Galileo as a commentator on Aristotle?: The reception of Galileo in the Jesuit Collegio Romano and University of Pisa, 1633--1700

Raphael, Renee J Princeton University 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the reception of Galileo Galilei's final published work, the 1638 Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche, intorno a due nuove Scienze ("Two New Sciences"), from its publication to the end of the seventeenth century. In Part One, I rely on extant archival manuscript texts and printed materials in order to trace the incorporation of specific elements of Galileo's Discorsi in teaching at the University of Pisa and Collegio Romano during the seventeenth century. Chapter One examines the reception of the Discorsi at the University of Pisa through 1650. Analysis of manuscript and printed teaching texts composed by Claude Berigard, professor of natural philosophy from 1627 to 1639, and Vincenzio Renieri, professor of mathematics from 1640 to 1648, suggests that early incorporation of the Discorsi focused on Day 1 and ignored Galileo's work on motion. The chapter reveals how Berigard, in particular, found many of Galileo's arguments directly relevant to his own task of explicating Aristotle and shows how Galileo's manipulation of well-known Scholastic arguments could force committed Aristotelians like Berigard to respond to his claims. Chapters Two and Three complement this analysis by examining the teaching of natural philosophy at the Collegio Romano in the last half of the seventeenth century. The analysis begins with a detailed reading of Sylvester Mauro's 1658 Quaestiones Philosophicae, the first teaching text from the Collegio Romano to cite specifically Galileo's Discorsi. I then consider how Mauro's successors dealt with two of the passages from the Discorsi referenced by Mauro. I argue that characteristics inherent to the Jesuit natural philosophical curriculum were at least as important as the content and context of the Discorsi in encouraging professors to include Galileo's work in their teaching. This analysis highlights the willingness of Jesuit professors to incorporate the newest natural philosophical research in their teaching, yet also suggests that such inclusion was limited in some cases by certain inflexibilities intrinsic to the structure and content of the standard curriculum. These findings, in turn, allow for rumination on the compatibility of Galileo's and the traditional Aristotelian-Scholastic approach to the study of nature. Part Two, comprising Chapters Four, Five, and Six, revolves around a series of case studies that nuance the detailed archival analysis presented in the first two chapters. The trends noted in Part One serve as the impetus for a new interpretation of Galileo's Day 1, which is advanced in Chapter Four. Comparing Aristotle's Physics as it was presented in early seventeenth-century teaching commentaries to Galileo's First Day, I argue that Galileo's choice of topics and organizational structure have close parallels with Books 3-8 of Aristotle's Physics as it was traditionally taught in the early modern university. These observations point suggestively to a means for reconciling Galileo's early studies of Aristotelian natural philosophy with his purportedly mature repudiation of Aristotelian natural philosophy in his 1632 Dialogo and 1638 Discorsi. Chapter Five departs from the analysis of this university readership to provide a new interpretation of a well-known reader of Galileo's Discorsi, Marin Mersenne. Mersenne's 1639 translation and adaptation of the Discorsi, his Nouvelles Pensees de Galilee, serves as a window into how Mersenne read and understood Galileo's text. Though Mersenne's interest in Galileo's experiential claims mark him as a distinctly different reader than the university professors of Part One, Mersenne evinces certain similarities with this readership, particularly in the way in which he read and interpreted Galileo's work on local motion. By analyzing Mersenne's treatment of Galileo's experiential claims, the Chapter argues that even readers committed to Galileo's enterprise, like Mersenne, could mischaracterize and misunderstand him. Chapter Six sets the previous examination of Galileo's mechanics in context by considering the effect of Galileo's condemnation on Italian university teaching in this period. Seventeenth-century classroom presentations of Copernicanism form the core of this chapter. I argue that Galileo's condemnation served as a catalyst to propel Copernicanism and related questions, such as that of the earth's motion, to a more central place in the teaching of both mathematics and natural philosophy. This analysis illuminates the nature of early modern university teaching, particularly that of the Jesuits, and provides the means for assessing how the labels of "innovative" or "dangerous" impacted the way in which Galileo's ideas were presented in the classroom. It also serves as an entry-point for considering how Galileo's reputation, both as a well-known mathematician and natural philosopher and as a Copernican condemned by the Catholic Church, influenced the reception of his Discorsi (Abstract shortened by UMI.).

Towards dark energy: Design, development, and preliminary data from ACT

Niemack, Michael D Princeton University 2008 해외박사(DDOD)

Recent cosmological observations resulted in the surprising discovery that our universe is dominated by a dark energy, causing acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Understanding the dark energy (Λ) and the cosmic acceleration may require a revolution in our understanding of the laws of physics, and more precise data will be critical to this endeavor. The remainder of the universe is dominated by cold dark matter (CDM), while only ∼4% of the universe comprises baryonic matter. To improve our understanding of dark energy and the ΛCDM model of our universe, we have developed a novel telescope and receiver technology to map the universe at millimeter wavelengths on arcminute angular scales. The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and its receiver, the Millimeter Bolometer Array Camera (MBAC), are optimized to measure temperature anisotropies in the primordial cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). On the smallest angular scales measured by ACT the anisotropies are dominated by secondary interactions of CMB photons, such as gravitational interactions and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects: the interaction of CMB photons with ionized gas in galaxy clusters. We can use these measurements to probe dark energy in multiple ways. The CMB bispectrum quantifies the non-Gaussian nature of the secondary anisotropies and when combined with measurements from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, will provide constraints on dark energy. By combining and cross-correlating measurements of the SZ effects with galaxy cluster redshifts, we can constrain the equation of state of dark energy and its evolution. In addition, by measuring the CMB on arcminute angular scales, we will probe the details of the ΛCDM cosmological model that describes our universe. This dissertation begins with the development of the optical designs for ACT and MBAC that focus light onto the MBAC bolometer arrays. The kilo-pixel bolometer arrays are the largest ever used for CMB observations. The arrays utilize superconducting transition edge-sensor (TES) bolometers to measure changes in optical power, which are coupled to superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) for signal measurement and amplification. A model describing the functionality of the TES bolometers is presented in addition to a procedure developed to characterize all bolometers before assembling them into arrays. The capabilities and characterization of the time-domain SQUID multiplexing readout system and electronics are discussed, including the implications of magnetic sensitivity for the readout system and recently developed array characterization techniques. Measurements of the first fully-assembled detector array are presented, including: functionality, efficiency, detector time constants, and noise. Preliminary results from the first season of CMB observations are also discussed. A new approach for measuring photometric redshifts of galaxies using optical and ultraviolet observations is presented. These photometric redshifts will be cross-correlated with SZ cluster measurements from ACT to improve our understanding of dark energy. Finally, predictions are given for the sensitivity of the experiment from both one and two seasons of observations.

What to expect: Classical and ambient collisions within this binary universe with "softer shadows" (original music composition)

Molk, David Christopher Princeton University 2016 해외박사(DDOD)

BT's 2006 album, This Binary Universe, represents a major departure in compositional aims for someone whose career up to that point was rooted in EDM (electronic dance music). Here, BT states that he purposefully incorporates classical form within the album. This dissertation investigates the ways in which we might employ a classically oriented listening modality to address functional ambiguities that arise within the respective introductions. These ambiguities manifest from the inclusion of both classical and ambient-oriented processes and the tensions therein. An investigation into listener expectation provides a way to interact with the music, the processes that drive it, and our perception of these processes as we listen to the album. Chapter I examines how the overall cohesion within This Binary Universe enables comparisons not only from point to point within tracks but also across tracks. Chapter II scrutinizes the traditional role of introductions within the classical style, introducing the language of formal function and "becoming." Chapter III offers detailed analyses of the formal function ambiguity within the introductions of "All That Makes Us Human Continues," "The Internal Locus," "See You On The Other Side," and "The Antikythera Mechanism," discussing how the role of expectation within the listening process both engenders and responds to these functional frictions. Chapter IV reframes the specific findings of the four analyses within the context of the album as a whole, concluding with a survey of how the worlds of This Binary Universe continue to resonate in more recent projects by BT. The composition component that completes this dissertation, "softer shadows," incorporates a series of extended techniques that I've harvested slowly throughout my time in Princeton. murmur uses cardboard dowels standing in for more traditional mallets, creating a blurring of pitch and noise and culminating in a ping pong ball chorale. The second movement, fade to light, goes deeper still into these delicate worlds. These two movements allow us access to a softer shadow world. The motivation behind many of the techniques explored in "softer shadows" is my attempt to create novel acoustic analogues for electronic production techniques found within the EDM vocabulary.

Essays in applied microeconomics

Linsenmeier, David Matthew Princeton University 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

In this dissertation I study economic decision-making in three contexts—retirement, prescription drug insurance take-up, and college enrollment. In the first chapter, I examine the relationship between early retiree health benefits and early retirement. Although there is a positive association between the availability of retiree health benefits and early retirement, this association could be driven by other factors. I show that individuals in poor health and with poor outside insurance options value retiree health benefits more and then use variation along these dimensions to examine whether the estimated correlation between retiree health benefits and early retirement reflects demand for health insurance. The effect of retiree health benefits is not statistically significantly larger for those in poor health, but it is larger for those who lack insurance from other sources, particularly from their spouses. I conclude that retiree health benefits do increase the early retirement hazard and that health insurance demand among the near-elderly is not closely tied to health. Second, I study the market for prescription drug insurance supplements to Medicare (Medigap). Regulations prohibit insurers from using information on customer health to set prices or deny coverage, creating ideal conditions for adverse selection. I test for the presence of adverse selection in this market using the Health and Retirement Study (FIRS). Controlling for a range of demographic and economic characteristics, those in worse health at age 64, before the Medigap purchase decision, are more likely to purchase insurance at age 66. The estimates are large, with the probability of coverage 40% greater for those reporting fair to poor health and 28% greater for those with an additional $1000 of expected prescription drug expenditures. In the final chapter, Harvey Rosen, Cecilia Rouse and I study the effects of a change in financial aid policy introduced by a Northeastern university in 1998. Previously, the university's financial aid packages consisted of grants, loans, and jobs. After the change, all loans for low-income students were replaced with grants. We find the program had a statistically insignificant positive effect on the likelihood of matriculation by low-income students, with a larger, marginally significant effect among minorities.

Cooperative vehicle control, feature tracking and ocean sampling

Fiorelli, Edward A Princeton University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation concerns the development of a feedback control framework for coordinating multiple, sensor-equipped, autonomous vehicles into mobile sensing arrays to perform adaptive sampling of observed fields. The use of feedback is central; it maintains the array, i.e. regulates formation position, orientation, and shape, and directs the array to perform its sampling mission in response to measurements taken by each vehicle. Specifically, we address how to perform autonomous gradient tracking and feature detection in an unknown field such as temperature or salinity in the ocean. Artificial potentials and virtual bodies are used to coordinate the autonomous vehicles, modelled as point masses (with unit mass). The virtual bodies consist of linked, moving reference points called virtual leaders. Artificial potentials couple the dynamics of the vehicles and the virtual bodies. The dynamics of the virtual body are then prescribed allowing the virtual body, and thus the vehicle group, to perform maneuvers that include translation, rotation and contraction/expansion, while ensuring that the formation error remains bounded. This methodology is called the Virtual Body and Artificial Potential (VBAP) methodology. We then propose how to utilize these arrays to perform autonomous gradient climbing and front tracking in the presence of both correlated and uncorrelated noise. We implement various techniques for estimation of gradients (first-order and higher), including finite differencing, least squares error minimization, averaging, and Kalman filtering. Furthermore, we illustrate how the estimation error can be used to optimally choose the formation size. To complement our theoretical work, we present an account of sea trials performed with a fleet of autonomous underwater gliders in Monterey Bay during the Autonomous Ocean Sampling Network (AOSN) II project in August 2003. During these trials, Slocum autonomous underwater gliders were coordinated into triangle formations, and various orientation schemes and inter-vehicle spacing sequences were explored. The VBAP methodology, modified for implementation on Slocum underwater gliders, was utilized. Various operational issues such as speed constraints, external currents, communication constraints, asynchronous surfacings and intermittent feedback were addressed. The work contained in this thesis was conducted under the advisement of Naomi Ehrich Leonard at Princeton University.

The Princeton IQU Experiment and constraints on the polarization of the cosmic microwave background at 90 GHz

Hedman, Matthew McKay Princeton University 2002 해외박사(DDOD)

The polarization anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background provide important information about the structure and dynamics of the early universe. This cosmological polarization has thus far eluded detection, which is not surprising because it should be an extremely small signal (an order of magnitude smaller than the temperature anisotropies, or about 5 μK <italic>rms</italic> variations in 3K thermal radiation). The Princeton IQU Experiment, or PIQUE, is an effort to measure this tiny polarized signal using two correlation polarimeters operating at W-band (84–100 GHz) and Q-band (35–46 GHz). This work describes the construction, characterization, observations and preliminary results from the W-band system, which observed the sky around the north celestial pole over two successive winters (2000 and 2001), and acquired 500 hours of useful data. These data yield one of the tightest constraints on the cosmological polarization to date.

Gravitational waves and the early universe

Boyle, Latham A Princeton University 2006 해외박사(DDOD)

Can we detect primordial gravitational waves (i.e. tensor perturbations)? If so, what will they teach us about the early universe? These two questions are central to this two part thesis. First, in chapters 2 and 3, we compute the gravitational wave spectrum produced by inflation. We argue that if inflation is correct, then the scalar spectral index ns should satisfy n s ≲ 0.98; and if ns satisfies 0.95 ≲ ns ≲ 0.98, then the tensor-to-scalar ratio r should satisfy r ≳ 0.01. This means that, if inflation is correct, then primordial gravitational waves are likely to be detectable. We compute in detail the "tensor transfer function" Tt(k,tau) which relates the tensor power spectrum at two different times tau1 and tau 2, and the "tensor extrapolation function" Et( k, k*) which relates the primordial tensor power spectrum at two different wavenumbers k and k *. By analyzing these two expressions, we show that inflationary gravitational waves should yield crucial clues about inflation itself, and about the "primordial dark age" between the end of inflation and the start of big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN). Second, in chapters 4 and 5, we compute the gravitational wave spectrum produced by the cyclic model. We examine a surprising duality relating expanding and contracting cosmological models that generate the same spectrum of gauge-invariant Newtonian potential fluctuations. This means that, if the cyclic model is correct, then it cannot be distinguished from inflation by observing primordial scalar perturbations alone. Fortunately, gravitational waves may be used to cleanly discriminate between the inflationary and cyclic scenarios: we show that BBN constrains the gravitational wave spectrum generated by the cyclic model to be so suppressed that it cannot be detected by any known experiment. Thus, the detection of a primordial gravitational wave signal would rule out the cyclic model.

Integrating Network Management For Cloud Computing Services

Sun, Peng Princeton University 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

Cloud computing is known to lower costs of corporate IT. Thus enterprises are eager to move IT applications into public or private cloud. Because of this trend, networks connecting enterprises and cloud providers now play a critical role in delivering high-quality cloud applications. Simply buying better devices is not viable for improving network quality, due to high capital costs. A more attractive approach is to better utilize network resources with proper network management. However, there are two problems with current network management: separately managing network components along the end-to-end path, and heavily relying on vendor-specific interfaces with devices. This dissertation takes a practical approach driven by operational experiences of cloud services to tackle the two problems. With knowledge of real-world challenges, we have designed proper abstractions for low-level device interactions, and have built efficient and scalable systems to integrate the management of various network components. With commercial deployment, our operational experiences feed back into revision of the abstraction and system design. In this dissertation, we make three major contributions. We first propose to consolidate the traffic and infrastructure management in datacenters. Our system, called Statesman, simplifies management solutions by providing a uniform abstraction to interact with various aspects of devices. Statesman then allows multiple solutions to run together, resolves their conflicts, and prevents network-wide failures caused by their collective actions. Statesman has been operational worldwide in Microsoft's public cloud offering since October 2013. The second contribution consists of joining end hosts with networks for cooperative traffic management. Our Hone system brings in the fine-grained knowledge of cloud applications in the hosts, and offers an expressive programming framework with a uniform view of both host and network data. Hone has been integrated into Verizon Business Cloud. The final contribution consists of bridging enterprises and Internet service providers (ISPs) for fine-grained control of inbound traffic from cloud applications. Our Sprite system enables enterprises to directly decide how traffic enters the enterprise networks via which ISPs, offering expressive interface and scalable execution. In collaboration with Princeton's Office of Information Technology, Sprite was tested with campus-network data and live Internet experiments.

Alphas and surface backgrounds in liquid argon dark matter detectors

Stanford, Christopher J Princeton University ProQuest Dissertations & Thes 2017 해외박사(DDOD)

Current observations from astrophysics indicate the presence of dark matter, an invisible form of matter that makes up a large part of the mass of the universe. One of the leading theories for dark matter is that it is made up of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). One of the ways we try to discover WIMPs is by directly detecting their interaction with regular matter. This can be done using a scintillator such as liquid argon, which gives off light when a particle interacts with it. Liquid argon (LAr) is a favorable means of detecting WIMPs because it has an inherent property that enables a technique called pulse-shape discrimination (PSD). PSD can distinguish a WIMP signal from the constant background of electromagnetic signals from other sources, like gamma rays. However, there are other background signals that PSD is not as capable of rejecting, such as those caused by alpha decays on the interior surfaces of the detector. Radioactive elements that undergo alpha decay are introduced to detector surfaces during construction by radon gas that is naturally present in the air, as well as other means. When these surface isotopes undergo alpha decay, they can produce WIMP-like signals in the detector. We present here two LAr experiments. The first (RaDOSE) discovered a property of an organic compound that led to a technique for rejecting surface alpha decays in LAr detectors with high efficiency. The second (DarkSide-50) is a dark matter experiment operated at LNGS in Italy and is the work of an international collaboration. A detailed look is given into alpha decays and surface backgrounds present in the detector, and projections are made of alpha-related backgrounds for 500 live days of data. The technique developed with RaDOSE is applied to DarkSide-50 to determine its effectiveness in practice. It is projected to suppress the surface background in DarkSide-50 by more than a factor of 1000.

Cosmological observations as a probe of fundamental physics and astrophysics

Ferraro, Simone Princeton University 2015 해외박사(DDOD)

The unifying theme of this dissertation is using cosmological observations as a tool to discover new physics and astrophysics. The first part focuses on the effects of primordial non-Gaussianity on the large-scale distribution of dark matter halos. The statistical properties of the primordial fluctuation contain a wealth of information about the Universe's early moments, and these properties are imprinted on the late-time distribution of matter. The first chapter serves as an introduction to the effects of non-Gaussianity on halo bias, summarizing previous work and extending it to the cubic local model (the gNL model). Chapter 2 generalizes some of the techniques of Chapter 1, allowing for the calculation of halo bias with arbitrary initial conditions, while Chapter 3 shows the relationship between the seemingly different techniques existing in the literature. Detailed forecasts for upcoming surveys are presented in Chapter 4, including the effect of marginalization over shot-noise and Gaussian part of the bias, photometric redshifts uncertainties and multi-tracer analysis to reduce the effect of cosmic variance. The second part contains work on two secondary anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB), namely the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect and the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. The late-time ISW effect arises because of decay of the large-scale gravitational potential due to the accelerated expansion and is therefore a powerful probe of dark energy. Chapter 5 presents a new detection of the ISW effect, using WISE galaxies and AGN as tracers of the gravitational potential, whose bias is measured in cross-correlation with CMB lensing maps. An appendix discusses the contamination of this measurement due to the linear part of the kSZ effect, the Doppler shift of photon energy due to scattering off coherently moving electrons. The last chapter explores the prospects of detecting the kSZ signal from sources for which accurate redshift information is not available (such as the WISE catalog). Forecasts are presented, as well as comparison with simulations and a discussion of the main sources of contamination.