"Partington's method presupposes... that Greek fire and gunpowder represent premodern forms of "scientific" knowledge. ...Partington's second presumptuous belief is that the history of Greek fire and gunpowder is primarily to be understood through chemistry... These beliefs were what justified Partington's biographical approach; he was interested in those who wrote texts and what was written in them, mainly recipes and formulas. Perhaps the most familiar practitioner of this method is the founder of the modern founder of the history of science, George Sarton, whose Introduction to the History of Science (1927-47) Partington's work closely resembles."
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Historians from EnglandMathematicians from EnglandNon-fiction authors from EnglandChemists from EnglandHistorians of science
Original Language: English
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Bert S. Hall, (1999) Introduction to A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder by J. R. Partington (1960)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._R._Partington
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J. R. Partington
James Riddick Partington (30 June 1886 – 9 October 1965) was a British chemist, mathematician, historian of chemistry, scholar, author and teacher. He was a fellow and council member of the Chemical Society of London and the first president of the Society for History of Alchemy and Early Chemistry.
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