{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.018964259664478483, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.32258064516129, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Book Review: Ovidian Astronomy: Ovid, Aratus and Augustus: Astronomy in Ovid's Fasti

Montgomery's way of viewing the history of texts prevails, obstacles to doing the history of science would be formidable indeed. Montgomery's arguments are provocative, and even unsettling. But his relentless emphasis on divergences in manuscript versions of a given Greek scientific work in the different languages into which it was translated, and even the inevitable variations within the same language, should not negate the numerous resemblances among different versions of, say, Aristotle's Physics, or On the heavens. Readers of these treatises in different languages and in different geographic locations absorbed substantially similar ideas. Instead of an emphasis on differences, one can make a plausible case for sameness and constancy within the textual tradition of a given work. Scott Montgomery has written a learned and stimulating book that will compel historians of science to pay careful attention to what they have thus far largely ignored: the manner in which translation has shaped the history of the discipline. He has also paid deserved tribute to the small army of unsung scholars who laboured mightily with little fanfare to preserve and transmit the scientific knowledge of their day. Without their contributions, modem science would still lie in the future.