O papel da tradução na transmissão da ciência

o caso do Tetrabiblos de Ptolomeu

Abstract

This dissertation presents a history of translations of a founding text from the Hellenistic astrological canon: Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, which was written in Greek, in Alexandria (2nd century A.D.). It is generally assumed that science is transmitted intact along the years, thus grounding the authority of scientific texts and their authors. Translation is rarely remembered in the history of science, and when it happens, it usually plays a secondary role. Nevertheless the transmission of science always implies some kind of rewriting. Therefore the hypothesis here proposed is that Tetrabiblos, as all ancient scientific books which reached us, has pilgrimaged and constantly changed through time and space, revealing its historical feature. Scientific authors and texts are historical constructs, and the latter are handed down in form of rewritten vestiges, linguistically or spatiotemporally separated from the original writings to some extent. That pilgrimage through several languages and cultures has set up what we can call Ptolemy’s “manuscripted and printed textual tradition”. It is to this movable tradition that we will refer to historicize the origins and processes of transmission of Tetrabiblos from Antiquity to Renaissance. It is a biography of Ptolemy’s astrological book, regarding the amalgam between astrology and astronomy at that time and the extensive circulation of this knowledge across the Hellenistic period, the Arabic world and the Iberical context, especially its repercussion during the maritime expansionism.