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Title Knowledge, text and practice in ancient technical writing / edited by Marco Formisano, Philip van der Eijk
Published Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource
Contents From words to acts? / Philip van der Eijk and Marco Formisano -- The poetics of knowledge / Marco Formisano -- Machines on paper: from words to acts in ancient mechanics / Markus Asper -- Architecture as "the art of the possible" / Elisa Romano -- Caesar's Rhine bridge and its feasibility in Giovanni Giocondo's Expositio pontis / Ronny Kaiser -- From words to acts: on the applicability of Hippocratic therapy / Pilar Pérez Cañizares -- Naso magister erat -- sed cui bono? : on not taking the poet's teaching seriously / Alison Sharrock -- From techne to kakotechnia: use and abuse of ancient cosmetic texts / Laurence Totelin -- From discourses to handbook: the Encheiridion of Epictetus as a practical guide to life / Gerard Boter -- The problem of practical applicability in Ptolemy's Geography / Klaus Geus -- Living according to the seasons : the power of parapegmata / Gerd Grasshoff -- Auctoritas in the garden : Columella's poetic strategy in De re rustica 10 / Christiane Reitz -- The generous text: animal intuition, human knowledge, and written transmission in Pliny's books on medicine / Brooke Holmes -- From descriptions to acts : the paradoxical animals of the ancients from a cognitive perspective / Pietro Li Causi
Summary The relationship between theory and practice, in other words between norms indicated in a text and their extra-textual application, is one of the most fascinating issues in the history and theory of science. Yet this aspect has often been taken for granted and never explored in depth. The essays contained in this volume provide a complex and nuanced discussion of this relationship as it emerges in ancient Greek and Roman culture in a number of fields, such as agriculture, architecture, the art of love, astronomy, ethics, mechanics, medicine, pharmacology. The main focus is on the textuality of processes of the transmission of knowledge and its application in various fields. Given that a text always contains complex and destabilising aspects that cannot be reduced to the specific subject matter it discusses, to what extent can and do ancient texts support extra-textual applicability?
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Technical writing -- History and criticism
Classical literature -- History and criticism
Technology -- Greece -- History
Technology -- Rome -- History
TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- History.
Classical literature
Technical writing
Technology
Altertum
Literatur
Schrifttum
Technik
Greece
Rome (Empire)
Griechenland
Römisches Reich
Griechenland Altertum
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
Author Formisano, Marco, editor
Eijk, Ph. J. van der (Philip J.), editor
ISBN 9781316770450
1316770451
9781316718575
1316718573