This three-volume set of essays is dedicated to Alain Touwaide, known for his far-reaching investigations in fields such as ancient medicine, botany, pharmacy, texts and manuscripts, the classical tradition, translation, the history of science, ethnopharmacology, and plant therapies. The essays, penned by 80 international scholars and researchers and written in six languages, are grouped into three broad categoriesManuscripts, Plants, and Remediesto reflect Alain's main areas of research. Each category is broken into subgroups, such as manuscripts, texts, and science; botany; gardens, materia medica , pharmacy, drugs, archaeology, medical traditions, and continuity of scientific knowledge in the East and West. The papers reach across many fields of scholarship, science, and medicine and are, necessarily and fundamentally, trans-disciplinary, trans-chronological, and trans-geographic. These volumes are not so much a Festschrift as an approach to Alain's work through many disciplines and methods, a discussion of the current status of each field, and an opening into new perspectives.

Autorentext
Steven M. Oberhelman , Texas A&M University, USA.

Klappentext

The title of the project reflects an overarching methodology of trans-disciplinarity, which consists in injecting the concepts and methods of a discipline into another, as well as searching for trans-chronological and trans-geographic connections. The 93 essays range across traditionally defined disciplines and historical periods in medicine and science, and across countries all over the world. The papers discuss venoms and poisons to medicinal plants, the Byzantine manuscripts of botanico-medical texts, codicology and the art of textual editing, pharmacy, ethnobotany and ethnopharmacy, botany and botanical illustration, laboratory analysis of archaeological remains, and the history of science and intellectual history. The papers therefore reach across many fields of science and medicine, and will be, necessarily and fundamentally, trans-disciplinary, trans-chronological, and trans-geographic. The papers demonstrate how the study of ancient science requires a multitude of crisscrossed approaches, none of which provides the answer; rather, each approach, when put alongside others, contribute to constructing a vision of what was ancient science.