Where is knowledge generated? How does that knowledge replicate and spread? Where is it consumed? Who owns knowledge, and who may access it? Under what circumstances, and in what places, does it flourish or die out? How are its transmission and reception influenced by social and political factors? These are central questions in the history and sociology of science. A 5-year research project at the University of Cambridge is currently exploring these questions in relation to the science and scholarship of Assyria and Babylonia, 700-200 BC, based on the online edition and close analysis of cuneiform tablets from four ancient libraries. It is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is part of the Cuneiform Digital Library (CDL).
This talk will be in three parts. First the speaker will talk briefly about the ways in which Assyriology has traditionally tackled the intellectual history of Assyria and Babylonia, and why and how the project came about. Then she will explore how online tools, particularly those developed by CDL, are dramatically increasing the accessibility and analytical potential of cuneiform texts for historians of all sorts. Finally, she will consider the project's central historical question, and the degree to which concepts and methods from other fields of history of science can be used to answer it. For instance, the sociologist of science Bruno Latour famously coined the phrase "immutable mobile" for the inscribed objects (books, instruments, etc.) by which scientific knowledge has travelled in recent centuries. To what extent were cuneiform tablets immutable or mobile, and to what extent was the dissemination of knowledge in Assyria and Babylonia dependent on their relative immutability and mobility? What other factors were in play?
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