Partington's method presupposes... that Greek fire and gunpowder represent premodern forms of "scientific" knowledge. ...Partington's second presumptuous belief is that the history of Greek fire and gunpowder is primarily to be understood through chemistry... These beliefs were what justified Partington's biographical approach; he was interested in those who wrote texts and what was written in them, mainly recipes and formulas. Perhaps the most familiar practitioner of this method is the founder of the modern founder of the history of science, George Sarton, whose (1927-47) Partington's work closely resembles.
J. R. Partington