Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity
An Anthropology of Science

Features an exposition of ancient cuneiform science from the perspective of worldmaking and the cultural anthropology of science.

Francesca Rochberg (Author)

9781009522335, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2025

278 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.2 cm, 0.554 kg

'Rochberg's book is a timely, original work that significantly advances a line of analysis concerning Mesopotamian celestial science that she has been developing for much of her career as a leading historian of the ancient world.'Alan C. Alan C. Bowen, Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science

Objects of knowledge exist within material, immaterial, and conceptual worlds. Once the world is conceived from the perspective of others, the physical ontology of modern science no longer functions as a standard by which to understand other orderings of reality, whether from ethnographical or historical sources. Because premodern and non-western sources attest to a plurality of sciences practiced in accordance with different ways of worldmaking from that of the modern West, their study belongs to the history of science, the philosophy of science, and the sociology of science, as well as the anthropology of science. In Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity, Francesca Rochberg extends an anthropology of science to the historical world of cuneiform texts of ancient Babylonia. Exploring how Babylonian science has been understood, she proposes a new direction for scholarship by recognizing the world of ancient science, not as a less developed form of modern science, but as legitimate and real in its own right.

Introduction
Part I. Historiography of Science: 1. These bones live
2. Cuneiform texts and the historiography of science
3. The early shaping of a modern historiography of ancient astronomical sciences
Part II. Worldmaking and the Anthropology of Science: 4. The idea of worlds
5. Uses of diversity
6. Worldmaking in cuneiform culture
7. Imago mundi
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of names and subjects.

Subject Areas: Middle & Near Eastern archaeology [HDDC]