The Great Rift : Literacy, Numeracy, and the Religion-Science Divide / Michael E. Hobart.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hobart, Michael E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematics, Medieval.

Science, Renaissance.

Mathematics--History.

Mathematics.

Numeration--History.

Numeration.

Religion and science--History.

Religion and science.

Signs and symbols--History.

Signs and symbols.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (521 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

In their search for truth, contemporary religious believers and modern scientific investigators hold many values in common. But in their approaches, they express two fundamentally different conceptions of how to understand and represent the world. Michael E. Hobart looks for the origin of this difference in the work of Renaissance thinkers who invented a revolutionary mathematical system--relational numeracy. By creating meaning through numbers and abstract symbols rather than words, relational numeracy allowed inquisitive minds to vault beyond the constraints of language and explore the natural world with a fresh interpretive vision. The Great Rift is the first book to examine the religion-science divide through the history of information technology. Hobart follows numeracy as it emerged from the practical counting systems of merchants, the abstract notations of musicians, the linear perspective of artists, and the calendars and clocks of astronomers. As the technology of the alphabet and of mere counting gave way to abstract symbols, the earlier "thing-mathematics" metamorphosed into the relational mathematics of modern scientific investigation. Using these new information symbols, Galileo and his contemporaries mathematized motion and matter, separating the demonstrations of science from the linguistic logic of religious narration. Hobart locates the great rift between science and religion not in ideological disagreement but in advances in mathematics and symbolic representation that opened new windows onto nature. In so doing, he connects the cognitive breakthroughs of the past with intellectual debates ongoing in the twenty-first century.-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Rift Between Science and Religion

Part I. A Prayer and a Theory: The Classifying Temper

Religio and Scientia

A World of Words and Things

Demonstrable Common Sense: Premodern science

Part II. From the “Imagination Mathematical” to the Threshold of Analysis

Teeming Things and Empty Relations

Early Numeracy and the Classifying of Mathematics

Thing-Mathematics: The Medieval Quadrivium

Arithmetic: Hindu-Arabic Numbers and the Rise of Commerce

Music Taming Time, Tempering Tone

Geometry: The Illusions of Perspective and Proportion

Astronomy: The Technologies of Time

Part III. Galileo and the Analytical Temper

The Moment of Modern Science

The Birth of Analysis

Toward the Mathematization of Matter

Demonstrations and Narrations: The Doctrine of Two Truths

Epilogue: The Great Rift Today

Appendixes

Illustration Credits

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Aug 2018)

ISBN:

9780674985162

0674985168

9780674985186

0674985184

OCLC:

1030438283