, Brepols, 2023 Hardback, 292 pages, Size:156 x 234 mm, Illustrations:8 b/w, 9 col., 6 tables b/w., Language(s):English, Latin, Arabic. ISBN 9782503604480.
Summary Understanding and influencing nature were preeminent aims of medieval Arabic science, and attracted European fascination with its accomplishments. This volume draws together studies on central themes, presenting a world of enquiry into the earth and the heavens, and ways to harness this information for divination and the occult sciences. It gives examples of how Arabic science travelled to Latin Europe through texts and instruments, and how it underwent transformation there as diverse fields were put to use and reinterpreted. The studies introduce a range of learning and perspectives: astrology conducted with planetary lots; a geography where features of the earth's surface move over time; knowledge of the elements and climates which Adelard of Bath learned from Arab masters; Avicenna's meteorology explaining the extremes of fire storms and catastrophic floods; debates about the eternity or creation of the world; evaluations of magic as a rational, intellectual discipline, or alternatively a danger needing censorship and linked to female witchcraft; and a precious astrolabe which in the Renaissance was reused and inspired new theoretical writings. Together these studies sketch a landscape of medieval Arabic science and Latin European engagement with this new frontier. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Ab? Ma?shar and the Tradition of Planetary Lots in Astrology ?DORIAN GIESELER GREENBAUM The Ikhw?n al-?af?? on the ??rat al-Ar?: A Geography in Motion? GODEFROID DE CALLATA? Adelard of Bath on Climates and the Elements: An Adaptive View on Nature ? PEDRO-MANTAS ESPA A Avicenna's On Floods (De diluviis) in Latin Translation: Critical Edition with an English Translation of the Arabic ? DAG NIKOLAUS HASSE Latin Scholastics on the Eternity of the World and Eternal Creation on the Part of the Creature: Did They Amount to the Same Thing? ? ANN GILETTI Whitewash for ?Black Magic': Justifications and Arguments in Favour of Magic in the Latin Picatrix ? DAVID PORRECA Censorship, maleficia, and the Medieval Readers of the Liber vaccae ? SOPHIE PAGE The Transmission of Materialized Knowledge: A Medieval Saphea with Islamic Projections, Re-engraved in the Renaissance ? KOENRAD VAN CLEEMPOEL Bibliography of Works by Charles S. F. Burnett Index