07 April, 2010

Gerard of Cremona

My final semester has officially begun although I have been doing a little reading and article search for a couple of weeks now. I am still working my way through the Scott L. Montgomery book, Science in Translation. I am only reading one chapter for the purposes of this study, but it is a long chapter and full of information! It's almost a little overwhelming, but I will get through it. As always, I am making notes on what I am reading and highlighting certain passages that I need to research a bit more or plan to quote in my thesis. Don't get me wrong though. I think this is a great book so far! It was actually one that I checked out from the USF Library last semester and decided to purchase a copy for myself. :D


I am also going to be re-reading/skimming through Jonathan Lyons' The House of Wisdom as it is pertinent to Chapter 4 of my Thesis more than any of the other chapters. 

I am in the process of narrowing down my list a bit of the scientists/translators I will focus on for this chapter. Gerard of Cremona is definitely on my "Yes" list! He was probably one of the more important translators and has been compared to Hunayn in method of translation. According to Scott L. Montgomery, "the tremendous contribution [Gerard] made to the Western intellectual tradition...was based on bringing into medieval Latin a large portion of the Arabic-Indian-Persian-Greek synthesis in science..." (p155). I think this is an important point in moving from the Eastern translation movement into the Western as we have to think in terms of what the Arabs brought to the Middle East and it's spread westward from there.

As I have on previous posts, I want to include a picture of Gerard of Cremona, but I am unable to find one. I will keep looking as time permits...

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