Aetna And The Moon Explaining Nature In Ancient Greece And Rome Liba Taub by Liba Taub 9780870711961, 0870711962 instant download after payment.

Classical authors used both prose and poetry to explore and explain the
natural world. In Aetna and the Moon, Liba Taub examines the variety of
ways in which ancient Greeks and Romans conveyed scientific information.
Oregon State University Press is proud to present this inaugural volume
in the Horning Visiting Scholars Series. In ancient Greece and Rome,
most of the technical literature on scientific, mathematical,
technological, and medical subjects was written in prose, as it is
today. However, Greek and Roman poets produced a significant number of
widely read poems that dealt with scientific topics. Why would an author
choose poetry to explain the natural world? This question is
complicated by claims made, since antiquity, that the growth of rational
explanation involved the abandonment of poetry and the rejection of
myth in favor of science. Taub uses two texts to explore how scientific
ideas were disseminated in the ancient world. The anonymous author of
the Latin Aetna poem explained the science behind the volcano Etna with
poetry. The Greek author Plutarch juxtaposed scientific and mythic
explanations in his dialogue On the Face on the Moon. Both texts provide
a lens through which Taub considers the nature of scientific
communication in ancient Greece and Rome. General readers will
appreciate Taub’s thoughtful discussion concerning the choices available
to ancient authors to convey their ideas about science—as important
today as it was in antiquity—while Taub’s careful research and lively
writing will engage classicists as well as historians of science.