100 copies.

    The larger gilt-morocco book-shaped case contains, bound within it, a 75-page preface by Giuseppe Cantamessa which discusses the process of printing.

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    Galileo 1636

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Galileo, Nov-antiqua sanctissimorum patrum (Strassburg, 1636)

    In response to gathering criticism, Galileo in 1615 wrote a reconciliation of Scripture and Copernicanism which circulated in manuscript as the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. This is the first printed edition, which appeared in 1636.   Galileo cited Augustine throughout.  In theory, nothing would have prevented theologians at the time from accepting the Copernican system, had they rigorously followed their own explicitly formulated principles of interpreting Scripture.

    Pope John Paul II used Galilean language to affirm similar hermeneutical principles in 1992. However, no theologian then or now was persuaded by the weakest and most provocative part of Galileo’s letter, where he argued that he could prove Copernicanism from scripture.

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    Newton 1713

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London, 1713), 2nd ed.

    This is the 2nd edition of Newton’s masterwork in physics.

    The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 95 years after Copernicus. With a mathematical description of the law of universal gravitation, Newton in this book unified the terrestrial physics of Galileo with the celestial mechanics of Kepler’s laws. The development of science from Copernicus to Newton then became recognized as a “Scientific Revolution,” a complete overthrow of Aristotelian physics and cosmology.

    The second edition of Newton’s Principia contains several interesting changes from the first, intended to heighten the contrast between Newton and Descartes, including Cartesians such as Leibniz, with whom Newton had become embroiled in scientific and philosophical controversies.  Newton expunged the term “hypothesis” from his description of his own methodology in the second edition.  He retained it only to derogate physical mechanisms postulated by Descartes.  In the first sentence of the “General Scholium,” which was also new to this edition, Newton began his attack:  “The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties.”  Another major change in the 1713 edition was the inclusion of a manifesto by its editor, Roger Cotes, the Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Science at Trinity College, Cambridge.  Cotes’ preface, written 63 years after the death of Descartes and 26 years after the first edition of the Principia, defended the Newtonian methodology from charges of occultism raised by Leibniz and other continental critics, and propagandized it as conveying the best theology as well.

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    Newton 1687

    Posted on August 29, 2024 by admin

    Isaac Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London, 1687)

    The Copernican idea that the Earth moves as a planet required a thorough revision of physics. Galileo undertook this task in his Discourse on Two New Sciences, published 80 years after Copernicus. With a mathematical description of the law of universal gravitation, Newton in this book unified the terrestrial physics of Galileo with the celestial mechanics of Kepler’s laws. The development of science from Copernicus to Newton then became recognized as a “Scientific Revolution,” a complete overthrow of Aristotelian physics and cosmology.

    Newton’s title in the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) is a deliberate rejection of Descartes’ approach to scientific explanation in the Principles of Philosophy (1644).  Whereas Descartes engaged all of philosophy, deducing cosmology from first principles of ontology and epistemology, Newton claimed only to address “Natural” philosophy.  And whereas Descartes’ “Principles” were mechanical causes, even hypothetical ones, Newton argued that “Mathematical” laws suffice for science, since they are certain, even if they are only descriptive rather than causal.

    A past owner of the Oklahoma copy placed it flat on the bookshelf for storage.  To identify it, he wrote on the bottom of the text block the words “Matematica Neutun” (Mathematica, Newton).

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