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

systematic overview of what had been accomplished
in the preceding epoch. Dicaearchus in the
Life of Hellas considered the devel-
opment of culture as a whole, from its primeval state to his own time, noting not
only economic progress, but moral decay as well.
Thus, we can say that the history of science emerged not when it became
necessary, but when it became possible. This circumstance obliges us to do jus-
tice to Aristotle and his pupils, whose interest in the development of knowledge
allowed the history of science to appear long before it became needful for
scientists. Hence the third particular feature of the Peripatetic history of
science: the scientific community’s lack of professional interest predetermined
its subsequent fate in Antiquity. Unlike the other historiographical genres
emerging in the Lyceum, such as biography, doxography, and the history of cul-
ture, the history of science received almost no continuation, and especially not
in the professional community. Biography, which did not avoid scandalous de-
tails, addressed a wide educated audience; the histories of philosophy and
medicine later found the new forms answering the intellectual needs of the fol-
lowers of Hellenistic philosophical and medical schools. The history of culture
also had its own successors.
2
The history of science, even if it was interesting
for Greek mathematicians, did not engage them enough to take up Eudemus’
work.
It is revealing that Eratosthenes, probably the only Hellenistic scientist who
shared to a certain extent Eudemus’ interests, applied the latter’s historico-
scientific approach to geography, not astronomy or mathematics. At the very
beginning of his
Geography Eratosthenes opposed the tendency, popular in
Hellenism and especially among the Stoics, to derive all knowledge, including
geography, from Homer,
3
which made the boundary Aristotle drew between
science and myth a relative one. Though a poet himself, Eratosthenes ap-
proached geography as a scientist and started it, therefore, not with Homer, as
Strabo would later insist (I,1.2), but with Anaximander and Hecataeus of Mile-
tus. Anaximander was the first to draw the map of the earth, while Hecataeus
was the first to write a prose work on geography and also drew a geographical
map (fr. I B 5 Berger). Among Eratosthenes’ predecessors, Strabo (I,1.1) also
names Democritus, Eudoxus, Dicaearchus, and Ephorus, while Agathemerus
(
Geogr. 1, 1) mentions Hellanicus of Lesbos, Damastes of Sygeum, Democri-
tus, Eudoxus, and Dicaearchus. Since all these names are listed in chronologi-
cal order and mentioned in Eratosthenes’ fragments, his list of persons who
contributed to geography must have been as follows: Anaximander, Hecataeus,
2
On the influence of Dicaearchus’
Life of Greece, see Ax, W. Dikaiarchs Bios Hella-
dos und Varros De vita populi Romani, Dicaearchus of Messana, 279–310.
3
Berger, H.
Die geographischen Fragmente des Eratosthenes, Leipzig 1880, 19ff.;
Geus,
op. cit., 264ff. Cf. Strab. I,1.10; 2, 15.

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1. The decline of the historiography of science
279
Hellanicus, Damastes, Democritus, Eudoxus, Dicaearchus. A new epoch in
geography starts with the campaigns of Alexander, which opened for the
Greeks vast regions of Asia and Northern Europe (fr. I B 10–11 Berger). We
deal here, obviously, with the fragments of a historical overview of the devel-
opment of geography from its first discoverers until the third century.
Joining praise with criticism, Eratosthenes did his best to point out his fore-
runners’ individual contributions to geography, their eûr2mata. In geography,
however, unlike mathematics, incontestable discoveries exist side by side with
inaccurate, even erroneous notions:
The ancients considered the oecumene round in shape; in its middle lay Greece
and in the middle of Greece Delphi, because it holds the navel of the earth. De-
mocritus, a very learned man, was the first to understand that the earth (
sc. oecu-
mene) is oblong and the ratio between its length and width is 3:2. In this he was
followed by the Peripatetic Dicaearchus. Eudoxus, on the contrary, believed the
ratio of length to width to be 2:1, and Eratosthenes more than 2:1 (Agathem.
Geogr. 1, 2 = fr. II C 1 Berger).
This doxographical overview, which in Agathemerus immediately follows the
list of geographers who were Eratosthenes’ predecessors, goes back to Posido-
nius (fr. 200a E.-K.), and, through the latter, probably to Eratosthenes. It is not
clear whether it was part of the historical introduction to