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

op. cit., 46. Cf. Knorr. Plato and Eudoxus, 320; Mendell.
The trouble with Eudoxus, 114f.
219
In fact, Callippus’ division of the year differs from that of Meton and Euctemon (see
above, 244). Eudemus’ report implies that Callippus’ correction of the Eudoxian
system is earlier than his division of the year (I owe this point to H. Mendell).
220
Heath.
Aristarchus, 194. On Schiaparelli’s predecessors see ibid., 194 n. 1–2.
221
Mendell, H. Reflections on Eudoxus, Callippus and their curves: hippopedes and
callipopedes,
Centaurus 40 (1998) 177–275; idem. The trouble with Eudoxus; Ya-
vetz, I. On the homocentric spheres of Eudoxus,
AHES 51 (1998) 221–278. No new
evidence has appeared since the time of Schiaparelli. What has appeared is new com-
puter programs, allowing us to model the astronomical phenomena easily. As Men-
dell points out, these programs became a major factor in the revision of Schiaparel-
li’s reconstruction (The trouble with Eudoxus, 59).

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Chapter 8
Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
1. The decline of the historiography of science
In Antiquity, Eudemus’ history of science was an exception, yet there are no
grounds to explain this by the unique character of its author. His works are part
of one of the historiographical projects initiated by Aristotle. A retrospective
view of the three Eudemian histories of exact sciences, his
History of Theology,
and Theophrastus’ physical and Meno’s medical doxography allows us to state
more clearly the conclusion we have already formulated here: without Aris-
totle, the ancient historiography of science would hardly have been realized.
This conclusion does not, of course, invalidate the other factors and causes con-
sidered in previous chapters. It only serves to emphasize the unique circum-
stances under which the ancient historiography of science was born.
First of all, in Antiquity, unlike the Arabic Middle Ages or the European Re-
naissance, the history of science arose not in the scientific milieu where it
‘should’ have arisen, but in the framework of a philosophical school, close as
the latter stood to the science of the day. Second, it originated not in the course
of restoring a disrupted scientific tradition,
1
but at the moment when Greek
mathematics and astronomy, having laid their foundations, were soon to
achieve their most glorious heights. The path Greek science had taken by the
end of the fourth century was not long and complicated enough to suggest an
‘objective’ interest in the historiography of science on the part of scientists
themselves. What they did need was the systematization and summarizing of
the principal results achieved during the previous period. This is precisely the
task accomplished by Euclid in his
Elements, Phaenomena, Sectio canonis, and
Optics, which eclipsed all the similar writings of his forerunners. A parallel
process was at work in the natural sciences: Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ sum-
marizing works on physics, zoology, and botany remained generally unsurpass-
ed in Antiquity.
Peripatetic historiography on the whole, of which Eudemus’ treatises on the
history of science were an integral part, can also be regarded as the
historical
systematization of the achievements of the Greek culture, which many of the
fourth-century authors considered to be nearing its perfection. It is from this
standpoint that Aristotle and his pupils wrote historical surveys of theoretical
(physics, mathematics, theology) and practical (music, poetry, rhetoric) sci-
ences in progress, listing glorious discoveries and names that represented the
1
See above, 3f.

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Chapter 8: Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
278
rise of these sciences from their first beginnings to the latest spectacular attain-
ments. In the physical and medical doxography, Theophrastus and Meno went
still further, presenting a