Chiefly papers presented at a conference held April 20-21, 2018, at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC. "Long discredited as inadequate illustrations of thought processes more appropriately represented in algebraic or verbal terms, diagrams have enjoyed a renaissance across numerous disciplines--from philosophy and computer science to the burgeoning field of graphics--as a means of visualizing knowledge. As the historical disciplines take a fresh look at diagrams, this symposium will seek to offer an interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-cultural perspective, considering the range of diagrams in Byzantium, Europe, and the Islamicate world. Its cross-cultural approach aims to decenter the bodies of scholarly work that focus on only one of these three traditions, within which it remains all too easy to take particular uses of diagrams for granted. Among the questions [the] symposium will pose are: Why are diagrams relatively sparse (and certainly understudied) in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds? Why are they rarely adopted as vehicles of religious thought? What role do diagrams play in the development and documentation of scientific thought across the three traditions? How does the diagrammatic mode relate to artistic practice? To cartography? To science? To literature? To the school curriculum? Why is so much of 'Western' medieval art diagrammatic in character, but so little of Byzantine and Islamic art? How do attitudes toward diagrams change over time? And how do the three traditions interact with one another?"--Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies event email dated February 13, 2018. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Contents:
Mathematical, philosophical, and theological diagrams: The Prophet Muḥammad's ʹAyn seal: a Safavid-period diagram as cosmic vision / Christiane Gruber. Overviews: Byzantine diagrams / Linda Safran -- Islamicate diagrams / David J. Roxburgh -- Western medieval diagrams / Jeffrey F. Hamburger -- Scientific diagrams: Between diagram and image: on Yuval's harp / Benjamin Anderson -- Byzantine-Islamic scientific culture in the astronomical diagrams of Chioniades on John of Damascus / Alexandre M. Roberts -- Space, place, diagram: Cleomedes and the visual program of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.gr. 482 / Divna Manolova -- Al-Ṣūfī's Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābita (Book of forms of the fixed stars): between illustrated book, scientific instrument, and firmament / David J. Roxburgh -- Cosmological diagrams: A world of embedded spheres: circular planetary diagrams in late Byzantine manuscripts / Anne-Laurence Caudano -- Islamic cosmological diagrams / Sonja Brentjes -- Corporeal and spiritual celestial spheres and their visual figurations: from Abelard of Bath and Honorius to John of Sacrobosco and Michael Scot / Barbara Obrist -- Medical diagrams: Diagrams in Greek medical manuscripts / Petros Bouras-Vallianatos -- Proven recipes: geometry and the art of Arabic medicine / Meekyung Macmurdie -- Utility beyond function: practical and social uses of diagrams in late medieval English medical manuscripts / Sara Öberg Strådal -- Mathematical, philosophical, and theological diagrams: Grid space in Boethius's De institutione arithmetica / Megan C. McNamee -- Drawing conclusions: logic diagrams as a matrix for the making and meaning of Christian images in the Middle Ages / Jeffrey H. Hamburger -- Zweifalten's diagrammatic Scriptorium / Adam S. Cohen -- Diagramming Byzantine orthodoxy / Linda Safran -- The Prophet Muḥammad's ʹAyn seal: a Safavid-period diagram as cosmic vision / Christiane Gruber.
Summary:
"This is the first book that looks at medieval diagrams in a cross-cultural perspective, focusing on three regions - Byzantium, the Islamicate world, and the Latin West - each culturally diverse and each closely linked to the others through complex processes of intellectual, artistic, diplomatic, and mercantile exchange. The volume unites case studies, often of little-known material, by an international set of specialists, and is prefaced by four introductory essays that provide broad overviews of diagrammatic traditions in these regions in addition to considering the theoretical dimensions of diagramming. Among the historical disciplines whose use of diagrams is explored are philosophy, theology, mysticism, music, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and cosmology. Despite the sheer variety, ingenuity, and visual inventiveness of diagrams from the premodern world, in conception and practical use they often share many similarities, both in construction and application. Diagrams prove to be an essential part of the fabric of premodern intellectual, scientific, religious, artistic, and artisanal life"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.