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

op. cit., 146; Thraede. Fortschritt, 141ff.; Meier. ‘Fortschritt’, 353.
54
See e.g. Xenophanes (21 B 18) and below, 1.3.
55
gewmetría denoted geometry, @strología and @stronomía astronomy, logismó~
and logistik2 arithmetic, ârmonik2 harmonics, mhcanik2 mechanics, öptik2 op-
tics, ıatrik2 medicine, perì fúsew~ îstoría and fusiología natural philosophy
or natural science.
56
See Fritz, K. von.
Grundprobleme der Geschichte der antiken Wissenschaft, Berlin
1971, 3ff.; Zaicev, A. The interrelationship of science and philosophy in Antiquity,
Selected papers, ed. by N. Almazova, L. Zhmud, St. Petersburg 2002, 403f. (in Rus-
sian). See also Zhmud, L. Die Beziehungen zwischen Philosophie und Wissenschaft
in der Antike,
Sudhoffs Archiv 78 (1994) 1–13.

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3. Greek notions of science and progress
19
Scientific problems are sooner or later solved, if they are correctly posed, or
withdrawn, if they are incorrectly posed, while genuinely philosophical prob-
lems (not technical ones, like those of logic) have never received generally rec-
ognized and irrefutable solutions. Since there are no
a priori reasons to believe
that the differences between philosophy and science change with time, we may
expect them to have manifested themselves already at the earliest period of
their synchronic development in ancient Greece. The development of mathe-
matics and astronomy would, indeed, have been impossible had each of them
not singled out a special class of problems solvable by specific methods, i.e.,
the axiomatico-deductive and the hypothetico-deductive method respectively.
The achievements made by these sciences by the end of the fifth century show
that Greek scientists succeeded very early in isolating solvable problems and
developing adequate methods of dealing with them. Owing to this, the exact
sciences, unlike the natural sciences, appeared to be independent of contempor-
ary philosophy and were not perceived as a part of it.
57
Astronomy, which orig-
inally included a natural-philosophic component, was divided by the end of the
fifth century
de facto into cosmology, pursued by philosophers, and the math-
ematical theory of the motions of heavenly bodies, which was the domain of
trained specialists, maqhmatikoí. By the mid-fifth century, professionalisation
becomes quite pronounced: the mathematicians Hippocrates of Chios, Theodo-
rus, Theaetetus, and the astronomers Oenopides, Meton, and Euctemon have
left practically no traces of philosophical preoccupations. In the fourth century,
the same can be said of Eudoxus’ numerous pupils; Eudoxus himself partici-
pated in some Academic philosophical discussions, but left no works on these
subjects. It is from this situation that Aristotle and his students proceeded,
clearly formulating the difference between
mathe¯mata and physics and consist-
ently following the distinction in their works. Thus, even the first two centuries
of the development of philosophy and the exact sciences do not confirm the
idea of their original syncretism. Neither is this idea proven by cases in which
science and philosophy come to be joined in one person (Thales, Pythagoras,
Archytas); modern history provides still more examples of such ‘personal
union’ (Pascal, Descartes, Leibnitz, Russell, etc.).
Presocratic natural philosophy did, in fact, study problems that we regard as
related to physics, meteorology, or biology, while the medicine, botany, and
zoology of the classical period stayed, in their turn, under the strong (though
not equally intense) influence of philosophical doctrines. Ancient physics re-
mained part of philosophy to the very end – but that is precisely why it never
57
“I am convinced that the mathematical studies were autonomous, almost completely
so, while the philosophical debate, developing within its own tradition, frequently
drew support and clarification from mathematical work … My view conforms to
what one may observe as the usual relation between mathematics and philosophy
throughout history and especially recently.” (Knorr, W. R