Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing

Author:   Marco Formisano (Universiteit Gent, Belgium) ,  Philip van der Eijk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781107169432


Pages:   294
Publication Date:   19 April 2017
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing


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Overview

The relationship between theory and practice, in other words between norms indicated in a text and their extra-textual application, is one of the most fascinating issues in the history and theory of science. Yet this aspect has often been taken for granted and never explored in depth. The essays contained in this volume provide a complex and nuanced discussion of this relationship as it emerges in ancient Greek and Roman culture in a number of fields, such as agriculture, architecture, the art of love, astronomy, ethics, mechanics, medicine, pharmacology. The main focus is on the textuality of processes of the transmission of knowledge and its application in various fields. Given that a text always contains complex and destabilising aspects that cannot be reduced to the specific subject matter it discusses, to what extent can and do ancient texts support extra-textual applicability?

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Author:   Marco Formisano (Universiteit Gent, Belgium) ,  Philip van der Eijk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.70cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.560kg
ISBN:  

9781107169432


ISBN 10:   1107169437
Pages:   294
Publication Date:   19 April 2017
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

Table of Contents

1. From words to acts? Philip van der Eijk and Marco Formisano; 2. The poetics of knowledge Marco Formisano; 3. Machines on paper: from words to acts in ancient mechanics Markus Asper; 4. Si quis voluerit: Vitruvius on architecture as 'the art of the possible' Elisa Romano; 5. Caesar's Rhine bridge and its feasibility in Giovanni Giocondo's Expositio pontis Ronny Kaiser; 6. From words to acts: on the applicability of Hippocratic therapy Pilar Pérez Cañizares; 7. Naso magister erat – sed cui bono? On not taking the poet's teaching seriously Alison Sharrock; 8. From technē to kakotechnia: use and abuse of ancient cosmetic texts Laurence Totelin; 9. From discourses to handbook: the Encheiridion of Epictetus as a practical guide to life Gerard Boter; 10. The problem of practical applicability in Ptolemy's Geography Klaus Geus; 11. Living according to the seasons – the power of parapēgmata Gerd Grasshoff; 12. Auctoritas in the garden: Columella's poetic strategy in De re rustica 10 Christiane Reitz; 13. The generous text: animal intuition, human knowledge, and written transmission in Pliny's books on medicine Brooke Holmes; 14. From descriptions to acts: the paradoxical animals of the ancients from a cognitive perspective Pietro Li Causi.

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Author Information

Marco Formisano is Professor of Latin Literature at Universiteit Gent, Belgium. He has published extensively on ancient technical and scientific writing. His first monograph, Tecnica e scrittura (2001), was dedicated to late Latin scientific texts. He has studied the ancient art of war as a literary genre and its tradition (Vegezio: Arte della guerra romana, 2003 and War in Words: Transformations of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz, coedited with H. Böhme, 2012) as well as Vitruvius (Vitruvius in the Round, co-edited with S. Cuomo, special issue of Arethusa, 2016). He is the editor of The Library of the Other Antiquity, a series devoted to late antique literature. Philip van der Eijk is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Classics and History of Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He has published on ancient medicine, philosophy and science, comparative literature and patristics. He is the author of Aristoteles: De insomniis, De divinatione per somnum (1994), Diocles of Carystus (2000–1), Philoponus on Aristotle on the Soul 1 (2005–6), Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity (2005); and Nemesius: On the Nature of Man (with R. W. Sharples, 2008). He has edited Ancient Histories of Medicine (1999) and Hippocrates in Context (2005), and co-edited Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context (with H. F. J. Horstmanshoff and P. H. Schrijvers, 1995).

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