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Epilogue
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Epilogue As noted at the end of the last chapter, Kan B’ahlam II was able to patronize a calendric invention and convert it into a tool that served the state as a demonstration of the intellectual resources available to the ancient Maya ajawtahk in their quests for political legitimation. We have also seen that the project built with the 819-day count served in a much larger agenda. Partially, it preserved the memory of Janaab’ Pakal’s ritual recovery of the religious charter of Palenque. But the 819-day count also facilitated the preservation of a Nal-k’awiil-based Zuyua within an architectural group that brought Palenque aesthetically into the Maya fold. Such treatment has demonstrated that the message contained a number of levels. Kan B’ahlam II constructed 197 Epilogue 198 messages for each audience composing his society: for the commoners , Re-Creation was hewn of stone; for the nobility, Re-Creation was depicted in artwork; and for the would-be ajawtahk, Re-Creation utilized a mathematical re-creation to yield secret knowledge in the form of a series of puzzles. Having now solved several of these puzzles, we enter deeper into the intellectual world of the ancient Maya. In the process of recognizing and solving some of these puzzles, though, we have also witnessed something about the history of science as a discipline. In particular, we have recognized here that it may be valuable to take into account the agency of science itself. Before defining what an agency of science might mean, it is necessary to provide a definition of science as it is used in this work. Whenconsideringpremoderncultures,sciencegenerallyhasreferred to areas of knowledge that maintain historical trajectories with bodies of contemporary “scientific” knowledge. Healing traditions, for example , can be considered pre-medical sciences, natural philosophy as prephysical science, and even alchemy as early/pre-chemistry. For noncMd cultures, then, sciences are those analogues to these pre-modern sciences. This definition is perfectly functional, but it is entirely teleological . A more interesting alternative is to appeal to recent studies of modern science. In many of these studies, it is not the specific subject matter that defines science but rather the approach (Biagioli 1999; Latour 1987). Science is thus defined by the combination of a community of practitioners, a common specialized language with a quantitative basis, a collectively maintained and produced repository of knowledge , and a collectively agreed upon quantifiable phenomenon (or set of phenomena) suitable for investigation. Subgroups—or the different modern sciences—may be defined by placing restrictions on one or more of these aspects. Notice that this definition is more liberal as it allows for practices that modern cMd culture does not typically recognize as “science.” The “pseudo-sciences,” for instance, are no longer defined relative to some ideal or “true” science; rather, the validity or legitimacy of a science is left to be determined sociologically. As soon as we introduce the qualification of quantification, though, we bring along the intellectual constraints of logic. Mathematics works by maintaining structured relationships among language elements. The structures themselves must be consistent regardless of referent. [3.144.116.159] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 22:00 GMT) Epilogue 199 The interesting part—the utility—comes from the variety of available structures. For example, a geometer and an algebraist can address the same kinematic problem but come away with different insights based on the structures peculiar to the sub-languages they use. In other words, within science, quantifying languages are localized. By the same token, each local region of mathematics carries with it an idiosyncratic set of algorithms or “tricks” that facilitate application , such that along with the specialized quantitative language comes the social factor of training. Use of a specialized language requires the adoption of methodological conventions. As the apprentice works through various training “problems,” she acquires mental habits in the application of the language. These habits eventually constitute a “structuring structure” (Bourdieu 1995) particular to the local mathematical language being used. This “scientific habitus,” then, guides the scientist as she approaches new problems. It is this process of guidance by the language itself that I refer to as the agency of science. In science , discovery and creation are essentially identical, and they are in part the product of the scientist’s attention to the hints provided by the languages in which she works. Kan B’ahlam Chak Chan, Mut, and Yuhk Makab’te took part in the science maintained by the Maya nobility utilizing the...