Avner Ben-Zaken
Ono Academic College, Liberal Arts, Faculty Member
- Harvard University, Society of Fellows, AlumnusUniversität Erfurt, Max Weber Kolleg, Department MemberUniversity of California, Los Angeles, History, Alumnusadd
- History of Science, History, Early Modern Intellectual History, Cultural History, Bruno Latour, Natalie Zemon Davis, and 81 moreAmartya Sen, Anthony Grafton, History of the Book, History of Ideas, Picatrix, Early modern Ottoman History, History of Arabic Science. Islamic Instruments. Astronomy under the Mamluks, Amatus Lusitanus, Copernicus, Dioscorides, Pietro della Valle, John Greaves, Tommaso Campanella, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Science Between East and West, Cross-cultural History, Italian Humanism, Liberal arts, Historiography, Cross-Cultural Studies, World History, Mediterranean Studies, History of the Mediterranean, History of Astronomy, History Of Science In Islam, Cross-Cultural Interaction (History), Ottoman Egypt, Hermaneutics, Taqi al-Din, Ottoman Observatory, Cross-Cultural Interactions, early modern Jewish history of science, Cross-Cultural History of Science, Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan, Ben Zaken Ono, Jesuit Astronomers In Goa, Pico Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Review Avner Ben-Zaken Science historiography, Reading Hayy Ibn Yaqzan Review, Philosophy, Anthropology, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Ibn-Tufayl, Philosophus Autodidactus, Edward Pococke, Simon Ockley, Mose Narbonni, Philosophy of Science, European History, Early Modern History, History of Medicine, Ottoman History, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Philosophy, History of Astrology, History of the Eastern Mediterranean, Humanities, History of Philosophy, Microhistory, Actor Network Theory, Edmund Husserl, Amos Funkenstein, Carlo Ginzburg, Carl Schmitt, Filippo Buonaccorsi (1437-1496), Rheticus, Global Microhistory, Martin Heidegger, Philosophy of Magic, Talismans and Amulets, Magic, Religion and Science, Renaissance magic and astrology, Marsilio Ficino, Medieval Magic, Scientific Revolution, Occultism, Natural Magic, Magic and the Occult (Anthropology Of Religion), Witchcraft (Magic), and Cultural Studiesedit
- I am a historian of the early modern era who explores scientific and intellectual exchanges, focusing on the connecti... moreI am a historian of the early modern era who explores scientific and intellectual exchanges, focusing on the connectivity between men, books, objects, instruments, and theories as they move within cross-cultural networks.
I have had the opportunity to develop versatile research skills and topics of interest, stimulating me to write and publish on various topics and diverse cultural contexts — Jewish, Islamic, and Christian. The principle of my work is to illuminate the historical conditions of liminal consciousness, transitional periods, and marginal loci, demonstrating that such latent conditions are essential for free and fruitful exchanges, and generating new ideas.
I believe that the field of history of science has to shift its focus from looking for the structure of science in a particular locus to exploring the function of science, particularly in following the connectivity between various loci where scientific activities take place. Such a shift will bring about more prismatic and thicker accounts, combining local knowledge within a global perspective. Focusing on connectivity brings to light the outstanding role cultural margins played in sparking new ideas and practices that eventually moved from the margins to the cultural centers, generating paradigmatic shifts.
My historiographical approach cuts through division into regional studies and goes beyond a focus on one particular culture, highlighting the connectivity between cultures.edit
Research Interests:
in Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Audodidacticism, Avner Ben-Zaken shows that pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions. Struggles over relations of control between individuals... more
in Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: a Cross-Cultural History of Audodidacticism, Avner Ben-Zaken shows that pleas for autodidacticism echoed not only within close philosophical discussions. Struggles over relations of control between individuals and establishments were the ground from which such pleas grew and the field where they were displayed. The deeply buried and convoluted migration, circulation, and reception of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān, illustrates the intricate evolution of social and individual control. In twelve century Marrakesh, Ibn-Tufayl struggled to tame uncontrolled religious enthusiasm of mystics, subjecting them to philosophical procedures; In fourteenth century Barcelona, Narbonni called to liberate adolescences from communal control, confining them to self-disciplined life of solitude; In fifteenth century Florence, Pico della Mirandola detonated the spiritual chains of the heavens, grounding man to the physical reality of nature; the sixteenth century utopian societies and scientific societies defied the authority of institutional discipline, but called its members to follow restricted and sometimes ascetic way of life; and finally seventeenth century experimentalists liberated man from metaphysics and from constructed categories of knowledge, confining them to self-discovery of nature based on facts and personal credibility.
The various historical nexuses mutually chained one another through the growing process of shifting social control from establishments to the individuals themselves, creating the “modern man” as a solitary self-controlled individual that utilizes reason to foresee the future outcomes and repercussions of his deeds. The rejection of traditional authorities, thus, did not exclaim chaos, anarchism or complete freedom. In a mishap, it led to internalization of institutional mechanisms of control. Rather than loss of control, autodiadactism highlighted the need for self-control. It relocated the mechanisms of control from society to the individual, replacing history, tradition and metaphysics with nature, reason and natural instincts as the ultimate sources of knowledge.
The various historical nexuses mutually chained one another through the growing process of shifting social control from establishments to the individuals themselves, creating the “modern man” as a solitary self-controlled individual that utilizes reason to foresee the future outcomes and repercussions of his deeds. The rejection of traditional authorities, thus, did not exclaim chaos, anarchism or complete freedom. In a mishap, it led to internalization of institutional mechanisms of control. Rather than loss of control, autodiadactism highlighted the need for self-control. It relocated the mechanisms of control from society to the individual, replacing history, tradition and metaphysics with nature, reason and natural instincts as the ultimate sources of knowledge.
Research Interests: History, European History, Intellectual History, Philosophy of Science, History of the Book, and 15 moreRenaissance Studies, History of Science, World History, Jewish History, Cross-Cultural Studies, History of the Mediterranean, History of Reading, Scientific Revolution, Experimentalism, Microhistoria, Autodidacticism, Cross-cultural History, Moses Narbonni, History of Philosophy, and Global Microhistory
Avner Ben-Zaken reconsiders the fundamental question of how early modern scientific thought traveled between Western and Eastern cultures in the age of the so-called Scientific Revolution.Through five meticulously researched case... more
Avner Ben-Zaken reconsiders the fundamental question of how early modern scientific thought traveled between Western and Eastern cultures in the age of the so-called Scientific Revolution.Through five meticulously researched case studies—in which he explores how a single obscure object or text moved in the Eastern world—Ben-Zaken reveals the intricate ways that scientific knowledge moved across cultures. His diligent exploration traces the eastward flow of post-Copernican cosmologies and scientific discoveries, showing how these ideas were disseminated, modified, and applied to local cultures. Ben-Zaken argues that early modern science did not develop along separate, linear paths, with each culture drawing only on its own “monadic” nature, but rather was cultivated by streams of fresh ideas and objects that came through exchanges at the cultural margins. The principle of the “incommensurability of cultures” would, perhaps, best give way to a more continuative and dialogic approach that sets its eyes not on “cultural centers” but on the hazy yet fertile “cultural margins” that necessarily overlap with other “cultural margins,” creating a stimulating, mutually embraced zone where intensive cross-cultural exchanges transpire. A focus on “mutually embraced zones” is critical not only to drawing a widely prismatic history, but also to uncovering the precise locus and essential mechanisms for cultural construction. His findings reshape our understanding of scientific revolution.
Research Interests: History, European History, Intellectual History, Middle East History, Renaissance Studies, and 15 moreHistory of Science, World History, Cross-Cultural Studies, Microhistory, History of the Mediterranean, Scientific Revolution, Copernican Revolution, Sepharadic Studies, Cross-cultural History, Cross-Cultural History of Science, Taqi al-Din, John Greaves, Mutually-Embraced-Zones, incommensurability of Cultures, and Global Microhistory
"In Communism as Cultural Imperialism Avner Ben-Zaken examines, through a cross-cultural prism, the circulation of the communist Ideology and movement in the Middle-East, exposing the cultural nerves which offset the interactions between... more
"In Communism as Cultural Imperialism Avner Ben-Zaken examines, through a cross-cultural prism, the circulation of the communist Ideology and movement in the Middle-East, exposing the cultural nerves which offset the interactions between European Jewish communists on the one hand, and local communists, Jews and Arabs, on the other hand. He shows that local activists perceived Marxist discourse as a nuanced European imperialism, as a cultural imperialism, particularly for its universal pretention and claims for “scientific” and “objective” social science. In this sense, the “objective-scientific truth” of Marxism fueled the self-conviction of European-Jewish Marxists that it is possible to bridge the cultural gaps, to spread Marxism, and to transform local cultures. Such self-conviction generated a somewhat paradoxical development, in which European Jewish Marxists established the Middle Eastern Communist Parties, and for some decades regulated their public discourse and political strategies.
Local communist culture, however, was not harmonious at all. In deconstructing the mechanisms of circulation of Marxist ideology and movement, Ben-Zaken shows that cross-cultural encounters stimulate “sensations of estrangement”, pushing and pulling the various actors to opposing directions. “International” political ideologies, Ben-Zaken argues, are not necessarily perceived as scientific and as culturally neutral. He, thus, call to re-write the history of Marxism in the Middle East as the history of the various attempts to culturally adjust universal values to local practices."
Local communist culture, however, was not harmonious at all. In deconstructing the mechanisms of circulation of Marxist ideology and movement, Ben-Zaken shows that cross-cultural encounters stimulate “sensations of estrangement”, pushing and pulling the various actors to opposing directions. “International” political ideologies, Ben-Zaken argues, are not necessarily perceived as scientific and as culturally neutral. He, thus, call to re-write the history of Marxism in the Middle East as the history of the various attempts to culturally adjust universal values to local practices."
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Jewish Studies, Marxism, World History, and 12 moreJewish History, Political History, Cross-Cultural Studies, History of Astronomy, Arab and Jewish Diasporas, History of the Modern Middle East, Post colonial studies, Jewish-Arab relations, Cross-cultural History, cross-cultural history of Marxism, cross-cultural history of Social Sciences, and Comintern
Page 1. Page 2. AVNER BEN-ZAKEN Reading Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqzdn A Cross-Cultural History ofAutodidacticism Page 3. Reading Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqzan Page 4. This page intentionally left blank Page 5. Reading H.ayy Ibn-Yaqz.ān A Cross ...
In the 1630s, while in Aleppo, Edward Pococke picked up a manuscript of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān. He used it for his Latin translation Philosophus autodidacticus, and later gave it to the Bodleian Library where it is now kept. Interestingly,... more
In the 1630s, while in Aleppo, Edward Pococke picked up a manuscript of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān. He used it for his Latin translation Philosophus autodidacticus, and later gave it to the Bodleian Library where it is now kept. Interestingly, Pococke bound the manuscript together with a work of the mystic-philosopher Abū Ḥāmid Muhammad al-Ghazzālī (known in Latin as Algazel). The connection between Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān and al-Ghazzālī was not accidental. Between the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries, manuscripts of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān circulated in the Near East, as a text showing how the study of nature leads to mysticism. In subordinating mystical practices to philosophical procedures, the text gives preferentiality to firsthand practical experience over the traditional textual authority of contemplated philosophy. However, autodidacticism was not a pure philosophical choice. The contours of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān includes emblematic features that point out at the stimulating context to which Ibn-Tufayl responded - a wondrous Eastern island called Wāqwāq on which the story takes place; spontaneous generation; a wild prodigy nursed by a gazelle; an elusive “Oriental Philosophy” that the secrets of which the text claims to deliver, and finally mystical practices that brings the protagonist, Hayy, to spiritual climax in a cave.
These emblematic features corresponded with previous controversies regarding authoritative knowledge between mystics and judges, logicians and practitioners, literati and illiterati and finally far eastern traders and court politicians that swirled Ibn-Tufayl in the Almohad court in Marrakesh where he was employed as the court philosopher. In attempting to resolve such tensions, he recast their arguments into a coherent philosophical program in which autodidacticism seems as an accidental by-product rather than its principle feature.
These emblematic features corresponded with previous controversies regarding authoritative knowledge between mystics and judges, logicians and practitioners, literati and illiterati and finally far eastern traders and court politicians that swirled Ibn-Tufayl in the Almohad court in Marrakesh where he was employed as the court philosopher. In attempting to resolve such tensions, he recast their arguments into a coherent philosophical program in which autodidacticism seems as an accidental by-product rather than its principle feature.
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Medieval Philosophy, History of Religion, History of Science, and 12 moreMedieval Iberian History, Cross-Cultural Studies, Sufism, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Medieval Islamic History, Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Medieval History of Spain, Cave and Karst Studies, Almohads, Spanish Medieval and Golden Age Literature, and Research Medieval Judaism and Jewish Christian relations in Late Antiquity and Medieval age.
What would you do if you were stranded on a desert island? This dilemma and its derivatives somewhat epitomize the almost obsessive modern pursuit for the “true inner self.” In our shared cultural imagination, the desert island and the... more
What would you do if you were stranded on a desert island?
This dilemma and its derivatives somewhat epitomize the almost
obsessive modern pursuit for the “true inner self.” In our shared cultural imagination, the desert island and the life of solitude allow one to actively explore himself and his surroundings, to experience life firsthand rather than mediated by culture, and to perfectly situate himself in his proper natural place. Self- discovery becomes essential to the purpose of modern life—to the pursuit of happiness. Without social and historical constraints, without the burden of tradition, and without false needs imprinted on our minds by cultural hegemony, the individual can trust firsthand experience to bring natural, and so complete, happiness.
This dilemma and its derivatives somewhat epitomize the almost
obsessive modern pursuit for the “true inner self.” In our shared cultural imagination, the desert island and the life of solitude allow one to actively explore himself and his surroundings, to experience life firsthand rather than mediated by culture, and to perfectly situate himself in his proper natural place. Self- discovery becomes essential to the purpose of modern life—to the pursuit of happiness. Without social and historical constraints, without the burden of tradition, and without false needs imprinted on our minds by cultural hegemony, the individual can trust firsthand experience to bring natural, and so complete, happiness.
Research Interests:
This theoretical introduction promotes the explortion of cultural margins as shedding new light on the “Scientific Revolution,” showing that early modern science owed its formation not exclusively to “monadic” cultures in the traditional... more
This theoretical introduction promotes the explortion of cultural margins as shedding new light on the “Scientific Revolution,” showing that early modern science owed its formation not exclusively to “monadic” cultures in the traditional intellectual centers, but also to vibrant, everyday cross-cultural exchanges on the margins of cultural fields. Various cross-cultural exchanges transpired in the “mutually embraced zone” of the Eastern Mediterranean, where the margins of one culture overlapped the margins of the other, extending post-Copernican cosmologies eastward, where they were negotiated, shaped, and
resolved.
resolved.
Research Interests:
This paper aims at excavating the circulation of the Picatrix, an Andalusian grimoire, as it traveled across the Mediterranean in early modern Europe, stirring up natural magic not only as an alternative program for science, but also... more
This paper aims at excavating the circulation of the Picatrix, an Andalusian grimoire, as it traveled across the Mediterranean in early modern Europe, stirring up natural magic not only as an alternative program for science, but also identifying it as an alternative scientific culture located in the East. In following the readings of Ficino, Agrippa and Campanella of the Picatrix, it unfolds a latent cultural process, beginning with Ficino who attempted to philosophize the concept of magic, through Agrippa who sought to legitimate the practice of magic and the persona of the magician, and up to Campanella who ventured to transform natural magic not only into the prime program for natural sciences, but into a political science as well. By stressing their reliance on a source that not only encouraged a competing program (natural magic), but was also written in a competing cultural space, our protagonists stressed that natural magic originated in the deep past, in the ancient space of the east. Thus, they further established its legitimacy by arguing that in its essence, natural magic, builds upon cross-cultural exchanges and on breaking disciplinary fences, fusing bodies of knowledge from different disciplines and from different cultures into each other, so to establish a new philosophy of science. The east, accordingly, was not only a space from which the philosophy of natural magic originated, but more particularly, the fictional cultural space where practice of natural magic acted as building an inductive bottom-top society.
Research Interests: History, Intellectual History, Philosophy of Science, History of Ideas, Renaissance Studies, and 15 moreHistory of Science, World History, Cross-Cultural Studies, Witchcraft (Magic), Tommaso Campanella, Natural Magic, Occultism, Scientific Revolution, Medieval Magic, Picatrix, Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance magic and astrology, Magic, Religion and Science, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, and Philosophy of Magic
Scientific exchanges between Christian and Islamic civilizations passed through several phases from the Middle Ages onwards, each characterized in its own way. In medieval times, intellectually prosperous Islamic civilization passed works... more
Scientific exchanges between Christian and Islamic civilizations passed through several phases from the Middle Ages onwards, each characterized in its own way. In medieval times, intellectually prosperous Islamic civilization passed works on natural philosophy in Arabic to Western Europe, giving the first impetus to the rise of a new form of intellectual inquiry in Europe. The result was not only a transformation in the structure of European universities but also the establishment of a new form of doctrine, based on incorporating Arabic Aristotelian works into the new Thomist theology. For over two centuries, up to the 15th century, Latin translations of the Arab philosophical corpus played a key role in the curricula of European intellectual institutions. But later, with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, ancient Roman and Greek texts surfaced and were circulated, generating a new urge to read Aristotle directly, no longer through the mediation of the Arabs, thus opening the way in art, literature, and natural philosophy to the rise of the Renaissance.
Research Interests:
Sometime in the thirteen century Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān was translated into Hebrew. The translation was engrained in the process of the circulation of Arabic philosophical texts from Spain, through Catalonia across the Pyrenees Mountains to... more
Sometime in the thirteen century Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān was translated into Hebrew. The translation was engrained in the process of the circulation of Arabic philosophical texts from Spain, through Catalonia across the Pyrenees Mountains to France and Provence. The circulation produced a wave of translations of Arabic philosophy, particularly Averroeist writings, into Hebrew and Latin. These translations, in turn, sparked local controversies between philosophers and theologians among Christians in the University of Paris, and among Sephardic Jews in the Sephardic communities of Provence-Catalonia. More than a century after this stirred reception of philosophy, Moses Narbonni was restlessly wondering through Provence and Catalonia. When he arrived in 1348 at Barcelona he set to write down a commentary on the anonymous Hebrew translation of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān. He titled his commentary Yehiel Ben-‘Uriel and presented the story of Ḥayy in a form of a dialogue between Ibn-Tufayl and a student. Narbonni’s commentary set off an increasing interest in autodidactisism and was the vehicle through which Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān was presented to Hebrew and Latin readers. But, what intrigued Narbonni in Barcelona of the mid fourteenth century to pick up a manuscript translation of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān, to write down his commentary and set off this autodidactic tradition?
Research Interests:
Far from being a politician with no vision or plan, Benjamin Netanyahu is in dialogue with history. His ideology was inherited from his father, but it harkens back to 15th-century messianic writings. for a link press the... more
Far from being a politician with no vision or plan, Benjamin Netanyahu is in dialogue with history. His ideology was inherited from his father, but it harkens back to 15th-century messianic writings.
for a link press the link below:
https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-the-father-the-son-and-the-spirit-of-catastrophe-1.5364937
for a link press the link below:
https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-the-father-the-son-and-the-spirit-of-catastrophe-1.5364937
Research Interests: Israel Studies, Israel/Palestine, History of Political Thought, Holocaust Studies, Karl Schmidt, and 22 moreJewish Messianism, Israel, Israel and Zionism, Nazi Germany, Arab-Israeli conflict, Nazism, Neoconservatism, Flight and Expulsion, Leviathan, Holocaust Shoah, Conservative Politics, Catastrophism, Netanyahu, שואה, Neo-Conservatism, Anslem Kiefer, Don Issac Abarvanel , expulsion from Spain , buxtorf , behemototh , בנימין נתניהו, and סכסוך ישראלי ערבי
Famously argued by Thomas Kuhn, sequencing paradigms are incommensurable, not being able to share the same standard measurements and to judge each other. Such principle has dramatic ramifications when paradigms represented cultures. The... more
Famously argued by Thomas Kuhn, sequencing paradigms are incommensurable, not being able to share the same standard measurements and to judge each other. Such principle has dramatic ramifications when paradigms represented cultures. The shift of paradigms sometimes represents the shifting of the hegemonic culture of science, like in the early modern times when the rising European science replaced the declining medieval Islamic science. If we to apply Kuhn's principle of incommensurability on that period then we erroneously end up with the conclusion, as it often underlined in traditional historiography, that the scientific cultures of Europe and the Middle East were detached, isolated, with radically different values of science. In the conclusion part of the book, I offer to desert the Kuhnian principle and to move into locating and focusing on the places where the margins of one culture overlap the margins of adjacent culture, creating a mutually-embraced zone where intensive scientific exchanges take place freely and randomly. These exchanges on the margins, eventually create new ideas and practices of science, which move from the margins to the cultural centers, generating scientific revolutions. The Scientific Revolution, then, started on the margins and ended up in cultural centers.
Research Interests:
In 1629 Joseph Solomon Delmedigo published in Amsterdam a somewhat incoherent book enti-tled Elim. The book was printed by Menasseh Ben-Israel (Spinoza’s teacher) and was a collection of articles about natural philosophy and mathematics.... more
In 1629 Joseph Solomon Delmedigo published in Amsterdam a somewhat incoherent book enti-tled Elim. The book was printed by Menasseh Ben-Israel (Spinoza’s teacher) and was a collection of articles about natural philosophy and mathematics. Before his arrival in Amsterdam, Delmedi-go had traveled between 1616-1619 in the Near East where he participated in a public contest in mathematics, collected ancient manuscripts, studied Cabala, conducted observations of the 1619 comet and was associated with the Karaites, a Jewish sect that rejected rabbinical literature in favor of the purity of Scripture. In Elim he promoted the Copernican cosmology to which he was exposed by Galileo, his teacher in Padua University during the years 1606-1613. The book gives only vague clues for connecting his Copernican conviction with his travels. However, a close reading of Delmedigo’s published works, set alongside his culture of learning and associations, helps us to understand why and how he arrived at Copernican cosmology through the collecting of ancient manuscripts in the Near East.
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Renaissance Studies, History of Science, Jewish Mysticism, Jewish History, and 14 moreCross-Cultural Studies, Galileo Galilei, Pedagogy, Spinoza, Sephardic Studies, Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, Eighteenth Century Radical Enlightenment, Sephardic Jews, Karaites, Judeo-Arabic, Medieval Jewish History and Literature, Radical Enlightenment, Sephardic Diaspora and Migrations, Simone Luzzatto, Global Microhistory, and Jews of Venetian Crete
המחקר רב-השנים על קופרניקוס והספרות המחקרית החדשה על אובייקטיביזציה של הטבע עדיין לא הצטלבו. במאמר זה אבקש להציג ממצאים ראשוניים אשר מחברים את המסורות ההיסטוריגורפיות האלה לסיפור אחד, ולהראות ששאלות מהתחום החזותי תרמו באופן בלתי צפוי... more
המחקר רב-השנים על קופרניקוס והספרות המחקרית החדשה על אובייקטיביזציה של הטבע עדיין לא הצטלבו. במאמר זה אבקש להציג ממצאים ראשוניים אשר מחברים את המסורות ההיסטוריגורפיות האלה לסיפור אחד, ולהראות ששאלות מהתחום החזותי תרמו באופן בלתי צפוי לגיבושה של אחת מהתובנות המדעיות החשובות בהיסטוריה – הסטת השמש למרכז היקום. תחילה אצביע על המוזרויות בטקסט של קופרניקוס, קרי על השימוש שהוא עושה במטפורות כישופיות המתייחסות לשמש כאל אובייקט, אחר כך אחפש אחר מקורות ההשראה שהולידו מטפורות אלה, ולבסוף אחשוף את אופני הקריאה של הטקסט בסביבת גידולו של קופרניקוס. מסע זה יבקש להראות כי הסוגיה המרכזית שעמדה לפתחו של קופרניקוס היתה הפער בין תיאור תיפקודה של השמש כאובייקט בעל הכוח הגדול ביותר ביקום לבין תיאור מיקומה באופן פורמלי מתמטי-גיאומטרי לפיו היא עוד אחד מכוכבי הלכת. תפיסת השמש כאובייקט אפשרה לקופרניקוס להסיטה למרכז היקום, הסטה אשר פתרה את הסתירות שליוו את תאור השמש ואפשרה ליצור שפה פרדיגמטית וחזותית אחידה בעבור מי שעסקו במלאכת הכישוף-הכוכבי ומי שעסקו באסטרונומיה מתמטית.
Clues beneath the Lamp: On Copernicus's Magical "Other" - Preliminary Report
Avner Ben-Zaken
The extended scholarship on Copernicus and the new scholarship on objectification and visualization of nature have not yet intersected. In this paper I would like to present preliminary findings that bring these two scholarships together into one story, showing that questions about the visualization of the sun unexpectedly contributed to one of the most important scientific insight – the shift of the sun to the center of the universe. I will start in investigating some peculiarities in the text that Copernicus chose to encircle the heliocentric diagram in which he stirred up metaphors of astral magic; then I will point out on a possible source for such metaphors; and at the end I will excavate the modes of readings of such astral-magical source in Copernicus’s habitat – Cracow University. This exploration shows that the most critical question that Copernicus faced was the discrepancy between the astral-magical functional description of the sun as the most powerful object in nature and the astronomical-mathematical structural description of the sun as merely a marginal planet. The perception of the sun as an object enabled Copernicus to shift it to the center, resolving the contradicting descriptions of the sun and generating for the first time a unified visualized paradigmatic language for both, practitioners of astral-magic and astronomers.
Clues beneath the Lamp: On Copernicus's Magical "Other" - Preliminary Report
Avner Ben-Zaken
The extended scholarship on Copernicus and the new scholarship on objectification and visualization of nature have not yet intersected. In this paper I would like to present preliminary findings that bring these two scholarships together into one story, showing that questions about the visualization of the sun unexpectedly contributed to one of the most important scientific insight – the shift of the sun to the center of the universe. I will start in investigating some peculiarities in the text that Copernicus chose to encircle the heliocentric diagram in which he stirred up metaphors of astral magic; then I will point out on a possible source for such metaphors; and at the end I will excavate the modes of readings of such astral-magical source in Copernicus’s habitat – Cracow University. This exploration shows that the most critical question that Copernicus faced was the discrepancy between the astral-magical functional description of the sun as the most powerful object in nature and the astronomical-mathematical structural description of the sun as merely a marginal planet. The perception of the sun as an object enabled Copernicus to shift it to the center, resolving the contradicting descriptions of the sun and generating for the first time a unified visualized paradigmatic language for both, practitioners of astral-magic and astronomers.
Research Interests:
This paper suggests that in the search for particular practices that escape biological determinism historians may be better off focusing on circulating men and cultural objects – on displaced figures – as they travel and adjust to new... more
This paper suggests that in the search for particular practices that escape biological
determinism historians may be better off focusing on circulating men and cultural objects – on displaced figures – as they travel and adjust to new conditions. Strangers experience intense cognitive dissonance between the innate natural conditions of their upbringing and their cognitive values, and as such, these figures work out their mental capacities and exercise free-will more powerfully than well-embedded cultural figures. To adjust to new language and cultural practices, they wrestle with fixed habits. Natives, on the other end, experience estrangement when they encounter foreign cultural objects, reinterpret and place them in a fluid web of implied meanings. Both encounters generate sensations of estrangement, forcing humans to act beyond their inborn and habitual reactions. Therefore, in this current age of physical determinism, cultural networks and moving objects carry great potential in further developing cultural history and in re-stressing and maintaining culture as the expressive realm of the collective soul.
determinism historians may be better off focusing on circulating men and cultural objects – on displaced figures – as they travel and adjust to new conditions. Strangers experience intense cognitive dissonance between the innate natural conditions of their upbringing and their cognitive values, and as such, these figures work out their mental capacities and exercise free-will more powerfully than well-embedded cultural figures. To adjust to new language and cultural practices, they wrestle with fixed habits. Natives, on the other end, experience estrangement when they encounter foreign cultural objects, reinterpret and place them in a fluid web of implied meanings. Both encounters generate sensations of estrangement, forcing humans to act beyond their inborn and habitual reactions. Therefore, in this current age of physical determinism, cultural networks and moving objects carry great potential in further developing cultural history and in re-stressing and maintaining culture as the expressive realm of the collective soul.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Usability, Accessibility, and 13 moreHistory of Science, Metadata, Applied Linguistics, Cross-Cultural Studies, Biometrics, Cultural Identity, Linguistics, Semantic Web, Epigenetics, Actor-Network-Theory, HCI, Ernst Cassirer, and Cross-Cultural Communication
When Marxism circulated outside Europe, cultural tension was the prism through which Marxism was introduced and received. The presentation of Marxist discourse further intensified this cultural tension, not as an artifact of European... more
When Marxism circulated outside Europe, cultural tension was the prism through which Marxism was introduced and received. The presentation of Marxist discourse further intensified this cultural tension, not as an artifact of European culture and history, but as a “scientific,” “objective” program to analyze history and transform society. Marxists needed intermediaries fluent in both European and Middle Eastern cultures and languages who could disseminate Marxist ideology in the Middle East. The Comintern assigned Eastern European Jewish Marxists, who arrived at the turn of the century with the buds of the Zionist immigration, to circulate Marxism in the Middle East. Thus, Marxism’s “objective scientific truth” installed in Eastern European Jews a sense of conviction that Marxism could easily bridge cultural differences and transform the cultures and consciousnesses of local Middle Eastern workers.
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Did Shakespeare read Cornelius Agrippa's The Vanity of Sciences? In an investigation into a possible signature of Shakespeare on a copy of Agrippa's book, this paper suggests that natural magic shaped the rise of early modern arts by... more
Did Shakespeare read Cornelius Agrippa's The Vanity of Sciences? In an investigation into a possible signature of Shakespeare on a copy of Agrippa's book, this paper suggests that natural magic shaped the rise of early modern arts by transforming their state of mind from contemplation on the world to reflections on our thoughts of the world. The intellectual revolution at the outset of the modern age rested primarily on a fusion of practice and philosophy – that is, on how to “make a philosophical city without philosophy,” in the words of Thomas More. It began with art, when Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) sought to understand the connection between “to paint” and a painting, and transformed the painter into an artist. It continued with Cornelius Agrippa, who wanted to grasp the connection between “the magical manipulation” and “nature,” and transformed the magician into a scientist. It passed through Shakespeare in literature, as writing poetry was bound up with “making theater” and the playwright became the important literary persona. The artisan, the philosopher and the poet, who in ancient times purported to describe reality in itself, were superseded by the artist, the scientist and the playwright, who set out to describe reality and left us looking into ourselves.
Research Interests: New Historicism, Shakespeare, Pedagogy, Cultural Materialism, Bacon, Francis, and 9 moreCurriculum Development, Shakespeare Authorship, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, The western mystery tradition in literature; alchemical theater; explication of works associated with John Dee and Edward Kelley. Alchemy in Shakespeare. Neo-Latin alchemical poetry. Magical realism and surrealism in contemporary American literature., Relationship between magic, superstition and science, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
During the fifteenth century manuscripts of Narbonni’s commentary on Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān circulated along the Jewish communities from Barcelona through Provance all the way to Italy. In the early 1490s Pico della Mirandola encountered one of... more
During the fifteenth century manuscripts of Narbonni’s commentary on Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān circulated along the Jewish communities from Barcelona through Provance all the way to Italy. In the early 1490s Pico della Mirandola encountered one of these circulating manuscripts and had it translated. The story of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān appeared for the first time in Latin. The manuscript, as it came down to us, is a straight forward translation with few annotations or marginalia and it is now kept at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Genova. During the time he was engaged with Ḥayy, and before completing his influential anti-astrological work Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, Pico died. Recently, a team of scientists exhumed the corpses of Pico and his close friend Poliziano, and subjected them to a battery of tests. In February 2008 they concluded that both men, Poliziano in September and Pico in November 1494, had been poisoned. During his last years, Pico hectically wrote against astrology within a cultural and personal uproar. If we situate Pico’s translation of Ḥayy Ibn-Yaqẓān at the heart of these events, then we should ask what attracted Pico in the story of Ḥayy and how this philosophical novel fitted within the turmoil in Florence during the early 1490s?
Research Interests: Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Humanism, History of Science, Jewish Mysticism, Renaissance Philosophy, and 10 moreIslamic Philosophy, Self-regulated Learning, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Cross-Cultural Studies, History of Astrology, Homosexuality, Autodidactism, Lorenzo de' Medici, Ibn-Tufayl, and Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan
This essay explores the reception and readings of the medieval philosophical novella Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan in late 17th century Oxford. It shows how the publication of its first printed bilingual edition, Arabic-Latin, under the title... more
This essay explores the reception and readings of the medieval philosophical novella Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan in late 17th century Oxford. It shows how the publication of its first printed bilingual edition, Arabic-Latin, under the title Philosophus autodidacticus, aimed at supplying historical groundings, as well as, philosophical support to the fighting Oxfordian experimentalist camp, led by Robert Boyle.
Research Interests: Intellectual History, Cultural History, 17th Century & Early Modern Philosophy, Empiricism, History of Ideas, and 18 moreEarly Modern History, British History, Philosophy of Education, History of Science, Islamic Philosophy, Early Modern Europe, Cross-Cultural Studies, Arabic Philosophy, John Locke, Hugo Grotius, Experimentalism, Robert Boyle, Cross-Cultural History of Science, Ibn-Tufayl, Edward Pococke, History of Philosophy, Rationalists and Empiricists, and Global Microhistory
In 1574 the Ottoman Sultan Murād III invited Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad Ibn-Maʻārūf to build an observatory in Istanbul. Using his exceptional knowledge in the mechanical arts, Taqī al-Dīn constructed instruments and built mechanical clocks... more
In 1574 the Ottoman Sultan Murād III invited Taqī al-Dīn Muḥammad Ibn-Maʻārūf to build an observatory in Istanbul. Using his exceptional knowledge in the mechanical arts, Taqī al-Dīn constructed instruments and built mechanical clocks that he used in his observations of the comet of 1577. Such astronomical and mechanical activity was documented, in 1580, by an anonymous painter who illustrated some miniatures in a manuscript titled Shāhinshāhnāma. In the same decade, European astronomers, such as Tycho Brahe, built instruments and promoted a mechanical worldview of the celestial bodies. Although the scientific cultures coexisted for years, current historiography tends to present them as developing along separate linear paths. Yet, if we examine closely the peculiarities in one of the miniatures, we extract clues about a possible connection between Taqī al-Dīn’s and the European mechanical culture.
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Greaves’ engagement with Eastern sources involved a search for the pristine, thus precise, numbers, ancient measure expressed in modern terms. In turn it helped to recapture a perfect ancient knowledge of the dimensions of the universe.... more
Greaves’ engagement with Eastern sources involved a search for the pristine, thus precise, numbers, ancient measure expressed in modern terms. In turn it helped to recapture a perfect ancient knowledge of the dimensions of the universe. Subsequently, the methodological path helped fashion him to the scholarly needs of his patrons William Laud (1573-1645) and James Ussher (1581-1656). His work emanated as a side-project of these patrons’ belief in a Linguistic Leviathan to be found in the writings of the primitive church, and which could reconcile controversies in political-theology. Finally, Greaves was not working alone, but actually as a member in a cluster of royalist scholars, centered during the 1630s and 1640s on Oxford University. All of the men concerned were, in one way or another, interested in obtaining primordial sources also for resolving controversies. Before and during the Civil War, they either died or were ejected from Oxford by the parliamentary visitors and were replaced by Puritans, parliamentary adherents and Copernicans — men with no interest in primordial sources. Greaves’ attention to primordial measurement was later noticed by Isaac Newton, who explored the ancient sacred cubit in order to recapture the measurements of the Second Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem — the microcosm of the universe.
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"In 1623 an Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, reached the Portuguese colony of Goa in western India, after nine years of travel in the Near East. That same year, Christopher Borrus, a Jesuit on his way back to Italy from doing... more
"In 1623 an Italian traveller, Pietro della Valle, reached the Portuguese colony of Goa in western India, after nine years of travel in the Near East. That same year, Christopher Borrus, a Jesuit on his way back to Italy from doing missionary work
in Cochin-China (southern Vietnam), also stopped in Goa. The two men — della Valle, who was trained in Near Eastern languages, and Borrus, who was skilled in astronomy, cartography and mathematics — worked together to translate into Persian a short Latin work of Borrus’s on the Tychonic system. As it has come down to us, the translation takes the form of a Persian-Italian manuscript letter made into a booklet. Addressed to a Persian astronomer named Zayyn al-dīn al-Lārī, it eventually became part of the collections of the Vatican Library. Such a collocation of evidence fused the vast geographical and cultural gaps among the three men and extended to the East what has become known as ‘the Galileo affair’."
in Cochin-China (southern Vietnam), also stopped in Goa. The two men — della Valle, who was trained in Near Eastern languages, and Borrus, who was skilled in astronomy, cartography and mathematics — worked together to translate into Persian a short Latin work of Borrus’s on the Tychonic system. As it has come down to us, the translation takes the form of a Persian-Italian manuscript letter made into a booklet. Addressed to a Persian astronomer named Zayyn al-dīn al-Lārī, it eventually became part of the collections of the Vatican Library. Such a collocation of evidence fused the vast geographical and cultural gaps among the three men and extended to the East what has become known as ‘the Galileo affair’."
Research Interests: History of the Book, Postcolonial Studies, History of Science, Cross-Cultural Studies, Galileo Galilei, and 7 moreHistory of the Mediterranean, Tommaso Campanella, Cross-cultural interaction (Archaeology), Orientalism, The struggle between philosophy and theology in the early modern period, especially from Galileo to Leibniz. My focus has been on Spinoza, but I do a lot of work also on Descartes, Leibniz, Pascal, Hobbes, and Galileo, as well., Pietro della Valle, and Mario Schipano
How do we exchange things? Or what does it take to have a transmission and reception of natural philosophy? We certainly need to have a two-sided connection - either two cultures or two languages or even two historical epochs. This could... more
How do we exchange things? Or what does it take to have a transmission and reception of natural philosophy? We certainly need to have a two-sided connection - either two cultures or two languages or even two historical epochs. This could be the cultural medium through which natural philosophy propagates across civilizations. But ideas of natural philosophy are not divine and they do not exist out there until someone (or simultaneously some people) discovers them. Natural philosophy is the conceptualization of cultural practices, theological premises, particular socio-political structures, tacit knowledge and various values of trust into a coherent world-view of nature. These epistemic objects, in turn, are articulated in scientific objects or textual objects that carry mathematical models, observational data and autobiographical insertions. But to put these objects in motion across cultures we need an agency - a force by which scientific objects move. Usually, we identify the agency with the people who, acting on particular and often peculiar agendas, put those objects in motion. this paper aims to show that Jewish Salonikian astronomers played a crucial role in bridging European and Muslim scientific networks of trust.
In the late sixteenth century, European and Islamic practitioners of natural philosophy were experiencing a shift in the cultural hegemony in the field of astronomy. The medieval Arabic astronomical texts were cultivated in Europe and generated new theories and observations. Sacrobosco in the late thirteenth century, Peuerbach and Regiomontanus in the late fifteenth century and then Copernicus in the early sixteenth, shifted the centers of astronomy from East to the West. In the Islamic world, practitioners of astronomy distrusted and ignored these new astronomical writings and kept fidelity to their medieval traditions. Two separate networks of trust, Islamic and European, became an obstacle for the exchange of theories and observational data. However, in late 16th-century Salonika, Jews who had fled the persecutions of the inquisition in Spain and Italy, and who were versed in Latin and European natural philosophical writings, bridged this cultural gap by translating the works of Sacrobosco and Peuerbach from Latin into Hebrew. I hope that my paper shows that the translators were not only versed in intellectual trends, but were also in close connection to the Ottoman chief astronomer and high officials. I, therefore, argue that these seemingly insurmountable cultural gaps of trust could be bridged by a third party and by personal connections that made these “culturally untrustworthy” texts available to Islamic practitioners of astronomy.
In the late sixteenth century, European and Islamic practitioners of natural philosophy were experiencing a shift in the cultural hegemony in the field of astronomy. The medieval Arabic astronomical texts were cultivated in Europe and generated new theories and observations. Sacrobosco in the late thirteenth century, Peuerbach and Regiomontanus in the late fifteenth century and then Copernicus in the early sixteenth, shifted the centers of astronomy from East to the West. In the Islamic world, practitioners of astronomy distrusted and ignored these new astronomical writings and kept fidelity to their medieval traditions. Two separate networks of trust, Islamic and European, became an obstacle for the exchange of theories and observational data. However, in late 16th-century Salonika, Jews who had fled the persecutions of the inquisition in Spain and Italy, and who were versed in Latin and European natural philosophical writings, bridged this cultural gap by translating the works of Sacrobosco and Peuerbach from Latin into Hebrew. I hope that my paper shows that the translators were not only versed in intellectual trends, but were also in close connection to the Ottoman chief astronomer and high officials. I, therefore, argue that these seemingly insurmountable cultural gaps of trust could be bridged by a third party and by personal connections that made these “culturally untrustworthy” texts available to Islamic practitioners of astronomy.
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In 1637, a cosmographer named Noel Durret published Novae motuum caelestium ephemerides Richelianae in Paris. The book includes astronomical tables and deals with astrology, hermeticism, and mysticism, and merely in passing mentions the... more
In 1637, a cosmographer named Noel Durret published Novae motuum caelestium ephemerides Richelianae in Paris. The book includes astronomical tables and deals with astrology, hermeticism, and mysticism, and merely in passing mentions the heliocentric Copernican system. It reworked an earlier short work of Durret composed in French and titled Novvelle theorie des planetes in which one can find the same tables that were calculated according to the observations of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho and Lansbergen. In 1660 an Ottoman scholar named Ibrāhīm Efendi al-Zigetvari Tezkerci translated the two books into one Arabic manuscript. For more than three centuries his manuscript was buried in an Ottoman archive in Constantinople until it resurfaced at the beginning of the 1990s. In order to capture a local reading of Durret’s book by this unknown translator, we use philological and cultural clues — the translator’s name, and the book’s title and introduction. Why, how, and for what purposes did Ibrāhīm Efendi embrace Durret’s book?
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The historiography of Ottoman Egypt is a largely uncharted field. This article traces the development and current state of the field and offers new directions for research. Since the fifties, the field has been developed by scholars who... more
The historiography of Ottoman Egypt is a largely uncharted field. This article traces the development and current state of the field and offers new directions for research. Since the fifties, the field has been developed by scholars who have been interested in the corpus of texts which can be used as a source for the writing of political, economic and cultural histories of Ottoman Egypt. However, historians of Islamic science, who have focused on medieval technical texts have ignored this corpus. I propose that this corpus is a rich source for writing the cultural history of science in the early modern Islamic world. It sheds light on how natural phenomena and new European science and technologies were conceived by a great intellectual culture. Methodologically this allows not only for a cultural history of science but also for an all-encompassing approach that combines economic, political, cultural and natural histories into a mélange that represents the everyday practices of the intellectual culture of Otto-man Egypt
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Did economic factors determine the rise and decline of scientific cultures? In taking the 'decline theory' into the field of economics, this paper aims at challenging the essentialist premises and methods of those who spoke of either a... more
Did economic factors determine the rise and decline of scientific cultures?
In taking the 'decline theory' into the field of economics, this paper aims at challenging the essentialist premises and methods of those who spoke of either a decline or a renaissance in Islamic science during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I have suggested as an alternative method of analysis the evaluation of scientific activities according to the investment they received, both political and economic. Political and economic transformation inevitably affect the economy of scientific activity--the funding of research and development projects along with the development of school systems. But the driving force for these transformations must be sought in changes within social property relations. Thus, families of tax collectors and provincial lords, in spite of a set of curbs to their authority, accumulated capital, and local political power. During the seventeenth century’s global economic crisis, the state was weak and succumbed to the pressures applied by provincial lords to liberalize land tenure. By winning lifetime tenure and, later, inheritance rights (malikane), they won the right to accumulate private property. During the late eighteenth century, these changes transformed agriculture into a market-dependent economy. At the same time, the economic units of waqf, which aimed to fund madrasah, preserved their self-sustaining character. As a result, waqf production could not keep up with the competition provided by the new system. The unintended outcome was a severe crisis in the funding of the madrasah. Since financial resources were depleted, the remaining resources were used to fund religious studies. Preference was given to religious studies, while scientific activity underwent a severe decrease in funding and activity. Therefore, instead of looking for cultural flaws and religious obstacles, I have proposed an alternative explanation that can explain why Islamic science was not highly productive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In taking the 'decline theory' into the field of economics, this paper aims at challenging the essentialist premises and methods of those who spoke of either a decline or a renaissance in Islamic science during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I have suggested as an alternative method of analysis the evaluation of scientific activities according to the investment they received, both political and economic. Political and economic transformation inevitably affect the economy of scientific activity--the funding of research and development projects along with the development of school systems. But the driving force for these transformations must be sought in changes within social property relations. Thus, families of tax collectors and provincial lords, in spite of a set of curbs to their authority, accumulated capital, and local political power. During the seventeenth century’s global economic crisis, the state was weak and succumbed to the pressures applied by provincial lords to liberalize land tenure. By winning lifetime tenure and, later, inheritance rights (malikane), they won the right to accumulate private property. During the late eighteenth century, these changes transformed agriculture into a market-dependent economy. At the same time, the economic units of waqf, which aimed to fund madrasah, preserved their self-sustaining character. As a result, waqf production could not keep up with the competition provided by the new system. The unintended outcome was a severe crisis in the funding of the madrasah. Since financial resources were depleted, the remaining resources were used to fund religious studies. Preference was given to religious studies, while scientific activity underwent a severe decrease in funding and activity. Therefore, instead of looking for cultural flaws and religious obstacles, I have proposed an alternative explanation that can explain why Islamic science was not highly productive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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במאמר מרתק ומסעיר שהתפרסם בעיתון "הארץ" ב-19 באוקטובר, כותב ד"ר אבנר בן-זקן על האפשרות שבספרייה הלאומית מצויה חתימה בעצם כתב ידו של לא אחר מאשר וויליאם שייקספיר. החתימה האמורה מצויה על כריכה של ספר של קורנליוס אגריפה, "היהירות של המדעים"... more
במאמר מרתק ומסעיר שהתפרסם בעיתון "הארץ" ב-19 באוקטובר, כותב ד"ר אבנר בן-זקן על האפשרות שבספרייה הלאומית מצויה חתימה בעצם כתב ידו של לא אחר מאשר וויליאם שייקספיר. החתימה האמורה מצויה על כריכה של ספר של קורנליוס אגריפה, "היהירות של המדעים" במהדורה הראשונה, משנת 1569
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A piece I published in the magazine of Haaraetz Newspaper, in which I explore an alleged signature of Shakespeare on a copy of Cornelius Agrippa, The Vanity of Sciences (1569). Along the investigation, I show that Shakespeare silently... more
A piece I published in the magazine of Haaraetz Newspaper, in which I explore an alleged signature of Shakespeare on a copy of Cornelius Agrippa, The Vanity of Sciences (1569). Along the investigation, I show that Shakespeare silently used Agrippa as a source for his plays and that people from his surroundings, like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and others, most probably, introduced him to the works of Agrippa. I argued that just as Agrippa shifted the major focus from the "philosopher" to the experimentalist-magician, so as Shakespeare shifted the focus from the writer-poet to the actor-playwriter, introducing a much more sophisticated and experimentalist writings in literature. I also stressed that the English exprimentalists, seemed to appropriate the writing form of the Shakespearean plays, in a sense that a report of an experiment does not have an internal logic, but actually describe an external reality. And thus, just like in a play the philosophizing part comes at the end in the "conclusion", similarly to the soliloquies we find in plays.
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Research Interests: Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, New Historicism, Genre studies, Shakespeare, and 11 moreHistory of Science, Gender and Sexuality, Phenomenology, Pedagogy, Cultural Materialism, Curriculum Development, Magic and the Occult (Anthropology Of Religion), New Economic Criticism, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and History of the Theater
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Jewish migration to Salonika is mostly attributed to a religious motive – escape from religious persecution. It is surely the case for most parts of the migration during the early 16th century when Jews moved from Spain through Italy,... more
Jewish migration to Salonika is mostly attributed to a religious motive – escape from religious persecution. It is surely the case for most parts of the migration during the early 16th century when Jews moved from Spain through Italy, Eastward to Salonika and Istanbul. From the mid-16th century after Salonika turned into an intellectual and cultural center, however, it attracted Jews for other reasons as well. Amatus Lusitanus, a renowned physician and natural historian moved across Europe from one Intellectual center to another, publishing books and treating local nobilities and clergies from Kings and Cardinals up to the Pope. Why such a major intellectual figure who felt comfortable among Christian elites would arrive in 1558 at an intellectual province like Salonika? His arrival at Salonika, where he openly confessed his Jewish origins, is often portrayed as an exemplar of how it turned into a refuge city for conversos. As this paper will show, Lusitanus was indeed persecuted, but for quarrels over intellectual authorship, not for religious reasons. Salonika was not only a refuge city for religiously persecuted Jews, but also a ‘center of calculation’ free of intellectual restrictions, where scholars could freely translate, cite, publish and circulate scientific works beyond the rigid borders of intellectual cultures. Salonika, then, was not only a "trading-zone" where cultural goods exchanged hands, but also a "twilight-zone" where copyright claims were insignificant.
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The current preliminary draft aims to excavate the circulation of the Picatrix, a magical Andalusian treatise, as it traveled across the Mediterranean in early modern Europe, stirring up natural magic not only as an alternative program... more
The current preliminary draft aims to excavate the circulation of the Picatrix, a magical Andalusian treatise, as it traveled across the Mediterranean in early modern Europe, stirring up natural magic not only as an alternative program for science, but also identifying it as an alternative culture located in the East. It follows the readings of Ficino, Agrippa and Campanella of the Picatrix, particularly of its notion of ‘acting at a distance’ as the philosophical foundation for the rise of notions of forces in nature. The tracing of the readings of the Picatrix unfolds a latent cultural process, incepting with Ficino attempting to philosophize concept of magic, through Agrippa laboring to legitimate the practice of magic, up to Campanella venturing to transformed natural magic not only as the prime program for natural sciences, but for political science.
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for the interview click the link below:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-self-taught-philosopher-how-a-900-year-old-arabic-tale-inspired-the-enlightenment-1.4116060
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-self-taught-philosopher-how-a-900-year-old-arabic-tale-inspired-the-enlightenment-1.4116060
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Amir Gamini reviewing "Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges" in the Persian Journal The Scientific Heritage of Islam and Iran.
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""Ben-Zaken’s book offers an intriguing approach, empirically richer and more innovative..Doubtless Ben-Zaken has demonstrated with much inventive ingenuity that during these first decades of the Scientific Revolution a variety of... more
""Ben-Zaken’s book offers an intriguing
approach, empirically richer and more innovative..Doubtless Ben-Zaken has demonstrated with much inventive ingenuity that during these first decades of the Scientific Revolution a variety of remarkable encounters took place in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean.""
approach, empirically richer and more innovative..Doubtless Ben-Zaken has demonstrated with much inventive ingenuity that during these first decades of the Scientific Revolution a variety of remarkable encounters took place in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean.""
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"This is a serious, and remarkable, work of scholarship, and as such it very much deserves to be the starting point for further debate." "This finely textured book offers fresh and fascinating perspectives on the development of science... more
"This is a serious, and remarkable, work of scholarship, and as such it very much deserves to be the starting point for further debate."
"This finely textured book offers fresh and fascinating
perspectives on the development of science in the early
modern period. In five substantial chapters Avner Ben-
Zaken indicates the extent of, and thereby establishes
the importance of, cross-cultural exchanges between
Christians and Muslims. .... This is a serious, and remarkable, work of scholarship, and as such it very much deserves to be the starting point for further debate."
"This finely textured book offers fresh and fascinating
perspectives on the development of science in the early
modern period. In five substantial chapters Avner Ben-
Zaken indicates the extent of, and thereby establishes
the importance of, cross-cultural exchanges between
Christians and Muslims. .... This is a serious, and remarkable, work of scholarship, and as such it very much deserves to be the starting point for further debate."