Natural Knowledge in Preclassical Antiquity

Erscheinungsjahr 1992
ISBN: 978-0-8018-6371-4
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 300 g

In describing the origins of modern "science," historians often fail to appreciate or misread how the ancients understood and used significant expressions of "natural knowledge." Few read the story of the cyclops, for example, as useful advice about where to travel and settle — and where not to. Others search for "lost Egyptian wisdom" rather than see how the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom could be built with the simple tools and cumbersome mathematics of the time.

Mott T. Greene reexamines the remnants of ancient life using conceptual tools seldom brought to bear on such material. The result is a fresh appraisal of what the evidence will yield about natural phenomena and modes of thought in the distant past. Greene builds on the work of modern scholars but contributes scientific precision and tenacity to debates in areas as diverse as archaeology, early art history, Egyptian fractions, Indo-Iranian religion, classical Greek verse, and Plato's "problem of knowledge."

Autoren/Hrsg.

Greene, Mott T.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Prehistory
Chapter 2. Egyptian Fractions
Chapter 3. Hesiod's Volcanoes I. Titans and Typhoeus
Chapter 4. Hesiod's Volcanoes II. Natural History of Cyclopes
Chapter 5. Thales and Halys
Chapter 6. The True Identity of Soma
Chapter 7. Plato's Myths
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Greene, Mott T.
Mott T. Greene is an affiliate professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington and John Magee Professor of Science and Values emeritus at the University of Puget Sound. He is the author of Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing View of a Changing World and Natural Knowledge in Preclassical Antiquity.

Mott T. Greene is the John B. Magee Distinguished Professor in the Honors Program at the University of Puget Sound. He is the author of Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing World.