This chapter discusses 'rich' terminologies, that is, terms that are coined with a view toward connotations, and some of their implications in four different fields of theoretical Greek knowledge (mathematics, rhetoric, medicine, and belopoeics). In each case, 'rich' terminologies exceed the purely functional ones, which I call 'lean':1 e.g., they can tell us something about the field and the actors involved. In addition, the chapter argues that certain aesthetical aspects, connotations perhaps, of the terms adopted add to their significance. These aspects are fragmentary self-descriptions of the activities they are meant to designate and, in some cases, even contribute toward reconstructing the perspective of the actors onto their own practices. To some extent, a notion of field memory emerges. In short, rich terminologies can present additional aspects and perhaps do always imply certain associations that go beyond purely functional concepts of terminology.

Abstract When it comes to science writing, narrative has attracted little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by presenting a brief pilot survey on narrative in the Aristotelian Corpus. My main concern here is to understand the workings of narrative in the process of knowledge creation. Aristotle, apart from his paradigmatic role in the history of knowledge, offers a broad and varied corpus. The paper proceeds in three steps: After a few introductory remarks on the concept of ‘narrative’, I will give a brief overview of narrative in Aristotle. Then, there follow a few examples for the main epistemic functions of narrative in Aristotle. After that, five epistemic grand narratives, actually ‘stories’, told by Aristotle, demonstrate that he has a method of narrative construction, that is, of epistemic storytelling, which has been very successful. I attempt to cast this method in a poetics-style list of rules. The paper shows that Aristotle skillfully uses different forms of narrative in order to produce knowledge.

When it comes to science writing, narrative has attracted little attention. This paper attempts to fill this gap by presenting a brief pilot survey on narrative in the Aristotelian Corpus. My main concern here is to understand the workings of narrative in the process of knowledge creation. Aristotle, apart from his paradigmatic role in the history of knowledge, offers a broad and varied corpus. The paper proceeds in three steps: After a few introductory remarks on the concept of ‘narrative’, I will give a brief overview of narrative in Aristotle. Then, there follow a few examples for the main epistemic functions of narrative in Aristotle. After that, five epistemic grand narratives, actually ‘stories’, told by Aristotle, demonstrate that he has a method of narrative construction, that is, of epistemic storytelling, which has been very successful. I attempt to cast this method in a poetics-style list of rules. The paper shows that Aristotle skillfully uses different forms of narrative in order to produce knowledge.

The corpus of ancient Greek oratory (late 5th to late 4th century) contains about 100 cases, each of which forms the center of an often complex argument. This paper will look at some of these case narratives; first as carefully designed pieces of literature, that is, from the perspective of narratology. I will look for certain kinds of,plots`, especially their closure. Second, the paper will discuss these cases from within the conceptual framework of,thinking in cases`. Here, the paper will look at how the speaker draws or invites general conclusions from a specific event.

Mathematical writers, above all, Euclid, tend to present their theorems as decontextualized, abstract propositions, which has become the standard modus of textual presentation in theoretical mathematics. Mathematical commentators, however, provide their readers with personal names and historical facts in order to elucidate problems, provide contexts of discovery, or construct doxographies, among other things. Modern readers have used such information for the construction of histories of science. When we look at these passages, however, we see that personal names and information about mathematicians of the past can serve quite a range of different objectives, such as the strategic self-positioning of the commentator vis-a-vis the past or present of mathematics, the education of the reader, mathematical or moral, the construction of the history of the field, etc. Not only does the commentator present a persona of himself to the reader, he can also turn colleagues and predecessors into personae. This paper attempts to elucidate the practice, by offering four examples of such plays of and with personae, in Pappus, Eutocius, al-Nayrizi, and Proclus. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In sixthto fourth-century Greece, certain peculiar forms of discourse emerged, concerned with nature and medicine, but also with astronomy and mathematics. These (often fragmented) texts all share a modern-looking obsession with truth and a modern-looking interest in method, argument, explanation, sometimes even proof, and refutation. When studying these forms of discourse, it is difficult to avoid terminology and notions like ‘theory’, ‘science,’ and ‘rationality’ even for the modern reader who is aware of the dangers of anachronism. From a contemporary, ahistorical point of view, therefore, these forms of discourse do not look peculiar; rather, one is tempted to take them as evident pioneers of modern science. From the perspective of a comparative historian, however, who looks at how neighboring cultures in the Near East and in Egypt engaged with the same questions and problems at the same time, it is evident just how peculiar the Greek way of dealing with these phenomena actually was. In order to explain this, one has essentially a choice between two narratives: one describes the Greek scenario as an explosion before a Near Eastern-Egyptian background painted in dull colors, the other one prefers a model of continuous exchange and gradual acculturation. The former stresses how singular Greek discourse is, the latter shows how many elements it shares with ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian culture. While the former has been the orthodox position for a long time, recent research and the debate on orientalism have shattered both the evidence and the underlying assumptions for what once looked like a clear cultural divide.1

Abstract: This article asks what it takes to make the treatment of a given topic and thus a scientific or scholarly text ‘systematic’. After some remarks upon systems theory, the paper illustrates systematicity, the quality of being systematic, by readings of the Hippocratic On Breaths and De Morbis II, Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories, and Ps.-Galen’s Medical definitions. Systematicity turns out to be a result of epistemic and rhetorical practices to the same degree. It rests upon the authors’ ambition to transform the epistemic structure of the objects into equivalent rhetorical forms, which, in turn, become convincing because they hint at the objects’ epistemic structures.

Scientific and technological texts have not played a significant role in modern literary criticism. This collection, focusing mostly on medical and mathematical texts from ancient Greece, aims at approaching ancient Greek science from the cross-disciplinary perspective of authorship. Among the questions addressed are: How does scientific writing differ from 'literary' writing? In what ways does the author present himself as an authoritative figure? In addition to offering a new approach to this vast area of ancient literature, this collection reflects on the forms of scientific and scholarly communication current today.

In this paper, I examine metaphor as employed by Hellenistic Greek authors. Throughout, my emphasis is not on what any given metaphor means, but on how it means. I concentrate on three domains, namely religion, poetry/philology, and science. First, I look at the discourse of revelation, where brief passages of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and of the Oracle of the Potter are compared. Second, I give a brief outline of metaphor as a vehicle of poetic competition in Callimachus and late-Hellenistic literary criticism. Third, metaphors in Alexandrian science and, especially, mathematics and medicine, come into focus. While current research on metaphor stresses the cognitive functions of metaphor, I conclude with the suggestion that in the corpus surveyed metaphor's main function is to enhance authority and that metaphor is used as a tool geared to achieve competitive goals within the literary field.

MATHEMATICS AND POETRY IN HELLENISTIC ALEXANDRIA - R. Netz Ludic Proof. Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic. Pp. xvi + 255, figs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Cased, £62, US$107. ISBN: 978-0-521-89894-2. - Volume 63 Issue 1