Leonardo (the circulation of the blood):

Leonardo's dissections & documentation of muscles, nerves & vessels described the physiology & mechanics of movement as well as leading to other discoveries.  He found it difficult to incorporate the prevailing system of bodily humours & eventually abandoned these physiological explanations.  He determined that humours were not located in cerebral spaces or ventricles & documented that the humours were not contained in the heart or liver, that it was the heart that defined the circulatory system.  He created models of parts of the heart: the cerebral ventricles with the use of melted wax and constructed a glass aorta to observe the circulation of blood through the aortic valve by using water and grass seed to watch flow patterns.  

 

stereometry:

the measurement of volumes

 

analysis:

the branch of mathematics consisting of calculus and its higher developments; a system of calculation, as combinatorial analysis or vector analysis

 

Signorelli (body-in-itself):

see Chapter VII page 221, 239, 242

 

Columbus:

see Chapter IV page 148

 

Greeks(seeking the sources of the Nile):

Owing to their failure to penetrate the sudd wetlands of S. Sudan, the upper reaches of the Nile remained unknown to the Classical Greeks & Romans.  Various expeditions failed.  Agatharcides records in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308-246 BC) a military expedition penetrated far up the Blue Nile & established that the summer floods were caused by seasonal rainstorms in the Ethiopian Highlands.  A Roman expedition was sent by Nero (37-68 AD) in 60 AD.  The naturalist & philosopher Seneca participated; he was Nero’s tutor & got the emperor interested in the issue of the source.  The expedition (commanded by 2 centurions) report is found in Seneca’s Book VI of “Quaestiones Naturales”.  However no Greek or Roman reached Lake Tana.

 

Euclidean constitution:

The Apollonian Culture, as characterized by Spengler, produced a distinctive Apollonian mathematics called Euclidian.   Euclid’s The Elements begins with plane geometry (2D), as the first axiomatic system and the first examples of formal proof; it progresses to the solid geometry of 3D.

 

the New World (as discovery):

term originated early 16th century after Europeans made landfall in what would later be called the Americas in the age of discovery.  The term was coined by the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, in 1503, based on the hypothesis that the lands discovered by navigators to the west were not the edges of Asia ( as asserted by Columbus) but rather a different continent, a "New World.  From the early 15th century until the middle of the 17th century extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture.  These exploration started with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores in 1419 and 1427, the coast of Africa after 1434 and the sea route to India in 1498; and from the Crown of Castile (Spain), the trans-Atlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas between 1492 and 1502 and the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519–1522.

 

the circulation of the blood, (as discovery):

Leonardo’s discoveries were documented in his manuscripts but not published.  Michel Servetus was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation in his "Manuscript of Paris" (1546) and later in Christianismi Restitutio (published 1553).  Realdo Colombo, in De Re Anatomica (1559), is often credited with the discovery of pulmonary circulation.  Half a century later, the English physician William Harvey published his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628).  He was able to show a direct connection between the venous & arterial systems throughout the body & hypothesized correctly that the heart beat produced a continuous circulation of blood through minute connections at the extremities of the body.

 

Copernican universe (as discovery):

(aka Heliocentrism) astronomical model in which the Earth & planets revolve around the Sun at the centre of the Solar System; historically opposed to Geocentrism; a mathematical model of heliocentrism was proposed by Copernicus in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), in 1543; in the following century, Kepler introduced elliptical orbits & Galileo presented supporting observations using a telescope.

 

gunpowder (as discovery for long range weapon):

The earliest reference to gunpowder is from China in a 9th-century Taoist text; the discovery of gunpowder was a by-product of Chinese experiments seeking to create the elixir of life.  China also developed the first military use of gunpowder (around 1000 AD).  The Mongols brought gunpowder to Europe; sources mention Chinese firearms & gunpowder being used by Mongols against Europeans in 1241 (the Battle of Mohi).  The earliest Western account of gunpowder is found in Bacon’s Opus Maius (1267).  Development in Europe was fast.  By 1480 European cannon reached their longer, lighter, more accurate, more efficient classic form.  Technological advancements added mobility; wheeled gun carriages facilitated transportation, field artillery became viable.  By the 16th century, cannon were made in a great variety of lengths and bore diameters, the longer the barrel, the longer the range.  Some cannon from this period had barrels over 3 meters long & could weigh 20,000 pounds.  Better powder was developed.  The use of castles declined.  Machiavelli in The Art of War wrote, "There is no wall, whatever its thickness that artillery will not destroy in only a few days."

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printing (as discovery of the long-range script):

Like gunpowder, the first movable type system was created in China around 1040 AD.  The movable type was initially made of porcelain, then clay & finally by 1298 wood.  Copper movable type printing originated early 12th century, for large-scale printing of paper money issued by the Northern Song dynasty.  Western printing begins with Johannes Gutenberg & his movable type printing system.  He produced many innovations, including use of the screw-press, oil-based ink & softer, more absorbent paper.  He was the first to create type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin, antimony, copper & bismuth (still used today).  His first print run was in 1436.  The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type for Western languages.

 

Mariner's Compass:

a compass used in navigation that consists of parallel magnetic needles or bundles of needles permanently attached to a card marked to indicate direction and degrees of a circle