Workshop organized by Markham Geller, 2020-2021 Paris IAS Fellow, and Victor Gysembergh, CNRS, Centre Léon Robin de recherches sur la pensée antique

Workshop in english. Registration is compulsory, see registration form below.

Presentation

The innovative focus of the workshop will be on examples of ancient science which were not influenced by Aristotle but developed in other contexts and epistemes, from Pre-Socratic philosophy to the Babylonian Talmud. The main question regards
what motivated ancient science and how interactions between traditional disciplines may have influenced new thinking and innovation in ancient scholarship. Since innovations are easier to chart in practical applications of knowledge, as new technologies spread around the ancient world, the following examples of scientific knowledge will be of primary interest:

writing it down: scribal arts
figuring it out: astronomy and mathematics
looking for it: divination
making it work: alchemy
locating it: geography
manipulating it: medicine and magic
putting it into context: cosmology

Program (Paris time)

13:00 - 14:00      
Nicla de Zorzi (Vienna)
Respondent: Jean-Jacques Glassner (Paris)
Seeking knowledge: principles of interpretation in Ancient Mesopotamian divination

14:00 - 15:00      
Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel (Strasbourg)
Respondent: Alain Berthoz (Paris)
Understanding sensory experiences in cuneiform sources 

15.30 - 16:30   
Madalina Vartejanu-Joubert (Paris)
Respondent: Mark Geller (IEA de Paris)
Aspects of scientific thought in the Babylonian Talmud 

16:30 - 17:30   
Maurizio Viano (Turin)
Respondent: Glenn Most (Pisa, Chicago)
Babylonian hermeneutics and early Greek thought

18:00 - 19:00       
Victor Gysembergh (Paris)
Respondent: Lorenzo Verderame (Rome)
Chaldaean arithmetical astronomy at Plato’s Academy