Methods in the Exact Sciences of the Ancient and Medieval Periods

Sidoli Nathan C, Toronto

Investigators

Abstract

This Postdoctoral Fellowship is to develop the language skills to conduct research in the methods and practices of the ancient exact sciences of medieval Arabic. The PI will acquire the historical background to situate the evidence within the culture of medieval Islam. These skills and knowledge will be applied in a collaborative project on the mathematical methods of ancient and medieval astronomy. The scholar host is an expert in the exact sciences of both the Greco-Roman and medieval Arabic periods, with a strong publishing record in both areas. The project will investigate different approaches to producing astronomical knowledge using spherical geometry in Greco-Roman Antiquity. There were a number of different ways of approaching spherical problems in the ancient period. It has usually been assumed that there was an historical progression in ancient spherical methods, moving from the simpler to the more powerful and complex. In fact the ways in which knowledge was produced in each method are different and problems can only be solved with a particular approach. All ancient methods continued to coexist as complementary ways to produce astronomical knowledge in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. In a number of cases, the Latin or Arabic translations are our only evidence for a lost Greek original. In order to apply the techniques of textual studies to these texts, it will be necessary to situate the translations in their cultural and linguistic contexts while still reading them as witnesses of much older work. This means being sensitive to the texts and the editorial changes that have been made to them.. By using the method of textual comparison, the investigators will be able to shed light, not only on the form of the original texts, but also on the conditions of the medieval transmission of these texts. The project will undertake a study of the texts to develop a characterization of the mathematical procedures that is situated in the intellectual and cultural context of the sources. It will then proceed to an exploration of the properties of these different approaches using more powerful, modern mathematics which will allow the full range and limitations of the ancient methods to be seen. Finally, it will show, through balanced reconstruction, how these methods might have been used in practice. This study will be part of a growing body of recent work that explores historical science not simply in terms of the theoretical statements it produced but also with regard to the conditions, problems and practices. Although there is no evidence that historians have insight into the process of scientific discovery, by drawing out the practices witnessed in the ancient texts, this study will furnish a better understanding of the methods that scientists used to generate their results. This study will contribute to our understanding of the methods and practices used in the production of ancient and medieval mathematical astronomy. One of the most exiting aspects of this study will be following a continuous scientific tradition as it was transmitted through different cultures and languages. This project will provide an important case study of the transmission of particular texts, theorems and methods of mathematical astronomy from Greco-Roman Antiquity into the Arabic, and thence Latin Middle Ages.