Description
Book SynopsisThis book provides a comprehensive overview of the key themes in Greek and Roman science, medicine, mathematics and technology. A distinguished team of specialists engage with topics including the role of observation and experiment, Presocratic natural philosophy, ancient creationism, and the special style of ancient Greek mathematical texts, while several chapters confront key questions in the philosophy of science such as the relationship between evidence and explanation. The volume will spark renewed discussion about the character of ''ancient'' versus ''modern'' science, and will broaden readers'' understanding of the rich traditions of ancient Greco-Roman natural philosophy, science, medicine and mathematics.
Trade Review'… this Cambridge Companion is an excellent introductory guide to many areas of science-style inquiry in classical antiquity, and it is especially useful for less well known domains like botany, music, mechanics, or meteorology. In another way its authors' diverse choices offer a snapshot of our current relationship to Greco-Roman philosophical and scientific activity: our questions about its history are open-ended, even if a high proportion of them are still about Aristotle.' Philippa Lang Isis, Isis, a Journal of the History of Science Society
Table of ContentsIntroduction Liba Taub; 1. Presocratic natural philosophy Patricia Curd; 2. Reason, experience and art: the Gorgias and On Ancient Medicine James Allen; 3. Towards a science of life: the cosmological method, teleology and living things Klaus Corcilius; 4. Aristotle on the matter for birth, life and the elements David Ebrey; 5. From craft to nature: the emergence of natural teleology Thomas Johansen; 6. Creationism in antiquity David Sedley; 7. What's a plant? Laurence M. V. Totelin; 8. Meteorology Monte Ransome Johnson; 9. Ancient Greek mathematics Nathan Sidoli; 10. Astronomy in its contexts Liba Taub; 11. Ancient Greek mechanics and the mechanical hypothesis Sylvia Berryman; 12. Measuring musical beauty: instruments, reason and perception in ancient harmonics Massimo Raffa; 13. Ancient Greek historiography of science Leonid Zhmud.
