Next week, Daryn Lehoux, Queen 91制片厂 鈥檚 National Scholar, Professor of Classics and Philosophy, will give NYU 91制片厂 鈥檚 Twelfth Annual , a prestigious series of four lectures, named after the great ancient historian Michael I. Rostovtzeff. Daryn 91制片厂 鈥檚 topic: 鈥淓pistemic Corruption and Epistemic Progress in Ancient Science鈥.
The series abstract: How did ancient Greek and Roman authors conceive of their own knowledge of the natural world? Did they see it as progressing and increasing, or as degenerating in some way? What did they see as the strengths or dangers posed by their own and others鈥 epistemic practices, and what are the strengths and dangers that we in turn face in interpreting and understanding those practices today? By framing these questions in terms of a larger category of 鈥榚pistemic corruption,鈥 Professor Lehoux hopes to show that ancient ideas about knowledge practices are tightly correlated with claims about moral and bodily virtues and vices.
Daryn is the author of Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2007), What Did the Romans Know? (Chicago, 2012), and Creatures Born of Mud and Slime (Hopkins, 2017). He is co-editor of Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, Science (Oxford, 2013) and the author of more than forty articles on ancient science and epistemology.