Scientific Sources and Teaching Contexts Throughout History: Problems and Perspectives

This book examines the textual, social, cultural, practical and institutional environments to which the expression “teaching and learning contexts” refers. It  reflects on the extent to which studying such environments helps us to better understand ancient or modern sources, and how notions of “teaching” and “learning” are to be understood.
Tackling two problems: the first, is that of certain sources of scientific knowledge being studied without taking into account the various “contexts” of transmission that gave this knowledge a long-lasting meaning.

The second is that other sources are related to teaching and learning activities, but without being too precise and demonstrative about the existence and nature of this “teaching context”. In other words, this book makes clear what is meant by “context” and highlights the complexity of the practice hidden by the words “teaching” and “learning”. Divided into three parts, the book makes accessible teaching and learning situations, presents comparatist approaches, and emphasizes the notion of teaching as projects embedded in coherent treatises or productions.

Contributors.- General Introduction; Alain Bernard and Christine Proust.- Part I: Holistic Approach.- The teaching context and reading from the 16th to the 19th centuries: The role of the memorization of texts in learning; Anne-Marie Chartier.- Teaching and learning medicine and exorcism at Uruk during the Hellenistic period; Philippe Clancier.- Part II: Critical Approach.- Does a master always write for his students? Some evidence from Old Babylonian scribal schools; Christine Proust.- In what sense did Theon’s commentary on the Almagest have a didactic purpose?; Alain Bernard.- Part III: Comparative Approach.- Relationships between French “practical arithmetics” and teaching?; Stéphane Lamassé.- On the transmission of mathematical knowledge in versified form in China; Andrea Bréard.- Mathematical Progress or Mathematical Teaching? Bilingualism and Printing In European Renaissance Mathematics; Giovanna C. Cifoletti.- Part IV: Zooming Approach.- Leonardo of Pisa and the Liber Abaci.Biographical elements and the project of the work; Eva Caianiello.- Didactical Dimensions of Mathematical Problems: Weighted Distribution in a Vietnamese Mathematical Treatise; Alexei Volkov.- Learning and Teaching Medicine in Late Imperial China; Florence Bretelle-Establet.- Post Face.- On the sources of the historian of science from the perspective of a history of education; Karine Chemla.- Index.