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Author

Reviel Netz

Other affiliations: University of Cambridge
Bio: Reviel Netz is an academic researcher from Stanford University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Greek mathematics & Palimpsest. The author has an hindex of 17, co-authored 53 publications receiving 963 citations. Previous affiliations of Reviel Netz include University of Cambridge.


Papers
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Book
Reviel Netz1
28 Apr 1999
TL;DR: A specimen of Greek mathematics can be found in this article, where the main Greek mathematicians cited in the book are cited as the main sources of inspiration for the present paper, as well as the historical setting.
Abstract: Introduction: a specimen of Greek mathematics 1 The lettered diagram 2 The pragmatics of letters 3 The mathematical lexicon 4 Formulae 5 The shaping of necessity 6 The shaping of generality 7 The historical setting Appendix: the main Greek mathematicians cited in the book

202 citations

Book
01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: Barbed wire has been used to control cattle during the colonization of the American West and to control people in Nazi concentration camps and the Russian Gulag as discussed by the authors, and it has been shown to be effective in controlling humans, animals, and the environment.
Abstract: In this original and controversial book, historian and philosopher Reviel Netz explores the development of a controlling and pain-inducing technology - barbed wire. Surveying its development from 1874 to 1954, Netz describes its use to control cattle during the colonization of the American West and to control people in Nazi concentration camps and the Russian Gulag. Physical control over space was no longer symbolic after 1874. This is a history told from the perspective of its victims. With vivid examples of the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the environment, this dramatic account of barbed wire presents modern history through the lens of motion being prevented. Drawing together the history of humans and animals, Netz delivers a compelling new perspective on the issues of colonialism, capitalism, warfare, globalization, violence, and suffering. Theoretically sophisticated but written with a broad readership in mind, Barbed Wire calls for nothing less than a reconsideration of modernity.

110 citations

Book
Reviel Netz1
20 Feb 2020
TL;DR: In this article, the authors retell the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment in the Hellenistic era.
Abstract: Greek culture matters because its unique pluralistic debate shaped modern discourses. This ground-breaking book explains this feature by retelling the history of ancient literary culture through the lenses of canon, space and scale. It proceeds from the invention of the performative 'author' in the archaic symposium through the 'polis of letters' enabled by Athenian democracy and into the Hellenistic era, where one's space mattered and culture became bifurcated between Athens and Alexandria. This duality was reconfigured into an eclectic variety consumed by Roman patrons and predicated on scale, with about a thousand authors active at any given moment. As patronage dried up in the third century CE, scale collapsed and literary culture was reduced to the teaching of a narrower field of authors, paving the way for the Middle Ages. The result is a new history of ancient culture which is sociological, quantitative, and all-encompassing, cutting through eras and genres.

83 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A theory dealing with abstract objects, aiming at internal coherence rather than at connection to any external reality, is a non-starter for science as mentioned in this paper, and it is a peculiarity of the modern world to take this abstract discipline as the cornerstone for science.
Abstract: Imagine that you have to start science from scratch. Upon what disciplines should you draw? Philosophy, for instance, discusses the nature of time, space, and reality. Religion, too, tries to make sense of the world as a whole; and so, sometimes, does literature. Several disciplines—for example, biology and medicine—deal with special and highly significant features of the world. Such are the most natural ways to begin thinking about the world, and, in fact, most cultures make sense of their world through a combination of such intellectual resources. Mathematics, in comparison, appears like a non‐starter. Here is a theory dealing with abstract objects, aiming at internal coherence rather than at connection to any external reality. All cultures develop some ways of dealing with calculation and measurement, and in some societies, a more abstract discipline, a “mathematics,” may also emerge. But it is a peculiarity of the modern world to take this abstract discipline as the cornerstone for science.

50 citations

Book
Reviel Netz1
14 May 2009
TL;DR: In this paper, the Hellenistic mathematical corpus is placed centre-stage in the discussion of Hellenism as a whole, and a new departure in science studies is made: an analysis of a scientific style of writing, situating it within the context of the contemporary style of literature.
Abstract: This book represents a new departure in science studies: an analysis of a scientific style of writing, situating it within the context of the contemporary style of literature Its philosophical significance is that it provides a novel way of making sense of the notion of a scientific style For the first time, the Hellenistic mathematical corpus - one of the most substantial extant for the period - is placed centre-stage in the discussion of Hellenistic culture as a whole Professor Netz argues that Hellenistic mathematical writings adopt a narrative strategy based on surprise, a compositional form based on a mosaic of apparently unrelated elements, and a carnivalesque profusion of detail He further investigates how such stylistic preferences derive from, and throw light on, the style of Hellenistic poetry This important book will be welcomed by all scholars of Hellenistic civilization as well as historians of ancient science and Western mathematics

46 citations


Cited by
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01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: Thematiche [38].
Abstract: accademiche [38]. Ada [45]. Adrian [45]. African [56]. Age [39, 49, 61]. Al [23]. Al-Rawi [23]. Aldous [68]. Alex [15]. Allure [46]. America [60, 66]. American [49, 69, 61, 52]. ancienne [25]. Andreas [28]. Angela [42]. Animals [16]. Ann [26]. Anna [19, 47]. Annotated [46]. Annotations [28]. Anti [37]. Anti-Copernican [37]. Antibiotic [64]. Anxiety [51]. Apocalyptic [61]. Archaeology [26]. Ark [36]. Artisan [32]. Asylum [48]. Atri [54]. Audra [65]. Australia [41]. Authorship [15]. Axelle [29].

978 citations

Book
01 Aug 2003
TL;DR: The prehistory of science and technology studies can be traced back to the Kuhnian Revolution and the early 20th century as discussed by the authors, with a focus on the social construction of scientific and technical realities.
Abstract: Preface vii 1 The Prehistory of Science and Technology Studies 1 2 The Kuhnian Revolution 12 3 Questioning Functionalism in the Sociology of Science 23 4 Stratification and Discrimination 36 5 The Strong Programme and the Sociology of Knowledge 47 6 The Social Construction of Scientific and Technical Realities 57 7 Feminist Epistemologies of Science 72 8 Actor-Network Theory 81 9 Two Questions Concerning Technology 93 10 Studying Laboratories 106 11 Controversies 120 12 Standardization and Objectivity 136 13 Rhetoric and Discourse 148 14 The Unnaturalness of Science and Technology 157 15 The Public Understanding of Science 168 16 Expertise and Public Participation 180 17 Political Economies of Knowledge 189 References 205 Index 236

536 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This essay explores the conceptual and semantic work required to render algorithmic information processing systems legible as forms of cultural decision making and represents an effort to add depth and dimension to the concept of “algorithmic culture.”
Abstract: How does algorithmic information processing affect the meaning of the word culture, and, by extension, cultural practice? We address this question by focusing on the Netflix Prize (2006–2009), a contest offering US$1m to the first individual or team to boost the accuracy of the company’s existing movie recommendation system by 10%. Although billed as a technical challenge intended for engineers, we argue that the Netflix Prize was equally an effort to reinterpret the meaning of culture in ways that overlapped with, but also diverged in important respects from, the three dominant senses of the term assayed by Raymond Williams. Thus, this essay explores the conceptual and semantic work required to render algorithmic information processing systems legible as forms of cultural decision making. It also then represents an effort to add depth and dimension to the concept of “algorithmic culture.”

346 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Analyzing common visual communications reveals consistencies that illuminate how people think as well as guide design; the process can be brought into the laboratory and accelerated.
Abstract: Depictive expressions of thought predate written language by thousands of years. They have evolved in communities through a kind of informal user testing that has refined them. Analyzing common visual communications reveals consistencies that illuminate how people think as well as guide design; the process can be brought into the laboratory and accelerated. Like language, visual communications abstract and schematize; unlike language, they use properties of the page (e.g., proximity and place: center, horizontal/up-down, vertical/left-right) and the marks on it (e.g., dots, lines, arrows, boxes, blobs, likenesses, symbols) to convey meanings. The visual expressions of these meanings (e.g., individual, category, order, relation, correspondence, continuum, hierarchy) have analogs in language, gesture, and especially in the patterns that are created when people design the world around them, arranging things into piles and rows and hierarchies and arrays, spatial-abstraction-action interconnections termed spractions. The designed world is a diagram.

271 citations