Knowledge, text and practice in ancient technical writing / edited by Marco Formisano, Philip van der Eijk.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Formisano, Marco, editor.

Eijk, Ph. J. van der (Philip J.), editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technical writing--History and criticism.

Technical writing.

Classical literature--History and criticism.

Classical literature.

Technology--Greece--History.

Technology.

Greece.

History.

Technology--Rome--History.

Rome (Empire).

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 282 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Summary:

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?

Contents:

From words to acts? / Philip van der Eijk and Marco Formisano

The poetics of knowledge / Marco Formisano

Machines on paper: from words to acts in ancient mechanics / Markus Asper

Architecture as "the art of the possible" / Elisa Romano

Caesar's Rhine bridge and its feasibility in Giovanni Giocondo's Expositio pontis / Ronny Kaiser

From words to acts: on the applicability of Hippocratic therapy / Pilar P�erez Ca�nizares

Naso magister erat

sed cui bono? : on not taking the poet's teaching seriously / Alison Sharrock

From techne to kakotechnia: use and abuse of ancient cosmetic texts / Laurence Totelin

From discourses to handbook: the Encheiridion of Epictetus as a practical guide to life / Gerard Boter

The problem of practical applicability in Ptolemy's Geography / Klaus Geus

Living according to the seasons : the power of parapegmata / Gerd Grasshoff

Auctoritas in the garden : Columella's poetic strategy in De re rustica 10 / Christiane Reitz

The generous text: animal intuition, human knowledge, and written transmission in Pliny's books on medicine / Brooke Holmes

From descriptions to acts : the paradoxical animals of the ancients from a cognitive perspective / Pietro Li Causi.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107169432

1107169437

OCLC:

956583967

Publisher Number:

99972632788