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

Bus. 23, 28). See Zhmud.
Wissenschaft, 183f., 213f., 248f.
84
On Democritus, see Burkert.
L & S, 421 n. 118.
85
Snell,
op. cit., 76.
86
The closeness of Archytas’ ideas to the Sophistic theory of técnh has not yet been
noted, probably because Archytas’ philosophy was little studied in the 20
th
century.
Earlier, F. Blass.
Attische Beredsamkeit, Vol.1, Berlin 1889, 89, pointed out the simi-
larity of this fragment’s style to that of Gorgias. See now Huffman, C. A. Archytas
and the Sophists,
P
resocratic philosophy: Essays in honour of A. Mourelatos, ed. by
V. Caston, D.W. Graham, Aldershot 2002, 251–270.

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3. Archytas and Isocrates
65
To know what was heretofore unknown, one has either to learn it from another, or
to discover himself. What one has learnt, he has learnt from another and with an-
other’s assistance, what one has found, he has found himself and by his own
means. Discovering without research is difficult and (happens) seldom, by re-
search it is easy and practicable, but without knowing (how) to research it is im-
possible to research.
87
Archytas starts by introducing the antithesis of máqhsi~–eÛresi~: knowledge
is acquired either by learning or independently.
88
The same pair of notions
often occurs in Plato, who uses it to contrast one’s creative activity with assimi-
lation of discoveries made by others. True knowledge (tò safè~ eıdénai) can
be either learned or discovered by independent research.
89
This is also true for
any técnh, for instance, the art of training youths. Socrates offers the Sophists,
who claim to be masters of this técnh, the following choice: they have to prove
that they have either discovered it by themselves or learned it from someone
else.
90
The currency of the pair máqhsi~–eÛresi~ is confirmed by the material
of the Hippocratic corpus and Isocrates. The author of
On Diet believes that the
diet he has discovered and considers close to the true one may reflect glory on
himself, its discoverer, and be useful to those who learn it (III, 69). Isocrates ad-
vises a young man to acquire knowledge both independently and by learning
from others: in this way he would learn to find with ease what others had found
with difficulty (
Ad Dem. 18–19; cf. Antid. 189, In Dion. 4).
The passage from Isocrates’
Panathenaicus based on the juxtaposition of
máqhsi~, eÛresi~ and z2thsi~ is particularly reminiscent of Archytas’ ideas.
Talking of the discoverers of the civilization and culture Isocrates remarks that
all these things
are not discovered by any and everyone, but by men who have superior endow-
ments and are both able to learn the most of what has been discovered before their
87
In the last period (m3 ëpistámenon dè zhte$n @dúnaton), it seems most natural to
understand zhte$n as referring both to m3 ëpistámenon and to @dúnaton: “without
knowing how to research – to research is impossible” (cf. ëpistaménou~ logí-
zesqai in the second part of the fragment). Blass, F. De Archytae Tarentini frag-
mentis mathematicis,
Mélanges Graux, Paris 1884, 581–582, preferred the following
text: m3 ëpistámona dé, zhte$n @dúnaton, interpreting it in the sense that he who
does not know
what to seek, cannot seek. As a parallel to it, he cited Plato’s words
(
Men. 80e) about the Sophistic theory, according to which one cannot research what
one does not know already. Cf. the translation by Diels: “für den freilich, der es nicht
versteht, ist das Suchen unmöglich.”
88
Cf. already in Aesch.