Basilio Sabazio was the first in Italy to argue for the unity and corruptibility of either sublunar or celestial matter. In this paper new insight of his intellectual activity between Napoli and Milano is provided, and in particular his relationship with Scipione Capece, from whose letter to Giovan Francesco di Capua, Count of Palena we learn that Sabazio was an expert in philology and astronomy. The surviving part of an essay by Sabazio to the astronomer Francesco Cigalini from (...) Como is here edited with some informations about Cigalini’s reply. A newly recovered Sabazio’s astronomical work is here edited – from which his endorsement of Eraclides Ponticus’ astronomical system is evident –, as well as his Consilium to Pope Paolo III about the urgency of convening a general council. (shrink)

A presente comunicação é o resultado de uma pesquisa bibliográfica e das constatações do autor derivadas da sua experiência no processo de ensino e aprendizagem, mormente na disciplina de Didáctica de Física. Tomando como pressuposto de que a Didáctica de Física ou a Prática de Ensino de Física, ocupa um papel preponderante no currículo de Formação do corpo discente e docente na Universidade Pedagógica, o autor trás à tona uma discussão teórica com vários autores que de algum tempo à esta (...) parte se têm debruçado sobre o assunto. Nesta discussão, o autor se apegou no seguinte tripé: a) A dicotomia ensino e aprendizagem em Física; b) A prática de ensino de Física: realidades e desafios rumo à novos paradigmas didáctico – epistemológicos e c) Algumas reflexões pessoais do autor, arraigadas na sua experiência profissional e não só. O desdobramento deste tripé, serviu para cimentar a sua convicção, antes tida como premissa, segundo a qual, o ensino de Física, sobretudo em se tratando de cursos universitários, a actividade experimental precisa ter em conta à aspectos como a descrição das aulas, o modo como são organizadas, a valorização das actividades experimentais desenvolvidas em pequenos grupos, bem como a abordagem que focaliza a demonstração de conceitos e fenómenos discutidos teoricamente. E ainda, o direccionamento das actividades para favorecer elementos didácticos como o desenvolvimento de habilidades, observação e interpretação, entre outros. Para que estes pressupostos ganhem eco na nossa plataforma curricular, é necessário que a formação de professores de Física, dê maior importância aos contornos ecológicos, sociais e económicos que bordejam o espaço educacional. A percepção teórica que isso dá ao educador, aglutinado ao saber teórico-prático deste, da realidade que circunda a escola, é a que dá ao educador, premissas e ferramentas para poder equacionar e apropriar-se com eficácia dos ambientes sócio-culturais existentes neste espaço ecológico. (shrink)

Structural biology has experienced several transformative technological advances in recent years. These include: development of extremely bright X-ray sources and the use of electrons to extend protein crystallography to ever decreasing crystal sizes; and an increase in the resolution attainable by cryo-electron microscopy. Here we discuss the use of these techniques in general terms and highlight their application for biological filament systems, an area that is severely underrepresented in atomic resolution structures. We assemble a model of a capped tropomyosin-actin minifilament (...) to demonstrate the utility of combining structures determined by different techniques. Finally, we survey the methods that attempt to transform high resolution structural biology into more physiological environments, such as the cell. Together these techniques promise a compelling decade for structural biology and, more importantly, they will provide exciting discoveries in understanding the designs and purposes of biological machines. Structural biology is undergoing technological advancements that now reveal the structures of previously inaccessible biological machines. Microfocus synchrotron beamlines, X-ray free electron lasers, and MicroED cope with vanishingly small crystals, while cryo-electron microscopy targets single molecules at near atomic resolution. These advances promise an exciting decade for structural biology. (shrink)

Historians and grammarians, palaeographers, and epigraphers have long employed the Scipionic inscriptions as providing accurate data for the period of about 200 B.C. A recent article, however, appearing in this journal, written by the distinguished grammarian, Professor Fay, just before his untimely death, questions the authenticity of these inscriptions, chiefly on grammatical grounds. The inscriptions are so important that it might be well to consider carefully the validity of such arguments in the light of other evidence before we surrender these (...) landmarks of republican history and language. (shrink)

Historians and grammarians, palaeographers, and epigraphers have long employed the Scipionic inscriptions as providing accurate data for the period of about 200 B.C. A recent article, however, appearing in this journal, written by the distinguished grammarian, Professor Fay, just before his untimely death, questions the authenticity of these inscriptions, chiefly on grammatical grounds. The inscriptions are so important that it might be well to consider carefully the validity of such arguments in the light of other evidence before we surrender these (...) landmarks of republican history and language. (shrink)

Latin ‘plvs.’—To begin somewhat remotely, I am not satisfied with the current explanation of Lat. plus. As regards pleores, to pass over Cuny's mistaken derivation in MSL. 16. 322, the explanation from plēyōses is correct— IE. plēyo. : plēyos–:: Sk. návya: compv. návyas, cf. pánya: pányas and távya: távyas. IE. plēyes also appears, not only in Sanskrit as prắyas and in πλε–ων , but, by a quite rigorous phonetic, in O.Norse fleiri, from a primate flaiz-an (...) ‘sow,’ borrowed from a North Germanic verb-stem sā–ya shrink)

Le Songe de Scipion est l’occasion pour Cicéron de revenir sur cette notion généralement dévalorisée politiquement qu’est l’espoir, par le biais de la longue narration d’un rêve, dans lequel Scipion a eu la vision, non seulement de sa destinée future, mais de l’ensemble de l’univers, et a été instruit du destin des âmes humaines après la mort. En réponse aux interrogations du républicanisme antique sur les limites dans lesquelles une République peut aspirer à la gloire et à l’expansion impériale, l’eschatologie (...) développée par Cicéron dans le Songe de Scipion vient relégitimer l’espoir, en le réorientant vers cette gloire céleste, et non plus terrestre, promise après la mort aux hommes politiques attachés à la vertu. Prêter attention au traitement de l’espoir dans le De Republica permet à la fois de ressaisir l’unité que forme le Songe avec le reste de l’œuvre et d’esquisser l’histoire d’une réflexion sur la valeur politique de l’espoir. (shrink)

On peut difficilement contester l’importance de la traduction du Timée (17a-53c) par un certain Calcidius, accompagnée d’un commentaire d’une section plus courte (31c-53c), datant du ive siècle de notre ère. Comme le note Béatrice Bakhouche (p. 58), ce texte est, avec le Commentaire au Songe de Scipion de Macrobe, les Noces de Mercure et Philologie de Martianus Capella et la Consolation de Philosophie de Boèce, un des quatre « maîtres-livres‑» qui ont assuré la transmission de l’héritage phil...

No single text could be considered more important in the history of philosophy than Descartes' Meditations. This unique collection of background material to this magisterial philosophical text has been translated from the original French and Latin. The texts gathered here illustrate the kinds of principles, assumptions, and philosophical methods that were commonplace when Descartes was growing up. The selections are from: Francisco Sanches, Christopher Clavius, Pierre de la Ramee, Francisco Suárez, Pierre Charron, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo, Scipion Dupleix, Marin Mersenne, (...) Pierre Gassendi, Jean de Silhon, François de la Mothe le Vayer, Charles Sorel, and Jean-Baptiste Morin. (shrink)

Bolognese painter and printmaker Giovanni Luigi Valesio’s varied output included engravings featuring heraldic imagery coupled with allegorical figures and, in some cases, perplexing narratives. Their erudite, panegyric character is typical of thesis prints, elaborate ephemera made for the festive academic defences that flourished in early modern colleges. This essay establishes the heretofore unknown subject of one thesis print and offers a note on the dedicatee and art historical significance of another likely ‘conclusione’. Both prints were dedicated to cardinal nephews, (...) class='Hi'>Scipione Borghese and Pietro Aldobrandini respectively, and they situate the position of the cardinal nephew as a militant force against the Ottoman world through learned allusion and consciously affective depictions of captivity. Drawing on the monumental imagery of their respective papacies and offering innovative conflations of historical and allegorical representation, they testify to a visual apologetics of nepotism as good government that permeated art and life in the Papal States. (shrink)

There is a widely acknowledged, albeit still imprecisely defined, connection between the ‘calculatory’ analyses of local motion developed within the fourteenth century ‘Merton School’ and Galileo Galilei's later treatment of natural motion. The present essay is intended to cast some light on the possible sources and significance of Galileo's putative familiarity with the medieval discussions through a study of the fortunes of the most typical representative of the School, Richard Swineshead. Particular attention is paid to the writings of such scholastic (...) philosophers of Galileo's day as Francisco Toledo, Francesco Piccolomini, Iacopo Zabarella, Francesco Buonamico and Scipione Chiaramonte. Somewhat unexpectedly, it emerges that such authors possessed only the most fragmentary and attenuated knowledge of Swineshead's ideas. The implications of this circumstance, especially insofar as it renders Galileo's familiarity with the Merton tradition even more problematical, are discussed briefly. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials ed. by Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom SorellRichard A. WatsonRoger Ariew, John Cottingham, and Tom Sorell, editors. Descartes’ Meditations: Background Source Materials. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii + 170. Cloth, $54.95. Paper, $18.95.This volume includes primarily source materials from authors who were contemporary to Descartes’s composition of the Meditations. Thus there are no selections from Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne, for (...) example, who were more influential on the Meditations than some of the authors excerpted. Of course their influence is already amply documented by such scholars as Gilson and Gouhier. Probably the most important source included is Suárez, whose role is championed by Jean-Luc Marion in several works. Readers should look for the forthcoming Index Augustino-Cartèsian: Textes et Commentaire by Zbigniew Janowski (Paris: J. Vrin) for a startling challenge to the view that Descartes is Suárezian.In the volume under review, Eustachius a Sancto Paulo is of special interest because Descartes thought of refuting him item by item (but decided exposition of his own view would be adequate). In his youth Descartes had a definite interest in Petrus Ramus, although Beeckman told him his method consisted of tired old tricks. Francisco Sanches and Pierre Charron are important for their expositions of sceptical arguments and attitudes. Christopher Clavius is Descartes’s direct predecessor in mathematical analysis, and none of Descartes’s protests that he never read the man has convinced anyone. Scipion Dupleix is a fine example of how the Old Philosophy appeared to the New Philosophers, and Marin Mersenne, of course, compiled material on every subject Descartes ever had an interest in. Pierre Gassendi exercised Descartes’s ire more than any other commentator on the Meditations, and Descartes again probably read Gassendi’s continuing criticisms even though he claimed he wouldn’t. [End Page 366]Of special interest is Jean de Silhon, an old friend of Descartes’s who published a book containing a proto-cogito three years before the Meditations appeared. François de la Mothe le Vayer represents the libertine strain many detect in Descartes’s writings, while Jean-Baptiste Morin provides fodder for those who detect Descartes’s piety, although Descartes asserts that the man is an idiot for defending the immobility of the earth. Finally, Charles Sorel provides an example of the deductive mode of exposition in a text that shows that the notion of a unified science was more than Cartesian. One contemporary who was left out and should have been included was the Augustinian Guillaume Gibieuf.But overall, this is an interesting and useful collection of works Descartes doubtless knew. [End Page 367]Richard A. WatsonWashington UniversityCopyright © 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)