| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 275 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
The web of knowledge -- A Roman world -- Knowing nature in the Roman context -- Overview -- Nature, gods, and governance -- Divinity and divination -- Roman virtues -- Nature and the legitimation of the republic -- A Ciceronian contradiction? -- Knowledge of nature and virtuous action -- Fabulae versus learned observation -- Conclusion -- Law in nature, nature in law -- Laws of nature -- Natural laws -- Human and divine governance -- Is a "law of nature" even possible in antiquity? -- Divinity, redux -- Conclusion -- Epistemology and judicial rhetoric -- Theory-ladenness and observation -- Observations as models -- Observational selectivity -- Examination of witnesses -- The natural authority of morals -- Declamation and certainty -- The embeddedness of seeing -- Doubts about vision -- Mechanisms of seeing in antiquity -- The eyes as organs -- Not every black box is a camera obscura -- Epistemologies of seeing -- The centrality of experience -- The trouble with taxa -- Knowledge claims and context-dependence -- Unproblematic facticity -- Problems with experience -- The lab section of the chapter -- The question of worlds -- Epilogue -- The long reach of ontology -- Kinds of justification for prediction -- Predictability and determinism -- Physical solutions to determinism -- The cascading effect -- Dreams of a final theory -- Explaining the cosmos -- Orbs, souls, laws -- Numbers in nature -- Harmony and empiricism -- Conclusion -- Of miracles and mistaken theories -- History as a problem for realism -- Quantum magnum pi? -- Can we avoid the problems history poses? -- First strategy: we have something they didn't -- Second strategy: the curate's egg -- Other ways out -- Worlds given, worlds made -- What's in a world? -- Kuhn's world -- What good is relativism? -- Coherence -- Truth and meaning -- Realism, coherence, and history. |
| Summary |
What did the Romans know about their world? Quite a lot, as Lehoux makes clear in this contribution to the history and philosophy of ancient science. Lehoux contends that even though many of the Romans' views about the natural world have no place in modern science, their claims turn out not to be so different from our own. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Science, Ancient.
|
|
Science, Ancient. |
|
Science -- History.
|
|
Science. |
|
History. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
|
History.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Lehoux, Daryn, 1968- What did the Romans know? Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2012, ©2012 9780226471143 (DLC) 2011029349 (OCoLC)743755841 |
| ISBN |
9780226471150 (electronic book) |
|
0226471152 (electronic book) |
|
1280126221 |
|
9781280126222 |
|
9780226471143 |
|
0226471144 |
| Standard No. |
9786613530080 |
|
