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

Constitutions, they were
addressed to a wider audience than the Peripatetic community.
126
123
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Hecataeus of Miletus, Parme-
nides, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Philolaus, Democritus, Antiphon, Dio-
genes, Metrodorus, Plato.
124
Contrary to Steinmetz (
op. cit., 116ff., 161ff.), it is hardly the case that Theophrastus
abandoned the idea of the heavenly ether. See Sharples, R.W.
Theophrastus of Era-
sus. Commentary, Vol. 3.1: Sources on physics, Leiden 1998, 85ff. and fr. 158, 161a
FHSG.
125
Gigon, O. Die Geschichtlichkeit der Philosophie bei Aristoteles,
Archivio di filosofia
23 (1954) 117, aptly called Theophrastus’
Physiko¯n doxai “geschichtliche Ergän-
zung zur eigenen Physik”.
126
On Eudemus’
History of Geometry as a literary work, see Becker, O. Zur Textgestal-
tung des Eudemischen Berichts über die Quadratur der Möndchen durch Hippokra-
tes von Chios,
Q & St B 3 (1936) 416f. Eudemus’ histories were his only works
known in the Hellenistic period (5.1). According to a plausible reconstruction,
Phy-
siko¯n doxai was available to Epicurus already ca. 306 (Sedley, D. Lucretius and the
transformation of Greek wisdom, Cambridge 1998, ch. 6).

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5. Eudemus’ history of science
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5. Eudemus’ history of science
Let us turn now from the tasks of the Peripatetic project to the various forms in
which its specific parts came to be realized. What are the differences between
Eudemus’, Theophrastus’, and Meno’s approaches to their branches of knowl-
edge and what are the reasons for these differences? Being of particular interest
to us and serving as a starting point, Eudemus’ history of science was the most
historical part of the project. The history of theology can be placed somewhere
between the history of science and a much more systematically organized do-
xography. Is it explained by the specifics of the material itself, the differences in
approach to mathematics, physics, and theology, or some other reasons? What
made chronology the main principle of the organization of material in Eude-
mus’ historiography of science? Was Gewmetrik3 îstoría the history of ad-
vancing knowledge, or rather, as Eggers Lan believed, “a classification of au-
thors by geometrical subjects”?
Let us start with the titles of Eudemus’ historical treatises cited in several
authors. The most exact variant is given by Simplicius: Gewmetrik3 îstoría
(fr. 140) and ^Astrologik3 îstoría (fr. 148); Porphyry quotes ^Ariqmhtik3
îstoría (fr. 142). The list of Theophrastus’ works (251 No. 2 FHSG) includes
(Eudemus’) Perì tò qe$on îstoría. But what does Gewmetrik3 îstoría ac-
tually mean: ‘geometrical research’, ‘inquiry into geometry’, or, still, the ‘his-
tory of geometry’ proper? It is obviously not a mathematical treatise: Eudemus
did not consider mathematical problems as such, but the way they were solved,
in historical succession, by different mathematicians. (This holds good for the
history of theology as well.) The subject of his study accordingly coincides
with the subject of the history of science as we understand it now. The titles of
Eudemus’ works are, therefore, not as close to îstoría as ‘research’ – the
meaning it takes in the titles of Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ treatises (ˆIs-
toría z¢wn and Perì futõn îstoría) – as they are to îstoría in a more nar-
row sense, attested already in Herodotus (VII, 96) and understood usually as a
“written account of one’s inquiries, narrative, history”.
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There is no doubt that
in Eudemus’ times îstoría could mean what we now call history
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and further
that such rendering corresponds best to the historical character of his writings.
But if Eudemus’ book had been entitled Perì gewmetría~ or had remained un-
titled, it would not make any important difference for defining its genre. The
fact that Thucydides’ work had no title and the author himself never used the
word îstoría does not prevent us, any more than it did the Greeks themselves,
from relating it to the historical genre. In the case of Eudemus, we also have a
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