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

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Introduction
Greek science and its historiography
1. The historiography of science in the 16
th
–18
th
centuries
Ancient Greek science has been studied for such a long time that the history of
these studies themselves deserves an enquiry of its own. Like philology, which
emerged in Europe as classical philology, the history of science was born as the
history of ancient science. It is the theories and discoveries of Greek scientists
that provided the material on which the methods of the history of science were
worked out over the centuries. This process started much earlier and continued
far longer than is commonly thought. Interest in the history of science appeared
first in classical Antiquity and has experienced more than one rise and decline
since then. The first rise came in the late fourth century BC, when the earliest
works on the history of science were written. Then, after a long period of
dwindling interest, medieval Arabic culture again focused attention on the his-
tory of Greek science, with later peaks of interest occurring during the Renais-
sance and the scientific revolution of the 17
th
century. The
modern histori-
ography of science, which takes contemporary science as its main reference
point and has gradually mastered new methods of source criticism, emerged in
the late 18
th
to early 19
th
centuries. This period coincided with a new infatuation
with classical Antiquity, so that, ever since, the history of Greek science has re-
mained a steadily growing field of study, combining classical philology with
the history of science.
This is the history of studies in ancient science summarized in one para-
graph. Those who seek a detailed history of the subject will be disappointed:
none has ever been written. Generally speaking, historians of science, unlike
classical philologists or historians of philosophy, have as yet shown no particu-
lar interest in the origin and the early stages of their discipline. In the few cases
where these problems have appeared to draw attention, their examination
proved superficially selective and seldom reached further back than the 18
th
century.
1
Apart from works on the ancient historiography of medicine
2
and
1
Loria, G.
Guida allo studio della storia delle matematiche, Milan 1946; Struik, D. J.
Historiography of mathematics from Proklos to Cantor,
NTM Schriftenreihe für Ge-
schichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 17 (1980) 1–22; Vogel, K.
L’historiographie mathématique avant Montucla,