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

Politics used the evidence of the constitutions? If so, clear traces of such
101
Cael. 270b 16–24; Mete. 339b 25–30; Met. 1074b 10–13; Pol. 1269a 5ff., 1329b
25–33.
102
Cf. Gigon, O. Die @rcaí der Vorsokratiker bei Theophrast und Aristoteles, Natur-
philosophie bei Aristoteles und Theophrast, ed. by I. Düring, Heidelberg 1969,
114ff.; Mansfeld. Aristotle, 73 n. 29.

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4. The aims of the historiographical project
141
theories or works are not to be found in their legacy. It might be the case, there-
fore, that no such theories or works were really intended. Indeed, granted that
the objectives of the Peripatetics were mostly historical, we do not need to
postulate any specific ‘final goal’, external to the historiographical project.
Both the project as a whole and its separate parts possess a genuine value of
their own, imparting a historical meaning to contemporary philosophy and
science as the last stage in the long quest for truth.
As for the further use of collected and systematized material, it could have
been intended for various historiographical and theoretical purposes. Although
we cannot pinpoint a specific theoretical goal for the whole project or for its
separate parts, we can at least exclude the least plausible hypotheses suggested
on this point. To them belongs, first of all, the interpretation of Aristotelian dia-
lectic as simultaneously both a source and a goal of the physical doxography.
103
Nor is the interconnection between the systematic
method of doxography and
its systematic
purposes obvious.
104
In his theoretical works, Aristotle often
used historical material preliminarily arranged by him chronologically. The
chronological method of organizing the material – the method characteristic,
although in varying degrees, of all parts of the Peripatetic project – can be re-
garded as an important indicator of its historical orientation. Meanwhile, from
the point of view of Aristotelian îstoría, the historical and the systematic ap-
proaches hardly contradict each other; rather, they are different methods of
bringing facts into a system. The specific feature of history was (and still is)
that it allows and even encourages the chronological principle of organizing
facts, whereas natural history employed other methods. In the contemporary
humanities, chronology and systematics often complement each other: the his-
tory of literature unites literary works by genres, the history of philosophy
groups thinkers according to schools, and the order of consideration may not
agree with the chronology of individual authors and works. It is easy to imagine
a history of Greek culture consisting of chapters on religion, mythology, litera-
ture, etc., or an economic history of Rome with chapters on trade, agriculture,
slavery, etc. The extent to which each chapter can be organized chronologically
depends on the material and intentions of the author. Therefore, the fact that
Eudemus employs only a chronological approach, while Theophrastus and
Meno combine this with a systematic approach, does not undermine the histori-
cal orientation of doxography.
Both before and after Aristotle, scientists, historians, and philosophers de-
scribed the opinions of their predecessors and disputed them
105
without attach-
103
See above, 133f., 134 n. 72. On the origin of the Peripatetic doxography, see Zhmud,
L. Doxographie in ihrer Beziehung zu den anderen Genres der antiken Philoso-
phiegeschichte,
Die Philosophie der Antike, Vol. 1: Frühgriechische Philosophie,
ed. by H. Flashar et al., Basel 2007 (