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Philip Ball The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science
Farrar Straus Giroux 2006-04-18 0374229791 / 9780374229795 Hardcover Near fine Fine Hardcover
New. Near fine in publisher's quarter bound boards in fine dust jacket. Available in our UK premises for prompt dispatch worldwide.Starred Review. If one really wants to understand the contradictions and "intellectual ferment" of the 16th century, says Ball, one should look not at Luther or Copernicus, but at the much-maligned Paracelsus. Born in Switzerland in 1493, Philip Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, aka Paracelsus, is a figure often more imagined than known. Famous as a doctor of alchemic medicine, he has been compared with Faust and developed a reputation as a miracle worker and charlatan that only grew after his death in 1543. Ball, author of the prize-winning Critical Mass, mixes scant biographical detail with a wide-ranging evocation of the Renaissance worldview to create a fascinating portrait of the man, his age and his historical reputation. Forays into ancient, medieval and Islamic medicine, academic rivalries, the proliferation of publications, and treatments of syphilis all help to recreate the mindset in which doctor and patient lived. Concepts of magic as simply the hidden qualities of nature, and the blurring of poison and medicine demonstrate how what we call science and magic overlapped. Ball produces a vibrant, original portrait of a man of contradictions: "[a] humble braggart, a puerile sage, an invincible loser, a courageous coward, a pious heretic, an honest charlatan...." 50 b&w illus. (Apr.) Copyright ® Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. ... From The Washington Post Among scientists and historians of science, it is common to see the so-called pseudo- sciences of old, such as alchemy and astrology, as the faltering precursors of the empirical science of today. According to this model, scientific endeavor has gradually been purified of its superstitious and religious encumbrances to emerge as the objective disciplines we now rely on and revere.... As a result, the word "occult" has a bad rap. But as Philip Ball points out in his knowledgeable new biography, many of the scientific ideas we accept today as facts are occult (meaning "hidden") "in the Renaissance sense" -- phenomena like gravity and electromagnetic fields, even though these are "no less occult than the astrological 'emanations' of a star."... Renaissance magic and science can be as baffling as a labyrinth in part because high magic, religion and science shared much common ground. Our own worldview finds that unified vision difficult to grasp. In a factual sense, at least, Ball demonstrates an exuberant command of the field. The Devil's Doctor, his life of Paracelsus, the innovative Renaissance magus, is very much a life in context. We learn about early mining technology, the history of chemistry, Renaissance education, metallurgy, alchemy, medicine, Neoplatonic and Hermetic doctrine, the traditions of Arabic science, the life of a military surgeon and the internecine warfare of the Italian city-states. We get miniature histories of cobalt and zinc and a beguiling account of the etymology of the word "alcohol." As for the amazing wanderings of Paracelsus himself, Ball tracks him with satellite-like precision all over the known world. To do this, you have to know the geography and history of the period inside out.... His hero is worth it. Born about 1493 near Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Philip Theophrastus Aureolus Bombast von Hohenheim -- also known as Paracelsus (meaning, "beyond Celsus," a prominent Roman doctor) -- was the son of an alchemist and physician who taught at a mining school. The verifiable details of his life are scant, but he seems to have grown up poor, was tutored by his father, educated at monastic schools, and studied medicine and chemistry at the universities of T³bingen, Ferrara and Vienna. As an army surgeon he also saw the world, serving throughout Europe, Russia and the Levant.... In 1527, he accepted the post of town doctor at Basel, and his reputation was quickly made when he saved the life of the famed publisher Johann Froben, whom local university physicians had given up for lost. Predictably, the town's medical establishment tried to marginalize him, but his lectures,
Price:
15.12 GBP
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Philip Ball Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral
Harper 2008-07 0061154296 / 9780061154294 Hardcover Fine Fine Hardcover
New. Fine in publisher's deckle-edged boards in like dust jacket. Available in our UK premises for prompt dispatch worldwide.From The New Yorker: In this lively biography of Chartres Cathedral, Ball explores the configuration of cultural and technological factors that enabled Europe to achieve a "liberation from gravity" in the twelfth century, including the rise of scholasticism, Platonic obsessions with light and proportion, and heroic masons who "turned geometry into stone." The accomplishments of Gothic architecture were all the more remarkable given that stonework was virtually forgotten in the West in the centuries after Rome fell. Though much of the history of Chartres Cathedral remains opaque, Ball's account of its construction reveals fascinating details (such as the origins of its blue glass, likely scavenged from Roman or Byzantine sites) and evokes its raison d'être: in an era when architecture "existed to reveal the deep design of God's creation," Chartres "encoded a set of symbols and relationships that mapped out the universe itself." Copyright
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8.34 GBP
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