Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

Protosciences, or new sciences trying to establish their legitimacy, are ubiquitous in literature. In the old stories we hear of alchemists who can only dream of the discoveries that modern chemists take for granted, and in the new stories we hear of travelers moving faster than light as our greatest physicists attempt to make that fantasy a reality. Limiting our viewpoint to the modern scientific reductionist view of the universe not only makes little sense if we consider Michael Polanyi's theories of emergence and 'personal knowledge', but it robs medieval scholars for the conceptual credit they are due for theories they could not satisfactorily explain by the future's standards, and stifles the sorts of fantastic possibilities that are opened by the great science-fiction authors. Medieval authors' expositions of protoscientific thought laid the ground work for our own modern disciplines, and by reexamining how this happened we can develop a new appreciation for the power of the imagination.

Extent

vi, 73 p..

Comments

by Robert James Leivers.|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013.|Includes bibliography.|Mode of access: World Wide Web.|System requirements: Adobe Reader.|by Robert James Leivers.

Identifier

FADT3362480

Format

pdf

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