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

Prom. 447f.; Eur. Suppl. 201f., fr. 60, 236, 542, 771, 813, 931 Nauck; VM 3; Isoc.
Paneg. 32; Pl. Leg. 678b 9–10; Chairem. TrGF 71 F 21; Arist. SE 183b 20f.; Met.
982b 13–15 (later evidence: Thraede. Fortschritt, 148). In the fourth century BC it
will be contrasted with a different motif – the speed at which the inventions follow
each other in recent times (Arist. fr. 52–53 Rose;
 De an. 417b; EN 1098a 22f.); see
also a passage from an early Academic work (below, 87f.).
58
Edelstein,
op. cit., 3f.; Thraede. Fortschritt, 142; Babut, F. L’idée de progrès et la
relativité du savoir humain selon Xenophane (Fr. 18 et 38 D–K),
RPhil. 51 (1977)
217–228; Schneider,
op. cit., 60f.
59
In Isocrates (
Paneg. 32; Panath. 48; Nic. 8–9) and Aristotle (Protr. fr. 8 Ross), filo-
sofía figures as a (co)inventor of all the técnai. See also Posidonius (fr. 284 E.-K.)
and objections by Seneca (
Ep. 90).
60
Thales was the first to study astronomy, to discuss physical problems, to maintain the
immortality of the soul, to inscribe a triangle in a circle, to divide the year into
365 days, and to estimate the sizes of the sun and the moon (D. L. I, 23–27); Solon
was the first to institute the nine archons and to call the thirtieth day of the month the
Old-and-New day (I, 58); Chilon was the first to propose the office of ephores (I, 68);
Periander was the first who had a bodyguard and who established a tyranny (I, 98);
Anacharsis invented the anchor and the potter’s wheel (I, 105); Pherecydes was the
first to write of nature and (the origin of) gods (I, 116); Anaximander was the first to
invent the gnomon, the geographical map, and the celestial globe (II, 1–2); Pythago-
ras coined the word ‘philosophy’, discovered the monochord, was the first to intro-

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Chapter 1: In search of the first discoverers
36
the names of famous philosophers and scientists later continue to be associated
with inventions that stand very far from the properly mental sphere. Democritus
invented the arch (Sen.
Ep. 90, 32), Protagoras the shoulder pad for carrying
burdens (D. L. IX, 53, cf. IV, 2), Archytas the children’s rattle and the mechan-
ical dove (47 A 10), and Plato the water alarm clock (Athen. IV, 75). Eudoxus
was the first to arrange the couches at a banquet in a semicircle (D.L. VIII, 88).
Some of these testimonies come from people who are hardly to be suspected of
idle talk, for example, Aristotle (
Pol. 1340b 25f.). But what is important for us
now is not so much their historical reliability as the tendency, carried to ex-
tremes, to regard any, even the most insignificant element of civilization as the
result of somebody’s research and discovery. Because of the growing number
of new
pro¯toi heuretai, gods and cultural heroes are pushed gradually into the
background, particularly with regard to discoveries made within the horizon of
history. Finally, religion itself is declared to be man’s own creation.
61
Prometheus, who figures in Aeschylus as the inventor of writing, medicine,
astronomy, and arithmetic (457f., 478f.), was later superseded by human dis-
coverers, a separate one for each of these técnai.
62
To be sure, Prometheus
himself is far from being a traditional divine
pro¯tos heurete¯s. Let us have a
closer look at the Titan’s own description of his gifts to mankind, particularly
because this seems to be the first mention of mathematics and astronomy as dis-
coveries:
… I taught them to discern the rising of the stars
and their settings, ere this ill distinguishable.
Aye, and numbers, too, chiefest of sciences,
I invented for them, and the combining of letters …
63
Though the names of sciences themselves do not occur in Aeschylus, his words
make perfectly clear what branches of learning he means: the knowledge of ris-
ings and settings refers to astronomy, @riqmó~ (called Éxocon sofismátwn)
to arithmetic, and grammátwn sunqései~ to writing (grammar). The order in
which Aeschylus lists different técnai and sofísmata is arbitrary enough,
64
duce the meat diet for athletes and measures and weights into Greece, to identify the
Morning and the Evening Star with Venus, to call the heaven the cosmos and the
earth spherical, etc. (VIII, 12, 14, 48).
61
Prodicus (84 B 5), Critias (88 B 25); Democritus (68 A 77–79, B 166, 297); Thraede.
Erfinder, 1218f.
62
Theophrastus, discussing the problem of the emergence of arts and sciences in the
context of the argument on the age of humankind, claims that people who discovered
these things lived only a thousand years before (fr. 184.125f. FHSG). The partici-
pation of gods is not even mentioned here.
63
... Éste d2 sfin @ntolà~ ëg§ / Ástrwn Édeixa tá~ te duskrítou~ dúsei~. / kaì
m3n @riqmón, Éxocon sofismátwn / ëxhñron aÿto$~, grammátwn te sunqései~
(457–460, transl. by H. Smyth).
64
Hardly convincing is an attempt to find an ‘evolutionary’ sequence in the list of
crafts in