This volume is the outcome of two conferences held at the University of Oklahoma in 1992 and 1993 which dealt with issues of transmission and subsequent cultural transformations that occurred in the premodern histories of mathematics and science.
Some twenty contributors explore transmission from a variety of perspectives, including the role of language and other facets of culture in the transmission process, the interaction of popular and elite science in transmission, successful and less than successful episodes of scientific appropriation and the role of institutions in this process.
The volume uses the theme of transmission as a way to focus debate on the perennial issue of the continuity and discontinuity of ideas in the history of sciences.