Virtual historical landscapes

Using 3D computer graphics technology, we are able to create virtual reconstructions of (almost completely) disappeared landscapes. The applications of these virtual historic landscapes range from landscape archaeology, edutainment to landscape planning. Although computer graphics technology matured and photo-realistic representations are achieved, the creation of realistic virtual reconstructions remains problematic. For a realistic user experience, we need to know which cues influence the user perception. However, poor-defined visualization requirements for 3D virtual historic landscapes leave us with the question ‘How good is good enough?’ This article discusses the search for a decisive variable to let users perceive the virtual historic landscape, focusing on image quality and contents of the virtual historic landscape. The virtual reconstruction of Palace Honselaarsdijck, a 17th century real-estate of stadtholder Frederick Henry (1584-1647), and its surrounding landscape is used as a case study. Using old maps, image processing and GIS software the historic terrain model was generated. By application of a 3D historic object library, the virtual landscape was decorated with wind mills, houses, churches and so forth. Finally, the virtual historic landscape was completed with atmospheres, water and vegetation. The result is a full-decorated and rendered virtual historic landscape. From a preliminary user test, the researchers learned that the contents of the virtual historic landscape are more important than the image quality. Future work will focus on what the identifying landscape features for a realistic user experience are, and how to communicate uncertainty inside the virtual landscape. The expectation is  that the work contributes to the realization of virtual historic landscape on a large-scale to communicate landscape information to the broad public

Suárez, Francisco - Species and Abstraction

Francisco Suárez detached himself from Thomistic cognitive psychology on several fundamental points. He relativized the distinction be­tween agent and possible intellect, assigning to the latter the principal role in the cognitive process, and regarding the former as a mere dispositional power (CdA, IX, 8). Furthermore, he explored the possibility of an immediate cognitive grasp of singu­lar entities. Intellectual abstraction concerns only the materiality of a particular thing, not its concrete existence (CdA, IX, 3-4; DM, VI, 6, n. 7; Ludwig 1929: 115 and 119). From the fact that the intellect’s first object is a sensible individual, grasped by means of an intelligible species, it does not follow that the (inner) senses and their representations have any direct influence on the production of intellectual knowledge. They merely provide the occasion for the mind to generate mental representations and cognitive acts. Thus, Suárez’s psychology borrowed not only from the nominalist tradition, but it also drew on ideas from straightforward opponents of Thomist psychology, such as Peter Olivi, and probably also from Neoplatonic Peripatetics

1.'Redeunt Saturnia regna'. Profezia e poesia in Tommaso Campanella2.Ispirati da quale dio? Giordano Bruno e le parole della sapienza3.La fortuna seicentesca degli Oracula Sybillina4. Gli Oracula Sibyllina nel Rinascimento5. Profezia e spiritualismo: i Collegianti olandesi del Seicento

I cinque interventi sono stati presentati nell'ambito del Convegno "Le parole del futuro. Poesia e profezia nell’età moderna", che, organizzato da Eugenio Canone, si è tenuto presso l'Istituto per gli Studi Filosofici di Napoli dall'8 al 9 ottobre. Gli Atti sono in corso di stampa sul secondo facicolo 2005 della rivista "Bruniana & Campanelliana".Per quanto riguarda Campanella, il suo ultimo scritto è una Ecloga in esametri latini, scritta in occasione della nascita a lungo attesa del Delfino di Francia, il futuro Re Sole. Celebrando l’evento, l’autore auspica che il futuro sovrano possa realizzare una profonda renovatio della cristianità e del mondo tutto. Nei versi, e nelle annotazioni della composizione, Campanella ripropone ancora una vota tematiche e fonti profetiche che avevano giocato un ruolo di primo piano nella sua vita e nel suo pensiero, a partire dalla tentata congiura di Calabria. Il saggio intende ripercorrere i momenti e i motivi più significativi di tale tensione profetica, con particolare attenzione per la loro presenza all’interno delle composizioni poetiche

I demoni di Napoli. Naturale, preternaturale, sovrannaturale a Napoli e nell'Europa di età moderna

La possessione diabolica e l'arte esorcistica, le apparizioni e il culto dei santi, la medicina dotta e i rimedi popolari, il sonnambulism o e lo spiritismo: sono mappe di un percorso all'interno del "meraviglioso" napoletano di età moderna, presentato nelle sue diverse sfaccettature