Collaborative Research: The Aratus Project on Astronomy and Scientific Writing

Brown University, Providence RI

Investigators

Abstract

This collaborative research project in the history of science will produce the first full English translations of the commentaries and scholia to Aratus's literary work, Phaenomena, a popular text poem dealing with astronomy of Greek and Roman antiquity. It presented an accessible summary of star lore based upon a now lost work of Eudoxus, and it was an immediate and lasting success as an introductory text to astronomy; an immense exegetical literature grew up around it. This literature included commentaries written by both experts in astronomy, such as Hipparchus, and non-expert authors, as well as scholia (marginal notes) written in copies of his work. The project will explore the reception of Aratus's work among later commentators, and compare the way that the latter read, understood, and interacted with this text and the astronomy it contained. Results of this project will be made public through a dedicated website which will make available ancient texts with modern English translations for the first time; they will be made accessible through an innovative and open access online platform that will display the text of Aratus and of its commentaries and scholia, along with interactive visualizations of the astronomy they contain. In addition, the PI will produce a scholarly monograph on Hipparchus' commentary to Aratus, and she will develop an exhibition and new courses on ancient astronomy and history of science. This project is a pioneering investigation in history of science. It has four main goals. It will bring Aratus and his under-appreciated exegetical community to light, study the commentary of Hipparchus under the light of the debate about the nature of science and of the best genres to disseminate it, discuss the ancient reception of Aratus among different types of readership, and discuss the different genres of scientific writing in antiquity. The authors of these ancient texts form an understudied community of thinkers, who held widely varying opinions on Aratus' status as an authority on astronomy. The project will highlight this forgotten intellectual world, and it will broaden the traditional canon of ancient authors by translating many of these texts into modern English for the first time and making them freely available through an online digital portal. One key figure under investigation in the project is Hipparchus, who responds to Aratus and with whom Ptolemy deeply engages; understanding this missing intellectual link is critical to studies of ancient science. The PI will produce an edition and commentary on Hipparchus' commentary to Aratus that will be published as an independent, scholarly monograph. The project is also innovative for its social history of scientific writing and of commentary as a genre; the authors of these texts were all writing sciences but using very different genres and media. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.