Author: David Albertson Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199384908 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
The writings of theologians Thierry of Chartres (d. 1157) and Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) represent a lost history of momentous encounters between Christianity and Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. Their robust Christian Neopythagoreanism reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory, challenging our contemporary assumptions about the relation of religion and modern science. David Albertson surveys the slow formation of theologies of the divine One from the Old Academy through ancient Neoplatonism into the Middle Ages. Against this backdrop, Thierry of Chartres's writings stand out as the first authentic retrieval of Neopythagoreanism within western Christianity. By reading Boethius and Augustine against the grain, Thierry reactivated a suppressed potential in ancient Christian traditions that harmonized the divine Word with notions of divine Number. Despite achieving fame during his lifetime, Thierry's ideas remained well outside the medieval mainstream. Three centuries later Nicholas of Cusa rediscovered anonymous fragments of Thierry and his medieval readers, and drew on them liberally in his early works. Yet tensions among this collection of sources forced Cusanus to reconcile their competing understandings of Word and Number. Over several decades Nicholas eventually learned how to articulate traditional Christian doctrines within a fully mathematized cosmology-anticipating the situation of modern Christian thought after the seventeenth century. Mathematical Theologies skillfully guides readers through the newest scholarship on Pythagoreanism, the school of Chartres, and Cusanus, while revising some of the categories that have separated those fields in the past.
Author: David Albertson Publisher: Oxford Studies in Historical T ISBN: 0199989737 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 513
Book Description
The writings of theologians Thierry of Chartres (d. 1157) and Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) represent a lost history of momentous encounters between Christianity and Pythagorean ideas before the Renaissance. Their robust Christian Neopythagoreanism reconceived the Trinity and the Incarnation within the framework of Greek number theory, challenging our contemporary assumptions about the relation of religion and modern science. David Albertson surveys the slow formation of theologies of the divine One from the Old Academy through ancient Neoplatonism into the Middle Ages. Against this backdrop, Thierry of Chartres's writings stand out as the first authentic retrieval of Neopythagoreanism within western Christianity. By reading Boethius and Augustine against the grain, Thierry reactivated a suppressed potential in ancient Christian traditions that harmonized the divine Word with notions of divine Number. Despite achieving fame during his lifetime, Thierry's ideas remained well outside the medieval mainstream. Three centuries later Nicholas of Cusa rediscovered anonymous fragments of Thierry and his medieval readers, and drew on them liberally in his early works. Yet tensions among this collection of sources forced Cusanus to reconcile their competing understandings of Word and Number. Over several decades Nicholas eventually learned how to articulate traditional Christian doctrines within a fully mathematized cosmology-anticipating the situation of modern Christian thought after the seventeenth century. Mathematical Theologies skillfully guides readers through the newest scholarship on Pythagoreanism, the school of Chartres, and Cusanus, while revising some of the categories that have separated those fields in the past.
Author: David Nirenberg Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022664698X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 429
Book Description
"From the time of Pythagoras, we have been tempted to treat numbers as the ultimate or only truth. This book tells the history of that habit of thought. But more, it argues that the logic of counting sacrifices much of what makes us human, and that we have a responsibility to match the objects of our attention to the forms of knowledge that do them justice. Humans have extended the insights and methods of number and mathematics to more and more aspects of the world, even to their gods and their religions.Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity.But the rules of mathematics do not strictly apply to many things-from elementary particles to people-in the world.By subjecting such things to the laws of logic and mathematics, we gain some kinds of knowledge, but we also lose others. How do our choices about what parts of the world to subject to the logics of mathematics affect how we live and how we die?This question is rarely asked, but it is urgent, because the sciences built upon those laws now govern so much of our knowledge, from physics to psychology.Number and Knowledge sets out to ask it. In chapters proceeding chronologically from Ancient Greek philosophy and the rise of monotheistic religions to the emergence of modern physics and economics, the book traces how ideals, practices, and habits of thought formed over millennia have turned number into the foundation-stone of human claims to knowledge and certainty.But the book is also a philosophical and poetic exhortation to take responsibility for that history, for the knowledge it has produced, and for the many aspects of the world and of humanity that it ignores or endangers.To understand what can be counted and what can't is to embrace the ethics of purposeful knowing"--
Author: Iamblichus Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser ISBN: 9780933999725 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
Attributed to Iamblichus (4th cent. AD), The Theology of Arithmetic is about the mystical, mathmatical and cosmological symbolism of the first ten numbers. Its is the longest work on number symbolism to survive from the ancient world, and Robin Waterfield's careful translation contains helpful footnotes, an extensive glossary, bibliography, and foreword by Keith Critchlow. Never before translated from ancient Greek, this important sourcework is indispensable for anyone intereted in Pythagorean though, Neoplatonism, or the symbolism of Numbers.
Author: Carlos R. Bovell Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1725246155 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 142
Book Description
How do mathematics, philosophy, and theology intersect? In Ideas at the Intersection of Mathematics, Philosophy, and Theology, Carlos Bovell proposes a wide range of possibilities. In a series of eleven thought-provoking essays, the author explores such topics as the place of mathematics in the work of Husserl and Heidegger, the importance of infinity for the Christian conception of God, and the impact of Godel's Theorem on the Westminster Confession of Faith. This book will appeal to readers with backgrounds in mathematics, philosophy, and theology and can be used in core, interdisciplinary modules that contain a math component.
Author: Vern S. Poythress Publisher: Crossway ISBN: 1433541130 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
What does Christianity have to do with the study of mathematics? Prolific writer and scholar Vern Poythress offers a startling answer to this perplexing question: everything. This groundbreaking book argues that the harmony of abstract mathematical truths, the physical world of things, and the personal world of our thinking depends on the existence of the Christian God. With advanced degrees in mathematics and New Testament studies, Poythress shows that these distinct “perspectives” on mathematics cohere because all three find their origin in God’s consistent character and nature. Whether it’s simple addition and subtraction or more complex mathematical concepts such as set theory and the nature of infinity, this comprehensive book lays a theistic foundation for all mathematical inquiry.
Author: Richard Jack Publisher: Theclassics.Us ISBN: 9781230418711 Category : Languages : en Pages : 36
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1747 edition. Excerpt: ... Mathematical principles of theology Richard Jack PRINCIPLES . o F THEOLOGY, C.a OR, THE Existence of G O D Geometrically Demonstrated. In THREE BOOKS. WHEREIN IS PROVED, The Existence of GOD from Eternity to Eternity, his Self-existence, Independency, and Unity. That G O D is infinite in Wisdom, Power, Knowledge, &c. ALSO, That Matter is a temporary Being; that GOD is the Cause of its Existence, and of the Existence of all other Beings, that ever did, or can exist; and upon GOD the Continuation or Termination of their Existence depends. B Y > RICHARD JACK, Teacher of Mathematicks. L O N DON: Printed for G. Hawkins at Milton's Head in Fleet-street. Mdccxlvii. .J 4 * - r . I * * * * * . . PREFACE. . '. r. i. . . . v. *. . ALithough the knowledge of trfttix DEGREES in itself highly valuable, fc difficult to attain, y$t every mart DEGREES who seriously refleSis Upon what passes within himself, mufi acknowledge, that be is possessed of faculties, by the due exertife whereof he may acquire it; such as thoughts perception, and the power of comparing ideas, arid of determining, in pursuance of such comparison*, or the faculties of rea-r foning and judging. How man came to he endued with those faculties DEGREES may appear perhaps i A 4 not not so easy to determine, hut if a very simple maxim be allowed, which no man in his right fenses ever denied, - That nothing exists without a cause, it will necessarily follow, that those human faculties are owing to some being, and since we discover in ourselves no power capable to produce them, we must ascribe them tosome other existing being able to bestow them. If we also take a view of all around us, and observe the immenfi
Author: David Albertson
Author: David Albertson
Author: David Albertson
Author: David Nirenberg
Author: Granville C. Henry
Author: Iamblichus
Author: Carlos R. Bovell
Author: Vern S. Poythress
Author: Richard Jack
Author: Richard Jack