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This is a study of the union of astronomy and astrology, and relations to astral worship, from early Babylonian times, through medieval European times, up to and including the time of Isaac Newton, especially in relation to prediction, with extensions into more recent times. There is also discussion of related matters in other cultures, such as Chinese, Indian, Native American and African. These chapters are pages in HTML. New! For a single file containing a revised version of the whole work in Acrobat Reader Format (pdf), with references in text transferred to footnotes, additional appendices, updates, etc., click here.
Chapter 1. Some Sources of Astral Beliefs
Chapter 2. From Astral Beliefs to Kepler, Fludd and Newton
Chapter 3. Some Astrological Techniques
Chapter 4. From Babylon to Copernicus
Chapter 5. Stoics, Kepler and Evaluations
Chapter 6. Earlier Christians and Astrology
Chapter 7. From Ptolemy to Newton
To download a revision
of the entire work in Acrobat Reader (pdf) format, click
here.
2. Right as
Rain: What Goes Without Saying?
This is a lecture on what one can know without being able to put what one knows into a language.
3. Where did all the Indians go?
4. Adumbrations of Radiations from the Bible to Descartes
1. Adumbrations of Radiations from the Bible, Plato and Aristotle, up to Kepler
5. The Skeleton of Water (poems)
1. Who that say that? (22 poems)
5. The Play Goes On (12 poems)
6. On
the Group of All Homeomorphisms of a Manifold:
PhD dissertation, mathematics, as published in
Transactions of the American Mathematical Society
vol. 97, issue 2, Nov 1960, p 193-212
(pdf file, requires Acrobat Reader)
7. A
World New to Some
Some history of 16th & 17th century New England,
mainly the Connecticut River Valley, with
footnotes
showing genealogical connections with numerous
old Puritan families -- these are some of my ancestors:
1.
Henry Smith, Puritan preacher
2.
Samuel Hale and the Pequot War
3.
Samuel Hale, Jr., Justice of the Peace
4. Gov.
Thomas Welles and the Fundamental Orders
5.
Jonathan Hale I, II and III, and the Revolutionary War,
with
footnotes,
including a witch, Thomas Mix and Rebecca
Turner and
the Phantom Ship, Elisha Camp and the
steamship Sophia,
and more
8. Nothing New Under
the Sun: Cycles, Eternal Returns, Immortality
Some history of grand theories of universal
repetition (pdf)
9. Three
Paths to Gettysburg:
1.
Great-grandfather Corporal Elvin Gilman Hill
2.
Grandfather Capt. Charles Wiley Fisher
3.
Great-uncle Lt. (later Brig. Gen.) Tully McCrea
(Acrobat
pdf version)
10. On Time(s) and Off Times(s) (contents)
I. Martin Heidegger :
his beings and times
1. Starting from Athens and Jerusalem
2. On Temporalizing Being and temporalizing being
3. On the Way to One-ing
4. Times : Temporalität, Zeitlichkeit
5. Sein und Zeit, Being and Time: the Book
6. Dasein and Zeitlichkeit: Everyday time
7. Appendix 1: Some Origins
8. Appendix 2: Heidegger and the Nazis
II. Rudolf Carnap on Pseudoproblems
1. What Carnap Wants to Do to Heidegger and Others
2. What Words and Sentences Mean
3. How to Reason One's Way to Meanings
4. Metaphysical Words Without Meanings
5. Carnap Confronts Heidegger
11. Cauchy's
Variables and Orders of the Infinitely Small
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Vol. 30, No. 3, Sep 1979, 261-265 (Acrobat pdf file)
12. A sorites (heap) paradox: all elephants
are small
using mathematical induction and first order
predicate logic
13.
The Infinite and Infinitesimal Quantities of Du Bois-Reymond and their
Reception.pdf
Archive for History of Exact Sciences, v. 24, Nr. 2,
June, 1981, 101-16
14. Euclid
and the Egyptian Rope-stretchers
discussion of the extent to which Euclid's
Elements may have been based on a desire
to put into words directions for practical
measurements
15. Seeing and Saying
improved and extended version of 14, with
discussion about the use of diagrams
in connection with foundations of mathematics
Link to
Acrobat pdf version
Note: Since posting this item I have become
aware of the work of Reviel Netz, The Shaping
of Deduction in Greek Mathematics (1999,
2003).
This and works by David Fowler and Wilbur
Knorr are highly relevant to this item.
16. Space & Time & Spacetime
1. Time as
Motion and Motion as Time
2. Clock Motion and
Time Dilation