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> Named for Hypatia of Alexandria, the first prominent Western woman astronomer How is a middle-eastern woman who lived circa ~400AD "western"? "The west" didn
by calcifer 9y ago
> Named for Hypatia of Alexandria, the first prominent Western woman astronomer
How is a middle-eastern woman who lived circa ~400AD "western"? "The west" didn't take the lead in science until much, much later.
- filmor 9y agoAlexandria was founded as a Greek city and stayed Hellenistic until the Islamic Invasion 600 something. Wikipedia lists Hypatia as "Greek", Greek and Roman culture is usually counted as "western". It could also be meant in contrast to "eastern" as in Chinese and Indian astronomy.
- weeksie 9y agoIn any case Egypt is certainly not in the "middle east"
- filmor 9y agoIt is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East (the Near East then being the Balkan). In other languages (e.g. in German) one calls this part "Near East", "Middle East" is Iran -> India, "Far East" is South-East Asia, China, etc.
- weeksie 9y agoHuh, never heard it used in such a way as to include Egypt. I've always heard Egypt included in MENA (Middle East/North Africa). There you go.
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y agoMaybe consider not being so blindly confident in the future. :)
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoMENA includes Morocco, Tunisia, et cetera.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSurely Greco-Roman culture was pre "Western". So it's like calling Boudica an Anglo-Saxon. Better would surely be the "Hellenic astronomer", or just "Alexandrian astronomer" which places things reasonable well in geo-historical context. Would you call pharoahs "Western rulers"? If you say Western I'd assume it's after the downfall of the Roman Empire. Worth noting that Hypatia precedes the Qin dynasty by 200 years so there was no "Far East"/China in civilisation terms as such.
- fsloth 9y agoAlexandria was a greek city more or less at that time. It was first part of the ptolemaic egypt[0], and after Roman conquest a province[1]. The middle eastern influence came en masse only after the muslim conquest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_Kingdom [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt_(Roman_province) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt_(Roman_province)
- moomin 9y agoI think this just highlights how much "Western" is a movable feast. The Byzantine empire is typically counted as part of the west. So "Constantinople" is part of the West, but "Istanbul" is not. The qualification here mostly means "not Chinese".
- zeveb 9y ago> The qualification here mostly means "not Chinese". Well, and not Islamic. The West is 'European,' so Roman North Africa & Roman Anatolia were Western. 'Near East' or 'Middle East' mean the now-Islamic world (much of it was Western pre-conquest). 'Far East' mean Chinese or Japanese. At one point I think 'Oriental' (a word just meaning 'Eastern') could also apply to folks from the Indian subcontinent, but that's pretty rare to nonexistent nowadays.
- _dps 9y agoI'm confused by all the confusion about "western" here. It refers to a family of civilizations, cultures, and nations. Despite the geographic specifier, it is primarily about people and traditions, not a location. Pick up any book about "Western Civilization" and it always refers to the thing that nucleated with Greece and Rome, and then all the things that descended from it. Byzantium is absolutely part of this lineage.
- DanAndersen 9y agoHypatia was a Neoplatonist who lived in Alexandria in the late Roman Empire. Egypt had been integrated into the Roman sphere for centuries at that time. If "Western" implies a connection with the Greco-Roman tradition, which it often does, then Hypatia certainly seems to fit that. The modern notion of the "Middle East" being distinct from "the West" was less strong at that time because the Western world was more of a Mediterranean world; cultures in north Africa and the Levant were more integrated with Europe during the Roman period and even for centuries afterward. It was the rise of the Islamic Empire and its disruption of trade routes with Europe that more strongly created that distinction. I say this as someone not particularly emotionally invested in the idea of "claiming" Hypatia for the West or anything like that. To tell the truth, the story of Hypatia has turned into a modern myth in various ways -- like the story of Galileo -- in which we end up coloring it with our own narratives. If anyone is interested in details about Hypatia's life, I recommend reading this post which responds to the typical modern narrative about Hypatia: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-herstory-of-hypatia.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-herstory-of-hypatia.... I also recommend the more detailed series of posts by the same author, which gets into the political/social issues of the day, which is more interesting than you might think: https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-streets-of-old.html https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2015/02/hypatia-part-i-mean-str...