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A Mathematician's JourneysAs the Outsider Walked in the Historiography of Mesopotamian Mathematics Until Neugebauer

A Mathematician's Journeys: As the Outsider Walked in the Historiography of Mesopotamian... [Those who nowadays work on the history of advanced-level Babylonian mathematics do so as if everything had begun with the publication of Neugebauer’s Mathematische Keilschrift-Texte from 1935 to 1937 and Thureau-Dangin’s Textes mathématiques babyloniens from 1938, or at most with the articles published by Neugebauer and Thureau-Dangin during the few preceding years. Of course they/we know better, but often that is only in principle. The present paper is a sketch of how knowledge of Babylonian mathematics developed from the beginnings of Assyriology until the 1930s, and raises the question why an outsider was able to create a breakthrough where Assyriologists, in spite of their best will, had been blocked. One may see it as the anatomy of a particular “Kuhnian revolution”.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Mathematician's JourneysAs the Outsider Walked in the Historiography of Mesopotamian Mathematics Until Neugebauer

Part of the Archimedes Book Series (volume 45)
Editors: Jones, Alexander; Proust, Christine; Steele, John M.
Høyrup, Jens
A Mathematician's Journeys — Feb 4, 2016
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References (111)

Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
ISBN
978-3-319-25863-8
Pages
165 –195
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-25865-2_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[Those who nowadays work on the history of advanced-level Babylonian mathematics do so as if everything had begun with the publication of Neugebauer’s Mathematische Keilschrift-Texte from 1935 to 1937 and Thureau-Dangin’s Textes mathématiques babyloniens from 1938, or at most with the articles published by Neugebauer and Thureau-Dangin during the few preceding years. Of course they/we know better, but often that is only in principle. The present paper is a sketch of how knowledge of Babylonian mathematics developed from the beginnings of Assyriology until the 1930s, and raises the question why an outsider was able to create a breakthrough where Assyriologists, in spite of their best will, had been blocked. One may see it as the anatomy of a particular “Kuhnian revolution”.]

Published: Feb 4, 2016

Keywords: Mathematical Text; School Text; Babylonian Mathematics; Cuneiform Text; Possessive Suffix

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