Dr Dilwyn Knox, University of London Research Fellow (January to April 2009)
Dr Dilwyn Knox is a Reader in Renaissance Studies at the Department of Italian at University College London, University of London. Dr Knox was been awarded the University of London Research Fellowship at the School of Advanced Study for 4 months, between January and April 2009.
Dr Knox can be contacted by email at d.knox@ucl.ac.uk.
Dr Knox's published articles establish previously unappreciated sources for Copernicus's son non-Aristotelian account of gravity, making a substantially original contribution on a major issue in the history of science. Dr Knox has been able to restore Copernicus's place in the cosmological revolution of the sixteenth centuray and an original account of the role of that revolution in the rise of early modern science.
Dr Knox's research during is tenure was to complete a book on neo-Platonist alternatives to the Aristotelian account of gravity and natural place, and the adoption and adaptation of these accounts by Copernicus and Galileo. The project represented the culmination of research that had its origin in part with his work with Charles Schmitt on Renaissance Aristotelianism and that later focused on the motion of earth.
Dr Knox's new narrative shows how Bruno, Galileo and other adapted the alternative accounts and how they fit into the story that culminates with the demonstration of Kepler's laws from Newton's first two laws of motion, the inverse-square law, and the law of universal gravitation.
View Dr Knox's fellowship report [Word].
