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

Astronomy, whereas an excerpt of this work, analogous to but much shorter
than the
Catalogue, is entitled: tí~ tí e0ren ën maqhmatiko$~
;
134
We have noted already that the search for discoverers, which had mightily
stimulated the formation of the history of culture, remained topical in the Ly-
ceum as well. Some of the Peripatetics paid a direct tribute to the genre of
heurematography in works bearing the standard title of
On Discoveries.
135
Nor
did Aristotle ignore this subject matter himself.
136
Considering that in philo-
sophical biography discoveries are a recurrent topic, it could well go back to
Aristoxenus, the founder of the genre.
137
His biography of Pythagoras ascribes
to the philosopher the introduction in Greece of measures and weights and the
identification of the Evening and the Morning Stars with Venus (fr. 24). A frag-
ment of his work
On Arithmetic says that Pythagoras advanced the science of
numbers discovered by the Egyptian god Thoth (fr. 23). Extracts from other bi-
ographies by Aristoxenus (who wrote on Socrates, Plato, and Archytas) unfor-
tunately do not contain any similar information, but his work
On Music is brim-
ming with references to various discoveries (fr. 78–81, 83), as is the history of
music by Heraclides of Pontus (fr. 157–159, 163). Dicaearchus developed this
subject in his works on musical agones (fr. 75–76, 85), and in his
Life of Hellas
did not fail to mention the discovery of horse-breeding by the Egyptian king Se-
sostris (fr. 57). Still more important is the subject of the first discoverers in the
histories of various técnai written by Aristotle; it is presented in doxography as
well.
138
Persistent interest in cultural novelties and their authors is thus typical
of the majority of the historically oriented genres practiced in the Lyceum.
The influence the early heurematographic tradition exercised on these
genres had various forms and gradations. While Peripatetic heurematography
provides an example of the direct continuity of genre, individual references to
discoveries in the context of a biography or a systematic treatise testify rather to
the thematic continuity. The most interesting case seems to be where the prin-
sphaer., 88.18–23); on Democritus, prõto~ (Archim. II, 430.5f.); on Archytas,
prõto~ (D. L. VIII, 83); and on Eudoxus, ëxhúrhken prõto~ (Archim. II,
430.1f.).
134
Fr. 144, 145, 146, 147, 148; Ps.-Heron.
Def., 166.23–168.12. = Eud. fr. 145.
135
Heraclides Ponticus (fr. 152), Theophrastus (fr. 728–734 FHSG), Strato (fr. 144–
147).
136
Fr. 382, 479, 501, 600, 602 Rose = fr. 924 Gigon; see Eichholtz,
op. cit., 24f.; Wend-
ling,
op. cit.
137
Leo,
op. cit., 46f., 99f.; see above, 35 n. 60.
138
See above, 137f. Aristotle regarded Thales as the founder of physics (
Met. 983b 20),
Empedocles of rhetoric, Zeno of dialectic (fr. 65 Rose), and Socrates of ethics (
Met.
1078b 17). Particularly numerous are the mentions of prõto~ in the historical over-
view of the @rcaí in Metaphysics A: Hesiod or Parmenides (984b 23, 31), Empe-
docles (985a 8, 29), Pythagoreans (985b 23), and Xenophanes (986b 21). Theo-
phrastus follows and develops these ideas (fr. 225, 226a, 227d–e, 228a FHSG).

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5. Eudemus’ history of science
151
ciple of
pro¯tos heurete¯s becomes the constitutive feature of a historical treatise,
for example in Aristotle’s Tecnõn sunagwg2 (and, earlier, in Glaucus of Rhe-
gium) or, after him, in Eudemus’ history of science.
139
It is important to point
out, though, that this principle
as such is by no means identical to the historical
approach. No wonder then that the Peripatetic heurematography features tradi-
tional discoverers, rather than real innovators of the historical epoch, let alone
scientists.
140
The attention is invariably focused on cultural innovations as such,
constituting a list that is not ordered systematically or chronologically. Unlike
heurematography, the history of various arts and sciences (rhetoric, poetry, or
mathematics) attempts to show the dynamic of their development and does not
base the account on the list of discoveries, but on the chronology of their au-
thors, thus giving it a historical perspective.
In the history of science, Eudemus could employ a chronological approach
much more consistently than his colleagues, owing mostly to the character of
his material. In fact, in this period, the cumulative development of the exact
sciences was much more obvious than that of physics or medicine. The dis-
coveries of mathematicians necessarily depended on what had been achieved
before them: Hippocrates and Theaetetus relied on Pythagorean mathematics,
Archytas and Eudoxus developed the theories of Hippocrates, etc. A mathema-
tician could base his research on a solid foundation created by his predecessors
and move further in his quest for the truth faster than the others. To be sure,
Eudemus records in details some unsuccessful attempts to solve mathematical
problems, e.g. Antiphon’s squaring of the circle (fr. 139–140). It is, however, in
the nature of mathematics that its history includes many more victories than
failures, especially in comparison with other sciences. No wonder that, in the
history of early Greek geometry, Eudemus encountered fewer cases in which
many scientists
failed to solve one and the same problem than in the history of
physics. Each of the geometers mentioned by Eudemus could claim credit for
real discoveries that allowed them to be listed among the