Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

Geometry and algebra in
ancient civilizations, Berlin 1983).
32
The bibliography of works published from 1750 to 1800 on the history of mathe-
matics alone includes about 200 titles (Cantor, M.
Vorlesungen über die Geschichte
der Mathematik, 2
nd
ed., Vol. 4, Leipzig 1901, 1–36).
33
See e.g. Heilbronner, J. C.
Historia matheseos universae a mundo condito ad secu-
lum p. C. n. XVI, Leipzig 1742; Weidler, op. cit.; idem. Bibliographia astronomica,
Wittenberg 1755.
34
See e.g. Taelpo, S.
Scholium mathematicum de geometriae origine, Aaboe 1700;
Krebs, J. A.
Dissertatio de originibus et antiquitatibus mathematicis, Jena 1727;
Schulze, J. H.
Historia medicinae a rerum initio ad annum urbis Romae DXXXV de-
ducta, Leipzig 1728; Costard, G. A letter concerning the rise and progress of astron-
omy amongst the antients, London 1746; idem. A further account of the rise and
progress of astronomy amongst the antients, Oxford 1748; Fabricius, J. A. Elenchus
medicorum veterum,
Bibliotheca graeca, Vol. 13, Hamburg 1746, 15–456; Neu-
bronner, T.
Historiae zodiaci, sectio prima: de inventoribus zodiaci, Göttingen 1754;
Rogers, F.
Dissertation on the knowledge of the ancients in astronomy and optical
instruments, etc., London 1755; Goguet, A. J. de. De l’origine des loix, des arts et
des sciences et de leurs progrès chez les anciens peuples, Vol. 1–3, Paris 1758; Rei-
mer, N. T.
Historia problematis de cubi duplicatione, Göttingen 1798.
35
Frobesius, J. N.
Rudimenta biographiae mathematicae, T. 1–3, Helmstedt 1751–
1755. Though this series was interrupted by the author’s death, an impartial opinion
on another book of his (Cantor,
op. cit., Vol. 3, 499) shows that as a rule he hardly
ever ventured beyond the Arabs.

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Introduction: Greek science and its historiography
10
works related to it continued to grow century after century),
36
but from ancient
notions of its history that failed to stand up to critical examination. A case in
point is the works of J. K. Schaubach and especially of C. L. Ideler,
37
which
combine competent historico-philological criticism with professional expertise
in astronomy. Due to such an approach, the history of ancient science finally
managed to take a necessary distance from its subject.
Despite all the individual and typical features of the historico-scientific
works of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
they can be usefully regarded as in many ways a single tradition that paved the
way for the modern historiography of science. The influence of classical pat-
terns on the formation of Arabic and, later, European historiography of science
is a subject of special studies. For our purposes, suffice it to state that the search
for the beginnings of the historiography of science leads much further back
than the Renaissance epoch. Even the texts of the compilers and commentators
of late Antiquity that served for centuries as the main sources on the history of
ancient science are but an intermediary instance. Five hundred years of studies
in Greek science have not passed in vain. The historians of science have long
been aware that the pioneer research in the history of knowledge was initiated
by Aristotle and carried out by his pupils. It is from them, or, more precisely,
from their sources that the study of the origin of the history of science should
take its start.
2. The historiography of science in Antiquity
The history of science belongs to the series of historiographical genres that
emerged at the Lyceum. Along with biography, whose first specimens were
produced by Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, still another genre popular in An-
tiquity was born here: the systematic account of doctrines on natural philos-
ophy, known as doxography. Studies in doxography took their start from
H. Usener’s dissertation (1858) and the fundamental