This book is the first of a three-volume set introducing the history of scientific thought (including social and human science). The area covered in this volume is ancient Mesopotamia, classical Antiquity and the Islamic Middle Ages. Combining general descriptions with extensive excerpts from original sources in English translation, it concentrates on ways of thinking and actual argumentation and not just on results and mistakes; questions of validity are primarily dealt with in the perspective of the time of the writing, not on that of the 21st century. The work is of great interest to historians of science and culture, students as well as seasoned workers - but also for amateurs willing to invest the necessary serious efforts.

Auteur

Jens Høyrup (*1943): educated as a physicist at Copenhagen University. From 1971 to 1973 he taught physics in an engineering school, and from 1973 onward he taught first in the domain of social, then human sciences, at Roskilde University, Denmark, until he retired in 2005. From 1995 until retirement he taught a course of general history of science and guided student projects broadly within this field. Much of his research has dealt with the conceptual, cultural and social history of pre-Modern mathematics.