Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity
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The Origin of the History of Science in
Historical Dictionary of Ancient and
Modern Medicine includes, along with the biographies of eminent doctors, ar- ticles on Asclepius and the centaur Chiron. 30 Even such an authority on the his- tory of astronomy as Bailly still regarded Atlas, Zoroaster, and Uranus as the first astronomers. 31 To be sure, much depended on individual preferences. Thus Clerc, influenced by the critics, added a brief survey of the history of medicine until the 16 th century. 26 Ackermann, J. C. G. Institutiones historiae medicinae, Nuremberg 1792. 27 See e.g. Weidler, J. F. Historia astronomiae, sive de ortu et progressu astronomiae liber singularis, Wittenberg 1741. Cf. above, 5 n. 14. 28 Worstbrock, F. J. Translatio artium. Über Herkunft und Entwicklung einer kulturhis- torischen Theorie, ArKult 47 (1965) 1–22. Cf. below, 8.3. 29 For growing criticism of the concept of prisca sapientia in the 18 th -century histori- ography of philosophy, see Blackwell, C.W. T. Thales Philosophus: The beginning of philosophy as a discipline, History and the disciplines, 61–82. 30 Eloy, N. F. J. Dictionnaire historique de la médicine ancienne et moderne, T. 1–4, Liège 1755. 31 Bailly, J. S. Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne depuis son origine jusqu’à l’établis- sement de l’École d’Alexandrie, Paris 1775, 4. Bailly’s curious idea of a source com- mon to all the astronomies of Antiquity, which he identified with Atlantis (Pasini, M. L’astronomie antédiluvienne: Storia della scienza e origini della civiltà in J.-S. Bailly, Studi settecenteschi 11–12 [1988–89] 197–235), is similar to the thesis of a 1. The historiography of science in the 16th–18th centuries 9 Baldi (1589) opened his collection with Thales’ biography, Biancani (1615) de- cided not to mention Atlas, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Linus, etc., because they were legendary figures impossible to date, while Montucla, even in the second edi- tion of his famous History of Mathematics (1799), could not get rid of Thoth as the inventor of mathematics. The 18 th century, and its second half in particular, saw the rapid growth of lit- erature on the history of science, which numbered hundreds of solid volumes. 32 As science itself developed and became more specialized, the chapters on ancient science in general treatises grew shorter, remaining, however, subject matter for most studies. 33 Moreover, the number of special works on ancient science grew at least as fast as that of writings based on the material of Euro- pean science alone. 34 In the middle of the 18 th century, a historian of mathemat- ics could still allow himself to restrict his work to the biographies of ancient scientists. 35 Many writers continued to borrow from their Greek and Roman teachers not only evidence, but also the problems to be considered in the history of science. Of still greater importance than these particular borrowings was the perspective itself, in which ancient science continued to be an integral part of science as such, remaining, in this sense, modern until at least the end of the 18 th century. Admittedly, the new type of historiography emerging at the thresh- old of the 19 th century departs not from Greek science as such (the number of well-known modern mathematician and historian of science who found the common ground of all the ancient mathematical traditions in the megalithic culture of the third to second millennium BC (Waerden, B. L. van der. Download 1.41 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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