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

Sphere and the Prism entitles him to such a rank (of su-
periority over Euclid). In his
Lemmata, Archimedes now had to admit his inabil-
ity to achieve the trisection of angles. After Archimedes, Apollonius earned
greater fame than anyone else, in particular, through his discovery of the proper-
ties of conic sections.
Revealing is the confidence with which as-Samaw’al speaks of pre-Euclidean
mathematics, referring to scientists’ biographies and historical evidence. The
historical perspective from which he sees the development of Greek mathemat-
ics implies an excellent knowledge of Greek sources, and precisely Eudemus
was the principal source for the pre-Euclidean period. Yet the conclusion as-
Samaw’al draws goes far beyond the limited epistemological optimism familiar
to us from Greek texts;
126
the Europeans will not arrive at this conclusion until
the age of the Enlightenment:
No sage or well-informed historian will deny the fact that all the various disci-
plines of knowledge have manifested themselves in a process of gradual increase
and ramification. This process stops at no final point and tolerates no irregular-
ities.
127
In Byzantium, the prospects for scientific progress looked entirely different.
The time of Eutocius, Simplicius, Philoponus, and other authors of the sixth
century AD, who still fully enjoyed the whole treasury of ancient tradition, is
followed by the catastrophic decline of science and learning in general. Cor-
relative with this is the absence in Byzantium of a historico-scientific tradition
comparable with the Arabic one, which also, far from being an independent dis-
cipline, served the purposes of propaedeutics and theory. Here is how the situ-
ation looked through the eyes of a Greek who had an opportunity to compare
Arabic science with that of Byzantium. When Stephanus the Philosopher, an
astronomer and astrologer born in Persia,
128
arrived around 790 in Constantin-
126
Cf. above, 60 n. 62, on Seneca.
127
Rosenthal. Al-Asturlabi and as-Samaw’al on scientific progress, 563.
128
Stephanus was a disciple of another Greek, Theophilus of Edessa (ca. 695–785), the
court astrologer of the Abbasids in Baghdad. See Pingree, D. From Alexandria to
Baghdad to Byzantium. The transmission of astrology,
IJCT 8 (2001) 3–37; idem. A

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Chapter 8: Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
304
ople, he found that astronomy was almost extinct there. Deciding to revive it, he
expounded its foundation in the work
On the Mathematical Art.
129
At the be-
ginning of this work, he remarks that with time and according to fate some
sciences emerge and others entirely disappear – either everywhere, or in several
cities only (I, 1). To demonstrate the usefulness of mathematical técnh for
human life, Stephanus turns to its history. Discovered by the descendants of
Seth (one of Adam’s sons), this science passed on to the Chaldaeans, then suc-
cessively to the Persians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans, and finally the
Arabs. As long as these nations fostered mathematics, they remained the rulers
of victorious world empires (scedòn kosmokratorikà~ kaì nikhteíra~
e£con tà~ dunasteía~). That is why he, Stephanus, would like to revive and
plant this science among the Christians, lest they should fall behind forever in it
(I, 2). Interestingly, in Stephanus, who lived one generation before al-Ma’mun,
we already find the model of
translatio artium in its Arabic variant, schematic
as it yet is. But unlike Arabic authors, who constantly emphasize that science’s
flourishing depends on wise and enlightened rulers,
130
Stephanus believes that
the well-being of the state is conditioned by advanced science.
Stephanus’ hopes for the revival of science in Byzantium did not – at least
not fully – come true. The Byzantines appeared to be dependent on Arabic as-
tronomy and mathematics and never attained their level.
131
In the course of the
9
th
–13
th
centuries, the scientific tradition of Antiquity was repeatedly broken, its
achievements, if not names, forgotten.
132
But even the names partly fell into ob-
livion. A notion of what was known of ancient mathematicians and astron-
omers in the 10
th
century can be gained from the
Suda lexicon by confronting
the names it includes with those absent from it. Missing among the scientists of
the classical period are Hippasus,
133
Oenopides, Hippocrates of Chios, Theodo-
rus, Euctemon, and all of Eudoxus’ pupils. Particularly striking is the absence
Greek ephemeris for 796: The work of Stephanus the Philosopher?,