Containing sixteen essays and a substantial introduction by noted historians of premodern science, this book provides a fresh look at divergent yet complementary traditions of interpreting the natural world, ranging from Greek mechanics to early modern Chinese theories of dragons.

Introduction, William R. Newman & Edith Dudley Sylla ANCIENT Modes of Explanation in the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, Jean De Groot Structures of Argument and Concepts of Force in the Aristotelian Mechanical Problems, Mark Schiefsky ISLAMIC/ARABIC The Simple Ontology of Kalām Atomism: An Outline, A. I. Sabra The Footprints of “Experiment” in Early Arabic Optics, Elaheh Kheirandish THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES The “Experience-Based Medicine” of the Thirteenth Century, Michael McVaugh The Intellect Naturalized: Roger Bacon on the Existence of Corporeal Species within the Intellect, Yael Raizman-Kedar Magic and the Physical World in Thirteenth-Century Scholasticism, Steven P. Marrone The Debate over the Nature of Motion: John Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Albert of Saxony. With an Edition of John Buridan’s Quaestiones super libros Physicorum, secundum ultimam lecturam, Book III, q. 7, Johannes M.M.H. Thijssen John Buridan and Critical Realism, Edith Dudley Sylla LATE MEDIEVAL, RENAISSANCE, AND EARLY MODERN The Significance of “Chymical Atomism”, William R. Newman Conjecture, Probabilism, and Provisional Knowledge in Renaissance Meteorology, Craig Martin Setting up Copernicus? Astronomy and Natural Philosophy in Giambattista Capuano da Manfredonia’s Expositio on the Sphere, Michael H. Shank Copernicus’s Mereological Vision of the Universe, André Goddu From “Dragonology” to Meteorology: Aristotelian Natural Philosophy and the Beginning of the Decline of the Dragon in China, Qiong Zhang Baroque Fire (A Note on Early-Modern Angelology), Anne A. Davenport Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific Imagery, Christoph Lüthy & Alexis Smets Index