Assignment

Select one of the prompts below and write your initial response to it. Your response needs to be at least 2 solid paragraphs and offer detail and analysis. Then, select three students (preferably those who have selected different prompts) and respond to them with at least one solid paragraph per response. You will then need to respond to the follow up question posed by the instructor. Your weekly post total should be FIVE by Sunday at midnight in order to get full credit.

1. How did the printing press transform human knowledge? How do you see the necessary simplicity of oral communication affecting the depth of understanding that people had about the news, so to speak? How would the fact that most information about the world, most news, came from the pulpit affect the transmission of this information to villagers and townspeople? How did the printing press change this?

2. Compare the Mappa Mundi (Map of the World) with Ptolemy's map. What does Ptolemy's map allow that the Mappa Mundi does not? Why was the discovery of Ptolemy's map so important? How did it change the way people saw the universe? Likewise, compare memory and print in terms of how they changed the meaning of knowledge and how people saw their universe.

3. How do the following quotations illustrate the tension between science and religion in the Renaissance? How did new cosmological discoveries contribute to the establishment of the Church?

o "The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go." - Galileo Galilei
o "In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual." - Galileo Galilei

4. Discuss the concept of the Renaissance Artist-Scientist. Explain the several Renaissance concepts of perspective. What are these artist-scientists attempting to accomplish? Discuss the works of Masaccio and Leonardo da Vinci among others.