This volume is the outcome of two conferences held at the University of Oklahoma in 1992 and 1993 which dealt with issues of transmission and subsequent cultural transformations that occurred in the premodern histories of mathematics and science.
Some twenty contributors explore transmission from a variety of perspectives, including the role of language and other facets of culture in the transmission process, the interaction of popular and elite science in transmission, successful and less than successful episodes of scientific appropriation and the role of institutions in this process.
The volume uses the theme of transmission as a way to focus debate on the perennial issue of the continuity and discontinuity of ideas in the history of sciences.
F. Jamil Ragep, Ph.D. (1982) in History of Science, Harvard University, is Associate Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma.
Sally P. Ragep, M.Ed. (1980), Boston University, is an educator and media specialist who has extensive experience eproducing graphical materials; she has also done editorial work in both English and Arabic. Her special interest is in the history of science, and she plans to continue work in that area.
All those interested in the history of science, intellectual history, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Islamic studies and the Renaissance, and cross-cultural developments in South Asia, the Near East, and Europe.