The Cambridge History of Science Vol.1 Ancient Science

656 Pages·2016·14.2 MB·English

by  Alexander Jones and Liba Taub

CONTENTS
ListofIllustrations pagex
NotesonContributors xii
GeneralEditors’Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction 1
PARTI MESOPOTAMIA 5
1 ScienceandAncientMesopotamia 7
francescarochberg
2 BabylonianMedicineasaDiscipline 29
markhamj.geller
3 MesopotamianMathematics 58
jenshøyrup
4 BabylonianandAssyrianAstralScience 73
johnm.steele
PARTII EGYPT 99
5 TheCulturalContextof(Mathematical)ExpertsinAncientEgypt 101
annetteimhausen
6 EgyptianMedicine 120
johnnunn
7 EgyptianCalendarsandAstronomy 131
rolfkrauss
vii
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viii Contents
8 EgyptianMathematics 144
jenshøyrup
PARTIII GREEKANDGRECO-ROMAN 161
9 PhysicalandCosmologicalThoughtBeforeAristotle 163
danielw.graham
10 Aristotle:AnOverview 181
andreafalcon
11 Aristotle’sPhysicalTheory 196
ericlewis
12 AristotleandtheOriginsofZoology 215
jamesg.lennox
13 Botany 238
laurencetotelin
14 ScienceAfterAristotle:HellenisticandRomanScience 248
libataub
15 LateAntiquity:ScienceinthePhilosophicalSchools 278
miiratuominen
16 MedicineinEarlyandClassicalGreece 293
philipvandereijk
17 HellenisticandRomanMedicine 316
viviannutton
18 GreekMathematics 345
nathansidoli
19 Greco-RomanAstronomyandAstrology 374
alexanderjones
20 GreekandGreco-RomanGeography 402
klausgeus
21 GreekOptics 413
a.marksmith
22 Harmonics 428
andrewbarker
23 GreekMechanics 449
serafinacuomo
24 Greco-EgyptianAlchemy 468
cristinaviano
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Contents ix
PARTIV INDIA 483
25 AstronomyandAstrologyinIndia 485
kimplofker
26 MathematicsinEarlyIndia(1000bce–1000ce) 501
clemencymontelle
27 IndianMedicineandAyurveda 532
philippa.maas
PARTV CHINA 551
28 MathematicalKnowledgeandPracticesfromEarlyImperial
ChinauntiltheTangDynasty 553
karinechemla
29 MedicineandHealinginHanChina 574
viviennelo
30 ChineseAstronomyintheEarlyImperialAge:ABriefOutline 595
christophercullen
Index 617
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ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1 CatalogtabletsfromtheEsagil-kīn-aplischool page36
3.1 TheprocedureofBM13901nº1 67
8.1 Methodforfindingtheareaofacircle 154
11.1 Schematicshowingtherelationshipbetween 200
elementsandqualities
11.2 Diagramofthecosmosrepresentingthenaturalpositions 201
ofthefourelements
14.1 RomanmosaicdescribedasdepictingtheAcademyofPlato 250
14.2 ThephilosophicalschoolsofHellenisticAthens 251
14.3 Pythagoras,depictedonacoinproducedatSamos,under 262
TrajanDecius,Emperor249–51ce
19.1 Homocentricspheres 387
19.2 AsimpleeccentricmodelforMars 389
19.3 AsimpleepicyclicmodelforMars 389
20.1 ThecosmologyofAnaximander 404
20.2 Thesystemoffivegeographicalzones 405
20.3 ModernreconstructionofthemapofHecataeus 407
20.4 SchematicreconstructionoftheworldmapofEphorus 407
21.1 BinocularvisionaccordingtoPtolemy 419
21.2 Equal-angleslawofreflectionaccordingtoEuclid 420
21.3 Equal-angleslawofreflectionaccordingtoHeroofAlexandria 420
21.4 Equal-angleslawofreflectionaccordingtoPtolemy 421
21.5 Principlesdeterminingimagelocationinreflection 422
21.6 Analysisofreflectioninconcavemirrors 422
21.7 Analysisofrefraction 424
21.8 Ptolemy’sexperimenttodeterminetheangleofrefraction 424
fromairtowater
21.9 Ptolemy’stabulationsforrefractionfromairtowater 425
21.10 AtmosphericrefractionaccordingtoPtolemy 426
21.11 RefractiveimagedistortionaccordingtoPtolemy 427
x
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ListofIllustrations xi
24.1 Alembic 475
24.2 Kerotakis 476
24.3 Ouroboros 478
24.4 InkwellfromVaisonlaRomaine,firstcenturybce,Louvre 481
26.1 Examplesofthenāgarīnumeralsfromvariousmanuscripts 512
26.2 Varioustrigonometriccomponents 524
29.1 Blacklacquerfigurineexcavatedfromatomb 582
atShuangbaoshan雙包山
29.2 Theearliestextantdiagramofthevulva,Mawangdui 584
tomb3,closed168bce
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of
Birmingham and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has published 8
booksandover100articlesonancientGreekmusicandmusicaltheory.
Karine Chemla, Researcher (CNRS, laboratory SPHERE) has edited: The
History of Mathematical Proof in Ancient Traditions (2012); Texts, Textual
Actsand the Historyof Science(with Virbel,2015); TheOxfordHandbook of
Generality in Mathematics and the Sciences (with Chorlay and Rabouin,
2016);andCultureswithoutCulturalism(withFoxKeller,2017).
ChristopherCullenreadEngineeringScienceatOxford,andlaterdidaPhD
inClassicalChineseatSOAS,UniversityofLondon,underthesupervision
of D. C. Lau. He has published widely on the historyof science in China,
and served as editor of the Science and Civilisation in China series. He is
Emeritus Director of the Needham Research Institute and an Emeritus
FellowofDarwinCollege,Cambridge.
SerafinaCuomoisProfessorofAncientHistoryatDurhamUniversity.She
worksonthehistoryofscienceandtechnologyinancientGreeceandRome,
and has published on ancient mathematics, land-surveying, and military
technology.Sheiscompletingabookonancientnumeracy.
Andrea Falcon is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at
ConcordiaUniversity,Montreal.HeistheauthorofCorpieMovimenti.La
fortuna del “De caelo” nel mondo antico (2001); Aristotle and the Science of
Nature: Unity without Uniformity (Cambridge 2005); Aristotelianism in the
FirstCenturyBCE:XenarchusofSeleucia(Cambridge2012);andAristotelismo
(2017). He is the editor of Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristotle
(2016).
Markham J. Geller is Professor für Wissensgeschichte at the Freie
UniversitätBerlinandTopoiExcellenceClustersince2010,onsecondment
xii
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NotesonContributors xiii
from University College London. The PI of the ERC Advanced Grant
Project, BabMed (2013–2018), he is also co-PI with Philip van der Eijk on
amulti-yearproject,TheTransferofMedicalEpistemeinthe“Encyclopaedic”
Compilations of Late Antiquity, within the Collaborative Research
CenterEpistemeinBewegungattheFreieUniversitätBerlin.Hehasworked
extensivelyonSumerian,Akkadian,andAramaicmagicandmedicine.
KlausGeusisanancienthistorian,philologist,andgeographer.In2009he
was appointed professor of the historical geography of the ancient
Mediterranean at the Freie Universität Berlin. Geus works in the areas of
ancient geography and astronomy. He has published 20 books and 250
papersandarticles.
DanielW.GrahamisProfessorofPhilosophyatBrighamYoungUniversity.
HeispresidentoftheInternationalAssociationforPresocraticStudies.His
booksincludeExplainingtheCosmos(2006);(withco-editorPatriciaCurd)
The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (2008); The Texts of Early
GreekPhilosophy(2010);andSciencebeforeSocrates(2013).
Jens Høyrup was educated as a physicist at Copenhagen University. From
1973hetaughtfirstinthedomainofsocial,thenhumansciences,atRoskilde
University, Denmark, until he retired in 2005. Much of his research has
dealt with the conceptual, cultural, and social history of pre-modern
mathematics.
Annette Imhausen studied mathematics, chemistry, and Egyptology at
Mainz University and the Freie Universität Berlin. She completed her
doctoral dissertation in the history of mathematics and held fellowships at
the Dibner-Institute (Cambridge, MA) and Trinity Hall (Cambridge,
England). Since 2009 she has been Professor for the History of Early
ScienceatFrankfurtUniversity.
Alexander Jones is Leon Levy Director and Professor of the History of the
Exact Sciences in Antiquity at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient
World, New York University. His research interests include contacts
between Babylonian and Greco-Roman astronomy and astrology, texts
andartifactsofHellenisticandRomanperiodastronomy,andthescientific
workofClaudiusPtolemy.
Rolf Krauss studied Egyptology, history, and geography at the Freie
Universität Berlin, earning a doctorate in 1981 with his dissertation
“ProblemsoftheEgyptianCalendar.”In1996his“AstronomicalConcepts
in the Pyramid Texts” was accepted at Hamburg University for German
Habilitation (2nd dissertation). From 1982 until 2007 he was on the aca-
demicstaffoftheStateMuseumsinBerlin.
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xiv NotesonContributors
JamesG.LennoxisProfessorEmeritusofHistoryandPhilosophyofScience
at the University of Pittsburgh. His research in history and philosophy of
biologyincludesatranslationwithcommentaryofAristotle’sOnthePartsof
Animals (Oxford 2002), Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge 2001),
andmanyarticlesandbookchaptersonAristotleandCharlesDarwin.
EricLewisisanassociateprofessorofPhilosophyatMcGillUniversity.He
haspublishedinancientphilosophy,andthephilosophyofmusicandnew
mediaart.
Vivienne Lo 羅維前 is the Director of the UCL China Centre for
Health and Humanity. Her research focuses on the social and cultural
origins of self-care. She translates and analyzes manuscript material from
early and medieval China and studies the transmission of scientific
knowledge along the so-called Silk Roads through to the modern
Chinese medical diaspora.
Philipp A. Maas is an Indologist who currently works at the University of
Leipzig, Germany. His main interests are the pre-modern cultural and
intellectual history of South Asia and the multiple genres of Sanskrit
literature. Maas has published widely, especially on early classical
AyurvedaandYoga.
ClemencyMontelleisAssociateProfessorintheSchoolofMathematicsand
StatisticsattheUniversityofCanterbury,Christchurch,NewZealand.She
hasresearchinterestsinthemathematicalhistoryofearlycultures,including
Mesopotamia, Greece, India, and the Islamic Near East. Her Chasing
Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse
Reckoning (Johns Hopkins University Press) focuses on the theoretical
treatment of eclipse phenomena in the ancient world. She is, with Kim
Plofker,completingabookonthehistoryofSanskritastronomicaltablesin
thesecondmillennium.
JohnF.NunnretiredfromhisroleasHeadoftheAnaesthesiaDivisionof
the Clinical Research Centre, British Medical Research Council. He has
publishedwidelyonancientEgyptianmedicine,includingabookwiththat
title(BritishMuseumPress,1996).
Vivian Nutton, FBA, is Professor of the History of Medicine at the First
Moscow State Medical University. His recent books include Ancient
Medicine (2nd edn, 2013), a translation of Johann Guinter and Andreas
Vesalius’ Principles of Anatomy according to the Opinion of Galen, 1538
(2017), and John Caius, An Autobibliography.
Kim Plofker is Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics at
Union College in Schenectady, New York, USA. Her areas of interest
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NotesonContributors xv
include the history of mathematics and astronomy in India and the
medieval Islamic world, and the cross-cultural transmission of scientific
models.
FrancescaRochbergisCatherineandWilliamL.MagistrettiDistinguished
Professor of Near Eastern Studies in the Department of Near Eastern
Studies and the Office for the History of Science and Technology at the
UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley.ShepublisheswidelyontheBabylonian
astralsciences,especiallycelestialdivinationandastronomy.
Nathan Sidoli received his PhD from the University of Toronto, in the
History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and is currently
Associate Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Waseda
University,Tokyo.HisresearchfocusesontheGreekmathematicalsciences
andtheirdevelopmentinmedievalArabicsources.
A. Mark Smith is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of History at the
University of Missouri. He has published widely in the history of optics
and visual theory from antiquity to the seventeenth century, with special
focusontheworkofIbnal-Haytham.
JohnSteeleisProfessoroftheHistoryoftheExactSciencesinAntiquityin
the Department of Egyptology and Assyriology at Brown University. A
historian of astronomy, much of his work focuses on the development of
theastralsciencesinBabylonia.
Liba Taub is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the
University of Cambridge, where she is Director of the Whipple Museum
oftheHistoryofScience;sheisalsoaFellowofNewnhamCollege.Having
published extensively on Greco-Roman science, as well as scientific instru-
mentsandmodels,hermostrecentmonographisScienceWritinginGreco-
RomanAntiquity(CUP,2017).
LaurenceTotelinisaseniorlecturerinancienthistoryatCardiffUniversity.
HerresearchfocusesonGreekandRomanbotanyandpharmacology.Sheis
the author of Hippocratic Recipes: Oral and Written Transmission of
Pharmacological Knowledge in Fifth- and Fourth-Century Greece (Brill,
2009)and,withGavinHardy,AncientBotany(Routledge,2016).
Miira Tuominen (PhD 2002, University of Helsinki) is tenured at the
University of Jyväskylä. She has published on a wide array of topics,
including two monographs, Ancient Philosophers on Starting Points for
Knowledge (2007) and Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle
(2009). She is now finishing a monograph on Porphyry’s ethics in his
On Abstinence.
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