This article is a programmatic statement advocating a materialist reading of early modern Ottom... more This article is a programmatic statement advocating a materialist reading of early modern Ottoman science. I argue that a history of science that is sensitive to the material life of Ottoman subjects will help scholars cut through the unwarranted vocabulary of " Islamic science, " " Westernization " or " Ottoman civilization. " Two mini studies substantiate the programmatic claims. The first study presents a preliminary reinterpretation of the earliest mention of Copernican astronomy in Turkish, dated 1662. The second study reveals the maritime and mercantile genealogy of the eighteenth-century Ottoman prayer compass. Keywords Scientific Revolution – Ottoman Empire – magnetism – astronomy – calendar – historical materialism
“New Medicine and the Hikmet-i Tabiiyye Problematic in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Tzvi ... more “New Medicine and the Hikmet-i Tabiiyye Problematic in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Tzvi Langermann and Robert Morrison, eds. Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016; pp. 222-242.
This short essay focuses on three issues: how science studies may facilitate the rapprochement be... more This short essay focuses on three issues: how science studies may facilitate the rapprochement between the philological study of scientific texts and Middle East history; how it may help us reconsider ambiguous if not “black-boxed” terms such as the “state,” “Islam,” and the “West”; and finally, how it may build thematic and theoretical bridges with other histories and geographies of science currently emerging from a more global, and not merely local, perspective.
This is an essay on cosmopolitanism and the culture of learning in Ottoman Istanbul under Ahmed I... more This is an essay on cosmopolitanism and the culture of learning in Ottoman Istanbul under Ahmed III. Here, I propose an alternative way -- a middle path between a sui generis Islamic enlightenment and an "alii generis" intellectual westernization - to think about modernity in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire.
This article is a programmatic statement advocating a materialist reading of early modern Ottom... more This article is a programmatic statement advocating a materialist reading of early modern Ottoman science. I argue that a history of science that is sensitive to the material life of Ottoman subjects will help scholars cut through the unwarranted vocabulary of " Islamic science, " " Westernization " or " Ottoman civilization. " Two mini studies substantiate the programmatic claims. The first study presents a preliminary reinterpretation of the earliest mention of Copernican astronomy in Turkish, dated 1662. The second study reveals the maritime and mercantile genealogy of the eighteenth-century Ottoman prayer compass. Keywords Scientific Revolution – Ottoman Empire – magnetism – astronomy – calendar – historical materialism
“New Medicine and the Hikmet-i Tabiiyye Problematic in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Tzvi ... more “New Medicine and the Hikmet-i Tabiiyye Problematic in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Tzvi Langermann and Robert Morrison, eds. Texts in Transit in the Medieval Mediterranean. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016; pp. 222-242.
This short essay focuses on three issues: how science studies may facilitate the rapprochement be... more This short essay focuses on three issues: how science studies may facilitate the rapprochement between the philological study of scientific texts and Middle East history; how it may help us reconsider ambiguous if not “black-boxed” terms such as the “state,” “Islam,” and the “West”; and finally, how it may build thematic and theoretical bridges with other histories and geographies of science currently emerging from a more global, and not merely local, perspective.
This is an essay on cosmopolitanism and the culture of learning in Ottoman Istanbul under Ahmed I... more This is an essay on cosmopolitanism and the culture of learning in Ottoman Istanbul under Ahmed III. Here, I propose an alternative way -- a middle path between a sui generis Islamic enlightenment and an "alii generis" intellectual westernization - to think about modernity in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire.
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