Science in the Forest, Science in the Past

This collection brings together leading anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and artificial-intelligence researchers to discuss the sciences and mathematics used in various Eastern, Western, and Indigenous societies, both ancient and contemporary. The authors analyze prevailing assumptions about these societies and propose more faithful, sensitive analyses of their ontological views about reality—a step toward mutual understanding and translatability across cultures and research fields.

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past is a pioneering interdisciplinary exploration that will challenge the way readers interested in sciences, mathematics, humanities, social research, computer sciences, and education think about deeply held notions of what constitutes reality, how it is apprehended, and how to investigate it.

Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd is professor emeritus of ancient philosophy and science at the University of Cambridge, where he was master of Darwin College from 1989 to 2000. He has published over thirty books, most recently Being, Humanity and Understanding and The Ambivalences of Rationality: Ancient and Modern Cross-Cultural Explorations. 

Aparecida Vilaça is professor of social anthropology at the National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of Strange Enemies: Indigenous Agency and Scenes of Encounters in Amazonia and Praying and Preying: Christianity in Indigenous Amazonia, among others.