Pieces and Parts in Scientific Texts

Description

This book starts from a first general observation: there are very diverse ways to frame and convey scientific knowledge in texts. It then analyzes texts on mathematics, astronomy, medicine and life sciences, produced in various parts of the globe and in different time periods, and examines the reasons behind the segmentation of texts and the consequences of such textual divisions. How can historians and philosophers of science approach this diversity, and what is at stake in dealing with it? The book addresses these questions, adopting a specific approach to do so. In order to shed light on the diversity of organizational patterns and rhetorical strategies in scientific texts, and to question the rationale behind the choices made to present such texts in one particular way, it focuses on the issue of text segmentation, offering answers to questions such as: What was the meaning of segmenting texts into paragraphs, chapters, sections and clusters? Was segmentation used to delimit self-contained units, or to mark breaks in the physical appearance of a text in order to aid reading and memorizing, or to cope with the constraints of the material supports? How, in these different settings and in different texts, were pieces and parts made visible? Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Front Matter ....Pages 1-1 Introduction (Florence Bretelle-Establet, Stéphane Schmitt)....Pages 3-17 Textual Places: “Parts of Text” and “Stretches of Text” (Julie Lefebvre)....Pages 19-46 Front Matter ....Pages 47-47 Segmentation of Texts in Old Babylonian Mathematics (Christine Proust)....Pages 49-70 Textual Segmentation in Babylonian Astral Science (Mathieu Ossendrijver)....Pages 71-87 Front Matter ....Pages 89-89 Parts in Chinese Mathematical Texts. Interpreting the Chapter Form of The Nine Chapters on Mathematical Procedures (Karine Chemla, Dahai Zou)....Pages 91-133 “Parts of Text” in the Mathematical Literature of Ancient Greece: From the Author to His Commentator. The Example of Conics by Apollonius of Perga (Micheline Decorps-Foulquier)....Pages 135-157 Text Segmentation, Chapter Naming and the Transmission of Embedded Texts in South Asia, with Special Reference to the Medical and Philosophical Traditions as Exemplified by the Carakasaṃhitā and the Nyāyasūtra (Karin Preisendanz)....Pages 159-220 Front Matter ....Pages 221-221 Writing with and from Parts of the Discourses of Others in Chinese Medical Texts: Where Syntax and Layout Matter (Florence Bretelle-Establet)....Pages 223-267 Epigraphs as Parts of Text in Natural History Books in the Eighteenth Century: Between Intertextuality and the Architecture of the Book (Stéphane Schmitt)....Pages 269-295 Collecting Languages, Alphabets and Texts: The Circulation of ‘Parts of Texts’ Among Paper Cabinets of Linguistic Curiosities (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Century) (Fabien Simon)....Pages 297-346 Back Matter ....Pages 347-355