FROM HESIOD TO SAUSSURE, FROM HIPPOCRATES TO JEVONS
an introduction to the history of scientific thought
Jens Hoyrup (ROSKILDE UNIVERSITY)
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Notes on references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
On the present version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
“BEFORE PHILOSOPHY” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Mesopotamia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
TSS 671, the Shuruppak division problem (11); VAT 8512, the partition of a triangle
(13)
Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The “miracle” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
“Pre-Socratic science” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
From Socrates to Aristotle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Hellenism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Hesiod, Theogony (53); The Orphic current. Fragments (54); Hesiod,Works and Days
(56); Thales, summary of Diels, Fragmente (57); Anaximander, fragments and
summary of ancient accounts (58); The Hippocratic corpus (60); The Sacred Disease
(60); Airs Waters Places (62); Prognostic (64); Ancient Medicine (66); Herodotos,
Histories, book III (67); Aristotle, Constitution of Athens (68); Titus Livy, Ab urbe
condita (71); Aristotle, Metaphysics, book A (75); Aristotle, Metaphysics, book Λ (78);
Aristotle, De caelo, Book II (87); On the Almagest, and on eccentric and epicyclic
planetary theory (90); Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos (94); Sextus Empiricus, Against the
Astrologers (97); Aristotle, Historia animalium (106); Aristotle, De anima (108);
Theophrastos, Inquiry into Plants, book I (117); Theophrastos, Characters xxiv (118);
The Elder Pliny, Natural History (119); Galen, On the Natural Faculties (122); Archytas,
fragments 1 and 2 (129); Plutarch, Quaestiones conviviales VII.2 (130); Euclid, Elements,
book I (134); Sextus Empiricus, Against the Geometers (138); Archimedes, On the
Equilibrium of planes (144); Aristotle(?), Mechanica (145); Plotinus, The Enneads (148);
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Proclos Diadochos, Elements of Theology (150); Lucretius, On the Nature of Things,
book I (151); Aristotle, Categoriae (155); Donatus, Ars minor (157); Cassiodorus,
Institutiones divinarum et saecularium literarum (159); Augustine, De civitate Dei (166)
THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE AGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
THE MIDDLE AGES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
The early Middle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
The Central Middle Ages – 750 to 1050 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
The age of the liberal arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
The rise of universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Aristotelianism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
The compromise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
The fourteenth century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
The post-medieval university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, book III (202); Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks
(207); Alcuin, list of didactical and other writings (208); (ps?)-Alcuin, Propositiones
ad acuendos juvenes (210); Hrabanus Maurus, De universo (212); Abaelard, Sic et non
(214); John of Salisbury, Metalogicon (216); John of Salisbury, Polycraticus (219);
Thomas Aquinas, De regimine principum (221); Gerard of Cremona: list of his
translations (226); The Art of Nombryng (230); Albertus Magnus, Speculum astronomiae
(232); Albertus Magnus, De mineralibus (241); Étienne de Tempier, theses condemned
in 1277 (245); al-Khwa¯rizmı¯, Book of Algebra and Almucabala, translated by Gerard
of Cremona (248); Jordanus of Nemore, On given numbers (251); Ranulph Higden,
De arte predicandi (253); Jacopo da Forli, Commentary to Galen’s Tegni (255); Jean
Buridan, Sophismata (257); Nicole Oresme, Algorismus proportionum (259); Nicole
Oresme, Le Livre du ciel et du monde, Book II (262)
THE RENAISSANCE, 1400–1600 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Renaissance and Humanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
The wider context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Humanist scholarship, pedantry, and the humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
A “Scientific Renaissance”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Leonardo Bruni on Petrarca and his importance (289); Marsilio Ficino, Letter to Paul
of Middelburg (291); Leonardo da Vinci, observations on nature as supreme authority
(293); Bruni and Valla on the noble language (294); Juan Luis Vives, writings on
dialectic and the teaching of dialectic (296); Lorenzo Valla, The Falsely-Believed and
Forged Donation of Constantine (300); Giovanni Villani, Cronica (305); Jacopo of
Florence, Tractatus algorismi (309); Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito
Livio (314); Francisco de Vitoria, De jure belli (317); Pomponazzi
animae (319); Johann Reuchlin, Pythagoras redivivus (322); Marsilio Ficino, De vita
triplici (323); Paracelsus, The Book Concerning the Philosophers (327); Andreas Vesalius,
De humani corporis fabrica (330); Giovanni Battista della Porta, Magia naturalis (336);
John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica (344); Regiomontanus, De triangulis (351); Luca Pacioli,
De divina proportione (352); Copernicus, De hypothesibus motuum coelestium
commentariolus (356); Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (360)
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: TIME OF REAPING, TIME OF SOWING . . . . . . . 365
The post-Renaissance “scientific Renaissance” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
A shifting centre of gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Courtly culture and classicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
From scientific to philosophical revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Humanistic scholarship and theoretical activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
The problem of the Baroque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
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Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (391); Francis Bacon, Novum organum.
Aphorisms, book II (396); William Gilbert, De magnete (399); Marini Ghetaldi,
Promotus Archimedis, Seu, De variis corporum generibus gravitate, et magnitudine
comparatis (402); Galileo Galilei, Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due
nuove scienze (405); Descartes, Les Principes de la philosophie (410); The tools of
experimental philosophy (414); Robert Hooke, Micrographia (417); Robert Boyle,
New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects
(420); Robert Boyle, Excellency and Grounds of the Corpuscular or Mechanical Philosophy
(424); Pascal, De l’esprit géométrique et de l’art de persuader (428); Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan (431); Colbert, Mémoire au roi (1670) (434); Locke, An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (440); Antoine Arnauld & Claude Lancelot, Grammaire générale
et raisonnée (445); Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz, Mathesis biceps (449); Athanasius
Kircher, Musurgia universalis (452); Steno, Canis carchariae dissectum caput (456); Isaac
Newton, Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (468)
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
The appearance of the “public sphere” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
The Enlightenment movement and its staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
General themes and accomplishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
Philosophy redefined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
The scientific institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
Natural sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Jean le Rond D’Alembert, Discours préliminaire to the Encyclopédie (497); Christian
Wolff, Mathematisches Lexicon (504); Leonhard Euler, Introductio in Analysin
Infinitorum (509); Carl von Linné, Oeconomia naturae and Oratio de telluris habitabilis
incrementio (512); Peter Simon Pallas, Über die Beschaffenheit der Gebirge und die
Veränderungen der Erdkugel (518); Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, Mémoires sur la
réspiration des Animaux et sur les changements qui arrivent á l’air en passant par les
poumons (521); Julien Offray de La Mettrie, L’Homme machine (525); Charles de
Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois (532); Adam Smith, An Inquiry
Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (537); Edmund Burke, Reflections
on the Revolution in France and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative
to that Event (543); Étienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, Essai sur l’origine des
connaissances humaines (550)
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THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
The institutionalization of unbounded research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
The German university reform and the humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563
The social triumph of nineteenth-century science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 568
The triumphs of nineteenth-century natural science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 569
“Positive knowledge” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 574
Popularized science and popular science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576
Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 580
Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique (580); Frédéric Cuvier, Discours sur
les révolutions du globe (591); Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (597); Charles
Darwin, The Origin of Species (605); Claude Bernard, De la Physiologie générale (613);
Leopold von Ranke, Three prefaces (615); Karl Marx, Das Kapital I (621); Hippolyte
Taine, Histoire de la littérature anglaise, “Introduction” (626); Ferdinand de Saussure,
Cours de linguistique générale (632); Friedrich Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des
Privateigentums und des Staates (635); Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (641); Niels
Henrik Abel, Untersuchungen über die Reihe:
(649); Mary Somerville, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (652); W. Stanley
Jevons, Theory of Political Economy (657)
A BRIEF POSTLUDE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668
NAME INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
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