Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma.

• Author: Haq, S. Nomanul
• Position: Review

Edited by F. JAMIL RAGEP and SALLY P. RAGEP, with STEVEN LIVESEY. Collection de travaux de l'Academie internationale des sciences, vol. 37. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1996. Pp. xxxiv + 591. HFl 305.

"The future of the history of science lies with Heraclitus, and with Sabra," writes Peter Barker, one of the contributors to this painstakingly edited volume dedicated to the scholarly personage, A. I. Sabra. Perhaps it was never meant to be so, but Barker's resounding declaration appears physically at the very end of the volume, a declaration that literally concludes the corpus. But, to be sure, it is not only the physical final word, it is also the historiographic final word issuing forth from the two Oklahoma conferences whose select proceedings constitute this corpus. Indeed - and this was evidently meant to be so - the three editors conclude their own remarkably comprehensive introduction with an express reference to Barker's cry, ending with the words: "We heartily concur"!

It has now been well over a decade since A. I. Sabra published his celebrated "Appropriation" article, here reproduced in its original version, which has, in the meantime, become a commonplace among the scholars across the discipline of the history of science. Having already acquired the stature of a classic in its broader field, it is this article that inspired this whole volume, having provided for the second and larger of the two Oklahoma conferences its organizing theme - namely, the cross-cultural transmission of the sciences and their consequent transformation.

Sabra's discourse, emerging after a lifetime of incubation in rigorous textual work and reflection, pointed not only to new dimensions in his own scholarly pursuits, it pointed also to what promises to be a breakthrough in the field of the history of science at large. Indeed, even the deeply entrenched category, the "Scientific Revolution," has now been called into question by one of the contributors to this collection, Gary Hatfield, whose provocative title reads, "Was the Scientific Revolution Really a Revolution in Science?" This question may not have suggested itself to Hatfield as a direct consequence of Sabra's discourse, but by making a compelling case for the study of the history of science in an extra-scientific context, Sabra does provide scope for investigating the concept of science itself - and this happens to be Hatfield's express concern. Sabra's ideas have thus supplied a framework for this question, and for other equally fruitful ones that scholars have raised throughout this volume, questions that would otherwise remain isolated. Already, this constitutes a major historiographic advance.

Taking up the specific issue of the transmission of Greek scientific knowledge into medieval Islam, Sabra constructed two historiographic categories designated by the terms "appropriation" and "naturalization"; and, at the...