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

In Archim. De sphaer., 90.8f. = 47 A 15.
14
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. Ein Weihgeschenk des Eratosthenes (1894),
Kleine Schriften, Vol. 2, Berlin 1962, 48–70.
15
Knorr.
TS, 131ff. Eratosthenes’ letter seems to be unknown to Plutarch and Theon.
16
dusm2cana Érga (Eutoc. In Archim. De sphaer., 96.16 = 47 A 15).
17
Knorr.
AT, 22. It is much more likely, however, that the ‘anti-mechanical’ ending of
this story belongs to Plutarch, and not to Eratosthenes (Riginos,
op. cit., 145). See
below, 88 n. 29. Interestingly, Eutocius (
In Archim. De sphaer., 56.13–58.14) men-
tions one more solution to this problem, based on a mechanical device and attributed,
strangely enough, to Plato himself! As Knorr (
AT, 59) points out, we can wonder at
the flexibility of the tradition, which ascribed to Plato such a device, on the one hand,
while presenting him as a supporter of pure geometry, on the other.

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Chapter 3: Science in the Platonic Academy
86
story of the Delian problem to be a legend that arose in the mid-fourth century
in the Academy.
18
A parallel tradition in the history of astronomy depicts Plato as being the
first to put forward the principle of ‘saving the phenomena’ (s¢zein tà fai-
nómena),
19
explaining the apparently irregular movement of heavenly bodies
by attributing uniform circular movement to them. Having formulated the prob-
lem in this way, Plato posed it to the scientists, who then studied it using their
own methods; the first to achieve success was Eudoxus. It is easy to see that the
roles in this story are distributed in exactly the same way as in the legend about
the Delian problem. Plato’s powerful intellect uncovers the essence of the prob-
lem and formulates it for the
mathe¯matikoi; they then compete among them-
selves and in the end come up with an answer. It is revealing that this story oc-
cupied a central place in the arguments of those who attempted to present Plato
as a forerunner and nearly as one of the founders of European science. Unlike
the Delian problem, which despite all its importance cannot be related to the
foundations of ancient mathematics, the principle of ‘saving the phenomena’ is
a cornerstone of Greek astronomy,
20
laying the foundations of all astronomical
systems from Eudoxus to Ptolemy. If it could be successfully shown that Plato
really did have a connection with the formulation of this scientific principle,
then this fact alone would be sufficient justification for calling him an ‘architect
of science’.
If, however, we turn to the only ancient evidence on this story, provided by
Simplicius, the bright colors of this picture immediately begin to fade:
Eudoxus of Cnidus, as Eudemus reports in the second book of his
History of As-
tronomy and as Sosigenes repeats on the authority of Eudemus, is said to have
been the first of the Greeks to deal with this type of hypotheses. For Plato, Sosi-
genes says, set this problem for students of astronomy: ‘By the assumption of
what uniform and ordered motions one can save the apparent motions of the
planets?’
21
Mittelstraß, who analyzed this passage in great detail, came to a compelling
conclusion: it is not Eudemus who mentions Plato, but Sosigenes, a Peripatetic
commentator of the second part of the second century AD.
22
Actually, with his
18
Knorr.
AT, 22, 24. Wehrli also noted this (Eud. fr. 141, comm. ad loc.). Cf. Geus, op.
cit., 176f.
19
‘Preserving the phenomena’ is admittedly a better translation of s¢zein tà fai-
nómena, but I prefer to preserve the traditional idiom.
20
Lloyd, G. E. R. Saving the appearances,