Thanks for your comment! :-)
One of my arguments against Neugebauer's _A History of Ancient
Mathematical Astronomy_ is that it tacitly tries to be the "History
of the Ancient Mathematical Astronomy in the Whole World" without
bothering so much about anything else than Greece and Babylonia. In fact,
Neugebauer openly declares how ignorant he is when it comes to Chinese
material; so how can he then conclude that "its influence is probably not
visible until so and so?
I have no problem realising that Neugebauer was a great authority on
Babylonian and Greek stuff; what I am saying is that that does not give
him the mandate to evaluate other civilizations' records without
performing any research on it. If he REALLY would have been interested in
the issues of transmission between cultures, then he would first have
learned Sanskrit, Chinese, etc, and after that spent several years to
objectively compare the different accounts in their primary sources, as
well as making an attempt to understand the cultural issues in each and
one of these civilizations. Then, if was an honest and objective scholar,
he would have come to other conclusions than he did now.
Don't think that the expression "Again by reason of incompetence..." is
<really> a humble statement. It is only an excuse for trying to write a
world history of mathematics and astronomy according to his own
speculations. If he was <really humble> he would have written:
"Again by incompetence I don't know anything about Chinese or Indian
astronomy or mathematics and therefore I will not make any statements
about the transmission between these countries and Greece and Babylonia."
And if he was <really> humble, he would also have named his yellow,
three-book Springer-Verlag-set _A History of Ancient Babylonian and Greek
Mathematical Astronomy_, which would have been much more correct,
considering what's inside.
I repeat: I think Neugebauer is fantastic in some areas, while he is less
fantastic in other areas. He is especially weak in performing coherent
philosophical reasoning; and that he why is not always so credible.
To understand his self-declared incompetency better, maybe a simple
analogy would be OK? If I (or anyone else) tell you that I don't know
ANYTHING about brain surgery, would you let me make an operation on you?
Would you even waste you time on asking me for a consultation? Probably
not. :-}
Bo Klintberg,
Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
University of Toronto
-------------------
> On Sat, 2 Jan 1999, Bo Klintberg wrote (in part): > > >
> > Is that the <standard> way of "improving" this discussion? What I remember
> > from _A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy_ is that he said
> > something like "there is no need to discuss Egyptians, Maya, or the
> > Chinese." And in practice he didn't discuss so much about the Indians
> > either, more than saying that they got everything they had from the
> > Greeks.
> >
>
> Here is what Neugebauer actually said (p. 2):
>
> "Again by reason of incompetence I have omitted all discussion of
> the history of astronomy in China. Its influence upon the Islamic and
> Western development is probably not visible earlier than the creation of
> Mongol states in Western Asia. Thus the damage done by omitting China is
> perhaps not too great and at any rate is alleviated by ignorantia.
>
> "No relation whatsoever exists between our study and Maya
> astronomy. Consequently no reference to this field of study will be
> found in the following pages."
>
> And at the beginning of "Book III: Egypt", he writes (p. 559):
>
> "Egypt has no place in a work on the history of mathematical
> astronomy. Nevertheless I devote a separate "Book" on this subject in
> order to draw the reader's attention to its insignificance which cannot
> be too strongly emphasized in comparison with the Babylonian and the
> Greek contribution to the development of scientific astronomy.
>
> "Egypt provides us with the exceptional case of a highly
> sophisticated civilization which flourished for many centuries without
> making a single contribution to the development of the exact sciences. In
> fact, however, this is not the exception but the rule. Nowhere within
> ancient civilizations known to us did the sciences originate
> independently, neither in pre-Hellenic nor in early Greek civilization, in
> the ancient Near East, on the Iranian plateau, nor in pre-Arian or Arian
> India --- with the sole exception of Mesopotamia, probably in the early
> second millenium. It is at this single center that abstract mathematical
> thought first appeared, affecting, centuries later, neighbouring
> civilizations, and finally spreading like a contagious disease."
>
> In a footnote, Neugebauer also mentions China as another exception.
>
> Stacy Langton
> University of San Diego
> langton@acusd.edu