Introduction: The History of Science in Medieval Jewish Cultures

Summary

Is there an object out there answering to the name, “the history of science in medieval Jewish cultures”? Or is the history of the scientific activity of medieval Jewish scholars part and parcel of the contemporary activity in the various majority cultures in which they lived, which therefore provide the appropriate contexts for examining the history of science practiced by Jewish individuals? Inasmuch as science is the universal intellectual activity par excellence, is the history of its practice by a minority culture separable from its practice by the majority culture? Isn't the very notion of a “history of science in medieval Jewish cultures” an artificial construct informed by ethnic, nationalistic, or apologetic concerns? These are some of the questions that may cross readers’ minds when they encounter the title of this book.

It is certainly not the intention to produce here a twenty-first-century remake of the “famous Jews in science” genre. Rather, the title signals the belief that the history of the absorption and practice of science within various medieval Jewish cultures constitutes a clearly identifiable object of fruitful historical investigation. Differences in local conditions notwithstanding, there is a certain inner connectedness in the story of the fortunes of science in medieval Jewish cultures. This is what makes it an intellectually legitimate and potentially fertile object of research – on the condition, to be sure, that the accounts of the practice of science by Jews are not oblivious to the respective larger, non-Jewish contexts.