BEFORE NATURE: CUNEIFORM KNOWLEDGE AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Book ID/图书代码： 13560016B95909

English Summary/英文概要： In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the "natural world" confronts us all and always has but we are wrong. In reality, nature is a human construct. Before Nature is an exploration of that almost unimaginable time when there was no such thing as "nature" no word, reference, or sense for it. Long before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed the cuneiform script, the earliest system of writing used for documenting and observing the world in a way not wholly dissimilar to our modern science With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the history of science, despite not being focused around a conscious category of nature. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult if not impossible to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient Assyro-Babylonian investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, prediction, and explanation in relation to science without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science from a remarkable analytic and historical perspective, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 在现代西方社会，我们想当然地认为，我称之为“自然世界”的物质面对着我们所有人，然而，我们是错误的。事实上，自然是一种人类构想。《自然之前》探讨了尚未出现“自然”一词的时代。在自然这一概念形成前很长一段时间，在欧洲哲学和科学的漫长历史中，我们的祖先发明了楔形文字——用来记录和观察世界的最早的文字系统。在《自然之前》中，作者Francesca Rochberg 探讨了亚述-巴比伦的传统知识，展示了其与科学历史的关系。从现代西方角度看，如果无法想象，那么一个无法在物理自然界的框架里构想的世界是困难的。然而，正如Rochberg所列举的，古代亚述-巴比伦对于规则与不规则、正常与异常的调查在认知者与可理解的、有秩序的世界之间清晰地建立了一个知识轴。Rochberg 是首位阐述我们如何能够在不寻求后期自然概念的前提下、理解与科学有关的楔形文字知识、预测与解释的学者。 《自然之前》从分析和历史的角度系统性地审视了整个美索不达米亚科学，将为学习科学历史打开全新的视角。(LYR)

Awards/获奖情况：“有关自然的概念近期受到社会人类学、哲学、认知科学和历史学的挑战。在这本全新的著作中，作者Rochberg运用其无与伦比的学术能力和分析能力，审视了古代美索不达米亚人对该话题的见解。他们是我们所知道的第一批对一系列现象进行系统性观察、预测和解释的人群。然而，在他们的目标语言里，并没有“自然”一词，因为他们没有这样的概念。因此，他们自我设置的目标、运用的方法以及作出的假设对我们理解早期科学研究十分关键。”(Geoffrey Lloyd, Needham 研究中心)

“作者Rochberg 阐述了一个有说服力的、博学的案例，在古代美索不达米亚人中，自然并非构想为分离的实体……《自然之前》是唯一一本系统、全面审视古代美索不达米亚科学的哲学和理论基础的著作。”(Paul Delnero, 约翰霍普金斯大学)

“《自然之前》是一本具有挑战性的书，它邀请读者透过古代近东概念重新思考其最基础的类别——包括自然本身。作者通过严谨和想象展现了知识替代形式的证据，结果是对只需的延伸理解。所有科学历史学家，无论其主攻领域，都应读一下这本书。”(Lorraine Daston, Max Planck 科学历史研究所)

“The naturalness of the concept of nature has recently been challenged by work in social anthropology, philosophy, cognitive science, and history. In this brilliant new book Rochberg brings to bear her unparalleled scholarship and analytic skills to examine what light the ancient Mesopotamians can throw on this fundamental issue. They were arguably the first people we know to undertake the systematic observation, prediction, and explanation of a whole range of phenomena, especially but not exclusively in the heavens. But they did not have ‘nature’ as their target since they had no such concept. So the aims they set themselves, the methods they used, and the assumptions they made about the world they were investigating are crucial to our understanding of the earliest endeavors to engage in what we can recognize as scientific research.”

(Geoffrey Lloyd, Needham Research Institute)

“Rochberg makes a forceful, erudite, eloquent, and persuasive case that nature was not conceived as a discrete entity in Mesopotamia and that Mesopotamian scientific practices can only be properly understood and accorded their rightful place in the history of science when it is recognized that these practices were not informed by the goal of understanding nature and how it functions. Her command of the pertinent primary and secondary literature relating to Mesopotamian science is truly impressive and is one of the many strengths of the book. The author navigates effortlessly the most recent scholarship in the history of science, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities in which the topics covered in the book have been treated from different perspectives. Before Nature is the only work to examine systematically and comprehensively the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the whole of Mesopotamian science from such a remarkable analytic and historical perspective. For this and many other reasons, not the least of which is the depth, breadth, and erudition that informs every page of the study, this book will certainly become the stand-alone reference point for this topic for many decades to come.”

(Paul Delnero, Johns Hopkins University)

“Before Nature is a challenging book in the best sense: it invites readers to rethink their most basic categories—including nature itself—through the lens of ancient Near Eastern conceptions of order and practices of observation, interpretation, and prediction. The evidence for an alternative form of knowledge is presented with rigor and imagination, and the result is an enlarged understanding of order, without nature or causes. Before Nature should be read by all historians of science, regardless of their specialties.”

(Lorraine Daston, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)

About the Author/作者介绍： Francesca Rochberg是加利福尼亚大学近东研究教授。

Francesca Rochberg is professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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