4 Introduction
philosophy,” “medicine,” “mixed mathematics,” and other activities con-
cerned with the study of nature. One of our main aims is to bring together
scholars who have grappled with the study of nature in various periods
and cultures to collaborate in remedying this defi ciency. There is now
considerable interest in such questions, focused broadly on the identity
of “science” and prompted by a growing awareness of the general problem
of anachronism in the history of science and medicine. To date, however,
discussions of these important questions have tended to be highly special-
ized and somewhat piecemeal. Treatments have typically focused upon
discrete historical periods and have been conducted within the context
of tightly defi ned disciplinary boundaries. This book seeks to range more
widely, with contributions from experts representing different historical
periods and different disciplinary specializations within the broad fi elds
of the history of science and the history of medicine.
The general approach taken by the authors has been to examine how
students of nature themselves have understood and represented their
work. The aim of each chapter is to explain the content, goals, methods,
practices, and institutions associated with the investigation of nature and
to articulate the strengths, limitations, and boundaries of these efforts
from the perspective of the actors themselves. Particular attention is paid
to those features of the investigation of nature that might be distorted
or misrepresented by the application of present- day connotations and
categories, and every effort has been made to avoid anachronism and es-
sentialism. Accordingly, the kinds of questions addressed in the various
chapters are these: What did the investigators into nature take their work
to be in the period under discussion? What did this activity encompass?
What did it exclude? What was it called? What did its practitioners do to
carry it out? What did it mean and how was it justifi ed, perhaps person-
ally but especially socially and culturally? How did this activity fi t (or
not) into the culture in which it took place? Particular attention is also
devoted to the terminology used by the historical actors, and the chapters
address questions such as these: What terms and categories did the actors
use to describe their activity? What were their goals? What place did their
explorations occupy in the intellectual and social world in which they
found themselves?
The chapters have been arranged in rough chronological order and ad-
dress four overlapping sets of concerns. First is the very general question
of the ways in which, in particular cultures and historical periods, those
who have grappled with nature have conceptualized their own activities.
While in a sense the whole volume deals with that question, the fi rst four
chapters seek to tell this story by focusing respectively on the ancient Near