Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science
| العنوان: | Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science |
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| المؤلفون: | Martin Bernal |
| المصدر: | Isis. 83:596-607 |
| بيانات النشر: | University of Chicago Press, 1992. |
| سنة النشر: | 1992 |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | History, media_common.quotation_subject, Mesopotamia, law.invention, History and Philosophy of Science, Nothing, law, Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous), CLARITY, Natural (music), Sophistication, History of science, Classics, Trepidation, media_common, Shadow (psychology) |
| الوصف: | J SPENT THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS of my life trying to escape from the shadow of my father, John Desmond Bernal, and hence, among other things, from science and the history of science. Therefore, the trepidation that is proper for anyone who is neither a scientist nor a historian of science writing for Isis is multiplied manyfold in my case. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the invitation to put forward my views on the origins of Western science. Any approach to this question immediately stumbles over the definition of "science." As no ancient society possessed the modern concept of "science" or a word for it, its application to Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, or Greece is bound to be an arbitrary imposition. This lack of clarity is exacerbated by the clash between historians, like David Pingree, who are concerned with "sciences" as "functioning systems of thought" within a particular society and those who apply transhistorical standards and see "science" as "the orderly and systematic comprehension, description and/or explanation of natural phenomena . . . [and] the tools necessary for the undertaking including, especially, mathematics and logic."' I should add the words "real or imagined" after "natural phenomena." Pingree denounces the claims of what he calls "Hellenophilia" that "science" is an exclusively Greek invention owing little or nothing to earlier civilizations and that it was passed on without interference to the Western European makers of the "scientific revolution." Puzzlingly, the work of Otto Neugebauer-and his school, including Pingree himself-on the extent and sophistication of Mesopotamian astronomy and mathematics and Greek indebtedness to it, as well as M. L. West's demonstration of the Near Eastern influences on the Presocratic cosmologies, appears to have left this kind of thinking unscathed.2 |
| تدمد: | 1545-6994 0021-1753 |
| URL الوصول: | https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::6dfd9b6c6c027b365fd97c42abe04af0 https://doi.org/10.1086/356291 |
| رقم الأكسشن: | edsair.doi...........6dfd9b6c6c027b365fd97c42abe04af0 |
| قاعدة البيانات: | OpenAIRE |
| تدمد: | 15456994 00211753 |
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