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Science Studies and Early Modern Ottoman Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2015

B. Harun Küçük
B. Harun Küçük*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.; e-mail: kucuk@sas.upenn.edu
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Extract

This short essay focuses on three issues: how science studies may facilitate the rapprochement between the philological study of scientific texts and Middle East history; how it may help us reconsider ambiguous if not “black-boxed” terms such as the “state,” “Islam,” and the “West”; and finally, how it may build thematic and theoretical bridges with other histories and geographies of science currently emerging from a more global, and not merely local, perspective.

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 584 - 587
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

NOTES

1 For the global turn in the history of science, see Raj, Kapil, “Beyond Postcolonialism and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science,” Isis 104 (2013): 337–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Anderson, Warwick, “Making Global Health History: The Postcolonial Worldliness of Biomedicine,” Social History of Medicine, 27 (2014): 372–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fan, Fa-Ti, “The Global Turn in the History of Science,” EASTS 6 (2012): 249–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Daston, Lorraine, “Science Studies and the History of Science,” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 798–813CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Three very recent studies I would include under this rubric are Yalçınkaya, M. Alper, Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State and Society in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elshakry, Marwa, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Balsoy, Gülhan, The Politics of Reproduction in Ottoman Society, 1838–1900 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013)Google Scholar.

4 For example, an article focusing on Cairo that has informed my own work is Murphy, Jane, “Aḥmad al-Damanhūrī (1689–1778) and the Utility of Expertise in Early Modern Ottoman Egypt,” Osiris, Second Series 25 (2010): 85–103CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5 Pourjavady, Reza and Schmidtke, Sabine, “Some Notes on a New Edition of a Medieval Philosophical Text in Turkey: Shams al-Dīn al-Shahrazūrī's Rasāʾil al-Shajara al-Ilahiyya,” Die Welt des Islams 46 (2006): 76–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Karlığa, Bekir, “Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi'nin Yeni Bulunan Bir Fizik Kitabı Tercümesi ve On Sekizinci Yüzyılın Başlarında Osmanlı Düşüncesi,” Bilim-Felsefe-Tarih 1 (1991): 277–311Google Scholar. For a preliminary study and partial translation, see Kemal Sözen, “Şehrezûrî’nin El-Şeceret El-İlahiyye İsimli Eseri ve Türkçe Tercümesi Semeret El-Şecere” (master's thesis, İstanbul: Marmara University, 1989).

6 Pamuk, Şevket, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 Sahillioğlu, Halil, “The Introduction of Machinery in the Ottoman Mint,” in Transfer of Modern Science & Technology to the Muslim World, ed. İhsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin (Istanbul: IRCICA, 1992), 261–71Google Scholar.

8 Fazlıoğlu, İhsan, “Osmanlı Döneminde ‘Bilim’ Alanındaki Türkçe Telif ve Tercüme Eserlerin Türkçe Oluş Nedenleri ve Bu Eserlerin Dil Bilincinin Oluşmasındaki Yeri ve Önemi, Kutadgubilig Felsefe-Bilim Araştırmaları 3 (2003): 151–84Google Scholar; Kurz, Marlene, Ways to Heaven, Gates to Hell: Fażlīzāde ʿAlī's Struggle with the Diversity of Ottoman Islam (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2011)Google Scholar; Bachour, Natalia, Oswaldus Crollius und Daniel Sennert im frühneuzeitlichen Istanbul: Studien zur Rezeption des Paracelsismus im Werk des osmanischen Arztes Ṣāliḥ b. Naṣrullāh Ibn Sallūm al-Ḥalabī (Freiburg im Breisgau: Centaurus, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 See especially Oriens 41, nos. 3–4 (2013).

10 el-Rouayheb, Khaled, “The Myth of ‘the Triumph of Fanaticism’ in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire,” Die Welt des Islams 48 (2008): 196–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 On Greek natural philosophy, see, for example, Küçük, B. Harun, “Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Eighteenth Century: Esad of Ioannina and Greek Aristotelianism at the Ottoman Court,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 41 (2013): 125–59Google Scholar. On Jewish medicine, see, for example, Süleymaniye MS Nuruosmaniye 3512. On translations, see Günergun, Feza, “Ottoman Encounters with European Science: Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Translations into Turkish,” in Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe, ed. Burke, Peter and Hsia, R. Po-Chia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

12 See, for example, Brentjes, Sonja, “Patchwork—The Norm of Mapmaking Practices for Western Asia in Catholic and Protestant Europe as well as in Istanbul between 1550 and 1750?” in Science between Europe and Asia, ed. Günergun, Feza and Raina, Dhruv (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 77–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaçar, Mustafa and Bir, Atilla, “Ottoman Engineer Mehmed Said Efendi and His Works on a Geodesical Instrument (Müsellesiye),” in Multicultural Science in the Ottoman Empire, ed. İhsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin, Chatzis, Kostas and Nicolaidis, Efthymios (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 71–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; King, David A., “An Ottoman Astrolabe Full of Surprises,” in From Alexandria, through Baghdad: Surveys and Studies in the Ancient Greek and Medieval Mathematical Sciences in Honor of J.L. Berggren, ed. Sidoli, N. and Brumelen, G. Van (Berlin: Springer, 2014), 329–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.