Methods in the Exact Sciences of the Ancient and Medieval Periods

该博士后奖学金旨在培养语言技能，以便在中世纪阿拉伯语的古代精确科学方法和实践中进行研究。PI将获取历史背景，将证据置于中世纪伊斯兰文化中。这些技能和知识将应用于一个关于古代和中世纪天文学数学方法的合作项目。学者主持人是希腊罗马和中世纪阿拉伯时期的精确科学专家，在这两个领域都有很强的出版记录。该项目将研究利用古希腊罗马时代的球面几何来产生天文知识的不同方法。在古代有许多不同的方法来解决球形问题。人们通常认为，古代球形方法有一个历史进程，从简单到更强大和更复杂。事实上，每一种方法产生知识的方式是不同的，问题只能用一种特定的方法来解决。在中世纪和近代早期，所有古老的方法作为互补的方式继续共存，以产生天文学知识。在许多情况下，拉丁语或阿拉伯语的翻译是我们唯一的证据，证明一个丢失的希腊原文。为了将文本研究技术应用于这些文本，有必要将翻译置于其文化和语言背景中，同时仍将其视为更古老作品的见证。这意味着要对文本和编辑对它们所做的修改保持敏感。通过使用文本比较的方法，研究者不仅可以阐明原始文本的形式，还可以阐明这些文本在中世纪传播的条件。该项目将对这些文本进行研究，以在这些来源的知识和文化背景下对数学程序进行表征。然后，它将继续探索这些不同方法的性质，使用更强大的现代数学，这将允许看到古代方法的全部范围和局限性。最后，它将通过平衡重建来展示这些方法在实践中是如何使用的。这项研究将成为近期越来越多的研究工作的一部分，这些工作不仅从理论陈述的角度探索历史科学，而且从条件、问题和实践的角度探索历史科学。虽然没有证据表明历史学家对科学发现的过程有深入的了解，但通过绘制古代文献中所见证的实践，这项研究将更好地理解科学家用来产生结果的方法。这项研究将有助于我们理解古代和中世纪数学天文学生产中使用的方法和实践。这项研究最令人兴奋的方面之一将是遵循一个连续的科学传统，因为它是通过不同的文化和语言传播的。该项目将提供一个重要的案例研究，研究从希腊-罗马古代到阿拉伯语，然后是拉丁中世纪的数学天文学的特定文本、定理和方法的传播。

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.