Distortion of Scientific Terms by Supposed Modernizing Translations: The Example ‘orbis’ (sphere)/‘orbita’ (orbit). The use of modern terminology and thinking hinders to understand historic astronomical and physical texts and often misleads the reader, because between celestial physics from Aristotle and Ptolemy to Copernic on the one side and since Kepler and Newton on the other side a fundamental change of paradigm had taken place. The former started from the assumption that planets are indirectly moved by large equally rotating etherical spheres (...) combined with each other to form every kind of unequally apparent planetary motion as a resultant, whereas the later started from Kepler's idea that every motion of a planet is directly caused by two forces moulding his (naturally unequal) ‘orbit’. ‘orbita’ was Kepler's new specific term for the way of the planet coined in late 1604; in contrast, the Latin term of the elder paradigm has been ‘orbis’ (‘sphere’), on the one hand as concentric ‘orbis totalis’ of a planet (or the fixed stars), on the other hand as non‐concentric ‘orbes particulares’ (of the eccenters and epicycles) within the space of an ‘orbis totalis’. These terms were interpreted and translated in accordance with modern dynamic (as the supposed ‘true’) thinking as if they were ‘orbits’ (German: ‘Bahn’). But you cannot bring the two paradigms into line. As a result, the texts of seemingly ‘modern’ translations become incomprehensible, absurd and wrong. The study shows this on thinking (1st) about Aristotelian physics of former times using terms and ideas of modern dynamics, and on thinking (2nd) about the former explanation of apparent motions of heavenly bodies using these dynamics and ignoring the different special Aristotelian and Ptolemaic physics of ‘orbes’ (spheres). (shrink)

Pharmacy serving to propagate the Lutherian doctrine of justification: ‚Christus as a pharmacist’ is an interconfessional, but confessionally differentiated symbolic motif of Christian folklore art in German-speaking countries. The article investigates the sociocultural conditions and prerequisites for transfering the old metaphor and idea of Christ as a physician to the new vision of Christ as a apothecary who prepares and dispenses his heavenly medicine all by himself. In the early 17th century these requirements were fulfilled, so that the oldest known (...) witness to this motif transfer , a genre picture of 1619, will be the first pictural version of this motif in general. It was created by the protestant Painter Michel Herr of Nuremberg. In the abstract and reduced form of a devotional picture this motif then became widespread in churches and vicarages, in monasteries and their apothecaries as well as in private houses . The oldest yet known examples are works from around 1630. For the first time during the Thirty Year's War, it served in this form for propagating the Lutherian justification doctrine , saying that the belief in Christ is enough to be released from all sins . Around 1650, as a reaction to that, a catholic version of the devotional picture was created, claiming and picturing that in contrast eucharist is the highest and real ‚healing medium’ of Christ to redemption. All pictures of this version avoid quoting Jesaja 55, 1, whereas all protestant pictures quote this verse from the Bible word-for-word. (shrink)