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9780801863714 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Natural Knowledge in Preclassical Antiquity

  • ISBN-13: 9780801863714
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Mott T. Greene
  • Price: AUD $73.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/11/2000
  • Format: Paperback 208 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History of science [PDX]
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n describing the origins of modern ''science,'' historians often fail to appreciate or misread how the ancients understood and used significant expressions of ''natural knowledge.'' Few read the story of the cyclops, for example, as useful advice about where to travel and settle -- and where not to. Others search for ''lost Egyptian wisdom'' rather than see how the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom could be built with the simple tools and cumbersome mathematics of the time. Mott T. Greene reexamines the remnants of ancient life using conceptual tools seldom brought to bear on such material. The result is a fresh appraisal of what the evidence will yield about natural phenomena and modes of thought in the distant past. Greene builds on the work of modern scholars but contributes scientific precision and tenacity to debates in areas as diverse as archaeology, early art history, Egyptian fractions, Indo-Iranian religion, classical Greek verse, and Plato's ''problem of knowledge.''

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Chapter 1: Prehistory
Chapter 2: Egyptian Fractions
Chapter 3: Hesiod's Volcanoes I. Titans and Typhoeus
Chapter 4: Hesiod's Volcanoes II. Natural History of Cyclopes
Chapter 5: Thales and Halys
Chapter 6: The True Identity of Soma
Chapter 7: Plato's Myths

Notes
Index

""Mott Greene is a brilliant and original investigator of ancient enigmas. This lucid and thoroughly accessible book contains seven essays exploring aspects of knowledge in antiquity up to the time of Plato.""

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