Why Translate Science?

Dimitri Gutas, PhD. (1974), Yale University, is Professor Emeritus of Arabic at Yale. He has published on the medieval Graeco-Arabic translation movement, the transmission of Greek philosophical texts into Arabic (most recently Aristotle’s Poetics, Brill, 2012), and Arabic philosophy (most recently, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 2nd ed., Brill, 2014). Charles Burnett, PhD. (1976), Cambridge University, is Professor of the History of Arabic/Islamic Influences in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London. His research centres on the transmission of texts from the Arab world to the West in the Middle Ages. Uwe Vagelpohl, PhD. (2003), Cambridge University, is a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London. His research centers on the reception of antique learning in the medieval Islamic world. Contributors Michael Angold, Pieter Beullens, Charles Burnett, David Cohen, Gad Freudenthal, Dag Nikolaus Hasse, Anthony Kaldellis, Daniel King, Felix Mundt, Ignacio Sánchez, Isabel Toral, Uwe Vagelpohl, and Mohsen Zakeri.

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

 Dimitri Gutas



Latin Translations of Greek Science and Philosophy: Some Relevant Passages

 Felix Mundt and David Cohen



Translations from Greek into Middle Persian as Repatriated Knowledge

 Mohsen Zakeri



Why the Syrians Translated Greek Philosophy and Science

 Daniel King



Why Do We Translate? Arabic Sources on Translation

 Uwe Vagelpohl and Ignacio Sánchez



The Nabatean Agriculture by Ibn Waḥshiyya, a Pseudo-Translation by a Pseudo-Translator: The Topos of Translation in the Occult Sciences

 Isabel Toral



Translations into Greek in the Byzantine Period

 Anthony Kaldellis



The Statements of Medieval Latin Translators on Why and How They Translate Works on Science and Philosophy from Arabic

 Charles Burnett



Latin Translators from Greek in the Twelfth Century on Why and How They Translate

 Michael Angold and Charles Burnett



Why did Latin Translators Translate from the Greek in the Thirteenth Century and Later?

 Pieter Beullens



Why Translate? Views From Within: Egodocuments by Translators from Arabic and Latin into Hebrew (Twelfth–Fourteenth Centuries)

 Gad Freudenthal



Renaissance Scholars on Why They Translate Scientific and Philosophical Works from Arabic into Latin

 Dag Nikolaus Hasse



Index