This chapter explores assumptions about what things are made of (physicality) as revealed by ethnography and the study of antiquity. The history of Greek speculations on the problem reveals a striking diversity, where Aristotle’s ontology based on the primacy of substances was certainly not universally accepted by other theorists. A very different view on the question is common among ancient Chinese writers, who usually focussed not on stable substances but on interacting processes. This allows us to qualify some of the conclusions proposed by the anthropologist Descola in his account of the contrast between naturalism and animism.

This chapter challenges the binary contrast between ’myth’ and rational account (logos), reviewing the negative impact of the application of that dichotomy when used to draw contrasts between properly scientific modes of discourse and those to be dismissed as irrational. Ethnographic reports show that there is often no equivalent to our term ’myth’ in indigenous vocabularies, at least not one that carries similar pejorative undertones. The arguments of Lévi-Strauss that systems of myth may convey ’concrete science’ have the merit of taking those systems seriously, but still imply a pejorative binary judgement.

Opening his City of God is a heartfelt dedication from Augustine to his “dearest son” (fili carissime) Marcellinus, a Roman tribune and the imperial commissioner who was dispatched by Emperor Honorius to preside over the Council of Carthage in June of AD 411. Best known for his assistance to the Bishop of Hippo in bringing the Donatist Schism to an end, Marcellinus was not shy in asking Augustine questions by exchanging rich letters (epp. 128, 129, and 133) during this time. Furthermore, Augustine’s On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins and on Infant Baptism (pecc. mer.) and The Spirit and the Letter (spir. et litt.), both dated AD 412, are also dedicated to Marcellinus in response to some answers this theologically cultured aristocrat first posed to the great bishop. Overseeing the debates between Catholics and Donatists in AD 411 would eventually cost Marcellinus his life, yet win him the hallowed crown of martyrdom. The well-connected Donatists were able to convince Marinus, comes rei militaris of both Italy and Africa, that Marcellinus and his brother Apringius (cf. ep. 134), African proconsul in AD 411, were secretly plotting with the comes Africae Heraclinus to usurp imperial power. Despite Augustine’s and other African bishops’ intervention, Marinus ordered the brothers’ beheading in mid-September of AD 413 on charges of high treason. However, a year later the imperial court realized that these charges had been fabricated. Emperor Honorius exonerated both brothers, produced evidence that Marinus had acted out of selfishness, and thereby referred to Marcellinus and Apringius with great honor, and had both celebrated as Catholic martyrs of the Donatist rebellion.

This chapter examines current assumptions about the agenda of the history of science where the dominant narrative concentrates on the Greek legacy and then on the transformations that took place in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. A Great Divide is often postulated between the workings of the Savage Mind and those of Western scientific modernity. When Greek ideas concerning nature, magic and metaphor are critically examined the way is open to expand the remit of the history of science to make room for a fuller appreciation of the work of other ancient societies and modern indigenous groups.

“The whole Church of the true God holds, confesses and professes that Christ is going to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead” (ciu. Dei 20.1; Babcock 2.390), as Augustine shows throughout ciu. Dei 20. As simple as this affirmative statement may sound, its emphatic nature masks the complexity of thought about God’s final judgment that had already come to challenge the Christian community by the early 5th century AD, and which Book 20 was designed, in part, to address. True enough, all known early creeds encapsulated the promise of a future judgment requiring Christians to affirm their belief that Christ, with the Father, would judge the living and the dead. But this still left many questions unanswered. When would this judgment occur? How would the events of the last day unfold? How would divine justice be done, and be seen to be done? How did the ordinary experience of human death relate to the events outlined in the Book of Revelation? And what kind of community would result?

This chapter explores four different types of explanatory factors that might be invoked to account for the emergence of different groups of scientific theories, ontologies or cosmologies, namely ecology, language, technology and socio-political factors. It arrives at the negative conclusion that none of these singly nor all four taken in conjunction allow us to predict and explain the world-views and modes of scientific investigation that the historical record and the ethnographic data provide evidence for. The varying trajectories of the different developments that we encounter thus demand nuanced particular analysis.

This chapter accepts that biomedicine is the dominant influence on our ideas about health and disease but considers what qualifications need to be introduced to do justice first to the more complicated issues to do with mental health and then to the very diverse conceptions that have been entertained in this area in non-Western societies, ancient and modern. Drawing on Hacking’s work on natural kinds and Luhrmann’s analysis of the uncertainties of modern psychiatry, it suggests further respects in which we need to exercise caution in assessing competing claims for expertise in this area.

This chapter summarises certain conclusions concerning the scientific endeavours of different cultures at different periods. Cross-cultural understanding is fraught with difficulty but the recognition that there is no neutral vocabulary available in which to undertake our analyses does not mean that all mutual understanding is beyond reach. However, traditional views of the contrast between the literal and the metaphorical should be replaced by an acceptance of the pervasiveness of semantic stretch. Cross-cultural explorations provide an opportunity to examine our own preconceptions, including about the scope of science and the values it implies – and so also of its history.

Studies treating Augustine’s City of God normally begin with the year AD 410 and Alaric’s infamous Sack of Rome. Yet, might it not be more accurate to start in AD 380 when the Emperor Theodosius (d. AD 395) presented himself for Christian baptism at fifty-three years of age in the middle of a severe sickness? Upon recovering, this new and grateful Christian issued the Edict of Thessalonica, Cunctos Populos, along with the Emperors Gratian (d. AD 383) and Valentinian II (d. AD 392), now making Catholic Christianity the official religion of the the Roman Empire. Furthermore, in just a decade thereafter, in AD 391, the ancient rites would be banned, and the old ways authoritatively denounced. It was a truly watershed moment. The strength of the reliable Roman pantheon had been replaced with the weakness of religious novelty professing faith in a humbly vulnerable God-man hanging on a cross.

This chapter introduces the key theme of the book, which is to challenge the dominant agenda in the history of science which concentrates on developments in the West since the seventeenth century. Once we focus on aims and methods rather than on results, the explorations of the members of ancient societies and of modern indigenous groups can be given due attention. Their different approaches offer us the opportunity to revise our own assumptions and so expand the horizons of the history of science.