Papers by Tanja Pommerening
In: T. Pommerening / W. Bisang (Hgg.): Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times. Sources, Methods, and Theories from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter 2017, S. 1-17, 2017
T. Pommerening / W. Bisang (Hgg.): Classification from Antiquity to Modern Times. Sources, Methods, and Theories from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter 2017, 2017
This essay is intended to embark upon a path of method, in which the classifications contained in... more This essay is intended to embark upon a path of method, in which the classifications contained in Ancient Egyptian formulae, or prescriptions, are more closely characterized; their potential for recovering comprehensive and specific concepts of drugs and effects will be discussed. In medical papyri there are four different kinds of classification, depending on focus: 1) classifiers at the end of individual words – a general phenomenon in the Ancient Egyptian language; 2) the increased occurrence of nominal compounds, especially in relation to the names of drugs and illnesses, compounds that are unavoidably connected to the creation of subordinate level categories;
3) systematic list-type sequences of the formula content and the correlations appearing therein; 4) the configuration of chosen formulae within a papyrus.
These different means of classification will be more closely determined with respect to their specificities (i.e. type of source, medium, the circle of users and the Duration of use), motivations, types (exclusive or flexible class limits, hierarchizations) and criteria. It can be shown that the classification types 3) and 4) are directly connected
to concepts of drugs and effects, but that ascertaining the individual specificities of 1) and 2) in relation to formula texts can reveal the concepts of drugs and effects behind them.
In the past, Ancient Egyptian medicinal prescriptions have been the focus of research by scientis... more In the past, Ancient Egyptian medicinal prescriptions have been the focus of research by scientists from a variety of disciplines, especially
Egyptologists, historians of science, physicians, biologists, and pharmacists. Their work considers, in most cases, today’s natural scientific perspective, namely the question whether a remedy may have had an effect in a ‘modern’ sense. Some of the lexicographical works concerning drug or symptom names, are based on such a correlation, proposing a drug or disease name for an untranslatable word in a prescription by evaluating the indications and looking for effective drugs, which could have been available in Ancient Egypt. This paper points in the opposite direction. The aim is to introduce new methodological tools to gain an emic, namely an insider’s, perspective on medicinal prescriptions, by applying an experimental-archaeological perspective and by focussing on manufacturing processes, its terminology and its interrelations with ingredients, symptoms and patients. The paper starts with a pharmacological and philological examination of a prescription against worms, questioning its conventional translation. Afterwards, the new approach is introduced. With the help of three concrete recipe examples, semantic and process-oriented readings of prescription texts as medical re-enactments of symptoms and healing processes will be demonstrated. As a result, we will achieve conceptual structures in order to recover features of previously philologically undetermined drugs and symptoms, and new perspectives that will help to broaden our knowledge of the concepts of Ancient Egyptian ‘physiology’ and ‘pathophysiology’.
This article introduces briefly the morphology, syntax and semantics of ancient Egyptian drug ter... more This article introduces briefly the morphology, syntax and semantics of ancient Egyptian drug terminology. It discusses critically in more detail and by examples the methods, which Egyptologists have used so far to regain the specific meanings of ancient Egyptian drug terms. Those methods are examining residues in vessels with designations of content, interpreting ancient descriptions, word-image correlations, word-thing correlations, etymological and morphological considerations, using lists of synonyms and comparing pharmacological practices. The aim is to show potential pitfalls regarding this specific terminology and to request for annotated lexica to provide information about the identification process. Keywords Ancient Egyptian pharmacy-categorization-code names-Dioskurides-lists of plant-synonyms-materia medica-motive of designation-secret names-technical language
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
The aim of this paper is to show in what manner natural objects can be chosen, arranged, and orga... more The aim of this paper is to show in what manner natural objects can be chosen, arranged, and organized in order to be written up as a list, given the consideration that lists always serve a particular purpose. To reduce the topic to a restricted amount of data, this paper focuses only on trees, shrubs and fruits. Two time frames are considered: fruit lists from Old and Middle Kingdoms and tree and shrub lists from the New Kingdom, Late Period and Greco-Roman Period.
On a superordinate level this paper discusses different forms of lists, and delivers a method to recover ancient Egyptian concepts by means of determining categorizations and classifications in lists.
It can be shown that two different types of lists exist. The first type is here called the standard type. This is what is commonly understood to be a list: a typical form (some types can be distinguished) in which elements can be included ynchronically. Besides that, we seem to have lists derived from spoken
texts. The elements here are always in a special order; these lists are normative, diachronic, and contextualized. They are short forms of rituals or recipes. As they are in connection with actions, they are here called action instructions.
The ranking of the elements is orientated around a repeatable, transtemporal act. As these lists were also considered to be relevant for the future they were frequently copied and transmitted across longer time periods, as is also the
case with knowledge lists. The rankings of fruits in those lists could have had an effect on the rankings of fruits in standard lists as well.
This paper also illustrates the formal aspects of different list subtypes in detail in order to analyze which kinds of specifications a list type generates. This is important to understand how lists can be used to regain the polyhierarchical
vocabulary of concepts. This is the first time such an approach has been attempted with ancient Egyptian lists and it is naturally contingent on the small amount of sources used. In the center are selection criteria, the single elements, rankings and clusters. It can be shown that fruits are principally grouped with regard to their uses, their taste, their area of growing or production and their storage features. This shows that practical and environmental aspects were considered most important. The rankings in a list can also be influenced by rituals: in tomb contexts in particular the offering ritual makes it possible to
explain specific sequences.
Most of the lists of trees and shrubs come from religious contexts. It could thus be concluded that they might be used to retain or even regain religious concepts. However, as the selection of elements for these lists seems to have taken place on a very theoretical level, it is nevertheless a hypothetical exercise to retrace the ideas behind them, given that the selection criteria are not indicated in the lists.
The aim of this contribution is to present developments in medical “teaching texts” (“Lehrtexte”)... more The aim of this contribution is to present developments in medical “teaching texts” (“Lehrtexte”), which are a characteristic genre within ancient Egyptian medical writings. The point of departure is provided by a classification of the teaching texts into five groups, which is based on the patterns of reasoning within the sources. The order of the individual groups indicates a development, which can also be traced by the lexicon, indications of measurements and stages of the language. Based on this evidence, the oldest teaching texts date to the 5th/6th dynasty (c. 2400 BC), the youngest to the Second Intermediate Period or the beginning of the New Kingdom
(c. 1550 BC). Teaching texts from later periods, including the Roman Period, can be traced back to an earlier date of their composition and therefore document a tradition of medical knowledge that lasted over 2000 years.
The association of the water-lily with architecture and art is one of the most familiar visual as... more The association of the water-lily with architecture and art is one of the most familiar visual aspects of the ancient Egyptian culture. However, the earliest representations of the water-lily date only to the Naqada III period. The finds of that period are discussed using the available archaeological and environmental data. An interdisciplinary approach allows the interpretation of the symbolic meaning of the plant within the cultural context of daily life and the ancient Egyptian landscape. Small stone and faience cosmetic vessels in the shape of the water-lily flower refer to its odorous qualities and by extension to beauty. The faience vessels were found in temple deposits, illustrating the symbolic importance of the flower. Rattles in the shape of water-lily buds extend the idea of beauty to that of music. The association with cosmetics and music point to the more pleasant side of elite life, which must have been the reason for the integration of the water-lily into Early Dynastic iconography. The sudden appearance of water-lily representations is to be seen as part of the development of the Dynastic visual language.
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Papers by Tanja Pommerening
3) systematic list-type sequences of the formula content and the correlations appearing therein; 4) the configuration of chosen formulae within a papyrus.
These different means of classification will be more closely determined with respect to their specificities (i.e. type of source, medium, the circle of users and the Duration of use), motivations, types (exclusive or flexible class limits, hierarchizations) and criteria. It can be shown that the classification types 3) and 4) are directly connected
to concepts of drugs and effects, but that ascertaining the individual specificities of 1) and 2) in relation to formula texts can reveal the concepts of drugs and effects behind them.
Egyptologists, historians of science, physicians, biologists, and pharmacists. Their work considers, in most cases, today’s natural scientific perspective, namely the question whether a remedy may have had an effect in a ‘modern’ sense. Some of the lexicographical works concerning drug or symptom names, are based on such a correlation, proposing a drug or disease name for an untranslatable word in a prescription by evaluating the indications and looking for effective drugs, which could have been available in Ancient Egypt. This paper points in the opposite direction. The aim is to introduce new methodological tools to gain an emic, namely an insider’s, perspective on medicinal prescriptions, by applying an experimental-archaeological perspective and by focussing on manufacturing processes, its terminology and its interrelations with ingredients, symptoms and patients. The paper starts with a pharmacological and philological examination of a prescription against worms, questioning its conventional translation. Afterwards, the new approach is introduced. With the help of three concrete recipe examples, semantic and process-oriented readings of prescription texts as medical re-enactments of symptoms and healing processes will be demonstrated. As a result, we will achieve conceptual structures in order to recover features of previously philologically undetermined drugs and symptoms, and new perspectives that will help to broaden our knowledge of the concepts of Ancient Egyptian ‘physiology’ and ‘pathophysiology’.
On a superordinate level this paper discusses different forms of lists, and delivers a method to recover ancient Egyptian concepts by means of determining categorizations and classifications in lists.
It can be shown that two different types of lists exist. The first type is here called the standard type. This is what is commonly understood to be a list: a typical form (some types can be distinguished) in which elements can be included ynchronically. Besides that, we seem to have lists derived from spoken
texts. The elements here are always in a special order; these lists are normative, diachronic, and contextualized. They are short forms of rituals or recipes. As they are in connection with actions, they are here called action instructions.
The ranking of the elements is orientated around a repeatable, transtemporal act. As these lists were also considered to be relevant for the future they were frequently copied and transmitted across longer time periods, as is also the
case with knowledge lists. The rankings of fruits in those lists could have had an effect on the rankings of fruits in standard lists as well.
This paper also illustrates the formal aspects of different list subtypes in detail in order to analyze which kinds of specifications a list type generates. This is important to understand how lists can be used to regain the polyhierarchical
vocabulary of concepts. This is the first time such an approach has been attempted with ancient Egyptian lists and it is naturally contingent on the small amount of sources used. In the center are selection criteria, the single elements, rankings and clusters. It can be shown that fruits are principally grouped with regard to their uses, their taste, their area of growing or production and their storage features. This shows that practical and environmental aspects were considered most important. The rankings in a list can also be influenced by rituals: in tomb contexts in particular the offering ritual makes it possible to
explain specific sequences.
Most of the lists of trees and shrubs come from religious contexts. It could thus be concluded that they might be used to retain or even regain religious concepts. However, as the selection of elements for these lists seems to have taken place on a very theoretical level, it is nevertheless a hypothetical exercise to retrace the ideas behind them, given that the selection criteria are not indicated in the lists.
(c. 1550 BC). Teaching texts from later periods, including the Roman Period, can be traced back to an earlier date of their composition and therefore document a tradition of medical knowledge that lasted over 2000 years.
3) systematic list-type sequences of the formula content and the correlations appearing therein; 4) the configuration of chosen formulae within a papyrus.
These different means of classification will be more closely determined with respect to their specificities (i.e. type of source, medium, the circle of users and the Duration of use), motivations, types (exclusive or flexible class limits, hierarchizations) and criteria. It can be shown that the classification types 3) and 4) are directly connected
to concepts of drugs and effects, but that ascertaining the individual specificities of 1) and 2) in relation to formula texts can reveal the concepts of drugs and effects behind them.
Egyptologists, historians of science, physicians, biologists, and pharmacists. Their work considers, in most cases, today’s natural scientific perspective, namely the question whether a remedy may have had an effect in a ‘modern’ sense. Some of the lexicographical works concerning drug or symptom names, are based on such a correlation, proposing a drug or disease name for an untranslatable word in a prescription by evaluating the indications and looking for effective drugs, which could have been available in Ancient Egypt. This paper points in the opposite direction. The aim is to introduce new methodological tools to gain an emic, namely an insider’s, perspective on medicinal prescriptions, by applying an experimental-archaeological perspective and by focussing on manufacturing processes, its terminology and its interrelations with ingredients, symptoms and patients. The paper starts with a pharmacological and philological examination of a prescription against worms, questioning its conventional translation. Afterwards, the new approach is introduced. With the help of three concrete recipe examples, semantic and process-oriented readings of prescription texts as medical re-enactments of symptoms and healing processes will be demonstrated. As a result, we will achieve conceptual structures in order to recover features of previously philologically undetermined drugs and symptoms, and new perspectives that will help to broaden our knowledge of the concepts of Ancient Egyptian ‘physiology’ and ‘pathophysiology’.
On a superordinate level this paper discusses different forms of lists, and delivers a method to recover ancient Egyptian concepts by means of determining categorizations and classifications in lists.
It can be shown that two different types of lists exist. The first type is here called the standard type. This is what is commonly understood to be a list: a typical form (some types can be distinguished) in which elements can be included ynchronically. Besides that, we seem to have lists derived from spoken
texts. The elements here are always in a special order; these lists are normative, diachronic, and contextualized. They are short forms of rituals or recipes. As they are in connection with actions, they are here called action instructions.
The ranking of the elements is orientated around a repeatable, transtemporal act. As these lists were also considered to be relevant for the future they were frequently copied and transmitted across longer time periods, as is also the
case with knowledge lists. The rankings of fruits in those lists could have had an effect on the rankings of fruits in standard lists as well.
This paper also illustrates the formal aspects of different list subtypes in detail in order to analyze which kinds of specifications a list type generates. This is important to understand how lists can be used to regain the polyhierarchical
vocabulary of concepts. This is the first time such an approach has been attempted with ancient Egyptian lists and it is naturally contingent on the small amount of sources used. In the center are selection criteria, the single elements, rankings and clusters. It can be shown that fruits are principally grouped with regard to their uses, their taste, their area of growing or production and their storage features. This shows that practical and environmental aspects were considered most important. The rankings in a list can also be influenced by rituals: in tomb contexts in particular the offering ritual makes it possible to
explain specific sequences.
Most of the lists of trees and shrubs come from religious contexts. It could thus be concluded that they might be used to retain or even regain religious concepts. However, as the selection of elements for these lists seems to have taken place on a very theoretical level, it is nevertheless a hypothetical exercise to retrace the ideas behind them, given that the selection criteria are not indicated in the lists.
(c. 1550 BC). Teaching texts from later periods, including the Roman Period, can be traced back to an earlier date of their composition and therefore document a tradition of medical knowledge that lasted over 2000 years.
Dated to the Roman Period, the mummy head belonged to an upper-class woman between 25 and 35 years of age. Computed tomography revealed a lethal blunt force trauma affecting the dorsal parts of the parietal bones, below the intact overlaying soft tissue. Moreover, ancient medical treatment was evidenced through localized shaving of the hair on the affected area, which indicates that efforts have been made to keep the woman alive.
This astonishing example of homicide demonstrates the enormous scientific benefit brought by the multidisciplinary investigation of mummified bodies and body parts, and sheds light on life, death and medical care of a woman from Roman Period Egypt.
BC) an innovation in Egyptian medicine emerged:
prescriptions suddenly began to indicate precise
measurements for each ingredient in a preparation,
particularly those remedies prescribed for internal
administration. This metrological information was
expressed in two systems of dyadic fractions, but without
any specification of their base units of measurement.
Hence, the absolute quantity of each substance used in a
given remedy remains unknown. To establish the efficacy
of ancient Egyptian medicines and ascertain the dosage
form, it is necessary to know the exact units of
measurement used in these recipes. The aim of this paper
is to summarize my works on the units dja and oipe which
I recovered as the main units in a healing context.
Aside from the fully licensed herbal medicines there are products on the European pharmaceutical market which are registered by virtue of their longstanding traditional use. The normal registration procedure does not apply to them because presently they do not meet the legal requirements for a full license as set out in the relevant European Union Directive. One of these requirements, “proof of tradition”, has so far been dealt with in different ways and fails to meet the criteria of good practice.
Method
This analysis is based on a selective literature search in PubMed and in databases of medical and pharmaceutical history, interviews with licensing experts, a consensus meeting attended by researchers with a background in general medicine, phytotherapy, medical and pharmaceutical history, biometry, ethnopharmacology, pharmacognosy and the pharmaceutical industry.
Results and discussion
The 2004 EU Directive, which governs the registration of Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products and demands proof of tradition, is a regulatory construct and, above all, the outcome of a political process that has ended in a pragmatic compromise. The concept of tradition applied in the Directive does not sufficiently reflect the semantic breadth of the term. The only condition defined is that a specific commercial preparation needs to have been on the market for 30 years (15 of them inside the EU). Such an approach does not make full scientific use of the evidence available because the information excerpted from historical sources, if adequately processed, may yield valuable insights. This applies to indications, modes of application, efficacy and product safety (innocuousness). Such criteria should enter in full into the benefit-risk-analysis of applied preparations, in the registration process as well as in the therapeutic practice.
Conclusion
When registering Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products the criterion of evidence-based medicine will only be met if all the facts available are assessed and evaluated, over and above the formally stipulated regulatory provisions (30 years, product reference). To this end, the scientific methods (from among the natural, life or cultural sciences), which are recognized as authoritative in each case, must be applied.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037887411731019X
Date: Friday and Saturday, 19-20 June 2020
Place: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Deadline: 31 January 2020
Organizer: Norbert W. Paul, Tanja Pommerening
Perspective of the future plays an essential role from early healing practice to the modern. It is precisely through the practice of prognosis that the future enters medicine as an epistemologically and practically uncertain dimension. Divinatory texts in the Near East, oracle texts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, prognoses in Egyptian medicine, Hippocratic treatises on prognosis, or the writings of Galen, offer a multitude of ways for explaining illness, healing and death that are oriented towards the future. Movements of demarcation, that separated medical prognosis from divination, are found for example in the Corpus Hippocraticum and in the writings of Galen. In all cases, it becomes clear that a supposedly safe practice of medicine and healing is initially based primarily on the past, on experience, empiricism, and evidence and places these in relation to the present within the context of the diagnosis. The exact recognition of what is the case and medical problem solving, acting and justifying are always dependent on the reinsurance of the past.
Deeply rooted in the healing and medicine of the present, is the practice in the past. Equally, it is directed towards the future; in the narrower sense towards future health and participation, up to and including global health. While empirical knowledge and diagnostics justify medical decisions and actions, prognosis and prevention dictate the goals for the future in the sense of preventing the worst.
It is in this historically, historic-epistemologically and medical-theoretically rich context that the 40th conference of the Ancient Medicine Interdisciplinary Working Group, which is jointly supported by the DFG Research Training Groups "Early Concepts of Humans and Nature: Universal, Specific, Interchanged" and "Life Sciences - Life Writing: Experiences at the Boundaries of Human Life between Biomedical Explanation and Lived Experience", will take place. Which individual levels of action of practitioners and patients are oriented towards the future? What overarching ideas about the shaped future can be discerned from historical sources? What allusions can be found in texts from the Near East, Egypt, in Plato’s Politeia, in the Greek-Roman and Arabic works of medicine, or the relevant works of the Renaissance, such as Morus, Bacon, Campanella – or even concepts of the more recent and most recent history of medicine that refer to long lines of tradition? With such and other perspectives, temporality in medicine and healing arts is to be made the subject of interdisciplinary exchange.
Due to the anniversary, there will be a keynote lecture by Prof. Dr. Florian Steger (Ulm) on Friday evening. After a small reception there will be the opportunity for a joint dinner.
We expect proposals of papers in German and English limited to 20 minutes, as well as panels with a series of papers, lasting 90 minutes.
Beside the specified theme, it is also possible to include other papers (limited to 20 minutes) from the domain of the pre-modern medicine.
Please submit your proposals of papers or panels to Nadine Gräßler ([email protected]) before 31 January 2020 including an abstract (c. 300 words), which clearly describes the questions and outcomes of your study.
You can find more information on our website: https://ancient-medicine.uni-mainz.de/.
Datum: Freitag, 19. bis Samstag, 20. Juni 2020
Ort: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Deadline: 31. Januar 2020
Veranstalter: Norbert W. Paul, Tanja Pommerening
Von frühen heilkundlichen Praktiken bis hin zur modernen, so genannten Biomedizin spielt die Perspektivierung der Zukunft eine wesentliche Rolle. Gerade durch die Praxis der Prognose tritt Zukunft als erkenntnistheoretisch und praktisch unsichere Dimension in die Heilkunde. Divinatorische Texte im Vorderen Orient, Orakeltexte in der griechisch-römischen Antike, Prognosen in der ägyptischen Heilkunde, hippokratische Traktate zur Prognose oder aber die Schriften Galens bieten eine Vielzahl von Hinweisen auf das auf die Zukunft hin ausgerichtete Erklären von Krankheit, Heilung und Tod. Aber auch Abgrenzungsbewegungen – wie etwa die Abgrenzung der ärztlichen Prognose von der Wahrsagerei – finden sich bspw. im Corpus Hippocraticum und bei Galen. In allen Fällen wird deutlich, dass eine vermeintlich sichere Praxis von Heilkunde und Medizin sich zunächst vorrangig auf das Vergangene, auf Erfahrung, Empirie, Evidenz stützt und diese im Rahmen der Diagnose ins Verhältnis zur Gegenwart setzt. Das genaue Erkennen dessen, was der Fall ist, und ärztliches Problemlösen, Handeln und Rechtfertigen sind immer auf die Rückversicherung durch die Vergangenheit angewiesen.
So tief die Heilkunde und Medizin der jeweiligen Gegenwart als Praxis aber in der Vergangenheit verankert sein mag, so sehr ist sie auf Zukunft, im engeren Sinne auf zukünftige Gesundheit und Teilhabe – bis hin zur globalen – Gesundheit gerichtet. Während also Erfahrungswissen und Diagnostik medizinisches Entscheiden und Handeln rechtfertigen, geben Prognostik und Prävention im Sinne der Verhütung des Schlimmeren die auf Zukunft gerichteten Ziele vor.
In diesen historisch, historisch-epistemologisch und medizintheoretisch reichhaltigen Kontext ist die 40. Tagung des Interdisziplinären Arbeitskreises „Alte Medizin“, die gemeinsam von den DFG-Graduiertenkollegs „Frühe Konzepte von Mensch und Natur: Universalität, Spezifität und Tradierung“ und "Life Sciences – Life Writing: Grenzerfahrungen menschlichen Lebens zwischen biomedizinischer Erklärung und lebensweltlicher Erfahrung“ getragen wird, gestellt. Welche individuellen Handlungsebenen von Behandelnden und Patienten sind auf die Zukunft hin ausgerichtet? Welche übergeordneten Vorstellungen werden aus den historischen Quellen über die gestaltete Zukunft deutlich? Welche Anspielungen findet man in Texten aus dem Vorderen Orient, aus Ägypten, in Platos Politeia, den heilkundlichen Werken der griechisch-römischen und arabischen Heilkunde oder aber den einschlägigen Werken der Renaissance etwa von Morus, Bacon, Campanella – bis hin zu Konzepten der neueren und neuesten Medizingeschichte, die sich auf lange Traditionslinien berufen? Mit solchen und weitere Perspektiven soll Zeitlichkeit in der Heilkunde und Medizin zum Gegenstand des interdisziplinären Austausches gemacht werden.
Aufgrund des Jubiläums findet am Freitagabend ein Festvortrag von Prof. Dr. Florian Steger (Ulm) statt. Nach einem kleinen Empfang ist die Möglichkeit zum gemeinsamen Abendessen gegeben.
Herzlich willkommen sind 20-minütige Beiträge in deutscher und englischer Sprache zum genannten Oberthema oder auch Panels von mehreren Vortragenden mit einer Gesamtredezeit von 90 Minuten.
Es gibt wie immer auch die Möglichkeit, weitere Vorträge (à 20 Minuten) aus dem Bereich der „Alten Medizin“ einzubinden.
Bitte senden Sie Vorschläge für Vorträge oder Panels bis 31.01.2020 an Nadine Gräßler: [email protected]. Bitte fügen Sie Ihrem Vortragsvorschlag ein Abstract von ca. 300 Wörtern bei, aus dem die Fragestellung und die zu erwartenden Ergebnisse Ihres Vortrags hervorgehen.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie auch auf: https://www.iak-alte-medizin.uni-mainz.de/ oder https://ancient-medicine.uni-mainz.de/.
Within the framework of the international conference, the RTG aims to deal with the question of possibly universal basic patterns of concepts and their causes as well as with the specific implementations of concepts of humans and nature in early societies. We would like to foster a discussion on whether and how the body or, more generally, our physically grounded experience might be involved in understanding, shaping and even creating concepts within the domains of humans and nature. Thereby we aim to explore the universal or contextual nature of those concepts. More specifically, questions we would like to address include:
To what extent can diverse conceptual constructions and theoretical systems, for instance about the cosmos or human body, be traced back to elementary, physically grounded experiences and actions, in order that a universal substratum may be assumed?
To what extent are concepts of humans and nature, both concrete and abstract, influenced by our bodily and physically grounded experience? In turn, to what extent do already established concepts influence the social assessment and representation of given phenomena?
To what extent could the representation of certain objects, the formation of certain notions and the creation of more abstract concepts and conceptual theories be, in each case study, contextually defined, re-shaped and exploited?
How do phenomena, human understanding of phenomena and creative imagination interplay in the formation and development of concepts of humans and nature?
How close is the connection between physically grounded actions on the one hand and cognitive processes on the other?
We would like to foster a discussion on these questions in an international and interdisciplinary environment, with three panels, which are in line with research projects our RTG is currently working on. Our graduates will be the chairs of those panels:
1) Zones, Parts, Functions – The relationship between body experience and body concepts
2) Conceptualizing Sky and Heaven – Human interactions with meteorological and cosmic phenomena
3) Investigating concepts of the dead body
Diese Problematik trifft umso mehr den Umgang mit historischen Quellen, seien es Texte oder Bilder. Auch sie kommunizieren mit uns, wenn wir sie als wissenschaftliche Objekte nutzen. Sie sind aber nicht zu diesen Zwecken überliefert und zudem nicht hinterfragbar. Zugrundliegende Konzepte lassen sich hier nur durch breite Kontextualisierungen ergründen. Dem Unsagbaren widmen sich inzwischen linguistische Theorien wie die konzeptuelle Metapherntheorie, Prototypensemantik oder Translationstheorien. Das Ungesagte bleibt eine Leerstelle.
Solche Leerstellen wurden in der Geschichte der Medizin gelegentlich auch als Projektionsflächen genutzt. Die immer noch stattfindenden Versuche retrospektiver Diagnostik zeigen dies beispielhaft. Hier werden gleiche Kategorisierungen und Konzepte vorausgesetzt und Leerstellen durch Narrative ausgefüllt. Dies ist kein modernes wissenschaftliches Phänomen, sondern ein grundsätzlich historisch-epistemologisches Problem, das sich durch die Wissenschaftsgeschichte zieht.
Unsere Tagung verfolgt das Ziel, vor allem eine methodologische Perspektive einzunehmen. Den modernen Mediziner fragen wir, wie er die kommunikative Brücke zwischen seinen Kategorien und denen des Patienten schlägt. Die historisch arbeitenden Disziplinen fragen wir, wie sie mit der Problematik des Ungesagten und aus Sicht der Quellen Unsagbaren umgehen. Zudem freuen wir uns über Beiträge, die sich wissenschaftshistorisch mit alten Lehrbüchern zur Geschichte der Medizin auseinandersetzen und beispielhaft demonstrieren, wie man Lücken durch Narrative aufgefüllt hat.
Not surprisingly, this problem is also highly relevant in the study of historical sources, textual or illustrative. Sources also communicate with us even when we use them only as research objects. They were not however transmitted for this end, and certainly one cannot pose them clarifying questions. One way to reveal the underlying concepts is by means of wide contextualization. Nowadays, a number of linguistic theories focus on the inexpressible; among them are the conceptual metaphor theory, the prototype theory, and translation theories. The untold remains however a gap.
These gaps appear to have been used in the history of medicine as projection areas. The still common attempts at retrospective diagnoses provide a good example of an overly reductionist view of ambiguous and sometime even opaque medical phenomena. Historians assume that the categories and concepts coincide with the modern ones and try to fill the gaps with narratives. This is not a novel phenomenon but rather a fundamental historico-epistemological problem of the history of science.
Our conference aims to explore these phenomena from a methodological perspective. We ask modern doctors how they bridge the communicative gap between their categories and those of the patients. We ask the historical disciplines how they deal with what is left untold or is inexpressible from the perspective of the sources. We are pleased to receive proposals of papers from historiographers of science studying old textbooks on medicine history and exploring the narratives used to fill the gaps in the primary sources.
Aim of the Workshop is to bring together recent research from the field of Ancient Medicine and to increase their visibility. The Working Group connects all fields of the premodern world with a focus on the Greco-Roman Antiquity together with the temporally and spatially neighbouring cultures of ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East as well as their reception until modern times.