Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity
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The Origin of the History of Science in
The idea of progress in England, New Haven 1990, 29ff.
63 Thus, Wissenschaft in the subjective sense used to mean “persönliche Fähigkeit, Fer- tigkeit, Geschichtlichkeit”, in the objective sense “jeder Wissenszweig samt der praktisch-nützlichen Anwendung” (Bumann, W. Der Begriff der Wissenschaft im deutschen Sprach- und Denkraum, Der Wissenschaftsbegriff. Historische und sys- tematische Untersuchungen, ed. by A. Diemer, Meisenheim am Glan 1970, 64–75). 64 The future researcher may well find similar contradictions in what seems logically obvious to us. 65 A source book in Medieval science, ed. by E. Grant, Cambridge, Mass. 1974, 3f., 53ff. Chapter 1 In search of the first discoverers: Greek heurematography and the origin of the history of science 1. Prõtoi eûretaí: gods, heroes, men In theory, a study of the origins of the history of science in Antiquity should start from the point where history and science first intersect, i.e., from a histori- cal overview of the scientific discoveries of the past. The problem, however, is that such overviews are unknown before the second half of the fourth century BC, whereas the sporadic mentions that historians, for example Herodotus, make of scientific discoveries belong not so much to history as to heurema- tography. Yet this is not the only reason to regard heurematography, an utterly unscientific genre with apparently little to offer history, as one of the fore- runners of the history of science. Heurematography raised the question of how knowledge and skill are originated and transmitted long before the history of science appeared, and various answers to this question are part of the latter’s prehistory. Which is why the common origins of the interest in pro¯toi heuretai shared by both genres can best be traced in this ‘prehistoric’ material. * * * Interest in the past is inherent, to different extents, in all societies, including preliterate societies. The forms of its manifestation in ancient time are quite various, but generally they fit into the long worked out typology of folklore and early literary genres. Among the folklore genres, cosmogonic and etiological myths are to be mentioned first, then the heroic epic, which in many though not all cultures becomes the earliest literary genre. Another early literary genre worth noting is the historical chronicle, characteristic of the Chinese and, to a lesser extent, the Jewish tradition. This list does not, of course, exhaust the var- iety of questions the ancients asked about their past. It simply reduces our analysis to a number of definite themes that aroused constant interest and led to the formation of stable genres. Thus, a cosmogonic myth answered the question of the origin of the universe, an etiological myth explained the origin of par- ticular elements of the civilization, say, a craft or a product important in a given culture, such as beer in Sumer or wine in Greece. A heroic epic and, later, a chronicle, told of things of still greater interest: ancestors’ glorious feats. Ancient Greece, whose literary and cultural history begins with Homeric and Hesiodean epics, manifests the same tendencies. The Iliad tells of the her- oic deeds of the Achaeans and the Trojans, the Theogony, with its peculiar Chapter 1: In search of the first discoverers 24 ‘genealogical’ attitude, depicts the origin of the world inhabited by gods and men. But the interest in the past characteristic of the epic is not identical to his- torical interest as such. The first is satisfied with legends about gods and ancient heroes; the second, oriented primarily toward men and their accomplishments, seeks to explain the present by linking it with the past. For all the uniqueness of the Homeric and Hesiodean epics, they have very little about them to suggest that their authors had a properly historical interest. It is only natural, therefore, that we do not find in either Homer or Hesiod any traces of a tradition on the Download 1.41 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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