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

Greek and Roman artillery. Technical treatises, Oxford 1971, 1.

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1. The decline of the historiography of science
283
Zopyrus of Tarentum built the middle gastraphetes in Miletus and the mountain
gastraphetes in Cumae.
15
That the names of engineer-inventors were widely
known in the Hellenistic epoch is attested by
Laterculi Alexandrini, the second-
century papyrus from Egypt that was part of a school library. Along with the
names of the highest mountains and the longest rivers, etc., it contains the
names of famous lawgivers, sculptors, and architects. Under a special rubric
come the names of the seven famous engineers (mhcanikoí) of the classical and
Hellenistic epochs, accompanied by brief indications of their discoveries.
16
This was the information each schoolboy was supposed to learn.
Similar lists were also compiled on the basis of excerpts from Eudemus’
works.
17
Yet we do not know of any other lists of the
pro¯toi heuretai in the exact
sciences, while those that go back to Eudemus contain practically no new
names.
18
It is also revealing that the late authors who pass these lists on (Der-
cyllides, Theon of Smyrna, Anatolius, Porphyry, Proclus) were not original
scientists, but philosophers, compilers, and commentators – as were, in fact,
most of those in whom we find Eudemus’ quotations.
19
Does this mean that the
mathematicians and astronomers of Antiquity failed to accumulate a ‘critical
mass’ indispensable for the existence of an established genre, which for philo-
sophical biography and doxography was provided by the numerous adepts of
philosophical schools?
To answer this and related questions on the causes of the decline of the his-
toriography of science it is important to appreciate the real scale of ancient
science. R. Netz estimates the number of the Greek mathematicians known to
us by name at 144 persons and believes that the whole number of mathema-
ticians active in Antiquity did not exceed one thousand.
20
The contrast with the
modern picture of mass science is striking: the number of specialists in exact
sciences who are active in St. Petersburg now is almost as large as that of all the
ancient mathematicians and astronomers. It seems that, in Antiquity, to main-
tain a discipline alive, it sufficed if every century a few persons practiced it seri-
ously, i.e., achieved new results, the others serving only to pass the new knowl-
edge on. The development of a discipline, not necessarily a mathematical one,
often appeared to be suddenly interrupted, as was the case with Aristotle’s zool-
15
Biton, 61f., 65 = p. 74, 76 Marsden.
16
Diels, H.
Laterculi Alexandrini: aus einem Papyrus ptolemäischer Zeit, Berlin,
1904, 8–9.
17
Theon.
Exp., 198.14f.; Procl. In Eucl., 64ff.; Ps.-Heron. Def., 108.10–25, 166.23–
168.12.
18
Not a single name was added to the list of astronomers, while that of geometers was
augmented by Euclid alone. After Euclid, Proclus (
In Eucl., 68) mentions Archi-
medes and Eratosthenes, but only to establish Euclid’s chronology. He makes no
mention of their discoveries in mathematics.
19
See above, 236.
20
Netz, R. Greek mathematics: A group picture,
Science and mathematics, 196–216.

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Chapter 8: Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
284
ogy, Theophrastus’ botany,
21
Archimedes’ hydrostatics later, and Ptolemy’s
mathematical astronomy and geography and Diophantus’ ‘algebra’ still later:
the whole of Antiquity brought to these subjects hardly a single scientist
worthy of their originators.
22
In this respect, the fate of the history of science
does not seem to be unique; on the contrary, its origin, development, and de-
cline fully conform with the general regularities that become manifest as we ap-
proach Greek science in its entirety.
Since the small number of mathematicians active before Eudemus (who, as
we remember, cited the names of 20 geometers) did not preclude the emergence
of the history of science, the small number of Greek mathematicians in general
can hardly account for the lack of followers of Eudemus. We will adduce for
comparison one more figure found in Netz: the number of pagan (non-Chris-
tian) philosophers of Antiquity known by name amounts to 316.
23
Even sup-
posing the ratio between mathematicians and philosophers to have been one to
three or four, rather than one to two, the sudden break in the development of the
history of science, in contrast to the flourishing philosophical doxography and
biography, remains unexplained. A more important factor seems to have been
the degree to which philosophy and medicine, on the one hand, and mathemat-
ics, on the other, were institutionalized. Philosophy and medicine generally
existed, from their very origin and to the end of Antiquity, within the frame-
work of schools, while in mathematics schools were an exception.
24
Pythago-
rean mathematics developed within the framework of a philosophical school
that stemmed, in turn, from a political society,