15. TREATISES AND HANDBOOKS 

 ON THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



The need of explaining the work accomplished by one's predecessors in any 

 philosophic or scientific field and of recapitulating the results already obtained is 

 natural enough. Every scholar who has raised himself above the lowest techni- 

 cal stage must have realized it, though he may have been unable to satisfy it. 

 That need was felt just as soon as the development of knowledge had assumed suf- 

 ficient complexity. Young students of the history of science may be astonished to 

 find "historical outlines" even in early times, but there is nothing astonishing in 

 that as long as one understands that those early times were not early at all from 

 the contemporary point of view. The "father of medicine" Hippocrates was a 

 very sophisticated physician, who had been preceded by many generations of other 

 physicians and thought of himself as a modern doctor. When we look backward 

 from our privileged position, we see him standing, not at the beginning of a long 

 line of physicians, but rather about half-way between our earliest Egyptian col- 

 leagues and ourselves. One of the early Hippocratic treatises deals with "ancient 

 medicine." "^ The first book of Aristotle's Metaphysics contains a history of early 

 Greek philosophy; various philosophical problems are introduced as it were in their 

 chronological order of appearance, a method which has been followed by many 

 philosophers and is still popular in the teaching of philosophy. The history of 

 philosophy is used to explain philosophy itself; in the same way, the history of sci- 

 ence might be used to explain science, if one had time enough for that."* Science 

 is so vast and complex that the teachers must use the shortest avenues of approach 

 instead of the historical one which may be the most natural but is certainly the 

 longest. This explains a paradoxical situation: while courses on the history of 

 science are still very rare, courses on the history of philosophy are an intrinsic part 

 of every philosophical curriculum. 



To return to early histories of science the best examples of it were given by 

 EuDEMOs OF Rhodes (IV-2 B.C.), who tried to explain the historical development 

 of arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Eudemos' histories are lost but many frag- 

 ments of them have been preserved in later writings."^ Unfortunately, that example 

 was not as fruitful as the one given by Aristotle and the history of science was not 

 cultivated as it might have been. The decadence and fall of ancient science and the 

 very slow and precarious revival in mediaeval times may be the cause of the historical 

 silence. There are some mediaeval books which might be considered attempts in 

 the direction of the history of science, but such attempts are rare and weak. The 

 best work in that line was done by Arabic scholars such as the Andalusian, Ibn 

 Sa'id (XI-2), the Egyptian, Ibn al-Qifti (XIII-1), the Syrian, Ibn abi Usaibi'a 

 (XIII-1). These books stem from the Arabic interest in the classification of the 

 sciences, in bibliography, and in biography; they are hardly more than lists of sci- 

 entific books (very precious indeed) with short biographical notes on their authors. 



A fairly large number of books on the history of this or that science, or on the 

 history of science in general, appeared in the eighteenth century. Their purpose was 

 the popularization of science, and the historical approach being as natural as it is, 



»3 n Epl &Qy_a'[.r\z IriTpixfi;. Text with French translation in Littre (vol. 1, 1839); text with 

 English translation by W. H. S. Jones in the Hippocrates of the Loeb collection (vol. 1, 3-64, 

 1923). 



^^ This was tried by many people, the most successful attempt being that of Poul LACOtni and 

 Jacob Appkl: Historisk fysik (in Danish, 2 vols., Copenhagen 1896-7; German translation, 

 2 vols., Braunschweig 1905). The method is excellent to teach the elements of science, but 

 beyond that point it breaks down because science is far too complex. Still, historical digressions 

 will often help teachers of science in their task. 



^ Leonardus Spengel: Eudemi Rhodii peripatetici fragmenta quae supersunt (188 p., 

 Berlin 1866). Hermann Diels: In Aristotelis physicorum libros commentaria (Commentaria 

 in Aristotelem graeca, 9, 10; 2 vols., Berlin 1882-95). 



