Guide

Scientists and professionals in the Ancient World

School of Classics, University of Saint-Andrews

7-9 september 2009

The technical and scientific writing of Graeco-Roman antiquity has been the focus of systematic scholarly study in recent decades. Attention has been mainly directed towards the textual means through which ancient technical and scientific knowledge was organised and codified. Relatively little scholarly effort has been put into examining the role of authorial voice in the making of such bodies of knowledge, despite the fact that authorial perspective is very important in modern history of science and anthropology’s evaluation of how scientific truth is constructed. Even less, until recently, has there been an effort to connect ancient scientific writing with broader strategies of cultivating a distinctly professional, or ‘specialist’ identity in antiquity, such as are manifested through biography, epigraphy, or art. There has been some important recent work in all of these areas, but this conference aims to break new ground through a comparative approach which brings together scholars working on many different areas of ancient professional and intellectual life, investigating technical and scientific texts in a wide range of different fields, and integrating that with attention to other kinds of evidence for professional activity in the ancient world. We are particularly interested in exploring the extent to which certain key topoi of professional self-presentation may be traced across genres (including poetry, philosophy or sophistic performance) or representational media (such as inscriptions, funerary art, or sculpture).

INTRODUZIONE AL CONVEGNO (Traduzione)

La scrittura di tipo tecnico-scientifico dell’antichità Greco-Romana è stata al centro di un sistematico studio specialistico negli ultimi decenni. L’attenzione è stata rivolta principalmente ai mezzi testuali attraverso i quali la conoscenza tecnica e scientifica era organizzata e codificata. Uno sforzo relativamente modesto è stato fatto nell’esame del ruolo degli autori nella formazione di tali corpi di conoscenza, nonostante il fatto che la prospettiva degli autori è molto importante nella moderna storia della scienza e la valutazione antropologica di come la verità scientifica viene costruita. Nondimeno, fino a poco tempo fa, vi è stato un tentativo di  collegare la scrittura scientifica antica  con le più ampie strategie di coltivare una identità distintamente professionale, o specialistica nell’antichità, così come esse si manifestano attraverso la biografia, l’epigrafia o l’arte. Vi sono stati alcuni lavori importanti di recente in tutte queste aree, ma questa conferenza mira a dissodare un nuovo terreno attraverso un approccio comparativo il quale spinge gli studiosi a lavorare in molte aree diverse di vita professionale e intellettuale antica, approfondendo testi tecnici e scientifici entro un’ampia gamma di campi differenti, integrando questo con una attenzione ad altri campi di prove  per una attività professionale nel mondo antico. Noi siamo interessati in modo particolare a esplorare fino a che punto possono essere rintracciati i luoghi chiave di auto-presentazione attraverso vari generi (inclusa poesia, filosofia o esecuzione sofistica) o i media di rappresentazione (come le iscrizioni, l’arte funeraria oppure la scultura).

PROGRAMME

Monday, 7 September

9:30- 10:15 Welcome and registration

The Ancient Scientist’s ‘I’

(l’Io dello scienziato antico)

10:15 – 11:00 Harry Hine (University of St Andrews): ‘I’ or ‘We’? The grammar and tactics of authorial self-presentation in Latin technical and philosophical writers

11:00- 11:30 Coffee break

11:30- 12:15 Georgia Irby-Massie (College of William and Mary): Geographika sine studio aut ira? Authorial voice and self-presentation in Roman Imperial geographical texts

12:15 – 13:00 Johanna Akujärvi (Lund University): Authorial voice and the addressee in Pausanias’ Periegesis

13:00- 14:30 Lunch break

Transmission of Professional Knowledge

(La trasmissione della conoscenza professionale)

14:30- 15:15 Marco Galli (Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’): tba (tema da concordare).

15:15- 16:00 Tracey Rihll (Swansea University): How was technical knowledge transferred in Classical antiquity?

16:00- 16:30 Tea break

Expertise and Politics in the Late Roman Republic

(Competenza e scienza politica nella tarda Repubblica Romana)

16:30 – 17:15 Serafina Cuomo (Birkbeck College, London): All the proconsul’s men: Cicero, Verres and account-keeping

17:15 – 18:00 Katharina Volk (Columbia University): Nigidius Figulus and the study of nature in late Republican Rome

Dinner

Tuesday, 8 September

Strategies of Self-Presentation I: The Ancient ‘Military Author’

(Strategie di auto-presentazione I: L’ antica ‘autorità militare’)

9:30 – 10:15 Marco Formisano (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): The author, the soldier, and the scholar: strategies of authorization in the ancient art of war

10:15 – 11:00 Alice König (University of St Andrews): Frontinus as hands-on expert and arm-chair historian: a comparison of his self-presentation in the De Aquis and the Strategemata

11:00- 11:30 Coffee break

Strategies of Self-Presentation II: Framing Authority across Genres

(Strategie di auto-presentazione II: Adattamento dell’autorità attraverso i generi)

11:30 – 12:15 Daryn Lehoux (Queen’s University, Ontario): Author and authority in Roman science

12:15 – 13:00 Thorsten Fögen (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): L’architecte engagé: education, morality and politics in Vitruvius’ De architectura

13:00 – 14:30 Lunch break

14:30 – 15:15 Emily Kneebone (University of Cambridge): The rhetoric of authority in Oppian’s Halieutica

15:15 – 16:00 Karin Tybjerg (Kroppedal Museum, Copenhagen): Hero of Alexandria – the mechanics of self-representation

16:00- 16:30 Tea break

Genres and Disciplines

(Generi e Discipline)

16:30 – 17:15 Lieve Van Hoof (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and University of Oxford): The battle over healthcare: Plutarch and Galen on dietetics

17:15 – 18:00 Jacqueline Feke (University of Toronto): Ptolemy: mathematician as philosopher

Conference Dinner

Wednesday, 9 September

Professional Communities

(Comunità professionali)

9:00- 9:45 Stephen Flett (University of Liverpool): Hippocratic deontology and professionalism: the professionalization of medicine in Greek Hellenistic antiquity

9:45 – 10:30 Bob Sharples (University College London): The self-presentation of philosophers: some thoughts

10:30- 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 – 11:45 Georgy Kantor (University of Oxford): Legal experts in Roman Asia Minor

Strategies of Self-Presentation III: Shifting Paradigms

(Strategie di auto-presentazione III: spostamento di paradigmi)

11:45 – 12:30 Mladen Popović (Qumran Institute, University of Groningen): Jewish scientists in Hellenistic and early Roman Palestine: antediluvian and other transmitters of divine knowledge

12:30- 13:30 Lunch break

13:30 – 14:15 Todd Curtis (Newcastle University): Creating a scientific identity: egotism, discourse community and the genre rhetoric in the Galenic corpus

14:15 – 15:00 Rosalind Maclachlan (University of Birmingham): Oribasius and Eunapius: iatros & philiatros

15:00 – 15:30 Tea and closure

Conference venue: Swallowgate Room no. 11, School of Classics, Butts Wynd, St Andrews

The event is part of the activities of the Leverhulme ‘Science and Empire in the Roman World’ project: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/science-and-empire/

More information, including a booking form, is available from: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/science-and-empire/scipro.shtml.
Deadline for bookings: 29 August 2009

Conference organisers:
Dr Emma Gee

ergg@st-andrews.ac.uk
Cet e-mail est protégé contre les robots collecteurs de mails, votre navigateur doit accepter le Javascript pour le voir

Dr Jason König

jpk3@st-andrews.ac.uk
Cet e-mail est protégé contre les robots collecteurs de mails, votre navigateur doit accepter le Javascript pour le voir

Dr Katerina Oikonomopoulou
ao40@st-andrews.ac.uk
Cet e-mail est protégé contre les robots collecteurs de mails, votre navigateur doit accepter le Javascript pour le voir
Professor Greg Woolf
gdw2@st-andrews.ac.uk
Cet e-mail est protégé contre les robots collecteurs de mails, votre navigateur doit accepter le Javascript pour le voir