anaximandek's book. 277 



ologoi, meaning thereby those who discoursed about physis. Having 

 elsewhere treated of the latter term I have no intention of taking it up 

 afresh. Suffice it for the present to say that men of the most diverse 

 interests in detail had in the fifth century much to say about physis 

 who never found their way into the group recognized as physikoi or 

 physiologoi by the doxographic tradition. When one considers the 

 members of the group in detail, and the questions which were noted 

 as falling within the purview of the historian of their opinions, one sees 

 that the classification, though intelligible from the point of view of 

 Aristotle's conception of philosophy, is altogether arbitrary as regards 

 the fields of knowledge cultivated by men of science in that day. 

 Opinions relating, or supposed to relate, to 'material' and 'efficient' 

 causes, to cosmology, to the more important meteorological and 

 terrestrial phenomena, to the gods, to the soul and its faculties, and to 

 the more striking physiological functions, were included; such as 

 concerned the biological sciences, zoology and botany, and the fields 

 of history and geography, were ignored. It is the same process of 

 selection which, at a later stage, determined the choice of those among 

 the writings of Aristotle that should have the honor of a commentary; 

 only in the latter instance the interest of the schools in logic led to the 

 inclusion of the Organon. 



The same inconsistency is fovmd in regard to the title On Nature 

 (Ilept (pvaecjos) . Probably the earliest extant reference to this catch- 

 word as a title occurs in the Hippocratic treatise On the Old School 

 of Medicine :^^ " Certain persons, physicians and sopliists, assert that 

 no one can know medicine who doesn't know what man is, how he 

 originated, and whereof he was framed at the start: that is what he 

 must fully learn who would properly treat men. But their proposi- 

 tion relates to philosophy, like Empedocles or others who have written 

 On Nature." Earlier references in the fifth century are to be found 

 in Euripides and elsewhere, but hardly so pointedl}^ or so clearly to 

 titles of treatises. Finally, as in Galen, ^^ we find it the generally 



85 Ilept dpxatrjs irjrptK^s, 20. 



86 V^ I. 131, 18. Besides the persons specifically mentioned by Galen the 

 following are elsewhere cited as having written Ilept (^ixrecos: Anaximander, 

 Xenophanes, HeracUtus, Orpheus, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of ApoUonia, Metro- 

 dorus, and Zeno of Citium. In my Ilept $uo-ecos I spoke somewhat at length 

 regarding the dominant interests of these treatises. A more intensive study of 

 the historico-geographical tradition'since I wrote that essay has not only con- 

 firmed my general view but has taught me much besides, especially in regard 

 to the mutual relations of the early scientists in their several fields. If I ever 

 set forth my conclusions as a whole it will have to be done in a history of early 

 Greek science, which I have contemplated for many years. 



