IHPST Research Seminar | "Early Modern Science: Exploring Global Connections"
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Recent studies have attempted to relocate the history of early modern science within the wider context of global history involving circulations of knowledge across the Afro-Eurasian region. In this paper I argue that four influences that entered medieval Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries had a major impact on the rise of modern science. These are the translation of Euclidean geometry into Latin, the translation of the Arabic optics of Ibn al-Haytham, the introduction of Indian decimal place-value numerals with zero and its associated computing techniques, and the flow of numerous Chinese technologies through the corridors of communication opened by the Mongol Empire. These transplantations of knowledge carried modes of thinking, which became transformed and then integrated within Europe to crucially shape early modern science. The paper concludes by tracing how these are exemplified in Newton’s studies in his Principia Mathematica and Opticks.
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