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

• Model Wars

  2025-03-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Ancient tactical manuals inhabit a prospective, generalising narrative space quite different from that created by retrospective battle narratives. In this chapter, I examine how authors of ancient tactical manuals like Asclepiodotus and Aelian used verbal descriptions and visual diagrams to provide a ‘model space’ of sufficient predictive power so that their advice could be applicable in a wide range of real situations whose particular details might nevertheless vary considerably. My analysis draws on current work in the philosophy of science on how scientific models, which simplify and generalise in much the same way as the tactical manuals, can nevertheless generate useful knowledge.

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• Strange Loops

  2024-10-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Hero of Alexandria’s Automata describes the design and construction of theatrical automata. These elaborate devices could be mechanically programmed to perform a variety of activities, including rolling around the floor on any of several predetermined paths, sparking a group of dancing figurines to life, or even presenting a multiscene play with changing backdrops and puppet actors. Hero presents his automata as mechanical systems shaped by an iterative dynamic between craftsman and machine: the craftsman begins with a plan for the automaton, but the automaton’s own material complications ‘reprogramme’ the plan in various ways throughout the construction process. These ancient automata are driven by stubbornly material, mechanical components, and yet the iterative process of designing and fitting the automaton to play out its ‘programme’ turns out to resemble the day-to-day work of constructing algorithms like those that guide modern automated systems more than the cleanly finished products might suggest. In this paper, I explore the material complications of Hero’s automata, the extent to which his automata aim for realism, and the ways in which Hero’s instructions to a reader-builder appeal to the kind of looped ‘respecification’ modern algorithms require as their designs are gradually refined by the complications of the world in which they operate.

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• Cultural and Cognitive Anchoring in Hero of Alexandria’s Metrica

  2024-12-12

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• cognitive studies and ancient science, technology, and medicine

  2024-11-19

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  Cognitive studies of Graeco-Roman antiquity may draw on a wide range of ancient and modern theories of mind. Particularly fruitful modern approaches for the study of ancient science include conceptual metaphor theory, theories of social cognition (particularly in animals), memory studies, and “4E cognition” (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) theories, suggesting that cognitive activities may depend in part on embodied experience, environmental cues, or external objects. While these theories have only recently been articulated by scholars identifying as cognitive scientists, ancient authors’ analyses of mind and thought processes offer many parallels as well as additional perspectives.

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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 examines “Hero” as a corpus, a textual tradition of technical problem-solving capable of incorporating textual transformations like interpolation, epitomization, and translation, as well as intermedial transformation from text to artifact. Key themes include ancient and early modern technical readerships, the relationship between mathematics and mechanics, the materiality of manuscript and printed texts, and the shifting cultural contexts for scientific and technical literature.

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• Notes on Contributors

  De Gruyter eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology

  Dominik Berrens completed his studies in classical philology

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

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

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• Terminology in the Wild: Enactive Meaning-Making in the Roman Surveyors

  2023-12-18

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Roman land surveyors (agrimensores) engaged with a rich and variable set of terminological systems defined the technical and legal aspects of how land was divided and allocated in the Roman Empire. Their extensive vocabulary for the varied types of land was encoded in media like the bronze maps in the imperial tabularium and bound to the systems of material boundary markers the surveyor would need to identify and differentiate in the landscape, which might exhibit considerable local variations. The surveyor could not master these terminological systems merely from text; only direct and active experience allowed the surveyor to negotiate the terminological systems that organized the Roman landscape. In this chapter, I use cognitive science theories of embodiment and enaction to trace the role the surveyors' lived experiences would have played in the ongoing construction of the terminological systems that guided their work.

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• PLINY THE ELDER AND ART - (A.) Anguissola Pliny the Elder and the Matter of Memory. An Encyclopaedic Workshop. Pp. xvi + 137, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. Cased, £44.99, US$59.95. ISBN: 978-0-367-34988-2.

  The Classical Review · 2022-04-28

  article1st authorCorresponding

  PLINY THE ELDER AND ART - (A.) Anguissola Pliny the Elder and the Matter of Memory. An Encyclopaedic Workshop. Pp. xvi + 137, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2022. Cased, £44.99, US$59.95. ISBN: 978-0-367-34988-2.

  PublisherDOI

• Archimedes for the rest of us: Thinking commentary with Guidobaldo dal Monte

  Interdisciplinary Science Reviews · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Epistemology

  For Archimedes’ work to have furnished the ‘key theoretical tools’ for the scientific revolution, the texts must have been comprehensible to early modern readers. Yet as Archimedes’ readers and commentators have observed for centuries, his work can be very difficult going indeed. In this chapter, I explore how commentaries and other explanatory texts, like Guidobaldo dal Monte’s 1588 ‘paraphrase’ commentary to Archimedes’ Planes in Equilibrium, can help unfurl the difficulties of Archimedes’ sparse proofs by means of additional explanations and examples that help the reader develop their own ability to follow Archimedes’ reasoning. I give particular attention to insights from contemporary cognitive science into how strategic repetition of information, the materiality of the text, and highlighting connections between mathematics and the material world can all aid in the learning process.

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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