Continuity and Discontinuity of the Sciences in the 5th to the 10th Centuries A.D.

Abstract

The question of continuity and discontinuity is addressed with four case studies on the disciplines of astronomy, medicine, alchemy, and mathematics. Astronomy disappeared from papyrological records for three an a half centuries from papyrological records. The same holds for alchemy which disappeared for at least four centuries. Literary and archaeological sources point to a longer survival of astronomy at Alexandria for about a century. Medicine survived on a very basic and practical level. The same can be said of mathematics.