What do we mean by 'science'?
- Activities: collection, classification, prediction, modelling, experiment, extrapolisation, generalisation, mathematisation, ...
- Subject matter: the natural world, the heavens, the human body, the mind, ...
- Attributes: rationality, repeatability, (dis-)provability, rigour, objectivity, ...
- Are any of these detectible in the theories and practices of ancient Assyrian scholarship?
Should we be judging ancient cultures by modern standards, or trying to understand them on their own terms?
- Rationality: there are no objective standards of 'rationality', which has varied greatly even within modern scientific culture
- Rationale: the internal logic and coherence of a system; what it means to its practitioners
- Knowledge: is the philosophers' definition of knowledge as 'justified true belief' useful here?
- Belief: implies a choice whether to believe or not; if the Assyrians 'believed in' the gods, do we 'believe in' gravity?
Case study: coloured glass
- Why are there recipes for making coloured glass amongst the scholarly tablets of the Assyrian royal libraries?
- Step-by-step instructions for manufacture, with ingredients, quantifications, close observation: many 'scientific' attributes
- But the technology was hundreds of years old, the scholars are unlikely to have had the equipment or technical facility, glassmakers are unlikely to have been literate or had access to royal libraries
- Coloured glass as artificial stone TT : 'stone of the kiln'; coloured stones with protective and healing properties; ritual TT aspects of 'technological' procedures
Case study: time
- Lunar calendar of twelve 29 or 30-day months, needing intercalation TT (an extra month) every three years TT or so to keep aligned with solar year: determined by scholars, proclaimed by king
- Epic of Creation TT , Tablet V: Marduk PGP creates the moon as the motor of time, before the rest of the world
- Epic of Anzu PGP : Tablet of Destinies controls future time, and (in the wrong hands) can locally reverse time too
- What did it mean when solar and lunar events such as eclipses TT appeared to mismatch Marduk's ideal calendar?
There are no clearly demarcated boundaries between Assyrian 'science' and 'not-science'. In order to understand their intellectual world we need to put aside our own assumptions about disciplinary boundaries and study a wide range of writings, objects and contexts.
Further reading
- Rochberg, Heavenly writing, 2004: Chapter 7, 'The classification of Mesopotamian celestial enquiry as science' pp. 237-285
- Pingree, 'Hellenophilia', 1992
- Heeßel, 'Diagnosis, divination and disease', 2004
- Oppenheim, 'Man and nature', 1975
- Böck, 'When you perform', 2003
- Postgate, 'Mesopotamian petrology', 1997
- Dalley, Myths, 2000: 'The Epic of Creation' (pp. 228-277), 'The Epic of Anzu' (pp. 203-227)
- Brown, 'Cuneiform conception', 2000
- Robson, 'Counting the days', 2004
Content last modified: 07 Jul 2012.