Charles Burnett

Quaestiones super libros De generatione et corruptione Aristotelis

with regionalism, nationalism and imperialism in science during the colonial period. Anderson hints at an answer by saying that cosmopolitanism was essential to the ethic of science especially in the 1940s and 1950s (p. 448). It would be useful to extend this argument to recover the cosmopolitan dimension within the native Indian madhyabitta bhadralok (middle class intelligentsia) scientists in early 20th century India. These issues apart, Nucleus and Nation richly contributes to several fields: history of science and technology, South Asian history, and the history of colonialism. Anderson weaves in rich detail the complex interplay between science and culture in the Indian context, thus expanding the context of science and technology studies to non-Western cultures.

Le Liber Mahameleth: Édition critique et commentaires

The Liber Mahameleth is a work on commercial arithmetic written in the mid-twelfth century and based on Arabic material. The quotation of the first two pages in Dominicus Gundissalvis On the Divis...

The Dispensatory of Ibn al-Tilmid

Oliver Kahl has carved out for himself a speciality in which he can now consider himself the leading expert: that of Arabic drug prescriptions. Having edited and translated Sabur ibn Sahl’s Small Dispensatory (Leiden 1994 and 2003), in the two books reviewed here he deals with another version of Sabur ibn Sahl’s Dispensatory and a work of the same genre by Ibn al-Tilmid. Sabur stands at the very beginning of Arabic medical writing. He was a Nestorian physician who worked at Jundishapur before moving to Baghdad, and died in 869, probably in Samarra, where the caliphate was temporarily situated. His dispensatory (aqrabad ̄ in) circulated in at least three versions (small, middle and large). Kahl summarises the information on the relationship of the extant manuscripts to these three versions, nicely presented in a table (p. 5). The small version, extant in only one manuscript, was the subject of Kahl’s earlier books; the 2009 book deals with the version used by the doctors in the ‘Adudi hospital in Baghdad in the mid-eleventh century, which is substantially based on the large version. The ‘pure’ large version, extant in two Iranian manuscripts, remains to be studied and edited (Kahl, in one of his several personal statements, claims that he has ‘grown a bit weary of Sabur’s company over the years’, pp. 4-6). The heading of MS Munich arab. 808 reads ’the dispensatory of Sabur according to the copy of the ‘Adudi hospital, being a synopsis of Sabur’s dispensatory on the composition of drugs, in 16 chapters’. It mentions recipes composed by eleventh-century physicians at the ‘Adudi hospital: Abu-l-Faraj (d. 1043: no. 148) and Abu Nasr Harun (nos 26, 118 and 202), and other recipes called’ ‘Adudi’ (nos 77, 168, 201, 220; the ’Adudi hospital had been founded in 979 by the Buyid prince ‘Adud ad-Daula). It includes material which is not attested either in the small or large versions of the dispensatory, and retains the last chapter on the uses and occult properties of human and animal parts, which the small version left out. The hospital epitome has rearranged the material of the small and large versions, so that it is divided systematically according to certain drug categories or forms of application (pastilles, oils, powders, theriacs, etc.), rather than according to the body part, as in the typical Western de capite ad calcem arrangement. 411 simple drugs are mentioned, ranging from plants (the majority) to human bodyparts (the least). The drugs purport to come from an extremely wide geographical area: Indo-Arabia, North and East Africa, Southern and Eastern Europe, South East Asia and China (one medicament is named after the island of Celebes:

Liber primus naturalium. Tractatus secundus de motu et de consimilibus

Bryan or John Roach Straton. Clark devotes a great deal of time discussing scientists’ responses to them and does discuss some of the opinions and arguments made by Bryan, Roach and others. But there is a decided lack of parity in presenting the ideas and arguments of both sides. More primary source material expressing the views of anti-evolutionists would strengthen the book, but it is not a serious flaw. Clark’s study offers a novel perspective of the history of human evolutionary research and popular culture and is a valuable contribution to scholarship in this area.

Expounding the Mathematical Seed: A Translation of Bhaskara I on the Mathematical Chapter of the Aryabhatiya

by Ibn al-Kammad. The final article points out that a correction to Ptolemy’s Almagest, thought to have been made by Copernicus, had in fact already been made by the Arabic translator, al-Hajjaj, and had thence been incorporated into the Latin translation of Gerard of Cremona. That this correction had not been noticed is due to the lack of critical editions of even such a basic text as the Latin Almagest (only the star-table has been edited critically, by Paul Kunitzsch). The collection includes editions of several texts:

Volkstümliche Astronomie im islamischen Mittelalter Zur Bestimmung der Gebetszeiten und der Qibla bei , Ibn und al-Fārisī

the laws of quantum mechanics along with parameters summarizing a number of empirical relationships are used to predict the behaviour of molecules, as well as the best synthetic routes to their creation. Here art truly anticipates nature. Concluding comments by Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann address the current status of the discussion with particular attention to modern chemistry. Hoffman sees the blurring of the distinction between natural and artificial as a good thing and in any case inevitable. He points out for instance that over half the nitrogen and sulphur atoms in our bodies have at some point been inside a chemical plant producing fertilizer. For chemists, often branded in the public mind as producers of unnatural ‘chemicals’, a more realistic approach is desirable. He concludes by urging that ‘to every act of creation or transformation’ should be attached an ‘act of ethical judgment’.