The Potential of the Comparative History of Pre-Modern Science

Abstract

Argument

While undeniably more restricted in many respects than the history of modern science (both in that the evidence is lacunose and because the science itself is more elementary) the comparative inquiry into ancient investigations may, from another point of view, be said to be far richer. We can open up the question of why science should have taken such different forms in different ancient civilizations. How did the ancient investigators come to define the problems, and the methods to tackle them, in the ways they did? A history of pre-modern science provides access to ancient aims, values, and ideologies in a distinctive fashion, differing from other areas of ancient thought in that “reality” – as the ancients themselves understood it in different ways – could and did act as a check on their speculations.