New Worlds, Ancient Texts
New Worlds, Ancient Texts is a book written by Anthony Grafton;Nancy G. Siraisi;April Shelford. The book was published in 1992 and is listed under the History category. For readers who want to quickly understand what this title offers, this page gives a clear overview of the book, including its description, author information, page count, ratings, and ISBN details.
The full title of the book is New Worlds, Ancient Texts. When available, the subtitle is The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, which gives extra context about the theme, focus, or main idea behind the book. According to the available description, On encountering what he called “the Indies”, the Jesuit Jose de Acosta wrote, “Having read what poets and philosophers write of the Torrid Zone, I persuaded myself that when I came to the Equator, I would not be able to endure the violent heat, but it turned out otherwise… What could I do then but laugh at Aristotle’s Meteorology and his philosophy?” Acosta’s experience echoes that of his fellow travelers to the New World, and it is this experience, with its profound effect on Western culture, that Anthony Grafton charts. Describing an era of exploration that went far beyond geographic bounds, this book shows how the evidence of the New World shook the foundations of the old, upsetting the authority of the ancient texts that had guided Europeans so far afield. The intellectual shift mapped out here, a movement from book learning to empirical knowledge, did not take place easily or quickly, and Grafton presents it in all its drama and complexity. What he recounts is in effect a war of ideas fought, sometimes unwittingly by mariners, scientists, publishers, scholars, and rulers over one hundred fifty years. He shows us explorers from Cortes and Columbus to Scaliger and Munster, laden with ideas gathered from ancient and medieval texts, in their encounters with the world at large. In colorful vignettes, firsthand accounts, published debates, and copious illustrations, we see these men and their contemporaries trying to make sense of their discoveries as they sometimes confirm, sometimes contest, and finally displace traditional images and notions of the world beyond Europe. The fundamental cultural revolution that Grafton documents still reverberates in our time. By taking us into thisbattle of books versus facts, a conflict that has shaped global views for centuries, Grafton allows us to re-experience and understand the Renaissance as it continues to this day.
This book has 296 pages, making it useful for readers who want to know the approximate length before starting. It has an average rating of 3.58, based on 70 ratings, which can help readers understand how other people have responded to it.
For cataloging and reference purposes, the ISBN-13 is 9780674618763, while the ISBN-10 is 0674618769. These numbers are helpful when searching for the exact edition of the book online, in libraries, or in bookstores.
The book cover image can be viewed here: http://books.google.com/books/content?id=APVWL5avg7oC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&source=gbs_api.
Overall, New Worlds, Ancient Texts by Anthony Grafton;Nancy G. Siraisi;April Shelford is a title that may interest readers looking for books in History. Whether you are researching new books, comparing editions, or building a reading list, this page gives you the most important details in one place.
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