Flight Through the Air in the Middle Ages - A Historical Essay on a Scientific Utopia
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Flight Through the Air in the Middle Ages - A...

Flight Through the Air in the Middle Ages - A Historical Essay on a Scientific Utopia

L20200263
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€11.61 €23.22 -50%

In medieval sources, human flight is rarely addressed directly: the catastrophic attempt by English monk Eilmer of Malmesbury, the flying machine dreamed up by Roger Bacon, or the vessel floating above the air imagined by Albert of Saxony and Nicole Oresme stand as celebrated exceptions. Yet the question of flight was a genuine intellectual challenge for medieval thought. Whether borne by the natural force of birds, by spirits (souls, angels or demons), or by human ingenuity, flights give rise to rich explicit or implicit speculation.

It was a challenge for scholastic science to conceive of the possible suspension of a heavy body in the air by projection, through fire or hot air, through magnetism, or by the effect of nature's abhorrence of a vacuum.

In this original historical essay, Nicolas Weill-Parot investigates the confrontation between science and magic, technology and theology. Working closely with numerous primary sources, he charts a new history of thinking about flight through the air: that of the scientific conceptualisation of an inaccessible reality.


 

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Author 1
NICOLAS WEILL-PAROT
Publication date
November 2020
Pages
234
Illustrations
central insert
Cover
Paperback
Language
French
Publisher
Les Belles Lettres
EAN
9782251451039

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