Courtney Ann Roby

About

Courtney Ann Roby is a Professor in the Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University, affiliated with the Departments of Classics and the College of Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the literary aspects of scientific and technical texts from the ancient world, examining the interaction of verbal and visual elements in those texts and applying cognitive science approaches to ancient scientific work. She has authored the book "Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature: The Written Machine between Alexandria and Rome" (Cambridge University Press, 2016), which explores the literary techniques used in the textual representation of technological artifacts from Hellenistic Greece to late-ancient Rome. Her forthcoming second book investigates the mechanical tradition established by Hero of Alexandria, emphasizing multidisciplinary technical treatises spanning geometry to automata, and their influence through history. Roby's current projects include exploring how concepts from cognitive science, such as embodied, embedded, and extended mind, can inform the understanding of ancient scientific activity and writing. Her work also addresses how philosophy of science can shed light on ancient 'scientific fictions,' how cognitive ideas are reflected in Ptolemy's works, and how early printed editions rework ancient texts for new contexts.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Linguistics
• Mathematics
• Philosophy
• Cognitive science
• Aesthetics

Selected publications

• Geometer, in a Landscape: Embodied Mathematics in Hero’s Dioptra

  2018-04-23 · 4 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  In this paper, I will use recent work on embodied cognition to analyze the techniques Hero uses to embody the imposition of mathematical constructions on the physical world in his Dioptra, a text on surveying. Hero shifts geometrical objects, and techniques for manipulating them, into the real world by invoking material attributes that purely geometrical objects do not possess. This shift, in turn, demands an innovative restructuring of conceptual categories, triggered by processes that strongly…

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• 3. Physical Sciences: Ptolemy’s Extended Mind

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2018-11-06 · 2 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction Not much is known about Claudius Ptolemy's life, beyond what can be deduced from the astronomical observations recorded in his Syntaxis mathematica (better known as the Almagest ), made between 127 and 141 CE at Alexandria, and the inscription he seems to have set up at nearby Canopus in 147. Otherwise he remains a nebulous figure, neither filling his own books with colourful anecdotes of his professional life as did the physician Galen, his near contemporary, nor enjoying the post-…

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• Theorizing Technology: Theōria, Diagram, and Artifact in Hero of Alexandria

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• The Mechanical Tradition of Hero of Alexandria

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-07-06 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Hero of Alexandria was a figure of great importance not only for ancient technology but also for the medieval and early modern traditions that drew on his work. In this book Courtney Roby presents Hero's key strategies for developing, solving, and contextualizing technical problems, not only in his own lifetime but as an influential tradition of creating accessible technical treatises spanning multiple disciplines. While Hero's historical biography is all but impossible to reconstruct, she exami…

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• Unruly Objects – Material Entanglements in the Arts and Sciences

  Nuncius · 2020-12-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  This volume considers the tension between the unruly material object and the equally unruly materiality of media used to investigate and engage with the natural world. It explores issues of flow and friction related to the creation and use of scientific and medical objects in mutable material media. While historians of science and medicine have frequently engaged in reconstructing these material engagements in terms of acts of ordering (in the museum context, for example), this volume sets out t…

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Frequent coauthors

• Loren Marsh

  Universität Hamburg

  8 shared

• Verity Platt

  Atkins (United States)

  6 shared

• Markus Asper

  6 shared

• Nalini Kirk

  Universität Hamburg

  4 shared

• Werner Kogge

  Universität Hamburg

  4 shared

• Thomas Stolz

  University of Bremen

  4 shared

• Francesca Schironi

  Universität Hamburg

  4 shared

• Werner Golder

  PTC (France)

  4 shared

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Sturt Manningh-45
• Thomas Hillh-9
• Benjamin Andersonh-8