Those who nowadays work on the history of advanced-level Babylonian mathematics do so as if everything had begun with the publication of Neugebauer’s Mathematische Keilschrift-Texte from 1935 to 1937 and Thureau-Dangin’s Textes mathématiques babyloniens from 1938, or at most with the articles published by Neugebauer and Thureau-Dangin during the few preceding years. Of course they/we know better, but often that is only in principle. The present paper is a sketch of how knowledge of Babylonian mathematics developed from the beginnings of Assyriology until the 1930s, and raises the question why an outsider was able to create a breakthrough where Assyriologists, in spite of their best will, had been blocked. One may see it as the anatomy of a particular “Kuhnian revolution”.
...MoreBook Alexander Jones; Christine Proust; John M. Steele (2016) A Mathematician's Journeys: Otto Neugebauer and Modern Transformations of Ancient Science.
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From Graz to Göttingen: Neugebauer’s Early Intellectual Journey
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Mathieu Ossendrijver;
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Translating Babylonian Mathematical Astronomy: Neugebauer and Beyond
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Mathieu Ossendrijver;
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Bisecting the Trapezoid: Tracing the Origins of a Babylonian Computation of Jupiter’s Motion
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John M. Steele;
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Neugebauer’s Astronomical Cuneiform Texts and Its Reception
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M. Willis Monroe;
(2016)
The Micro-Zodiac in Babylon and Uruk: Seleucid Zodiacal Astrology
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Scurlock, Jo Ann;
Andersen, Burton R.;
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Diagnoses in Assyrian and Babylonian Medicine: Ancient Sources, Translations, and Modern Medical Analyses
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Steele, John M.;
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Babylonian Lunar Theory Reconsidered
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Teije de Jong;
(2016)
Babylonian Astronomy 1880–1950: The Players and the Field
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John Z. Wee;
(2016)
Virtual Moons over Babylonia: The Calendar Text System, Its Micro-Zodiac of 13, and the Making of Medical Zodiology
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The Circulation of Astronomical Knowledge between Babylon and Uruk
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Du, Shi-ran;
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Historical Events about the Writing and Publication of The History of Chinese Mathematics with Qian Baocong as Its Chief Compiler
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A Preliminary Research on Li Yan's Study of the History of Mathematics in China
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