Knowledge in Translation: Global Patterns of Scientific Exchange, 1000-1800 CE

by Patrick Manning (Editor), Abigail Owen (Editor)

Overview

In the second millennium CE, long before English became the language of science, the act of translation was crucial for understanding and disseminating knowledge and information across linguistic and geographic boundaries. This volume considers the complexities of knowledge exchange through the practice of translation over the course of a millennium, across fields of knowledge—cartography, health and medicine, material construction, astronomy—and a wide geographical range, from Eurasia to Africa and the Americas. Contributors literate in Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Minnan, Ottoman, and Persian explore the history of science in the context of world and global history, investigating global patterns and implications in a multilingual and increasingly interconnected world. Chapters reveal cosmopolitan networks of shared practice and knowledge about the natural world from 1000 to 1800 CE, emphasizing both evolving scientific exchange and the emergence of innovative science. By unraveling the role of translation in cross-cultural communication, Knowledge in Translation highlights key moments of transmission, insight, and critical interpretation across linguistic and faith communities. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822945376
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/09/2018
Edition description:	1
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Patrick Manning is Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of World History at the University of Pittsburgh and founding director of the World History Center there. He is the author or coeditor of numerous books, including Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850. A Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and past president of the American Historical Association, Manning has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation, as well as the Pioneer in World History award from the World History Association.

Abigail Owen is Special Faculty in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University, where she teaches Environmental History courses on water, agriculture, energy, and spatial history. She was the Mellon World History of Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh from 2015-16. She received her PhD in International/Global History from Columbia University in 2011.
 

Read an Excerpt

Preface
 
 
This volume is an inquiry into the global patterns and global implications of scientific investigation from 1000 to 1800 CE, one that pursues history of science in light of the expanding fields of world and global history. The interest of world historians in history of science can hardly be surprising. Especially in the past twenty years, the overlapping fields of world history and global history have developed rapidly, addressing the whole of human history, but with particular focus on global interconnections of the early modern and modern eras. Key contributions in this era of expanding publication focused on environmental and migration history, supplementing earlier world-historical concentration on civilizational, imperial, and political history. Additional contributions emerged in economic history at the turn of the twenty-first century, especially through comparison of European and Asian centers of economic life. World historians showed interest in technological change though not much in global scientific connections. Social, cultural, and intellectual issues, while they advanced in many fields of historical study during the late twentieth century, did not develop vigorously within world-historical context. Thus, world-historical thinking and research unfolded in uneven fashion, especially because of the widely ranging topics of interest. Nevertheless, the desire for comprehensive and systemic approaches to the past inevitably brought globalists to the history of science.
            The World History Center at the University of Pittsburgh opened in 2008 as a center for research, institutional development, and teaching in world history. It benefited from its establishment within a department of history with a strong tradition in social history and benefited further from proximity to the university’s well-known Department of History and Philosophy of Science and its associated Center for Philosophy of Science. Within a year of its establishment, the World History Center came to be a partner in a publication initiative with the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the University of Pittsburgh Press to synchronize the publishing activity of the press with key strengths of the university. The full initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has resulted in collaborations and activities that are supporting the press’s efforts to expand its publishing program in the history of science. It has allowed for the employment of a new acquiring editor at the press, three postdoctoral fellows and two distinguished lecturers hosted by the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and three conferences organized by the World History Center, supported by the employment of three postdoctoral fellows serving as co-organizers of the conferences and co-editors of the resulting volumes.
For the World History Center, this was an exciting opportunity. World history was already developing subfields in the study of empire, migration, and environment. Here was the possibility of developing a subfield in world history of science. The hope was to articulate the study of science (and technology) within world history and to identify global perspectives in the history of science.
The Center’s proposal for the three conferences ranged fairly widely across time and topic. The first conference took place in May 2012 under the title “Linnaean Worlds: Global Scientific Practice during the Great Divergence,” co-directed by Patrick Manning and Daniel Rood, which resulted in the publication of Global Scientific Practice in an Age of Revolutions, 1750-1850 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). A second conference took place in May 2014 under the title “The Life Sciences after World War II,” co-directed by Mat Savelli and Patrick Manning, which resulted in the publication of Global Transformations in the Life Sciences, 1945-1980 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). A third conference, “Found in Translation: World History of Science, 1200-1600 CE,” on which the present book is based, took place in October 2015, co-directed by Abigail Owen and Patrick Manning. Each symposium gathered a range of junior and senior scholars with background both in history of science and global approaches, with the intention of exploring in further detail the global interactions in expansion of scientific knowledge.
In the call for papers for the 2015 conference, we asked for submissions on studies addressing sciences, exact or applied, uniting scientific insights and cultures of knowledge across linguistic or faith communities of the period 1200-1600. We sought contributions highlighting key moments of transmission, translation, and critical interpretation across linguistic and faith communities, or across boundaries of shared practice, or shared knowledge about the natural world. The contributions met these criteria, also expanding the temporal frame of this collection to 1000-1800 CE.
 
Acknowledgments
We express our appreciation to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for supporting the collaboration at the University of Pittsburgh between the World History Center, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and the University of Pittsburgh Press to publish innovative studies in history of science. We express our thanks to the faculty and staff of the World History Center, notably its former administrator, Katie Jones, for support of the conference and post-conference activities in support of this volume. We express our thanks to members of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, especially to Professor James Lennox for analytical insights and logistical support. And we express deep appreciation to our colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh Press, who have guided us expertly through each stage of the publication project, and particularly for the editorial work in this volume. Peter Kracht served as director of the press and Abby Collier, senior acquisitions editor, has conducted the editorial task with both substantive knowledge and editorial skill.
 
 

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Foreword by Charles Burnett
Preface                                                                                                                                                      
Introduction: Knowledge in Translation
Patrick Manning                                                                                                    
Part I: Mapping the Earth

1. The Geographical Concept of the Catalan mappamundi                                                                        Katrin Kogman-Appel                                                                                         
2.  Interpretation, Intention, & Impact: Andalusi Arab and Norman Sicilian

Examples of Islamo-Christian Cartographic Translation
Karen Pinto

1. Mountains of the Moon, Lakes in the Sun and Sinus Gangeticus                                                          Rila Mukherjee                                                                                                     
2. The Global and the Maritime: Divergent Paradigms for Understanding

the Role of Translation in the Emergence of Early Modern Science”Robert Batchelor
 
Part II: Constructing Society

1. Charting South China in the Thirteenth-Century World: The First English

Translation of Zhu fan zhi and Its Recipients in China in the 1930s             
              Huei-ying Kuo                                                              

1. The Case of Bingata: Trafficking Textile Art and Technique

across the East China Sea
BuYun Chen

1. Mapping the Tracks of Yu: Yellow River Statecraft as Science

and Technology, 1200-1600
Ruth Mostern
 
Part III: Advancing Health and Welfare

1. Animal remedies in space and time: the case of the nail

of the great beast
Irina Podgorny

1. Translating Heaven: Divination and political authority under the

Yuan Dynasty
Francesca Fiaschetti

1. Between Local and Universal: Translating Knowledge in Early

Modern Ottoman Plague Treatises
Nükhet Varlik

1. Transposing Knowledge: Beyond Translation in the Medieval

Islamic and Japanese Medical Literary Traditions
M. A. Mujeeb Khan
 
Part IV: Charting the Skies

1. The Nesting Hypothesis for Planetary Distances and Its Persistence

Over the Centuries and Across CulturesBernard R. Goldstein and Giora Hon                                                       

1. Marâgha Observatory: A Star in the Constellation of Eurasian
2.  

Roxann Prazniak

1. Reading Between the Lines: Attitudes towards Arabic Astrology in the Latin

Marginalia of Alcabitius's Introductorius ad magisterium iudiciorum astrorum                 
               Margaret Gaida

1. The Fourteenth-Century Transformation in China's

Reception of Arabo-Persian Astronomy
Dror Weil

1. Celestial Navigation: The First Translational Science

Pat Seed                                               
 
Notes
Bibliography                                                                                                                          
Contributors                                                                                                                           
Index                                                                                                                                      
 
 
 

Editorial Reviews

The editors of this volume have embarked on a very novel approach to one of the most fascinating periods of human history, 1000-1800 CE. By bringing together profound research on diverse topics that cross cultures, languages, and systems of faith in the Euro-Asian region—and by framing the history of science within the scope of global history—Knowledge in Translation succeeds in abolishing borders of all kinds.” —George Saliba, Columbia University
 


“Knowledge in Translation is a remarkable collection of essays that highlights the multidirectional and polycentric nature of the transfer of scientific knowledge around the globe, with an expansive chronology that incorporates medieval as well as early modern exchanges across communities. This book thus examines knowledge and practices that crossed boundaries, and does so itself.” —Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Editor, Journal of Global History
 


"This wide-ranging volume makes clear that the transfer of scientific knowledge and the global implications of scientific investigation are a crucial aspect of world and global history." —J. Werner, Bentley School

“By editing these three volumes, Patrick Manning, Abigail Owen, Daniel Rood, and Mat Savelli have done the discipline a huge service. All three volumes are essential reading for historians of science regardless of their specialization, and they reveal the marked importance of the history of science for understanding global developments in the past millennium.” —Isis
 

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