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

De medicina et medicis by G.
Tortelli, followed the way paved long before him by Celsus and Pliny.
16
Start-
ing with
De antiquitate medicinae by his contemporary Bartolotti, the histori-
ography of medicine made increasing use of Galen’s material as well as of his
notions of medicine’s past. Some biographies of scientists and physicians had
already been known via Greek and Arabic sources and their Latin trans-
lations;
17
during the Renaissance this genre was revived. The first general
history of mathematics, written by B. Baldi in 1580s, was a collection of
202 mathematicians’ biographies, from Thales to Clavius, patterned after Dio-
genes Laertius and using a wealth of Greek, Latin and modern sources.
18
An-
tiquity occupies about two thirds of this voluminous work.
The works of the humanists did not so much investigate the origin and de-
velopment of arts and sciences as illustrate them with biographies of scientists
and doctors, supplementing the latter with bibliographical and doxographical
evidence. Chronological outlines briefly describing the achievements of emi-
nent scientists from Antiquity to the present were a fairly popular genre.
19
Among the important tasks of this antiquarian and genealogical history was the
enhancement of the status of a given science by demonstrating its antiquity.
Thus the majority of early histories of chemistry considered alchemy’s claims
15
Jardine, N.
The birth of history and philosophy of science. Kepler’s “A defence of
Tycho against Ursus”, Cambridge 1984; Jardine, N., Segonds, A. A challenge to the
reader: Ramus on Astrologia without Hypotheses,
The influence of Petrus Ramus,
ed. by M. Feingold et al., Basel 2001, 248–266.
16
Giovanni Tortelli on medicine and phycisians; Gian Giacomo Bartolotti on the an-
tiquity of medicine: Two histories of medicine of the XVth century, transl. by D. M.
Schullian, L. Belloni, Milan 1954.
17
Musitelli, S.
Da Parmenide a Galeno. Tradizioni classiche e interpretazioni medi-
evali nelle biografie dei grandi medici antichi, Rome 1985 (A. A. Lincei, Vol. 28,
fasc. 4); Pinault,
op. cit.
18
Rose, P. L.
The Italian Renaissance of mathematics, Geneva 1975, 243ff. A part of
Baldi’s learned work was published posthumously: Baldi, B.
Cronica de’ matema-
tici overo Epitome dell’ istoria delle vite loro, Urbino 1707. For biographies of the
medieval and Renaissance mathematicians with a commentary and ample bibli-
ography, see Baldi, B.
Le vite de’ matematici, ed. by E. Nenci, Milan 1998.
19
Champier, S.
 De medicinae claris scriptoribus in quinque partibus tractatus, Lyon
1506; Brunfels, O.
Catalogus illustrium medicorum sive de primis medicinae scrip-
toribus, Strasbourg 1530; Gaurico, L. Oratio de inventoribus, utilitate et laudibus as-
tronomiae,
C. Ptolemaei Centum sententiae, ed. G. Trapezuntius, Rome 1540; Cla-
vius, C. Inventores mathematicarum disciplinarum (1574),
Opera mathematica, I,
Mainz 1611.

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1. The historiography of science in the 16th–18th centuries
7
to antiquity and refutations of them.
20
Hence, the ideas of the development of
individual sciences from their legendary ‘founding fathers’ to the author’s day
and of the transmission of knowledge from one culture to another are charac-
teristic, in various forms, of the historico-scientific literature of the Renais-
sance and distinguish it from the medieval Latin genealogies of sciences and
arts.
21
In the 17
th
century, the number and volume of works on the history of science
increases, the range of problems widens, and the subject matter becomes more
varied.
22
Voluminous works by such polymaths as Voss combine prodigious
learning with uncritical retelling of old legends. It is only natural that, in the
period when Hippocrates and Archimedes were topical as never before, a large
number of historico-scientific works were directly related to Antiquity.
23
Even
works of a more general character devoted the greater part of their attention to
this period.
24
Daniel Le Clerc’s fundamental