Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1107169437 ISBN 13: 9781107169432

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2017

Synopsis

The relationship between theory and practice, 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 multi-layered 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 and pharmacology. The main focus is on the textuality of processes of transmission of knowledge and its application in various fields. Given that a text always contains complex and destabilizing aspects that cannot be reduced to the specific subject matter it discusses, to what extent can and do ancient texts support extra-textual applicability?

About this title

Book Description:

This book sheds new light on the problematic relationship between theory and practice in ancient Greek and Roman culture. Various fields of knowledge are discussed, including agriculture, architecture, the art of love, astronomy, ethics, mechanics, medicine and pharmacology. The main focus is on the interaction between texts and the transmission of knowledge.

About the Author:

Marco Formisano is Professor of Latin Literature at Universiteit Gent, Belgium. He has published extensively on ancient technical and scientific writing. His first monograph, Tecnica e scrittura (2001), was dedicated to late Latin scientific texts. He has studied the ancient art of war as a literary genre and its tradition (Vegezio: Arte della guerra romana, 2003 and War in Words: Transformations of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz, coedited with H. Böhme, 2012) as well as Vitruvius (Vitruvius in the Round, co-edited with S. Cuomo, special issue of Arethusa, 2016). He is the editor of The Library of the Other Antiquity, a series devoted to late antique literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1107169437
• ISBN 13: 9781107169432
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Formisano Marco, Eijk Philip Van Der