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

Busiris, for example, one of Isocrates’ earlier speeches (ca. 390), this leg-
endary legislator is said, first, to have provided the Egyptians a sufficiency
(@nagka
$
a) and even abundance of goods (eÿporía, periousía, 12–15).
Afterward, he divided the people into three classes: priests, warriors, and
craftsmen and peasants (15). The priests, spared the necessity of toil and war
and enjoying affluence and leisure (eÿporía, scol2, 21), invented (ëxeñron)
medicine and philosophy (22) and also went in for astronomy, geometry, and
arithmetic (23). This theory, like that of Democritus, implies two stages in the
development of técnai, with the difference that Isocrates makes no mention of
music and other arts that serve pleasure and seemed irrelevant in the context of
Egyptian history, but passes immediately on to medicine, sciences, and philos-
ophy.
35
The frequency with which the subject of inventors crops up in Isocrates’
speeches, including the political ones, shows that interest in the development of
culture and in the past of humankind was not the prerogative of a narrow circle
of intellectuals. Isocrates’ importance for us lies not only in his ability “to for-
mulate best what most of his educated contemporaries felt and wanted to
say”.
36
The main cluster of his ideas and interests was formed on the threshold
of the fourth century and underwent no further essential changes, although
there are variations depending on the subject and audience. As a result, his later
works, along with his earliest ones, can provide material for the analysis of con-
ceptions current at the turn of the century. In
Panegyricus (ca. 380), which ex-
tols the role of Athens in the development of Greek culture, Isocrates combines
34
Met. 981b 13–22, 982b 22f.; fr. 53 Rose =
Protr. fr. 8 Ross = fr. 74.1 Gigon (p. 314b
12f.). Some assert that this fragment comes from
Protrepticus (Flashar, H. Platon
und Aristoteles im
Protrepticos des Jamblichos, AGPh 47 [1965] 66ff.), others that it
is from
On Philosophy (Düring, I. Aristotle’s Protrepticus. An attempt at reconstruc-
tion, Göteborg 1961, 227f.; Effe, op. cit., 68ff.). Spoerri, W. Kulturgeschichtliches
im Alpha der aristotelischen “Metaphysik”,
Catalepton. Festschrift B. Wyss, Basel
1985, 45–68, believed that the theory on the origin of culture put forward in
Met.
981b 13–22, 982b 22f. goes back to both these works. The similar theory, found in
De philos. fr. 8 B Ross, belongs not to Aristotle, but to Aristocles of Messina, a Peri-
patetic of the first century AD. See Haase, W. Ein vermeintliches Aristoteles-Frag-
ment bei Johannes Philoponos,
Synusia. Festgabe für W. Schadewaldt, ed. by
H. Flashar, Pfullingen 1965, 323–354; Tarán, L. Rec.,
AJP 87 (1966) 467–468; Mo-
raux, P.
Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, Vol. 2, Berlin 1984, 83ff., 92ff.
35
On the sources of
Busiris, see Froidefond, op. cit., 246f. (cf. below, 226). Leisure is
also mentioned by Plato (
Crit. 110a).
36
Meyer, E.
Geschichte des Altertums, 4
th
ed., Vol. 5, Stuttgart 1958, 329.

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1. The invention of técnh
53
a theory of the emergence of culture with a socio-political history. First of all,
he writes, Athens took care to provide its citizens with food and the necessities
of life (28). Citing as a proof the myth of Demeter and Persephone, the rhetor-
ician turns to more serious arguments:
But apart from these considerations, if we waive all this and carry our inquiry
back to the beginning, we shall find that those who first appeared upon the earth
did not at the outset find the kind of life which we enjoy today, but that they pro-
cured it little by little through their own joint efforts (katà mikròn aÿtoì sune-
porísanto). Who, then, must we think the most likely either to have received
this better life as a gift from the gods or to have hit upon it through their own
search (zhtoñnta~ aÿtoù~ ëntuce$n)? Would it not be those who are admitted
by all men to have been first to exist, to be endowed with the greatest capacity for
técnai, and to be the most devoted to the worship of gods? (32–33).
37
Immediately after his praise for the first discoverers in the prehistoric epoch,
Isocrates turns to the role of Athens in the colonization of Ionia and the struggle
with the ‘barbarians’ (34–37). Having succeeded and provided for the neces-
sities of life, Athens did not stop there. This city was the first to lay down laws,
invent various necessary as well as pleasurable técnai, and teach them to
others (38–40).
38
The ‘co-inventor and co-organizer’ of all these wonderful
things was rhetoric (47–48), i.e., the kind of filosofía practiced by Isocrates
himself.
39
In Isocrates’ later works, the theory of the origin of culture is even more
closely interwoven with the history of rhetoric. Man, he taught, is naturally in-
ferior to many animals in strength, agility, and other qualities. He makes up for
it, however, by his innate art of convincing others by means of speech. Owing
to this art, people not only abandoned the beast-like way of life, but also,
coming together, founded cities, laid down laws, and invented técnai.
40
At
first, while starting to socialize, all people sought more or less the same things.
Since then, however, we have made such progress (ëpeid3 d’ ëntañqa pro-
elhlúqamen) that both laws and discourses have become innumerable (Antid.
81–82). But while laws are respected when old, discourses are held in esteem
when new, and those who seek for what is new, will have great difficulty in
finding it (kainà dè zhtoñnte~ ëpipónw~ eûr2sousi, 83). Returning to the
history of eloquence, or philosophy, Isocrates remarks: some of our ancestors,
seeing that many técnai had been devised for other things, while none had
been prescribed for the body and the soul, invented physical training and philo-
sophy for them (181).
37
Transl. by G. Norlin.
38
On the invention of laws, técnai, and philosophy in Athens, see also Hel. 67; Pa-
nath. 119, 148.
39
Cf.
Antid. 181. According to Thraede (Fortschritt, 145), for Isocrates “language and
eloquence are the source, the culmination and the guarantee of progress”.
40
Nic. 5–7, Antid. 254–255. See qhriwdõ~ already in Bus. 25.

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Chapter 2: Science as técnh: theory and history
54
Some of the elements of the
Kulturentstehungslehre presented in Isocrates
may well go back to Democritus or one of the Sophists contemporary with
him.
41
We need not, however, regard Democritus as
the creator of study on the
origin of culture. He was, rather, the author of one of a number of such the-
ories, whose close affinity to each other need not be explained by direct in-
fluence. The most interesting of them from the historico-scientific perspective
was a theory of the origin of medicine found in the
VM. It is worth detailed
consideration.
2. The theory of the origin of medicine
Many Hippocratic treatises, which were addressed to a larger public as well as
to specialists, were written, in particular, to defend medicine from criticism
that its methods were arbitrary and ineffectual.
42
When attempting to explain
the nature of the medical art, a Hippocratic physician had the opportunity of
stating his views not only of medicine and its method, but also of the differ-
ences and affinities between medicine, other técnai, and philosophy. Some-
times he spoke of the origin of medicine as well. The
VM, dated to the last
quarter of the fifth century,
43
is the only work of the Hippocratic corpus in
which the problem of the origin of medicine is discussed in detail. Other Hip-
pocratics touched upon the topic but slightly. It has been noted above that the
author of
VM did not aim to write a history of medicine as a history of individ-
uals; it is primarily his own understanding of the medical art that he wanted to
expound. On the other hand, his own theory of the origin and the development
of medicine was not a formal tribute to the subject of
origo artis, but an integral