In the Wake of the Compendia : : Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia / / ed. by J. Cale Johnson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2015 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Badalanova Geller, Florentina,; Bhayro, Siam,; Geller, M. J.,; Johnson, J. Cale,; Lehmhaus, Lennart,; Ossendrijver, Mathieu,; Raggetti, Lucia,; Rochberg, Francesca,; Steinert, Ulrike,; Wee, John Z.,
• HerausgeberIn: Johnson, J. Cale,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2015]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Series: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Cultures , 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (326 p.)

In the Wake of the Compendia presents papers that examine the history of technical compendia as they moved between institutions and societies in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia.This volume offers new perspectives on the development and transmission of technical compilations, looking especially at the relationship between empirical knowledge and textual transmission in early scientific thinking. The eleven contributions to the volume derive from a panel held at the American Oriental Society in 2013 and cover more than three millennia of historical development, ranging from Babylonian medicine and astronomy to the persistence of Mesopotamian lore in Syriac and Arabic meditations on the properties of animals. The volume also includes major contributions on the history of Mesopotamian “rationality,” epistemic labels for tested and tried remedies, and the development of depersonalized case histories in Babylonian therapeutic compendia. Together, these studies offer an overview of several important moments in the development of non-Western scientific thinking and a significant contribution to our understanding of how traditions of technical knowledge were produced and transmitted in the ancient world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Introduction -- A. The Infrastructural Compendium -- Encyclopaedias and Commentaries -- Compendia and Procedures in the Mesopotamian Astral Sciences -- Listenwissenschaft and the Encyclopedic Hermeneutics of Knowledge in Talmud and Midrash -- B. Licensing Empiricism: Replication and Authority in Mesopotamian Technical Literature -- ‘Tested’ Remedies in Mesopotamian Medical Texts -- Theory and Practice in the Syriac Book of Medicines -- The ‘Science of Properties’ and its Transmission -- Between Demonology and Hagiology -- C. The Two Paradigms: Towards a New Textual Criticism for Mesopotamian Technical Compendia -- The Babylonians and the Rational -- Phenomena in Writing -- Depersonalized Case Histories in the Babylonian Therapeutic Compendia -- Source index -- Subject index -- Word index