General Introduction

International audienceThe most recent developments of history of science, for the past decades, have strongly emphasized the need for studying the cultural and intellectual context in which the ancient scientific sources that are now studied by historians have been produced or used. Following this general trend, the problematic core of this volume stems from the recognition, by its contributors, of two basic facts. The first is that certain sources of scientific knowledge are too often studied without taking into account the various ‘contexts’ of transmission, specifically the “teaching context” by which this knowledge was elaborated, used and transmitted. The second is that other sources are related–sometimes dismissively--to teaching and learning activities without being sufficiently precise and demonstrative about the existence and nature of this ‘teaching context’. Accordingly, the various contributions to this volume propose a more nuanced approach of teaching and learning activities, as well as a reflection on what these terms meant for the actors themselves. Indeed, the complexity of such activities appears when various periods and contexts are compared and confronted with each other. Thus, the present volume involves several disciplines and joins together a team of researchers in the history of antique, medieval and modern science and/or history of education, all of whom share the above epistemological and methodological concerns despite the diversity of their objects of study. They have agreed to contribute to a better grounded approach of their specific objects of study, which extend from mathematics and astronomy to medicine, divination and religious lore