Bøger i Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures serien

Scientific and technological texts have not played a significant role in modern literary criticism. This title focuses on medical and mathematical texts from ancient Greece, aims at approaching ancient Greek science from the cross-disciplinary perspective of authorship.

This volume brings together a number of leading scholars working in the field of ancient Greek mathematics to present their latest research. In their respective area of specialization, all contributors offer stimulating approaches to questions of historical and historiographical ¿revolutions¿ and ¿continuity¿. Taken together, they provide a powerful lens for evaluating the applicability of Thomas Kuhn¿s ideas on ¿scientific revolutions¿ to the discipline of ancient Greek mathematics. Besides the latest historiographical studies on ¿geometrical algebrä and ¿premodern algebrä, the reader will find here some papers which offer new insights into the controversial relationship between Greek and pre-Hellenic mathematical practices. Some other contributions place emphasis on the other edge of the historical spectrum, by exploring historical lines of ¿continuity¿ between ancient Greek, Byzantine and post-Hellenic mathematics. The terminology employed by Greek mathematicians, along with various non-textual and material elements, is another topic which some of the essays in the volume explore. Finally, the last three articles focus on a traditionally rich source on ancient Greek mathematics; namely the works of Plato and Aristotle.

Before scientific anatomy or Freud, the only way of divining someone¿s character or fate was to observe their external features and behavior. This volume focuses on two paradigmatic approaches to describing observable features and what they can tell us: physiognomy and ekphrasis. The fifteen contributions present the latest research on these modes of description from the Eastern Mediterranean, Mesopotamia and India in antiquity.

In the Wake of the Compendia presents papers that examine the history of technical compendia as they moved between institutions and societies in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia.This volume offers new perspectives on the development and transmission of technical compilations, looking especially at the relationship between empirical knowledge and textual transmission in early scientific thinking. The eleven contributions to the volume derive from a panel held at the American Oriental Society in 2013 and cover more than three millennia of historical development, ranging from Babylonian medicine and astronomy to the persistence of Mesopotamian lore in Syriac and Arabic meditations on the properties of animals. The volume also includes major contributions on the history of Mesopotamian "e;rationality,"e; epistemic labels for tested and tried remedies, and the development of depersonalized case histories in Babylonian therapeutic compendia. Together, these studies offer an overview of several important moments in the development of non-Western scientific thinking and a significant contribution to our understanding of how traditions of technical knowledge were produced and transmitted in the ancient world.

This monograph begins with a puzzle: a Babylonian text from late 5th century BCE Uruk associating various diseases with bodily organs, which has evaded interpretation. The correct answer may reside in Babylonian astrology, since the development of the zodiac in the late 5th century BCE offered innovative approaches to the healing arts. The zodiac-a means of predicting the movements of heavenly bodies-transformed older divination (such as hemerologies listing lucky and unlucky days) and introduced more favorable magical techniques and medical prescriptions, which are comparable to those found in Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and non-Hippocratic Greek medicine. Babylonian melothesia (i.e., the science of charting how zodiacal signs affect the human body) offers the most likely solution explaining the Uruk tablet.

The development of science in the modern world is often held to depend on such institutions as universities, peer-reviewed journals, and democracy. How, then, did new science emerge in the pre-modern culture of the Hellenistic Egyptian monarchy? Berrey argues that the court society formed around the Ptolemaic pharaohs Ptolemy III and IV (reigned successively 246-205/4 BCE) provided an audience for cross-disciplinary, learned knowledge, as physicians, mathematicians, and mechanicians clothed themselves in the virtues of courtiers attendant on the kings. The multicultural Greco-Egyptian court society prized entertainment that drew on earlier literature, mixed genres and cultures, and highlighted motion and sound. New cross-disciplinary science in the Hellenistic period gained its social currency and subsequent scientific success through its entertainment value as court science. Ancient court science sheds light on the long history of scientific interdisciplinarity.

Wissenschaftliche Mathematik ist eine der wichtigsten Kulturleistungen des antiken Griechenland. Doch wann und wo genau hatte sie ihren Ursprung? Die Einschatzung der Antike, zwischen Thales und Euklid habe Platon eine magebliche Rolle gespielt, gilt als Fiktion. Diese Studie wirft einen neuen, modelltheoretischen Blick auf die Zeugnisse und erweist im Gegenteil, dass in der Tat Platon als Schopfer von axiomatisch-deduktiver Mathematik gelten muss.Grundlage der Analyse ist eine Neubewertung des Diagramms als zentralen Charakteristikums griechischer Mathematik aus modelltheoretischer Perspektive. Eine Untersuchung der Quadratverdopplung im Menon und zur Wurfelverdopplung (Delisches Problem) zeigt, dass eine theoretische Mathematik erstmals fur Platon bezeugt ist. Dass weiter auch nur Platon ein Motiv hatte, sie zu erfinden, ergibt sich aus der Explikation von Platons Theorie der mathematischen Modellierung anhand des Liniengleichnisses in Verbindung mit dem Nachweis, dass der Timaios als deren praktische Umsetzung fungiert.Die Studie bietet wissenschaftshistorisch neue Einsichten zur Entstehung von Mathematik, philosophiehistorisch zu Platons Ontologie und Epistemologie und modelltheoretisch zu Theorie und Praxis von Modellierung.

In the 6th century CE, Aetius of Amida wrote a medical compilation (Libri medicinales) addressing nearly all areas of medicine. Until now, this treatise has been rather neglected. This book offers the first modern translation and commentary of parts of Book 6 dealing with diseases of the brain and mental illnesses. As such it provides new insight into Aetius¿ way of compiling and into the treatment of brain diseases in late antiquity.