Greek and Latin authors were acutely aware of the problems of knowledge transmission. Not only could manuscripts become corrupted, as we know all too well today, or falsely attributed to some more famous author, but also incorrect claims could creep into a tradition of knowledge-making all too easily. This lecture will look at how some influential Roman thinkers worried about, and tried to control, the integrity and the stability of facts and fact-making in the fields of medicine, politics, and especially the geographical mapping of the entire world as it was then known.

Speaker: Daryn Lehoux is Professor and Department Head of Classics and Archaeology, as well as Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University. He is the author of What Did the Romans Know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking (Chicago, 2012), Creatures Born of Mud and Slime: The Wonder and Complexity of Spontaneous Generation (Johns Hopkins, 2017), Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 2007), the forthcoming Corruption and Progress in Ancient Science (Princeton) and Ancient Science (Chicago). He is the co-editor of Lucretius: Poetry, Philosophy, of Science, and the author of more than fifty papers on ancient science and the philosophy of science.