Authority and Expertise in Ancient Scientific Culture König Woolf Paperback

Authority and Expertise in Ancient Scientific CultureAuthor(s): Jason Knig, Greg Woolf\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781107629646, 978-1107629646\nSynopsis\nHow did ancient scientific and knowledge-ordering writers make their work authoritative? This book answers that question for a wide range of ancient disciplines, from mathematics, medicine, architecture and agriculture, through to law, historiography and philosophy - focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on the literature of the Roman Empire. It draws attention to habits that these different fields had in common, while also showing how individual texts and authors manipulated standard techniques of self-authorisation in distinctive ways. It stresses the importance of competitive and assertive styles of self-presentation, and also examines some of the pressures that pulled in the opposite direction by looking at authors who chose to acknowl.