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Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the
death of the "engineering pope" Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome
was transformed by intense activity involving building construction
and engineering projects of all kinds. Using hundreds of archival
documents and primary sources, Engineering the Eternal City
explores the processes and people involved in these infrastructure
projects--sewers, bridge repair, flood prevention, aqueduct
construction, the building of new, straight streets, and even the
relocation of immensely heavy ancient Egyptian obelisks that Roman
emperors had carried to the city centuries before. This portrait of
an early modern Rome examines the many conflicts, failures, and
successes that shaped the city, as decision-makers tried to control
not only Rome's structures and infrastructures but also the people
who lived there. Taking up visual images of the city created during
the same period--most importantly in maps and urban
representations, this book shows how in a time before the
development of modern professionalism and modern bureaucracies,
there was far more wide-ranging conversation among people of
various backgrounds on issues of engineering and infrastructure
than there is in our own times. Physicians, civic leaders, jurists,
cardinals, popes, and clerics engaged with painters, sculptors,
architects, printers, and other practitioners as they discussed,
argued, and completed the projects that remade Rome.
Essays explore the world of Michael of Rhodes, examining the
historical context, the discovery of his manuscript, and Michael's
knowledge of mathematics, shipbuilding, navigation, and other
topics. In the fifteenth century, a Venetian mariner, Michael of
Rhodes, wrote and illustrated a text describing his experiences in
the Venetian merchant and military fleets. He included a treatise
on commercial mathematics and treatments of contemporary
shipbuilding practices, navigation, calendrical systems, and
astrological ideas. This manuscript, "lost," or at least in unknown
hands for over 400 years, has never been published or translated in
its entirety until now. In volume 3, nine experts, including the
editors, discuss the manuscript, its historical context, and its
scholarly importance. Their essays examine the Venetian maritime
world of the fifteenth century, Michael's life, the discovery of
the manuscript, the mathematics in the book, the use of
illustration, the navigational directions, Michael's knowledge of
shipbuilding in the Venetian context, and the manuscript's
extensive calendrical material.
In today's world of intellectual property disputes, industrial
espionage, and book signings by famous authors, one easily loses
sight of the historical nature of the attribution and ownership of
texts. In "Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the
Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance," Pamela
Long combines intellectual history with the history of science and
technology to explore the culture of authorship. Using classical
Greek as well as medieval and Renaissance European examples, Long
traces the definitions, limitations, and traditions of intellectual
and scientific creation and attribution. She examines these
attitudes as they pertain to the technical and the practical.
Although Long's study follows a chronological development, this is
not merely a general work. Long is able to examine events and
sources within their historical context and locale. By looking at
Aristotelian ideas of Praxis, Techne, and Episteme. She explains
the tension between craft and ideas, authors and producers. She
discusses, with solid research and clear prose, the rise, wane, and
resurgence of priority in the crediting and lionizing of authors.
Long illuminates the creation and re-creation of ideas like "trade
secrets," "plagiarism," "mechanical arts," and "scribal culture."
Her historical study complicates prevailing assumptions while
inviting a closer look at issues that define so much of our society
and thought to this day. She argues that "a useful working
definition of "authorship" permits a gradation of meaning between
the poles of authority and originality," and guides us through the
term's nuances with clarity rarely matched in a historical
study.
In today's world of intellectual property disputes, industrial
espionage, and book signings by famous authors, one easily loses
sight of the historical nature of the attribution and ownership of
texts. In "Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the
Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance," Pamela
Long combines intellectual history with the history of science and
technology to explore the culture of authorship. Using classical
Greek as well as medieval and Renaissance European examples, Long
traces the definitions, limitations, and traditions of intellectual
and scientific creation and attribution. She examines these
attitudes as they pertain to the technical and the practical.
Although Long's study follows a chronological development, this is
not merely a general work. Long is able to examine events and
sources within their historical context and locale. By looking at
Aristotelian ideas of Praxis, Techne, and Episteme. She explains
the tension between craft and ideas, authors and producers. She
discusses, with solid research and clear prose, the rise, wane, and
resurgence of priority in the crediting and lionizing of authors.
Long illuminates the creation and re-creation of ideas like "trade
secrets," "plagiarism," "mechanical arts," and "scribal culture."
Her historical study complicates prevailing assumptions while
inviting a closer look at issues that define so much of our society
and thought to this day. She argues that "a useful working
definition of "authorship" permits a gradation of meaning between
the poles of authority and originality," and guides us through the
term's nuances with clarity rarely matched in a historical
study.
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