{"title":"E R Truitt","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"medieval-robots-book-e-r-truitt-9780812223576","title":"Medieval Robots","description":"A thousand years before Isaac Asimov set down his Three Laws of Robotics, real and imagined automata appeared in European courts, liturgies, and literary texts. Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, and silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed disciplinary or surveillance functions. Variously ascribed to artisanal genius, inexplicable cosmic forces, or demonic powers, these marvelous fabrications raised fundamental questions about knowledge, nature, and divine purpose in the Middle Ages.  Medieval Robots recovers the forgotten history of fantastical, aspirational, and terrifying machines that captivated Europe in imagination and reality between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. E. R. Truitt traces the different forms of self-moving or self-sustaining manufactured objects from their earliest appearances in the Latin West through centuries of mechanical and literary invention. Chronicled in romances and song as well as histories and encyclopedias, medieval automata were powerful cultural objects that probed the limits of natural philosophy, illuminated and challenged definitions of life and death, and epitomized the transformative and threatening potential of foreign knowledge and culture. This original and wide-ranging study reveals the convergence of science, technology, and imagination in medieval culture and demonstrates the striking similarities between medieval and modern robotic and cybernetic visions.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49567518785809,"sku":"GOR011799825","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49567833948433,"sku":"GOR011797681","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730553315601,"sku":"NGR9780812223576","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361853280529,"sku":"CIN0812223578A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008017858833,"sku":"NIN9780812223576","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812223578.jpg?v=1771668080"},{"product_id":"necessary-inventions-book-e-r-truitt-9781512829884","title":"Necessary Inventions","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA study of thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon that reveals the medieval thinking that erased non-Christian texts, actors, and cultures from the history of science\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In his works, thirteenth-century English scholastic philosopher and Franciscan Roger Bacon depicted an enticing future that included, among other technological marvels, vehicles of unimaginable speed without animal power, diving bells for exploring the ocean floor, and mirrors and lenses that could incinerate whole armies. These speculative technologies exemplify the promise of \u003ci\u003escientia experimentalis\u003c\/i\u003e, Bacon's term for his theory of scientific knowledge production, and which relied on both theory and experiential knowledge to get accurate knowledge of the natural world. In the centuries after his death, others constructed Bacon's inventiveness and anticipation through partial readings, creative mistranslations, and purposeful distortions of his work, especially relating to \u003ci\u003escientia experimentalis\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eNecessary Inventions\u003c\/i\u003e, E. R. Truitt uses Roger Bacon and his afterlives to establish and critique the role of periodization in the historiography of science, specifically the divide between \"medieval\" and \"modern.\" Truitt shows how, in his lifetime, Bacon was part of an intellectual current of men at Oxford and in Paris, and he consulted texts written in Arabic, newly available in Latin, from which he borrowed, synthesized, and Christianized knowledge about optics, experimentation, and other topics. By the nineteenth century, however, Bacon was understood within the history of scientific development as a brilliant visionary who foretold (or, according to some, invented) later technologies and whose theory of \u003ci\u003escientia experimentalis\u003c\/i\u003e anticipated the scientific method by five hundred years. This framing implies that Bacon's own time--the Middle Ages-- was one of intellectual immaturity, and that Bacon's ideas were precocious because the period in which he lived was an era of intellectual stagnation, hostile to rational thought. Truitt exposes the history of this characterization of the medieval period, showing how it organizes both the historiography of science and the narrative of scientific progress.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Uncovering the logic of replacement theology that undergirds the characterization of Bacon as a prophetic figure of scientific modernity, \u003ci\u003eNecessary Inventions\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the medieval thinking that enabled modern science to tell a story of scientific development that erased non-Christian texts, actors, and cultures from the history of science.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53533987832081,"sku":"NGR9781512829884","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781512829884.jpg?v=1778538320"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-ie\/collections\/author-books-by-e-r-truitt.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}