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Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

Online ISBN:
9780199984657
Print ISBN:
9780199734146
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World

Paul T. Keyser (ed.),
Paul T. Keyser
(ed.)
Classics, University of Colorado
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Paul T. Keyser, Independent Scholar, Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh, USA

John Scarborough (ed.)
John Scarborough
(ed.)
History, Classics, University of Wisconsin - Madison
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John Scarborough, Professor Emeritus, Department of History and School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

Published online:
10 July 2018
Published in print:
29 August 2018
Online ISBN:
9780199984657
Print ISBN:
9780199734146
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The book offers 50 essays introducing, surveying, summarizing, and analyzing the many sciences of the classical world, that is, ancient Greek and Roman worlds. The opening section offers 10 essays on mathematics, astronomy, and medicine in other ancient cultures that may have either influenced the Greek world or else served as informative alternative accounts of ancient science. There is a brief section on Greek science of the 6th through 4th centuries bce, then a long section on Greek science of the Hellenistic era, the period in which ancient Greek science was most active. The Greco-Roman era, that is the early Roman Empire, is treated in a fourth section, and the final section addresses the sciences of Late Antiquity, or Early Byzantine, period, the 4th through 7th centuries ce. Throughout, the volume insists on the close integration of the ancient sciences with one another and on the consequent necessity to study them as a whole, not in isolation. Sciences elsewhere neglected or excluded are here included as first-class citizens, such as alchemy, astrology, paradoxography, pharmacy, and physiognomy. The essays invite readers to study these fascinating disciplines, and in many cases offer new interpretations and syntheses. Each essay includes a bibliography supporting its content and providing further reading. Key figures in the history of ancient science, Pythagoras with Plato, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy, each receive their own essay.

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