Postsocial genealogies: Persian medical cultures as early epistemic formations

Karin Knorr Cetina developed the concept of "postsocial relations" to explain the increasing importance of epistemic objects in the organization of knowledge, expertise, and social interaction within late modern scientific and technological contexts. While this theoretical approach has primarily been applied to contemporary developments, its historical scope remains largely unexplored. The present article investigates whether medieval Persian medicine can be understood as a historically specific form of object-centered epistemic relations that is analytically comparable to the relational dynamics described by postsocial theory. The focus is on Persian medicine between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, examining manuscripts, hospitals, pharmaceutical substances, medical instruments, and pedagogical practices as material components of an epistemic culture. Methodologically, the study is based on a historical-conceptual analysis within the framework of Science and Technology Studies (STS), drawing on research concerning Islamic medicine and material knowledge cultures. The findings indicate that these material entities functioned as dynamic and open-ended centers of epistemic engagement, structuring learning, clinical practice, and scholarly communities in ways that exhibit important structural similarities to the characteristics Knorr Cetina associates with epistemic objects. Rather than arguing that medieval Persian medicine constituted a postsocial society in the strict historical sense, the article proposes that it developed historically specific configurations of object-centered epistemic relations. By doing so, the study extends the temporal and geographical horizon of postsocial theory, contributes to the globalization of STS, and demonstrates how non-Western knowledge cultures can serve as sources of theoretical refinement.

کلیدواژه ها:

Postsociale Genealogien ، epistemische Objekte ، iranische Medizin ، mittelalterlicher Islam ، Science and Technology Studies (STS) ، Geschichte der Medizin