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

 Republic, in which Plato gives valu-
able instructions on how to develop mathematical sciences in order to make
them most useful for dialectic, and similar passages from other dialogues were
necessary and sufficient conditions for the creation of the Academic legend of
Plato as the architect of science? If we take into account the previous analysis,
which shows an absence of any firm historic evidence that he really did play
this role, such a conclusion seems to me very compelling. The legend about his
Apollonian ancestry, mentioned by Speusippus (fr. 1 Tarán), serves here as an
excellent parallel, since it was also born out of an interpretation of a Platonic
dialogue, in this case the
Phaedo.
131
The tendency to reconstruct or rather to
construct a biography relying on the author’s writings was widespread in An-
tiquity. If the image of Plato giving instructions to the mathematicians and as-
tronomers originated in the image of Socrates, the hero of the dialogues, such a
transformation would have been well justified in the eyes of the Platonists,
since it corresponded to the basic intention of their teacher: to see further and to
penetrate deeper than any of those whose knowledge he used.
5. The theory and history of science in the Academy
The role of Plato and his school in the formation of mathematics and astron-
omy proves quite negligible, as far as we can trace it. However, in history and
especially in the theory of science, the situation looks different. Plato was one
of the many who, disappointed with the heurematographic tradition, sought
different explanations for cultural achievements and innovations.
132
To a con-
siderable extent, the break with heurematography can be explained by its to-
tally ignoring the cultural and social context out of which the invention of arts
and sciences could hardly be conceived. The total or partial rejection of in-
herited myths, attested as early as in Herodotus, led either to the reconstruction
of the primeval past of humankind in which such figures as Asclepius, Or-
pheus, and Palamedes did not yet exist, or to the history of the oldest civili-
zation – Egypt (2.1). Democritus, Protagoras, the author of
VM, and others turn
130
Heath.
History 1, 324f.; Lasserre. Eudoxos, 176f.
131
Riginos,
op. cit., 9ff., 30f.
132
On Plato’s attitude toward the traditional Greek
pro¯toi heuretai, see below, 225f.

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5. The theory and history of science in the Academy
109
to the primeval past, while Herodotus and Isocrates develop the Egyptian ver-
sion. Plato used both approaches in different dialogues. Hardly original in
either of them, he must nevertheless have exerted considerable influence on Ar-
istotle and, through him, on the history of culture and science that was born in
the Lyceum.
Aristotle develops Plato’s theory of recurrent catastrophes,
133
in which ac-
quired knowledge is lost to be regained anew.
134
Both versions, the primeval as
well as the Egyptian, dwelled upon in many of Aristotle’s works, were taken up
and further developed by his disciples. It is revealing that the traditional
pro¯tos
heurete¯s discredited by Plato never makes an appearance in Eudemus’ history
of science, in Theophrastus’ and Meno’s doxography, or in Dicaearchus’ cul-
tural history. That does not mean, however, that it ceased to exist. Rather, it was
pushed aside, joining the ‘unserious’ genre of heurematography (indulged in,
however, by the Peripatetics) and popular history, where it lingered until the
end of Antiquity.
At the same time, Plato never attempts to give a schematic historically
oriented outline of the development of knowledge from its earliest forms, de-
termined by necessity, up to the perfect ones that lead to wisdom, such as we
find, e.g., in the