Tools, Techniques, and Technologies

Ancient scholars deployed innovative tools and techniques, both material (e.g., sundials and astrolabes) and literary or rhetorical, to interrogate and communicate knowledge of the natural world in fields such as astronomy, botany, medicine. Exploring these tools and techniques of ancient science as well as their legacies, this volume brings together scholarship from diverse subjects and periods to celebrate the eminent historian of science Liba Taub, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science. Building on Liba Taub’s diverse interests in ancient science and mathematics as well as scientific instruments and genres, the papers in this volume explore the ways in which practitioners in the ancient world utilised diverse strategies, techniques, and technologies to develop natural knowledge and procure authority, contributing to the legacies of ancient science into the modern world. With its attention to both abstract historiographical concepts and concrete examples of tools and techniques, this volume will appeal to those interested in the cultural transmission of ideas – across time, space, and genre.