Archimedean point Quick reference
A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
... point Metaphor derived from Archimedes’s alleged saying that if he had a fulcrum and a lever long enough, he could move the earth. The Archimedean point is a point ‘outside’ from which a different, perhaps objective or ‘true’ picture of something is obtainable. It might be a view of time from outside time, a view of science from elsewhere, a view of spatial reality from nowhere. Philosophers of a sceptical or anti-realist bent, as well as deflationists and minimalists, often claim that such an alleged standpoint is merely fantastical, and the...
Archimedean point
Archimedes (c.287–212bc)([Science]) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Reference and Allusion (3 ed.)
...(‘I have found it! I have found it!’). > Someone who experiences a moment of sudden inspiration (adjective Archimedean ) Charlie looks at a water sprinkler and has an Archimedes moment: he realizes that the same mathematical principle that allows him to track the path of drops to determine their point of origin could be applied to the distribution of crime scenes on a map. Clive Thompson, Weblog 2005 [He] leapt out of bed in high Archimedean excitement when the name entered his head. London Review of Books ...
catoptrics Reference library
Wilbur R. Knorr
The Oxford Classical Dictionary (4 ed.)
...from the sun to a given point by means of a parabolic mirror and shows that spherical mirrors lack a coherent focal point (the phenomenon later called ‘spherical aberration’). The principle of refraction, e.g. that rays are bent towards the normal when passing from air into water, is stated in Euclid's Catoptrica (post. 6), but not applied in the extant version of that tract. Extensions of this sort are reported by Apuleius as being in a catoptrical work he assigns to Archimedes . This and two other ancient references to an Archimedean catoptrics, however,...
Cultural relativity and religion Reference library
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
...live are different worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.’ It is the second of these views which leads to cultural relativity, since if each culture creates and then imposes its own view of what reality is, then there is no neutral ground (no ‘Archimedean point’—as in Archimedes' observation, ‘Give me a place on which to stand and I will move the earth’) on which to stand in order to give a neutral account or evaluation of any society or culture. Beyond the issue of the incommensurability of different cultures, cultural relativism...
Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa (1923–) Reference library
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
...originates. In contrast to Husserlian transcendental idealism (and to the eideticism of the Ingardenian and Göttingen schools), Tymieniecka pursued her early doctoral investigation of phenomenological foundations and creative experience, giving a preeminent position to the “Archimedean point” in the constitution of the All: human creative experience. This exploration was published in two volumes, Eros et Logos: Introduction à la experience créatrice ( 1965 ) and Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing? Prolegomena to a Phenomenology of Cosmic Creation (...
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen (1929–2003) Reference library
The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy
...a proper recognition of that force. A conclusion he insisted on was the unavailability of an ‘Archimedean point’ from which to validate our ethical commitments – a perspective external to those commitments from which they can be justified. However, his acceptance of this conclusion was conditioned by two further concerns. One was to reject those forms of relativism that undermine the seriousness of ethical commitment. To reject the idea of an ‘Archimedean point’ for ethics is not to succumb to the view that the ethical opinions we happen to have inherited...
Williams, Bernard Arthur Owen (1929–2003) Reference library
The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers
...a proper recognition of that force. A conclusion he insisted on was the unavailability of an “Archimedean point” from which to validate our ethical commitments – a perspective external to those commitments from which they can be justified. However, his acceptance of this conclusion was conditioned by two further concerns. One was to reject those forms of relativism that undermine the seriousness of ethical commitment. To reject the idea of an “Archimedean point” for ethics is not to succumb to the view that the ethical opinions we happen to have inherited...
Descartes, René Reference library
John G. Cottingham
The Oxford Companion to the Mind (2 ed.)
...false everything in which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if there afterwards remained anything that was entirely indubitable’ ( see doubting ). This led to the famous affirmation ‘I think, therefore I am’ ( je pense, donc je suis ). On the basis of this ‘Archimedean point’ Descartes erected a comprehensive philosophical and scientific system which was to include both a general theory of the structure and working of the physical universe, and many detailed explanations of particular phenomena, such as the mechanics of human and animal...
Guattari, Félix (1930–1992) Reference library
Simon O’Sullivan
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...that operates as this point, and “that ‘takes possession of the author’ to engender a certain mode of aesthetic enunciation” (p. 14). It is here that one can also see the logic of Guattari’s interest in the new sciences, inasmuch as they involve a similar reorientation from a transcendent Truth to what Guattari calls “operational modelisations that stick as close as possible to immanent empiricism” (Guattari, 1995 , Chaosmosis , p. 106). This is the privileging of points of view over any objective and universal Archimedean point. It is also the operating...
SOLLEN (GERMAN) Reference library
Marc de Launay
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
...in his preface to the third edition, 1915 ). He did not hesitate to describe as a Copernican revolution at the heart of the concept of judgment ( Der Gegenstand der Erkenntnis , 1927 ) the fact that henceforth it would no longer be the effective real that would be the Archimedean point of a judgment on reality, but the duty-to-be harbored by the necessity of bearing a judgment. In a judgment of the “that is (quite) real” sort, the that , the content, is the subject of the judgment to which the form reality should ( soll ) be ascribed as predicate: It is...
Ibn al-Ḥaytham Reference library
Nader El-Bizri
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam
...muṣādarāt kitāb Uqlīdis ), and composed two treatises on “The Quadrature of Crescent Figures or Lunes” ( al-Ashkāl al-hilāliyya ). In response to the mathematical and epistemic needs of his age, and in terms of investigating geometric transformations ( al-naql ) in the Arabic Archimedean-Apollonian tradition, Ibn al-Ḥaytham studied the kinematic application of motion to geometric definitions, propositions, proofs, and demonstrations. He did this in his mathematical treatise Fī al-Maʿlūmāt (On Knowable [Entities]) and in his tract Fī al-Taḥlīl wa-al-tarkīb ...
Energy Industries—Hydroelectric Reference library
André LEJEUNE
Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability
...The main manufacturers of turbines (e.g., Alstom, Alden, Voith Hydro) have identified specific mechanisms that cause injury, and they design and provide turbines to remedy these situations. For small-scale hydropower generation, Archimedean screw turbines, which push water uphill, are a promising technology. The Archimedean screw (named for the Greek scientist Archimedes, c. third century bce ) has been used since ancient times to help irrigate crops. In the twentieth century, the German manufacturer Ritz-Atro discovered it could use the screw to...
Postmodernism and Law Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History
...be based on a foundation that would support and constrain objective adjudication. Unlike the premodernists before them, however, modernists claimed to reject religious, mythological, and other traditional footings, and thus searched for some alternative foundation or Archimedean point. Most commonly, legal modernists turned to abstract reason or sense experience as the ostensibly objective sources of legal knowledge. Yet despite yeoman efforts for over one hundred years, modernists were unable to discover any widely acceptable ground for the rule of law....
pasta Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Food (3 ed.)
...The first machinery—merely a set of semolina sieves—caused riots, but the trend was unstoppable. In 1882 British-made kneaders, extruders, and cutters were installed. In Toulouse in 1917 , Féreol Sandragné invented the first extruder which worked continuously, due to an Archimedean screw feed like that of a modern mincing machine. It became very hot in operation, and required a cooling system. The device was adopted in one factory after another. The continuously emerging pasta was cut to length with a rotating knife whose speed could be varied. Thus, for...
Mechanics and Engineering Reference library
Josep Casulleras
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam
...hole to each segment was cut around the axle in one face of the drum. As the drum was rotated, the water was scooped from the source and discharged into a channel. The main use of the tympanum in the Muslim world seems to have been in de-watering mines. The water-snail or “Archimedean screw,” which is a wooden spiral blade fitting a wooden case, also served the purpose of raising water in Muslim countries until recent days. The sāqiya , a quite complex machine consisting of over two hundred components and powered by animals harnessed to a draw-bar that...
Philosophy Reference library
The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace
...is a goal to be achieved in a certain reasonable form of life as an active citizen among one’s fellows. With Descartes, however, human beings come to be mere “thinking things,” and their bodies, the world of nature, or spirituality gain “reality” only secondarily through the Archimedean certainty of the cogito . Subjectivity in the modern era assumes existential force in an autonomous heroic throwing of the self into a future that it brings to reality, essence realized in activity. Freed from the weight of its histories or obligations of social embeddedness,...
World Reference library
Jen Hui Bon Hoa
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
...here, to the generic convention of pretending to write from an Archimedean point beyond space and time. Attendant to this problem is that of justifying exclusions. Following a dominant tendency in discussions of world literature, this entry situates the debates taking shape at the turn of the 21st century in a history that progresses from Goethe to Marx to Auerbach, thus privileging continental philosophical traditions, particularly German. 57 It adopts a largely American institutional point of view on comparative literature, drawing principally on the...
Mining Reference library
James I. Stewart, James I. Stewart, Maurice Kirby, and Huw Beynon
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History
...Archimedean screws, revolving spiral tubes that lifted water. Wrought-iron tools with wooden handles replaced the bronze implements of the Egyptians. The Romans, successors to the Greeks, made little technological progress in mining, but they did spread best-practice methods across the Empire. Their one technological feat was to improve the draining of mines, building on their knowledge of water control. Roman mines employed a number of technologies toward this end, including adits or inclined drainage tunnels, chains of pots machines, and the Archimedean...
Political Philosophy and Nationalism Reference library
Ruhtan Yalçıner
The International Studies Encyclopedia
...have been related to either an essentialist or foundationalist logic of reductionism, but most comprehensively classificatory reasoning. In general, associated with a tendency to concrete dualisms, this sort of classificatory reasoning reflects a totalizing search for an Archimedean fulcrum in the analysis of nations and nationalism. One of the major inconveniences in the classical studies of nation and nationalism, therefore, can be characterized as the tendency to reductionist and dualistic definitions. Attached with the problem of essentialism and foun...
