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

Doxographi Graeci
(1879) by his pupil H. Diels. In recent decades they have been actively carried
on by J. Mansfeld and D. Runia.
38
The history of science appeared to be
eclipsed here as elsewhere by other historiographical genres; apart from occa-
36
For an overview of the achievements and tendencies in the historiography of the past
two centuries, see Krafft, F. Der Wandel der Auffassung von der antiken Naturwis-
senschaft und ihres Bezuges zur modernen Naturforschung,
Les études classiques
aux XIX
e
 et XX
e
 siècles: Leur place dans l’histoire des idées, ed. by W. den Boer,
Geneva 1980, 241–304 (
Entretiens Fondation Hardt. T. 26).
37
Schaubach, J.K.
Geschichte der griechischen Astronomie bis auf Eratosthenes, Göt-
tingen 1802; Ideler, C. L.
Historische Untersuchungen über die astronomischen
Beobachtungen der Alten, Berlin 1806.
38
See e.g. Mansfeld, J. Aristotle, Plato, and the Preplatonic doxography and chro-
nography,
Studies in historiography of Greek philosophy, Assen 1990, 22–83; Mans-
feld, J., Runia, D.
Aëtiana: The method and intellectual context of a doxographer,
Vol. 1, Dordrecht 1997.

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2. The historiography of science in Antiquity
11
sional notes scattered through the works on Greek astronomy and mathematics,
not a single serious study has so far been written on it.
The reasons for this have already been suggested above. In Antiquity, the
history of philosophy and the history of medicine were parts of philosophy and
medicine respectively. The problems posed by Plato and Hippocrates continued
to preoccupy philosophers and physicians until Greek philosophy and medicine
ceased to exist – hence the large number of writings on these subjects, some of
which are still extant. The works directly related to the genre of the history of
science were obviously much fewer in number, and very few of them survive in
fragments. Apart from them, at our disposal is the vast historico-scientific
ma-
terial found in texts of different genres. Sundry as our sources are, they are cer-
tainly not scarce and the evidence they bring shows many features in common.
Though the historiography of science has not taken shape as a viable genre, the
existence of a historico-scientific
tradition lasting from the classical period
until the last centuries of Antiquity is beyond doubt.
The Peripatetic works related to the history of science have been studied
since the mid-19
th
century, with a focus on important testimonies they contain.
Indeed, those who accept what Eudemus reports on Thales’ geometry, or Theo-
phrastus on Anaximander’s astronomy, or Aristoxenus on Pythagoras’ arith-
metic have quite a different view of the early Greek science from those who
reject this evidence. But the problem lies not so much in the assessment of sep-
arate fragments or individual authors as in the general approach to the Peripa-
tetic historiography and its separate branches – doxography, the history of
science, biography, etc. When reconstructing early Greek science, we are com-
pelled to rely not on original sources, but on preserved historico-scientific evi-
dence. As a result, our knowledge of it remains largely dependent on what was
regarded as science by the Peripatetics themselves, what, where, and in what
way they actually recorded, and what they neglected. The main conceptual ap-
proaches to science, which predetermined for many centuries to come the com-
prehension of this phenomenon in Antiquity and in the modern period, were es-
tablished in the fourth century BC. The comparison of Plato’s and Aristotle’s
views on science with modern conceptions of it has repeatedly proved to be
fruitful: the differences between them allow us to grasp the specificity of the ap-
proach to science at different times, while the common features demonstrate
the invariable nature of the phenomenon itself. It is important, however, to con-
sider Plato’s and Aristotle’s positions in the context of the discordant opinions
that existed in Antiquity, particularly the opinions of those who created the
science of the time first-hand.
A terminological remark is needed here. ‘Greek science’ in this book is
mostly confined to the exact sciences – geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and
harmonics, though in some contexts ‘science’ inevitably takes on a broader
meaning. It is in the realm of the exact sciences that we find the closest possible
match between ancient and modern
concepts of what science is as well as be-
tween ancient and modern
practice of scientific research. From the late fifth

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Introduction: Greek science and its historiography
12
century BC on, the Greeks called the exact sciences by a special term maq2-
mata and clearly distinguished them from the other intellectual pursuits, e.g.
from physics, which they considered a part of philosophy. Unlike many other
disciplines practiced by the Greeks, the exact sciences, joined in the fourth cen-
tury BC by optics and mechanics, reached a truly scientific level in Antiquity.
Their special status is confirmed by the fact that Greek historiography of
science deals only with
mathe¯mata; no other scientific discipline became a sub-
ject of a historical work, though histories of medicine were written. Thus,
Greek historiography of science gives further justification for our rather re-
strictive treatment of Greek science, which proceeds from the modern concepts
but tries to pay due attention to the ancient ones.
The idea that the history of science allows us to trace the development of the
human mind in a more reliable and spectacular way than any other kind of his-
tory was repeatedly expressed in the age of Enlightenment.
39
The 20
th
century
provided a corrective to this idea, giving it more precision: the progress of
knowledge is best studied by tracing the growth of scientific knowledge.
40
If
science constitutes the best embodiment of the progress of knowledge, its his-
toriography can be usefully considered an example of changing notions of
knowledge, science, and progress, an integral part of intellectual and cultural
history.
Thus, our research aims not only at collecting the most important evidence
related to the origins of the historiography and methodology of science in An-
tiquity, but also at answering the following questions. What was the socio-cul-
tural context in which the history of science emerged? What do the main ap-
proaches to science that found expression in the Peripatetic historiography
stem from? Did classical Antiquity comprehend science as a special form of
cognitive activity, and did this comprehension find its expression in the histori-
ography of science? To what extent did the Greek historiography of science
constitute a historical analysis of the development of knowledge? Did it pro-
ceed from philosophical premises, or remain purely descriptive? What was the
fate of the historiography of science in the Hellenistic period? Why did it fail
where doxography succeeded in creating a stable and popular genre?