Miri Shefer-Mossensohn, Science among the Ottomans: The Cultural Creation and Exchange of Knowledge

Abstract

History of science witnessed a revolutionary change in the second half of the twentieth century with a heightened focus on the social, political, and cultural setting that shaped production and circulation of scientific knowledge. This approach, which also raised questions about the definition of science, had an effect on the historical studies of science in the Ottoman Empire since the mid-1980s. Miri Shefer-Mossensohn's Science Among the Ottomans: The Cultural Creation and Exchange of Knowledge continues this approach as she attempts to fill a gap in English literature on sciences in the Ottoman Empire by writing an introductory text. Shefer-Mossensohn states that she is not interested in the content of sciences, but rather in the processes that produced "Ottoman science" (p. 11). By focusing on the subjects that Ottomans were interested in studying and the pedagogies they used, Shefer-Mossensohn hopes to provide an answer to Peter Dear's question "What is the history of science history of?" The author responds adopting a wide understanding of science as a "body of knowledge about the reality of our lives" (p. 1). Science Among the Ottomans consists of an introduction, four chapters, and a conclusion. In the introduction, the author notes the historiographical shifts, and briefly reviews the secondary literature on Arabic-Islamic and Ottoman sciences. The first chapter deals with the concept of knowledge. Shefer-Mossensohn points out that Ottomans inherited sciences and knowledge from various civilizations including Turkic-Mongol, Chinese, Islamic, Byzantine, Mediterranean, and European civilizations. This is followed by diverging issues such as Seljukid decorative arts, contemporary Wahhabi understanding of the Prophetic hadith "Seek knowledge even in China," Ottoman gardening, the entry on knowledge in Meninski's thesaurus, epistemology, classifications of sciences, status of philosophical sciences, and amalgamation of diverging medical, astronomical and astrological bodies of knowledge. All of these show diversity of scientific traditions in the Ottoman Empire.