Francesca Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Ancient Mesopotamians did not have ‘nature’ as their target since they had no such concept

Francesca Rochberg, Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science, University of Chicago Press, 2017.
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In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. 
Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

"Before Nature’s formidable erudition will fascinate cuneiformists... For noncuneiformists, the book’s most compelling parts will be its discussions of western civilization’s philosophical attempts to define 'nature', postdating the cuneiform world—from Aristotle to Einstein and his successors."-

Science

“Rochberg examines knowledge about the non-human world embodied in Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts. This volume is concrete, detailed, and scholarly in descriptions of how these texts treat observations, regularities, and explanations; the author also teases out an enormous range of implications for the history and philosophy of science. The contrast between the ways in which these texts describe and conceptualize knowledge of the world highlights the manner in which more familiar modern Western concepts of science and knowledge are cultural constructs rather than necessary or inevitable. Precise and clear writing eases an intrinsically challenging work that calls presuppositions into question and raises subtle but consequential distinctions. Scholarly footnotes and a wide-ranging bibliography will facilitate further work, and no doubt some revisions of the author's conclusions. This work will stand as a fundamental reference in any good library of history, philosophy, or cultural studies. Recommended.” - Choice

“The naturalness of the concept of nature has recently been challenged by work in social anthropology, philosophy, cognitive science, and history.  In this brilliant new book Rochberg brings to bear her unparalleled scholarship and analytic skills to examine what light the ancient Mesopotamians can throw on this fundamental issue. They were arguably the first people we know to undertake the systematic observation, prediction, and explanation of a whole range of phenomena, especially but not exclusively in the heavens. But they did not have ‘nature’ as their target since they had no such concept.  So the aims they set themselves, the methods they used, and the assumptions they made about the world they were investigating are crucial to our understanding of the earliest endeavors to engage in what we can recognize as scientific research.” - Geoffrey Lloyd

“Rochberg makes a forceful, erudite, eloquent, and persuasive case that nature was not conceived as a discrete entity in Mesopotamia and that Mesopotamian scientific practices can only be properly understood and accorded their rightful place in the history of science when it is recognized that these practices were not informed by the goal of understanding nature and how it functions. Her command of the pertinent primary and secondary literature relating to Mesopotamian science is truly impressive and is one of the many strengths of the book. The author navigates effortlessly the most recent scholarship in the history of science, anthropology, and many other disciplines in the humanities in which the topics covered in the book have been treated from different perspectives. Before Nature is the only work to examine systematically and comprehensively the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of the whole of Mesopotamian science from such a remarkable analytic and historical perspective. For this and many other reasons, not the least of which is the depth, breadth, and erudition that informs every page of the study, this book will certainly become the stand-alone reference point for this topic for many decades to come.” - Paul Delnero

“Before Nature is a challenging book in the best sense: it invites readers to rethink their most basic categories—including nature itself—through the lens of ancient Near Eastern conceptions of order and practices of observation, interpretation, and prediction. The evidence for an alternative form of knowledge is presented with rigor and imagination, and the result is an enlarged understanding of order, without nature or causes. Before Nature should be read by all historians of science, regardless of their specialties.” - Lorraine Daston

Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture,  Cambridge University Press, 2007.                          

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a sample chapter (pdf)

The subject matter of this book consists of the various ways the heaven were studied and understood in ancient Mesopotamia, namely, celestial phenomena observed and interpreted as signs from the gods as well as observed and studies as physical phenomena in their own right. It discusses the emergence of personal astrology from the tradition of celestial divination and the way astronomical methods were employed for horoscopes. Its importance lies in its treatment of Babylonian celestial sciences as a whole (celestial divination, horoscopy, and astronomy) as a su bject for the history of science and culture.

Celestial phenomena in ancient Mesopotamia was observed and interpreted as signs from the gods as well as physical phenomena. Relating the various ways the heavens were contemplated and understood, this study traces the emergence of personal astrology from the tradition of celestial divination and how astronomical methodology developed for horoscopes. Its importance lies in its treatment of Babylonian celestial sciences (celestial divination, horoscopy, and astronomy) as subjects relevant to the history of science and culture.

"Francesca Rochberg has written a reliable account of Babylonian celestial science in a lively style accessible to the non-specialist, based on years of research in the primary documents. She has woven the story around the components of astral omens, astrology, and astronomy, while challenging many assumptions about disciplinary boundaries as they apply to ancient texts. Her nuanced approach is informed by a critical analysis of relevant materials in the history and philosophy of science and, as a result, the earliest scientific enterprise can now be appreciated in its proper cultural context." -
Bernard R. Goldstein

"The Babylonian science of the heavens, divination through ominous phenomena and personal horoscopes, and astronomy both observational and mathematical, is the earliest of all sciences, at once empirical and theoretical. The Heavenly Writing is a comprehensive and penetrating study of the entire subject, in particular of the most important and complex questions concerning this science: the relation of its branches, to each other and to other forms of divination, to religion and to magic, and in what sense it truly is science. Professor Rochberg sets out expositions of each branch that will be of interest and intelligible to readers without specialized background, indeed, no one has done this better, and answers to the central questions that will establish the standard for all future investigations. This is a great and profound book on a great and profound subject." - Noel M. Swerdlow

"This is a fascinating book, one that readers interested in the history (and, perhaps, philosophy) of science will want to read." - Fernando Gouvea

"Readers ... will come away with a deeper sense of the complexity, the profundity, and the antiquity of ancient Mesopotamian scholarship." - William W. Hallo

"...much to provoke further thought and research. ...'Heavenly Writing' is a book that lives up to its name". Bryn Mawr

"It is a long time since I've enjoyed a book this much, found so much in it to agree with, and so much to provoke further thought and research...The Epilogue is an excellent way in, while the 'Descriptive survey of the "unprovoked" omen texts' is the best introduction of its kind I have read...She is generous with translated quotes from both published and unpublished sources...All in all, though, Heavenly Writing is a book that lives up to its name." - Eleanor Robson

Babylonian scholarship increased markedly about one hundred years ago when ancient cuneiform texts became readily available and books were written offering explanations of Babylonian celestial divination. One of the latest offerings in this field, published in September 2004, is 'The Heavenly Writings - Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture' in which it is suggested that the place of Mesopotamian science within a general history of science has shifted with the change in histiography.
Author Francesca Rochberg, Professor of History at the University of California, Riverside, explains that this book began with a desire to come to terms with the nature of science as a cultural phenomenon in ancient Mesopotamia. It is an account of Babylonian celestial science that is based on her extensive research into primary documents (cuneiform texts), where she gives a critical analysis of the relevant materials in the history and philosophy of Babylonian science.
What seems to be of most concern to Professor Rochberg is that we do not place anachronistic consideration on what Babylonians saw as science or whether their achievements can be classified as scientific. Her primary goal, she tells us, is to 'locate and define interconnections among the various and diverse parts of the Babylonian scribal traditions of celestial science, that is, celestial divination in the form of omens, personal astrology in the form of horoscopes, as well as some parts of the astronomical text corpus.'
Professor Rochberg sees the historical reconstruction that separated legitimate astronomy from primitive lunar, planetary and stellar omens in accordance with a religion (or magic) -to - science scheme as being untenable. She sees science, and therefore the possibility of a scientific culture, as not emerging from a magical religious culture, but as fully integrated with it. Her investigations show that, in the face of the cuneiform evidence, the dichotomy between such hypothetical cultures is artificial and ahistorical.
Professor Rochberg argues that the cuneiform texts of divinatory astrological and astronomical content belong to the history of science, not because the Babylonians thought of these intellectual enquiries as 'science', but because, in assessing the nature and practice of their activities, we can reasonably place Babylonian divination, astrology and astronomy in a larger context that is meaningful within the history of science. 'The question is not how they thought about science but how we do.'
There has been continuing debate of late as to just how much the Babylonians contributed to the astrology that we practice today. I finished this book believing strongly that to dismiss the contributions that were made by the Babylonians we were not only doing them a huge disservice but ourselves as well. This book legitimises Babylonian astrological contributions in a way that advances our understanding of this period, fitting it into the context into which it belongs. The author evidently feels passionately about her topic and has researched it comprehensively. Having also written a book about the creation epic Enuma Anu Elil she refers frequently to it in this book. If you decide to read 'The Heavenly Writing' and you are not familiar with this work it might be a good idea to have a look at it in advance. The Heavenly Writing is an interesting book and one that may well advance the case for looking more closely at the debt contemporary astrologers owe to ancient Babylonian culture. - Sue Toohey

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/hw_rev.html

Francesca Rochberg, In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy, Brill, 2010. 

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Celestial divination, in the form of omens from lunar, planetary, astral, and meteorological phenomena, was central to Mesopotamian cuneiform scholarship and science from the late second millennium BCE into the Hellenistic period. Beyond the boundaries of ancient Mesopotamia, the ideas, texts, and traditions of Babylonian celestial divination are traceable in Hellenistic sciences and philosophies. This collection of essays investigates features of Babylonian celestial divination with special focus on those aspects that influenced later Greco-Roman astronomy, astrology, and theories of signs. A multi-faceted collection of philological, historical, and philosophical investigations, In the Path of the Moon offers Assyriologists, Classicists, and historians of ancient science a wide-ranging series of studies unified around the theme of Babylonian celestial divination's legacy.

"The collected essays in this volume, successive steps in an ordered path, constitute an invaluable contribution to a better understanding of Babylonian divination." - Lorenzo Verderame

"The reader interested in the multifaceted presentation of the problems related to the explanation of Babylonian celestial divination and well equipped with the knowledge of Akkadian will certainly be rewarded by the study of Rochberg's latest publication." - Henryk Drawnel