7 Greek science and its language in Antiquity

according

§1 Although this study is concerned with Latin, a brief chapter on its precursor language in Antiquity is indispensable due to the significant influence of the latter on the former. All through the history of Latin up to the fall of Constantinople (1453), Greek continually influences Latin developments, as the motto quotation points out. This chapter will be limited to considering early candidates for being called 'scientists' ( § §2-3), Plato ( §4), Aristotle ( § §5-6), and Hellenism and some glimpses of later developments ( §7). 2 Chapters 3-4 above have already traced the Greek word ἐπιστήμη and its semantic field, mostly using the two authors most influential for epistemology and science in later times: Plato and Aristotle. We found that our modern categories of science, philosophy, religion, magic, technology, and the like (as used in chap. 4 §8 above) did not yet exist separately in early Greek thought; rather, they can be said to be in statu nascendi from earlier 'lore'. 3 This is the time and the environment in which the Greek scientific Denkstil is born; in Aristotle and Hellenistic scientists, it is already found in a very developed form. What many of the earlier authors quoted in the next few sections did and taught may at best belong more to one of our modern categories and less to others. So, while there are a number of important scientific insights and new methodologies in early Greek times, few of the men involved could be called 'scientists' first and foremost.
Concerning the relationship of language and science, the Greeks themselves in classical times do not show much interest in foreign languages (spoken by βάρβαροι) 4consequently, they are hardly ever conscious of differences between the use of their own language and others. The importance of language in convincing people of one's own point of view is one of the main points of the sophists ( §3), but inherent limitations of natural language are a rare topic among Greek scientists; indeed, the Greek language seems singularly apt to being easily extended for scientific use (see chap. 22). Such limitations are more often discussed by later mystics, who stress the ineffability of their experiences. Examples are Plotinus or, more importantly for the Latin  Church Fathers such as Augustine also often stress the ineffability of the divine. 5 From this ineffability, Eriugena will conclude that God 'is' not, but 'is' superessentially (Periphyseon III.5, PL 634B-C = ed. Sheldon-Williams, vol. 3, p. 60): Si igitur propter ineffabilem excellentiam et incomprehensibilem infinitatem diuina natura dicitur non esse, nunquid sequitur omnino nihil esse dum non aliam ob causam praedicetur non esse superessentialis nisi quod in numero eorum quae sunt numerari eam uera non sinit ratio dum super omnia quae sunt et quae non sunt esse intelligatur? 'Therefore, if it is on account of its ineffable excellence and incomprehensible infinity that the divine nature is said not to be, does it follow that it is nothing at all, when not-being is predicated of the superessential for no other reason than that true reason does not allow it to be numbered among the things that are because it is understood to be beyond all things that are and that are not?' (Trans. Sheldon-Williams, p. 61) formed the basis of natural philosophy as it would be shaped in the fourth century BC by Aristotle. Grant (2007: 18) §2 Exploring the first scientific achievements sensu stricto is made difficult by the fact that very few primary sources of the authors in question survive in full; for those in the sixth century BC, no complete text at all has come down to us. As a consequence, there is little concord on these authors' scientific approach (or lack thereof), which also depends to a large degree on one's definition of 'science', as pointed out above (chap. 4). A comparison with extant Middle Eastern and Egyptian texts from the second and early first millennium BC show clearly that in Greece around the sixth century a new inquisitive, 'scientific' Denkstil emerges. The extent to which it makes sense to see science as the further development of this Greek Denkstil is discussed at the end of this book (chap. 24).
The earliest philosophers often credited with the invention of 'science' and philosophy lived and taught at their own private schools in the Ionian city-states of the sixth century, 7 beginning with the Milesians Thales (ca. 624-ca. 546), Anaximander (ca. 610-ca. 545), and Anaximenes (ca. 585-ca. 528) and continuing elsewhere in this melting pot of Greek and 'oriental' cultures (especially Babylonian, Assyrian, Lydian, then Persian), such as Samos (Pythagoras, ca. 570-ca. 510) or Ephesus (Heraclitus, ca. 520-ca. 460). Upon the Persian conquest, some of these men emigrated to southern Italy, where they continued to flourish in various schools (especially Pythagoras, Xenophanes) and produced new approaches (e. g. Empedocles, Parmenides).
There are two points of uncertainty: first, how much of the early Greek (e. g. Milesian) 'science' stemmed from oriental sources mostly inaccessible to us, 8 and second, how much of it was actually 'science' and not just backward projection by later doxographers. The early oriental cultures are known for their 'wisdom' literature, which is clearly not of a scientific character. 9 A typical example of a scientific feat is the alleged prediction of a solar eclipse by Thales, who was in the 7 For a summary of the historical background of these cities at the crossroads of many cultures, see Marek (2010: esp. 177-183). 8 West and Burkert have changed our knowledge of these contacts decisively. See e. g. West (1971,1997) and Burkert (1969aBurkert ( , 2008, where the regional political background, especially the Assyrian conquests and the large number of displaced people in these times, is emphasised as the background against which Greek thought first becomes palpable for us. 9 There is a brief introduction in Burkert (2008: chap. 5).
'Pre-Socratic' 'science' past often hailed as the father of science precisely for this. 10 It seems clear now that such a prediction would have been unthinkable even for the Babylonians, who were in possession of astronomical data spanning centuries, and much more so for a Milesian, who could hardly have had access to records of past eclipses necessary to predict future ones, 11 at a time when the sphericity of the Earth was still unknown and thus also a fortiori the mechanism of eclipses. Indeed, it can be shown how already in Antiquity, this myth developed out of an untrustworthy statement by Herodotus. 12 Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans are often credited with the invention of the sciences of mathematics and music theory, although hardly any of their achievements can be confidently dated back to their founder or his first pupils. 13 Heraclitus might be taken to attest (although not to approve of) Pythagoras' scientific learning when speaking scornfully about his πολυμαθίη (D20 LM = 40 DK), but he mentions it together with Hesiod's 'learning' about the gods, which will not qualify as scientific in any way. In fragment D26 LM = 129 DK, Heraclitus speaks of Pythagoras as practising ἱστορίη, which again leads to his πολυμαθίη but also κακοτεχνία ('malpractice', with a connotation of fraudulence). Pythagoras and his early followers can be contextualised well as a kind of shamanic miracle men, 14 but that they engaged in activities that deserve the term 'scientific' must remain at best conjectural.
Nonetheless, many of those sages did set out to study φύσις and are accordingly called φυσιολόγοι. Although this concept roughly corresponds to our 'nature' (which is studied by natural science), it has some slightly different connotations: φύσις contains everything that grows or, indeed, comes to be (ἃ φύεται), thus the entire phenomenal world. The mystical and religious character of this 10 The tradition of beginning philosophy and science with Thales and his pupils goes back to Diogenes Laertius (De vita philosophorum I.13, ed. Long, p. 5) and tends to be upheld by many modern writers, such as Lloyd (1970: 8). 11 Not to mention the necessary mathematical skills; see Neugebauer (1970). 12 As done in Mosshammer (1981). It is interesting to note that science has a tendency to produce hagiography and mythology for some of its 'heroes' (e. g. Galileo and the wrong idea that the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat, respectively). Science should not be made a pseudo-religion, just as religion should not be pseudo-science. 13 The following largely follows Burkert (1972: 208-217, for mathematics: 401-420). See also von Fritz (1955). 14 Burkert (1962). The Greek term γόης comes close to our modern notion 'shaman' (which is abstracted from Siberian practices); the comparison goes back to Meuli (1935). Jan Bremmer voiced his disapproval, against which Burkert argues convincingly. Burkert also observes 'merkwürdig oft wird γόης und σοφιστής verbunden' ('remarkably often, γόης and σοφιστής are connected'; 1962: 189). vast entity was rightly pointed out already by Cornford (1912). 15 Thus, this 'all' is not far removed from what the neo-Platonists will call πλήρωμα: a divine, self-enfolding totality of being. This is what the φυσιολόγοι tried to understand, at first with approaches that can hardly qualify as scientific except, perhaps, insofar as there was a critical spirit and free debate among the sages. 16 In fact, some of the most renowned sages of the sixth century were already combined into a group in Plato's time: the 'Seven Sages', whom Plato lists as Thales of Miletus, Pittacus of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Cleobulus of Lindus, Myson of Chenae, and Chilon of Sparta (Protagoras 343a). They are by and large more statesmen or law-givers than philosophers or scientists, and provide another hint that Thales should rather be seen in that context too. Lloyd sees science's birth in the rejection of magic, a term he understands in a wide sense. He thus sees its novelty in the will to find necessary causes of phenomena. Some fragments from the Ionian philosophers indeed appear to indicate their preoccupation with principles and causes. About Anaximander we hear (P5 and D6 LM = A9 DK, known from Theophrastus): Θαλοῦ γενόμενος διάδοχος καὶ μαθητὴς ἀρχήν τε καὶ στοιχεῖον εἴρηκε τῶν ὄντων τὸ ἄπειρον, πρῶτος τοῦτο τοὔνομα κομίσας τῆς ἀρχῆς. λέγει δ' αὐτὴν μήτε ὕδωρ μήτε ἄλλο τι τῶν καλουμένων εἶναι στοιχείων, […]. 'Having become disciple and successor of Thales, he claimed that the boundless [τὸ ἄπειρον] was the beginning and fundamental principle of what is; he was the first to use the term "principle" [ἀρχή]. He says that it was neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, […]. ' We have seen (chap. 3 §11) that legal terms such as αἰτία/αἴτιον ('guilt; responsibility; cause') acquired a philosophical and scientific meaning, shifting from being 'responsible, culpable' for something to 'causing' it. Herodotus uses these two words 91 times in his Histories: he was clearly looking for reasons behind historical facts. Hippocratic authors, such as that of De arte (late fifth century, ed. Jouanna et al.), are also looking for causes of diseases. 17 Indeed, in the fifth century more convincing examples of scientific insights are found. Among the philosophers, traces of lasting scientific advances can be found in Parmenides (ca. 540-ca. 480) and Anaxagoras (ca. 499-428). Aristotle seems to agree with our view when he makes natural philosophy begin with these two men. 18 Parmenides had his own school at Velia (south of Naples); a bust of him from around 100 BC was found there, hinting that his memory was still held high then, apparently as a kind of priestly physician (see fig. 8). 19 He wrote a poem in hexameters treating the true nature of being in its first part, and the opinions of men in the second. Only fragments, mostly from the first part, survive. Parmenides is sometimes referred to as the father of logic, although this will also be a backprojection from later times, as his aims would seem to have been at least as much of a metaphysical or mystical kind than of a logical oneif he would have agreed at all to separate reality into such compartments. But it must not be forgotten that the second, apparently much longer, part of his poem dealt with the 'opinions of mortals, which cannot be truly trusted', 20 which were apparently in their time an advanced scientifically based Weltanschauung that included novel discoveries, for instance in astronomy that 'the moon gets its light from the sun, the earth is spherical, and the morning star is identical to the evening star'. 21 Besides inductive science, deduction is also well developed in Parmenides, who offers the first attested case of a deductive chain leading from an axiomatic 'it is' to a number of attributes of being: 22 it is eternal (ἀγένητον ἀνώλεθρον; 8.3, ed. Coxon = D8 LM = B8 DK), one of its kind (μουνογενές; 8.4), indivisible (οὐδὲ διαιρετόν 8,22), continuous (ξυνεχές; 8.25), timeless (ἄναρχον ἄπαυστον; 8.27), all of this of necessity (ἀνάγκη πείρατος ἐν δεσμοῖσιν ἔχει; 8.30-31), it is like a round sphere (εὐκύκλου σφαίρης ἐναλίγκιον ὄγκῳ; 8.43). Lloyd sees dialectical argumentation well developed for the first time here. Indeed, in the 148 extant lines of Parmenides (frags 1-17) there are many logical particles -γάρ (31), ἐπεί (9)and 70 occurrences of the verb εἶναι. Parmenides writes in hexameters, thus in a language based on epic, Homeric poetry. 23 In contrast, the first 148 lines of the Odyssey contain γάρ (6), ἐπεί (2), and εἶναι (8) much less often. 24 Anaxagoras developed much of this further, and among other things learned to understand the nature of solar and lunar eclipses, that is, that they are caused by the Sun's light being blocked (although he did not accept the Parmenidean round Earth). After him this view quickly became communis opinio. 25 Anaxagoras changed the written medium and wrote his book in prose, of which again only fragments remain. Besides astronomical questions, it treated much of the physical world, especially noteworthy phenomena (much like Seneca's Naturales quaestiones was to do; see chap. 8 §8).  Besides astronomy, geometry also seems to have developed into a scientific branch in the fifth century. Unfortunately, we are even less well informed about these beginnings. Geometry is in many respects an especially important science, as it was to become paradigmatic and its methods were copied within other sciences until at least early modern times (see §7). The important discoveries by Hippocrates of Chios (ca. 470-ca. 410), Theaetetus of Athens (ca. 417-368), and others culminate in the great work of Euclid (ca. 325-ca. 270). 26 Its title, στοιχεῖα 'arguments set in line' 27 (see chap. 3 §11 above), exemplifies its scientific nature; this work and its translations will be discussed in chapter 22.
Democritus of Abdera (ca. 460-ca. 370), who already belongs to the generation of Socrates, seems to be consciously engaged in shaping language to contain his thinking. Unfortunately, there are only some three hundred, mostly short fragments left of his numerous treatises. 28 The LSJ dictionary lists 628 lemmata in which Democritus is mentioned, of which slightly more than one hundred are otherwise practically not or not at all used by any other Greek writer. A few examples follow. 29 δέν (as an opposite to μηδέν 'nothing') denoted his atoms. This linguistically misconstructed word (μηδέν < μηδ' ἕν) was long thought to have been Democritus' invention, but now another instance of it has become known. 30 The word στοιχεῖα, adapted from its original meaning, 'letters', denotes for Democritus the atoms which make up things in a similar way to how letters make up words. Here are some words that are only known from him (translations from LSJ):   Many of these words are compounds reminiscent of epic poetry. Against expectations, many of them are not nouns (although abstracta in -ία are also common); more frequently, they are adjectives (often in -ής) or verbs (often in -έω or -όω). Of course, Democritus also uses normal words technically, such as τροπή ('position') or ῥυσμός ('shape'). 32 Such a linguistic approach, which easily coins new expressions for novel thought, stands in stark contrast to Plato (who did not coin any new words) and Aristotle (who did so, but rarely and quite differently). This approach to coining new terms is examined below (chap. 21).
In short, this evidence shows that while traces of scientific activities in the sixth century are meagre at best, things change significantly in the fifth. In addition to astronomy and demonstrative mathematics, this trend can be seen confirmed in Hippocratic medicine, apparently initiated by Hippocrates of Cos (fl. ca. 430). 33 Among Hippocratic physicians, a new methodological approach can, for instance, be seen in the author of De morbo sacro (ed. Jouanna), who tries to find natural causes, that is, causes from within φύσις, which follows its own rules (no intervention by divinities), to explain epilepsy, a disease that was especially prone to be linked with the divine. Unfortunately his 'natural' explanations seem to us today just as fanciful as those given by his opponents, the temple healers: he believed that the veins carrying air and phlegm to the brain do not work properly. Although his reasoning does make use of causes, these are fanciful and untested claims and do not at all correspond to observable facts. Accordingly, his remedies against epilepsy (mostly dietetic) are likely to have had as much (or as little) effect as those of the temple healers. Nonetheless, his approach was more scientific, although for the layman the difference between the two ways of healing may not have been obvious. 34 Some of these Hippocratic authors recorded not only their successes but also their failures in a scientific spirit, so that others could learn from them: 'a quite unprecedented phenomenon' (Lloyd 1987: 124). It would cer-  tainly be rewarding to study the Hippocratic authors' language further. The logical nexuses are strongly emphasised by some of them, for example by linking statements with γάρ. 35 Other scientific fields, such as historiography and geography, developed in a similar critical spirit during the fifth century. Hecataeus of Miletus (ca. 550-ca. 480) is said to have designed the first world map, and Herodotus of Halicarnassus (ca. 485-424) writes his Historiae in a spirit of trying to see events causally connected to one another. These later developments were already happening during the rise of sophistic rhetoric, pointing the way to Plato and his pupil Aristotle. The innovations in this period in natural philosophy, medicine, and history may well be addressed as a new Greek Denkstil; this Denkstil would entail a new, critical appraisal of the rôle of language. This became important among the s o p h i s t s . §3 How the term σοφιστής changed its meaning from 'expert' to 'sophist'i. e. someone who takes money for teaching how to persuade people, regardless of the truth of the positioncan be followed nicely in Laks & Most (vol. 8, chap. 42). The sophists 36 were certainly 'no self-contained group, let alone one that constituted itself self-consciously as a movement or school' (Lloyd 1987: 93). But this loose group of teachers can be said to be the inventors of higher education. 37 What unites them is an interest in rhetoric and dialectic, a demand in Greek society for more than elementary education, the development of scientific subjects, a growing interest in political and moral questions. 38 The realisation of the power and ambiguity of words was also very important in forming a consciousness of how convincing othersand at a later stage also oneselfcan be achieved.
In historiography, sophist influence is patent in Thucydides (ca. 460-ca. 400), who tries to be 'scientific' by stressing the amount of certainty, τὸ σαφές. He uses this word 34 times. If personal observation was impossible, τεκμήρια ('sure signs or tokens, proofs') were used; the same usage of these words occurs in some of the Hippocratic texts. 39 When, especially for times long past, τεκμήρια were also unavailable, only τὸ εἰκός ('probability') remained (as later for Aristotle). 40 In chapters 20-22, Thucydides speaks about the methods and goals of his history. An example (Historiae I.22.3-4, ed. Jones): ἐπιπόνως δὲ ηὑρίσκετο, διότι οἱ παρόντες τοῖς ἔργοις ἑκάστοις οὐ ταὐτὰ περὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ἔλεγον, ἀλλ' ὡς ἑκατέρων τις εὐνοίας ἢ μνήμης ἔχοι. καὶ ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται· ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελλόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει. κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται. '[What happened] was discovered laboriously, for those present at the respective events did not report the same about the same things, but instead as goodwill and memory of each had it. The fact that the book lacks myth may render it less enjoyable for hearing, but to those who will wish to spot what is certain about past deeds, which according to human nature will be the same or similar again, it will be sufficiently useful. It is composed as a possession for all times rather than to hear applause in the present.' Such a way of thinking is hardly imaginable without the sophist movement, but in contrast to it, Thucydides points out, he sets out to approach what actually happened as truthfully as possible, not to use the εἰκός merely in order to reach his own personal goals. As discussed above (chap. 3 §5), this may warrant speaking of scientific historiography. Laks & Most offer good reasons (vol. 8, pp. 293-294) for including his contemporary Socrates (ca. 470-399) among the sophists. He did not commend his philosophy to writing, but his pupils Plato and (indirectly) Aristotle will be central for what follows. Both had their own private schools that continued to work long after their founders' death. 41 Plato and his Academy §4 Judging from his extant works, Plato's (mid 420s-348/347) interest in the natural sciences was rather limited. They do not figure in his utopian Republic, and indeed, only one of his many extant exoteric works, the Timaeus, is concerned with them. But to what extent scientific study was an integral part of his school, the Academy, and of his unwritten teaching is a much-debated question. 42 Philosophy, rhetoric, and moral and political theory seem to have been central in the First, some key passages in Plato's preserved, exoteric works are considered, and then a few words will be said about his handling of language. In the Timaeus, he attempts to present at least an εἰκὸς μῦθος (28d) of how nature works, a true λόγος being impossible for non-necessary, non-ideal things (e. g. 27d, 29b). This unusual work will be the only one known directly in the Latin Middle Ages. In this dialogue, Plato uses mathematics (e. g. the five Platonic bodies) to explain the constituents of matter in a very speculative way; 44 apparently, he reworks a lot of physical and biological theories from his predecessors. It is usually hardly possible to determine what is his own contribution and what comes from them, but Lloyd (1968: 88-89) argues that at least some of it is indeed his own. Lloyd is rather sceptical of the scientific character of the work and of Plato's approach in general, 45 but concedes that the greatest legacy of Plato to natural science may have been his 'general belief in the mathematical structure of the universe and his ideal of the mathematical framework of scientific explanations' (91). As discussed above (chap. 2 §2), Plato discusses in his Theaetetus what ἐπιστήμη is, here still taken sensu lato, as true 'knowledge' in general. The dialogue's results are mostly negative, but it does contain some key future terms. Plato shows that knowledge does not come from the senses and that there are difficulties in defining it as correct opinion (ἀληθὴς δόξα, 187b), so this definition is improved by adding μετὰ λόγου (201c-d), concluding (202c2-3): From 206c onward, the precise meaning of λόγος is sought, leading to the final attempt at a definition (208e): Ὃς δ' ἂν μετ' ὀρθῆς δόξης περὶ ὁτουοῦν τῶν ὄντων τὴν διαφορὰν τῶν ἄλλων προσλάβῃ, αὐτοῦ ἐπιστήμων γεγονὼς ἔσται οὗ πρότερον ἦν δοξαστής. 'Someone who adds the ability to distinguish from other things to a right opinion about anything: he will have become knowledgeable about what he previously only held as opinion.' Knowledge able to distinguish the reason or definition (λόγον […] λήψῃ; 208d) of something, truly understands it. In the Euthyphron (11a), 'definition' (in this case of τὸ ὅσιον) is said to be directed at the οὐσία of the definiendum. Plato speaks of the ἐκεῖνο ἄνευ οὗ (sine quo non) in his Phaedon (99a-b) to differentiate between necessary causes and merely concomitant factors. This can be generalised: it is not only causes that reflect a scientific endeavour but also the desire in general to understand a phenomenon out of itself instead of just using it for some end or accepting opinions about it. Thus, mathematics can be said to arise when proofs are sought for claims, an approach that produced Euclid's Elementa. It is especially Plato who distinguishes strictly between the provably true and the merely probable, which latter must remain in the confines of mere δόξα and is thusaccording to Platonot susceptible to scientific study. Hence, his philosophy is hardly interested in 'physical' things treated by the natural sciences (excepting the Timaeus). In his Philebus, Plato marks clarity, exactness, and truth as the distinguishing characteristics of philosophical dialectics, in contrast to mere persuasion (58b-c): οὐκ, ὦ φίλε Πρώταρχε, τοῦτο ἔγωγε ἐζήτουν πω, τίς τέχνη ἢ τίς ἐπιστήμη πασῶν διαφέρει τῷ μεγίστη καὶ ἀρίστη καὶ πλεῖστα ὠφελοῦσα ἡμᾶς, ἀλλὰ τίς ποτε τὸ σαφὲς καὶ τἀκριβὲς καὶ τὸ ἀληθέστατον. 'I have not, friend Protarchus, just been seeking what kind of art or knowledge of all of them is distinguished as the greatest, best, and of most use to us, but what is the one that is most certain, exact and truthful.' Besides these passages from his works for a broad public, one wonders what he stated in his esoteric works and possibly in his unwritten teachings. Already in Antiquity, there was a vivid discussion about the latter. The neo-Platonists with their hierarchical worldview, in which mathematics plays an important rôle alongside the Platonic ideas high up in the hierarchy, saw themselves as faithful pupils of Plato. Gaiser (1963: appendix) presents a collection of all the passages from Antiquity that mention Plato's unwritten teaching, and is able to deduce some basic characteristics from it. He sees the roots of science as we know it today more in Plato than in Aristotle. But this seems questionable: later chapters will make clear that these two approaches were both important for the development of science, but that Aristotle's more open and observational, less 'metaphysical' approach was of greater importance for acquiring new scientific understanding. Nonetheless, Gaiser is certainly right when he states: 'Platon hat, geschichtlich gesehen, zu der heute erreichten Mathematisierung der Natur den entscheidenden Anstoß gegeben' ('From a historical point of view, Plato gave the decisive impetus for the mathematisation of nature achieved today'; 1963: 38).
Besides his emphasis on the mathematical structure of reality, Plato's most important other contribution to the advancement of science will have to be seen in his strict and conscious employment of language, in which he was trained by the sophists' eristic use of it. Plato's view of the limits of language is expressed in the Cratylus. Socrates discusses with the Heraclitean Cratylus about whether (383a) ὀνόματος ὀρθότητα εἶναι ἑκάστῳ τῶν ὄντων φύσει πεφυκυῖαν, 'the correctness of names is given by nature to each thing', which Socrates attempts to refute. But the discussion remains on a terminological level; the wider question of the relation between statements and facts isamong the surviving textsonly really tackled by Aristotle's logic. Plato's practical approach to language can be studied better. He does not seem to coin any new words in his surviving texts at all; 47 instead, he uses common words in specialised senses, such as εἶδος, ἰδέα, οὐσία, ἀρχή. But it is with Plato that we can observe for the first time (in extant literature) philosophical concepts being formed into systems of terms that receive their precise meaning within the system. 48 Examples collected by Eucken (1879) for such technical terminology contain many words of lasting influence, such as ἀναλογία, αἰσθητός-νοητός, γένεσις-οὐσία, εἰκός. But Plato tended to use several synonyms for some of his key concepts, as Diogenes Laertius (De vita philosophorum III.64, ed. Long, vol. 1, p. 147) already criticised: πολλάκις δὲ καὶ διαφέρουσιν ὀνόμασιν ἐπὶ τοῦ αὐτοῦ σημαινομένου χρῆται. τὴν γοῦν ἰδέαν καὶ εἶδος ὀνομάζει καὶ γένος καὶ παράδειγμα καὶ ἀρχὴν καὶ αἴτιον. 'Often he uses different words for the same concept. Indeed, he calls the "idea" also "form" and "genus" and "paradigm" and "principle" and "cause".' There is a less obvious point in which Plato proved to be very important for the development of science: his 'most trivial, "philosophical" view that spheres are "di- vinely" or "transcendentally" beautiful' (Bochner 1969: 95). As von Fritz 49 points out, this a priori aesthetic point of view was to stimulate the development of astronomy in a way that the more mechanistic but non-quantitative vortex theory of Democritus never could have. Plato's predilection for mathematics and for its beauty stimulated scientific research at his own school: Eudoxus of Cnidos developed the epicycle theory, probably on Plato's instigation (as von Fritz showed). His school, the Academy, was home to many important scientific advances; not least, it was the environment where Aristotle's mind was formed. 50 Among Plato's pupils, it was not only Aristotle who developed his approaches further: for instance, Speusippus seems to have studied the relationship between words and entities in the world, coining terms such as ταὐτώνυμα (ὁμώνυμα, συνώνυμα) vs ἑτερώνυμα (ἰδίως ἑτερώνυμα, πολυώνυμα, παρώνυμα). 51 Much of this system is taken over by Aristotle. Plato's Academy continued to function as a philosophical and scientific school until Sulla destroyed it during the Romans' conquest of Athens (86 BC). In Christian times, a new Academy existed in Athens that claimed to have a continuous list of heads of school since Plato, but in the half-millennium in between, nothing is heard of it.
Vlastos (1975: 82-94) points out that Plato's 'a priori' theories did take into account known 'hard facts' (e. g. by then, the sphericity of the Earth) if they were well established. Plato's 'naturalistic scenario' (97) leads to important theoretical advances. In the case of 'chemistry', however, his ingenious (although completely untestable) theory of matter being made up of triangles and squares does not have this effectat least in Antiquity. 52 It would seem that this is so because in chemistry the 'hard facts' were in his time basically everyday knowledge only. It may well be that Aristotle was aware of the lack of 'hard facts' in many fields and that this may have prompted him to start looking for and collecting new ones which could be used to build fanciful theories (something Aristotle enjoys hardly less than his teacher).

Aristotle and the Peripatos
In seiner Philosophie ist Aristoteles der zur höchsten Kunst des methodischen Denkens gesteigerte Ausdruck der weltanschaulichen Problematik seiner Zeit. In seiner einzelwissenschaftlichen Forscherarbeit dagegen ist er mehr, hier wächst er weit über seine Umwelt hinaus. 'In his philosophy, Aristotle represents the expression of the problems of the worldview of his time, elevated to the highest art of methodical thinking. In his individual scientific research work, however, he is more: here he grows far beyond his environment.' Jaeger (1955: 428) §5 Aristotle, 53 like Plato, published works and taught lectures both for a wider audience (ἐξωτερικά) and for the advanced, few pupils (ἀκροατικά). 54 The Aristotelian texts that survive today belong to the latter group; they can be seen as lecture notes in varying degrees of stylistic revision. In them, we see Aristotle trying to understand all the domains of the world around and within him with a scientific spirit aptly called by Wehrli 'umfassende Daseinserforschung' ('comprehensive exploration of existence'; 1944-1978: 10:100); the main concern of his approach to philosophy was clearly sciencein contrast to Plato, for whom the ethical development of man seems to have been of greater importance. Due to Aristotle's lasting importance in scientific methodology, his use of language in science and his scientific approach are now considered in some more detail. 55 Aristotle's striking new scientific approach led some to coin the verb ἀριστοτελίζειν. 56 Where Aristotle's scientific methodology is concerned, there is a significant difference between his theoretical writings about the scientific method and how he actually worked as a scientist, for instance in biology. 57 The theoretical writings describe an apodictic, deductive character of science and strive for complete certainty, as detailed in the Organon and especially the Analytica posteriora. The aim of his work in practice can be described as 'scharfsinnige Strukturanalyse' 53 Still fundamental on Aristotle's oeuvre and methodology: Düring (1966). On his scientific method, see Kullmann (1974Kullmann ( , 1998 ('astute structural analysis'; Düring 1966: 22) of a much more inductive character using methods that seem appropriate for the problem at hand. Lloyd wonders how Aristotle's important insight that scientific knowledge can hold good not only always, but also 'always or for the most part', can be squared with the formal, logical approach in the Analytica posteriora. 58 The mathematical foundations for stochastics able to deal with such cases were, of course, not anywhere in sight. Lloyd (1987: 141-143) reaches the conclusion that Aristotle presents a pedagogic model of demonstration, a mere ideal, in the Analytica posteriora. 59 Aristotle's actual practical approach is to begin with a collection of material (including earlier writers' opinions), then he tackles the question of why the material is the way it is, and then he tries to establish the characteristic structures in it synthetically (Düring 1966: 23). In this manner, he studied a wide range of phenomena scientifically, each with a methodology that seemed appropriate to it. Thus, Aristotle describes in the Organon one kind of science applicable to mathematics (and to some extent to what will be called the quadrivium), but employs a rather different one when the topic does not seem amenable to it, for instance in his zoology. Both these paths will find imitators over the centuries, and the discussion whether there can be 'real' science about uncertain, transient thingsa central question in Plato's Academyis kept alive. Deniers are, although under somewhat different circumstances and possibly more radically, still present today in the form of scholars such as Feyerabend (mentioned in chap. 4 §1 above).
Above (chap. 2 §1), it was seen that in Aristotle the term ἐπιστήμη is often used to denote a special kind of 'knowledge', a 'scientific' one that can be divided into separate fields and that is based on structural understanding. 60 In fact, the word is often found in the plural ἐπιστῆμαι, and Aristotle held that each science ought to be based on its own principles, thus establishing the concept of demarcated scientific disciplines. Although this step was very important for the development of the sciences, it also had questionable consequences, for instance when Aristotle refrained from using mathematics in the physical sciences. If it is accepted that the approach in the Analytica posteriora was, for Aristotle, not meant to be generally applicable to all sciences, we can look for descriptions of what ἐπιστήμη is for him in his practical scientific works. He seems to be continually 58 e. g. Physica II.5, 196b10-11: τὰ μὲν ἀεὶ ὡσαύτως γιγνόμενα τὰ δὲ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ ('some always happen the same way, some most of the time'). ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ is a very common phrase in Aristotle: 260 occurrences in Corpus Corporum. Mignucci (1981) studies some logical implications of using statements that are true only ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ. 59 The problem is also discussed by Wieland (1970: 20), whose conclusion is that Aristotle lacked a comprehensive system. 60 Burnyeat (1981: 129) speaks of 'knowledge with full understanding'. looking for and remoulding its core meaning in these works. For Aristotle ἐπιστῆμαι are a species (εἶδος) of ὑπόληψις ('a way of acquiring knowledge'). Other such species are δόξα ('opinion') and φρόνησις ('prudence', i. e. 'practical wisdom; De anima III.3 427b10). The opposite of ἐπιστήμη when taken sensu stricto is δόξα; when meaning 'knowledge' in general, it is ἄγνοια ('ignorance, the lack of knowledge'; Topica VIII.1, 156b12). In his Ethica Nicomachea, ἐπιστήμη is an 'intellectual virtue' (διανοητικὴ ἀρετή; II.1, 1103a6); there Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of 'virtues': 61 ethical ones and 'intellectual' onesmore precisely, those concerned with thinking or deliberating. Among these virtues, there are five species 'in which someone can be truthful by affirming or negating' (οἷς ἀληθεύει ἡ ψυχὴ τῷ καταφάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι): τέχνη, ἐπιστήμη, φρόνησις, σοφία, and νοῦς; there are others that do not preclude being wrong, such as ὑπόληψις in general and δόξα (VI.3, 1139b15-17). These terms were studied above (chap. 3); they tend to be hard to translate into other languages and epochs. Only to some extent do they fit 'practically minded craft', 'scientific knowledge', 'practical wisdom', 'speculative wisdom', and 'intuitive grasping' respectively. 62 On the 'input' side, ἐπιστῆμαι are based on the senses (αἴσθησις; Analytica posteriora Ι.18, 81a38-39), but there are also ἐπιστῆμαι μαθηματικαί for which this does not seem to hold (Metaphysica Μ4, 1078b7-17). They tend to be a generalised form of experience, but unlike it they are teachable: γίγνεται δὲ τέχνη ὅταν ἐκ πολλῶν τῆς ἐμπειρίας ἐννοημάτων μία καθόλου γένηται περὶ τῶν ὁμοίων ὑπόληψις.
[…] The ability to teach something is clearly a sign of knowing or not knowing it; because of this, we take art [τέχνη] to be scientific knowledge to a higher degree than mere experience.' ἔτι διδακτὴ ἅπασα ἐπιστήμη δοκεῖ εἶναι, καὶ τὸ ἐπιστητὸν μαθητόν. (Ethica Nicomachea VI.3, 1139b) 'Further, all science seems to be teachable, and scientific knowledge learnable.' It seems that for Aristotle there is a progression from mere experience to ἐπιστήμη, with τέχνη wavering in between; apparently there are higher, more 'understanding' arts and lower, more merely practical ones. The former are described in Metaphysica A1, 981a28-30: τοῦτο δ' ὅτι οἱ μὲν [i. e. οἱ τεχνίται] τὴν αἰτίαν ἴσασιν οἱ δ' [i. e. οἱ ἔμπειροι] οὔ. οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἔμπειροι τὸ ὅτι μὲν ἴσασι, διότι δ' οὐκ ἴσασιν· οἱ δὲ τὸ διότι 63 καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν γνωρίζουσιν. 'This is so because the former [practical scientists] know the reasons, the latter [mere craftsmen] do not. For craftsmen know the "that" but do not know the "because"; the former also get to know the "because" and the reason.' Such knowing the reasons or causes is typical of scientific understanding, as he points out a little later (Metaphysica A3, 983a24-26): Ἐπεὶ δὲ φανερὸν ὅτι τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς αἰτίων δεῖ λαβεῖν ἐπιστήμην (τότε γὰρ εἰδέναι φαμὲν ἕκαστον, ὅταν τὴν πρώτην αἰτίαν οἰώμεθα γνωρίζειν), […] As it is obvious that one has to reach scientific knowledge from reasoned principles (for we claim to know something when we believe to have acquired knowledge of the first reason), The importance of causes has become a necessary part of science, at least until recently. 64 It is still present in the proposed criteria for science, although in a somewhat more general way, in criterion II, which strives for step-by-step 'mechanisms': science must still show the 'because' (τὸ διότι), not only the 'that' (τὸ ὅτι). But ἐπιστῆμαι do study both facts and their reasons; they may be more descriptive or explanatory. They are about general 65 and measurable 66 things. Seen from the other sidenot that of their object but of the scientistthey are based on fitting definitions. 67 From these arise λόγοι ('conclusions') that find ἀρχαί ('principles') and αἰτίαι ('reasons/causes') with which one can understand the real being of what is under consideration, 'that which it was' (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι). This mental process happens within νοῦς ('the intuitively grasping "intellect"'). 68 Aristotle etymologises the word ἐπιστήμη as making the scientist's soul stand still, being unable to think or perceive well in chaos, 69 so the word was felt to belong to the kinship of ἵστημι (see chap. 2 §1 above); similarly, English 'to under-stand' and German ver-stehen. Something is understood when one has grasped its necessity, the fact that it cannot be different (Analytica posteriora I.2, 71b9-12): Ἐπίστασθαι δὲ οἰόμεθ' ἕκαστον ἁπλῶς, ἀλλὰ μὴ τὸν σοφιστικὸν τρόπον τὸν κατὰ συμβεβηκός, ὅταν τήν τ' αἰτίαν οἰώμεθα γινώσκειν δι' ἣν τὸ πρᾶγμά ἐστιν, ὅτι ἐκείνου αἰτία ἐστί, καὶ μὴ ἐνδέχεσθαι τοῦτ' ἄλλως ἔχειν. 'We believe to have understood something simply (that is, notas the sophists doby means of accidentals) when we believe to have known the cause through which the thing is, that is, the cause of it, and that it cannot be different.' Possibly even more important than Aristotle's emphasis on causation are logical rules that allow logically sound conclusions to be separated from ones that are merely able to persuade but lack logical rigour. The sophists' way of aiming purely at persuasion made Plato and his pupils aware of this problem. Aristotle formulated clear laws for what may be taken to be a logically sound conclusion from known facts and what may not. His basic writing on this subject, the Organon, will be of foremost importance in the re-emergence of his scientific spirit in the Latin Middle Ages. Aristotle himself seems aware that he had to start almost from scratch in developing logical foundations for science and philosophy (De sophisticis elenchis 33, 184a9-b8; the treatise's very end): καὶ περὶ μὲν τῶν ῥητορικῶν ὑπῆρχε πολλὰ καὶ παλαιὰ τὰ λεγόμενα, περὶ δὲ τοῦ συλλογίζεσθαι παντελῶς οὐδὲν εἴχομεν πρότερον λέγειν ἢ τριβῇ ζητοῦντες πολὺν χρόνον ἐπονοῦμεν. εἰ δὲ φαίνεται θεασαμένοις ὑμῖν, ὡς ἐκ τοιούτων ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὑπαρχόντων, ἔχειν ἡ μέθοδος ἱκανῶς παρὰ τὰς ἄλλας πραγματείας τὰς ἐκ παραδόσεως ηὐξημένας, λοιπὸν ἂν εἴη πάντων ὑμῶν [ἢ] τῶν ἠκροαμένων ἔργον τοῖς μὲν παραλελειμμένοις τῆς μεθόδου συγγνώμην τοῖς δ' εὑρημένοις πολλὴν ἔχειν χάριν. 'And teachings about rhetoric have existed in great number and for a long time, but about the way of thinking [logic] we found absolutely nothing to quote, although endeavouring to seek arduously for a long time. But if it should seem to you beholders [of my logic], although beginning from scratch, that the systematic approach is appropriate in comparison with other disciplines which could be augmented from already existing stock, then it should be the duty of all of you listeners to show lenience toward the approach's shortcomings, but great gratitude toward what it has been able to establish.' As often with Aristotle's statements about predecessors, this cannot be taken fully at face value: it should not be forgotten that questions of method and logic seem to have been discussed in Plato's Academy, as can be gleaned from the titles of soul stand; the soul is not able to perceive or think when in movement and turmoil'). It is debated whether the Problemata are genuine, but at any rate they are a product of Aristotle's school. some lost works, such as the ὅροι of Speusippus or the τῆς περὶ τὸ διαλέγεσθαι πραγματείας βιβλία, περὶ ἐπιστήμης, and περὶ ἐπιστημοσύνης by Xenocrates. 70 Aristotle's precise rôle can no longer be determined, as these works are completely lost.
Dialectics and rhetoric are for Aristotle faculties (δυνάμεις), thus prerequisites common to all sciences not themselves scientific disciplines. 71 The list of logical fallacies in De sophisticis elenchis (4, 165b23-27) indicates what scientific language should avoid: Τρόποι δ' εἰσὶ τοῦ μὲν ἐλέγχειν δύο· οἱ μὲν γάρ εἰσι παρὰ τὴν λέξιν, οἱ δ' ἔξω τῆς λέξεως. ἔστι δὲ τὰ μὲν παρὰ τὴν λέξιν ἐμποιοῦντα τὴν φαντασίαν ἓξ τὸν ἀριθμόν· ταῦτα δ' ἐστὶν ὁμωνυμία, ἀμφιβολία, σύνθεσις, διαίρεσις, προσῳδία, σχῆμα λέξεως. 'There are two kinds of refutation: one is within language, the other outside of language. The ways of producing illusion within language number six: they are equivocation, ambiguity, combination, division, accent, and form of expression.' Especially the first two show the importance of an unambiguous vocabulary. This leads us to consider Aristotle's approach to language. 72 Aristotle uses words with the stem of ἐπιστήμmore than a thousand times, including the lemmata ἀνεπιστημονικός (1), ἀνεπιστημοσύνη (1), ἀνεπιστήμων (6), ἐπιστήμη (980), ἐπιστημονικός (19), ἐπιστημονικῶς (1), ἐπιστημόνως (1), and ἐπιστήμων (55). 73 Strangely, Aristotle does not seem to discuss in any of his many surviving texts how he sees his own highly sophisticated andas far as we can seerather idiosyncratic language. He does not address the relation of language and science in general, either. For Aristotle, language is a system of 'symbols' ('what happens to be thrown together with what is symbolised') based on states of the soul; these are the same for all peoples regardless of their language. Similarly, texts are 'symbols' of sounds. 74 The problem of other languages and translatability only starts to be- 72 In order to study Aristotle's use of words, the Index Aristotelicus by Bonitz is the fundamental tool; the Corpus Corporum and TLG search functions are also useful. 73 Data from TLG (December 2017). 74 De interpretatione 1, 16a3-8: Ἔστι μὲν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολα, καὶ τὰ γραφόμενα τῶν ἐν τῇ φωνῇ. καὶ ὥσπερ οὐδὲ γράμματα πᾶσι τὰ αὐτά, οὐδὲ φωναὶ αἱ αὐ-ταί· ὧν μέντοι ταῦτα σημεῖα πρώτων, ταὐτὰ πᾶσι παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ ὧν ταῦτα ὁμοιώματα πράγματα ἤδη ταὐτά ('What is expressed by language are tokens of what is in the soul; what is come acute when another language (such as Latin) takes over science from the Greeks and its exponents lose their proficiency in Greek, which happened some eight centuries after Aristotle.
(1872: 26) presents a list of such cases: γένος-εἶδος, ἕξις-διάθεσις, κίνησις-ἐνέργεια, σημεῖον-τεκμήριον, τύχη-ταὐτόματον, ἐνδεχόμενον-δυνατόν, συνώνυμαὁμώνυμα, ἀντίφασις-ἐναντίον, ποιεῖν-πράττειν, ἀφαίρεσις-πρόσθεσις, δύναμιςἐνέργεια, ἐπαγωγή-συλλογισμός, οὐσία-συμβεβηκότα, παθητικός-ποιητικός, διαλεκτικός-ἀποδεικτικός, ὁμοιομερῆ-ἀνομοιομερῆ, ἀναλυτικῶς-λογικώς, πρότερον τῇ φύσει-πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἄνω-κάτω (in logic), ἱστάναι-εἰς ἄπειρον ἰέναι. 77 This list will not be discussed in detail; it is quoted here only to suggest to the reader the 'flavour' of Aristotelian terminology and to emphasise the importance of this kind of Fachsprache in the further history of philosophy and science. Aristotle not only laid the foundations of basic scientific and logical methodology for the times to follow; he also had a fine sense for the use of concepts, often deploring that his language did not have a word for a genus or a group of things that would logically require one. 78 In general, Aristotle coins new terms when unavoidable, 79 but more often he expresses novelty by means of words or syntagms from common language, defining them more precisely or using them somewhat differently, most famously with his τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι ('the essential nature of a thing'). This seems to contrast with Democritus, who makes extensive use of the Greek language's rich possibilities for compounding (examples in §2 above). The exceptions where Aristotle did coin new words involve words that look very different from Democritus' poetic-sounding ones.
For later translators of Aristotelian science and philosophy into languages that do not easily form new compounds (such as Arabic and Latin), Aristotle's language made life much easier than, for instance, Democritus' texts would have. 80 As a brief digression, we can take a look at his two most famous coinings in metaphysics -ἐντελέχεια and ἐνέργειαand how Latin translators dealt with them: both words were notoriously untranslatable in the Latin Middle Ages. Much has been written about these two words; in both cases the formation does not seem to have been unambiguous even to native speakers of Classical Greek. Graham (1989) summarises the discussion about ἐντελέχεια and points out that it is not derived from τέλος ἐν ἑαυτῷ ἔχειν ('having its end in itself'), but rather from ἐντελῶς ἔχειν ('to have completeness'), possibly hinting at Plato's use of 77 A shorter list which, however, discusses the individual items can be found in Kullmann (1998: 25-28). 78 He tends to call these instances ἀνώνυμος; for passages, cf. Bonitz (s. v.). Such cases are especially frequent in his works on ethics but occur also in those on the natural sciences. 79 Categoriae 7, 7a5-6: ἐνίοτε δὲ καὶ ὀνοματοποιεῖν ἴσως ἀναγκαῖον ('Sometimes also forging names may be necessary'). 80 Democritus may have written as much, and on such varied topics, as Aristotle. But textual transmission in Antiquity has preserved the one and not the other. ἐνδελεχής ('perpetual'). 81 At any rate, the word seems to be formed rather awkwardly, as new Greek compounds are usually clear enough to Greek-speakers. The oldest extant translations (by James of Venice and William of Moerbeke) of the Physica just write entelechia and may add id est actio. Later translators tended to simplify and just write actus, which, however, may also stand for several other Greek terms: ἐνέργεια, πρᾶξις, ποίημα, ἔργον, τὸ πράττειν. 82 Renaissance translators become more scrupulous about keeping Aristotelian concepts apart. Hermolaus Barbarus, apparently agreeing with the view championed by Graham, tries to translate it as perfectihabia.
Things are different for Aristotle's other new coining, that, although a nearsynonym of ἐντελέχεια, has a more dynamic character: ἐνέργεια. 83 It is often paired with δύναμις, in the well-known conceptual pair δυνάμει-ἐνεργείᾳ, as 'potentially' versus 'actually'. This distinction is an attempt to lessen Parmenides' paradox, in which things become being from not-being; instead, according to Aristotle, they come from potential being (Metaphysica Λ2, 1069b15-20): μεταβάλλει πᾶν ἐκ τοῦ δυνάμει ὄντος εἰς τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ ὄν (οἷον ἐκ λευκοῦ δυνάμει εἰς τὸ ἐνεργείᾳ λευκόν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἐπ' αὐξήσεως καὶ φθίσεως), ὥστε οὐ μόνον κατὰ συμβεβηκὸς ἐνδέχεται γίγνεσθαι ἐκ μὴ ὄντος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐξ ὄντος γίγνεται πάντα, δυνάμει μέντοι ὄντος, ἐκ μὴ ὄντος δὲ ἐνεργείᾳ. 'Everything changes from potential being to actual being (like something that changes from potentially white to actually white, similarly with growth and decay), so that something can not only per accidens come into being from not-being, but everything can also come into being from being, though potential being, actual not-being.' Both parts of this conceptual pair do not seem to have existed in Greek before Aristotle. But as δύναμις means (among other things) 'power, potential', δυνάμει was easily understood as 'in power, potentially'. Menn (1994: 75) observes that the corresponding new term ἐνέργεια can mean two things for Aristotle: 'actuality' and 'activity'; apparently, Aristotle first used the word to denote the latter meaning and progressively came closer to the former meaning. Aristotle also uses a verb ἐνεργεῖν ('to be in action, operate'). 84 This verb is translated by Boethius as simple ago, by high mediaeval translators usually as operor. Renaissance translators often use actu sum, which fits better to actus in the established actu-potentia pair. The noun ἐνέργεια is usually rendered as actus from the very beginning, but it will make history in modern physics in its Greek form as energia ('energy'). Both of these new words become quite common in later Greek, but ἐντελέχεια remained a typically Aristotelian term. §6 The contrast between scientific study before and after Aristotlein Hellenistic timesis striking. 85 Many sciences were first tackled in depth either by him or by students of his school, the Peripatos, 86 which apparently for the first time provided an institution for organised scientific studies with its own library. 87 It was only loosely organised into older teachers and younger pupils, and was in general open to the public (in contrast to Pythagorean circles). Düring points out that 'Aristotle created something quite new with his school.
[…] finally, most important of all, the scientific outlook and the strictly scientific method' (quoted in Lynch 1972: 73-74). For Aristotle, ἐπιστήμη described his way of studying phenomena of all kinds using a variety of methods from mathematical and logical reasoning, observation (occasionally including simple experimentation), 88 questioning people who observed a phenomenon, and an extensive use of written sources (in his large library) that had accumulated to a quite considerable amount in the two centuries before him. 89 Aristotle himself added new data to the general 'stock', very clearly in his biological writings or his collection of constitutions of Greek city-states (see fig. 9). 90 Although Aristotle's own research has largely been revised in the subsequent millenniahe occasionally jumped from faulty observations to wide-ranging systems of thought built on sandthe main novelties in his own and his school's way of research lie in his detailed and organised programme for how to study things, including collaborators who took over some of the work and continued his school after his death, his self-conscious application of logic, and his thorough scrutiny of language, stressing the importance of precise definitions and differentiating between the different meanings of some words. Aristotle seems to have been the first person who thought methodically about the rôle of language in the expression of 'truth'; 91 thus, according to the criterion of Léon Brillouin mentioned above (chap. 4 §6), Aristotle can be called the first scientist. We try to illustrate this with a few passages from Aristotle that display the features with which we tried to demarcate science above (chap. 4 §5).
(I) Systematic method. Aristotle studies scientific method in detail in his Organon. This does not always square with his actual methodology, but the latter (e. g. in biology) is also systematic, just of a more inductive kind. Indeed, discussions of methodology are present in many of his other works. Kullmann (1998: chap. 2) deals with this topic in extenso.
(II) Mechanisms. Above, the importance of causation for Aristotelian science was stressed (Metaphysica Α2, 983a), as well as the need to show the 'how' (τὸ διότι), not only the 'that' (τὸ ὅτι). What we have called 'mechanisms' can be seen as a further development of this.
(III) Testability and impartiality. Examples of Aristotle's active gathering of data can be seen in many instances in his Historia animalium or in the collection of Greek city constitutions. In De generatione animalium, Aristotle points out that perception is to be trusted more than theory. 92 92 De generatione animalium III.10, 760b30-32: οὐ μὴν εἴληπταί γε τὰ συμβαίνοντα ἱκανῶς, ἀλλ' ἐάν ποτε ληφθῇ τότε τῇ αἰσθήσει μᾶλλον τῶν λόγων πιστευτέον, καὶ τοῖς λόγοις ἐὰν ὁμολογούμενα δεικνύωσι τοῖς φαινομένοις ('[Speaking about the generation of bees:] the facts have not been ascertained sufficiently, but once they will have been, then sense perception must be believed (IV) Non-sterility and coherence. Although we have seen that Aristotle stresses that every science needs its own principles, it is nonetheless clear that his sciences are interconnected. Much of the novel terminology, especially the pairs of contrasting terms, is used by Aristotle in many or all of them. The legacy of his research (or, in the above terminology, 'fruitfulness'), continued in the short run at his own school and in Alexandria, and in the long run in Arabic and Latin science, as will be shown below, is obvious.
(V) Community effort. The continued existence of Aristotle's school, where people did research and continued to teach for free and openly many generations after him, has already been mentioned. A good concrete example of community effort for Aristotle himself is, again, the collecting of Greek constitutions in order to study them, for which he collaborated with many people.
(VI) Formalisation. Aristotle formalised his language, as will have become clear above, especially in his novel pairs of contrasting terms. But he did not make much use of mathematical notation; in fact, no strictly mathematical works by him are known. 93 In the Analytica priora, Aristotle uses letters to denote statements and lays the ground for formalised, syllogistic logic.
Of course, it may be somewhat circular to find the characteristics of (Aristotelian-based) science in Aristotle -'Wenn jemand ein Ding hinter einem Busche versteckt' (Nietzsche). The point of doing this, however, is to show that similar criteria can hold good at least for Aristotelian and present-day science. The question of the extent to which science is linked to Aristotelianism and the Greeks in general is taken up at the end of this study (chap. 24). As for the language used: it has been pointed out that Aristotle did not reflect much about how language should be used in science, but we can still consider how he himself used Greekwe again test our criteria from above (chap. 4 §7).
(i) Well-defined terminology. Aristotle usually defines his key terms and takes care not to make definitions that are too distant from then current linguistic usage. For completely new concepts, he occasionally coins new terms (such as ἐνέργεια, ἐντελέχεια), but more often he uses existing terms technically and defines them precisely.
(ii) Unambiguity. The phrase πολλαχῶς λέγεται occurs thirty-five times in Aristotle's works, 94 which is proof enough of the stress laid by Aristotle on the fact more than theory, theories [must be believed only] if they show agreement with what is observed'). 93 His relationship to mathematics was studied by Heath (1949) and Cleary (1995). 94 According to a Corpus Corporum search covering both sequences: πολλαχῶς λέγεται and λέγεται πολλαχῶς. that language is often ambiguous and that the philosopher or scientist must therefore 'help' and improve natural language, making it a more precise tool.
(iii) Extendability. Some examples of newly coined words were listed above, but as Greek allows the nominalisation of phrases, this was often not even necessary; instead, such nominalisations as τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι, τὸ τίνος ἕνεκεν, τὸ τί ἐστιν are frequently encountered. The Greek language makes meeting this criterion easy; it will be less so for Latin.
(iv) Perspicuity. The surviving Aristotelian works are in different states of redaction: some of them are very clear (e. g. most of the Organon and much of his biology); in others the reader can feel the author grappling with his topic (e. g. parts of the Physica and Metaphysica).
(v) Modality. The Greek language is quite rich in expressing nuances of certainty. It can use optatives, subjunctives, particles, and of course adverbs. Occurrence of some traits in Aristotle were counted and compared to average TLG Greek (January 2018). Many of them are indeed more common in Aristotle (lemmata): ἴσως, ἄν, τις, φαίνω, ἔοικα, while some are not: τάχα, δύναμαι. 95 This is entirely to be expected, as such lemma frequencies depend a lot on personal style, but on the whole such words do seem to be more common than average in Aristotle. This aspect would need to be studied in greater depth.
The importance of Aristotle for the development of science in the long run will become obvious below: his works triggered Arabic scientific inquiry in the eighth century and the formation of Latin universities in the thirteenth. Well aware of this rôle, Dante calls him 'il maestro di color che sanno' ('the master of those who know'; Inferno IV.131, ed. Sanguineti, p. 25).
Hellenistic science and beyond §7 Aristotle's school, the Lyceum, later also known as the Peripatos, continued his approach for several generations; his successor as head of the school, Theophrastus (scholarch 322-288), was even more 'first and foremost a man of science'. 96 Unfortunately, there is very little left of later Peripatetic works except 95 Occurrences compared to the most common word (the article), × 1,000: ἴσως 1.4 (TLG) vs 2.5 (Aristotle), ἄν 23.0 vs 37.2, τις 58.2 vs 84.6, φαίνω 4.7 vs 10.3, ἔοικα 2.6 vs 4.2; and the second group: τάχα 0.9 vs 0.3, δύναμαι 8.3 vs 7.0. 96 'Plato is a philosopher pure and simple; Aristotle is a man whose interest gradually turns from philosophical speculation to the study of detailed problems of natural science and history; Theophrastus is first and foremost a man of science' (Ross & Fobes in the edition of Theophrastus, Metaphysica, p. xxv). '[T]he aporetic and anti-dogmatic tendencies in Theophrastus are surely impressive' (Lloyd 1987: 154). those by Aristotle and some of Theophrastus. 97 The school continued to function centuries after its founder's death, and at least the first few scholarchs continued along very similar lines: in particular, Theophrastus and Strato of Lampsacus (scholarch 288-ca. 269), 98 besides some other scientifically minded members such as Eudemus of Rhodes (ca. 370-ca. 300), who wrote exclusively (lost) ἀκροατικά, especially on the history of the mathematical sciences, are known by name. Later on, the difference between public works and those for advanced specialists seems to have become less pronounced and the school seems to have taken a more philological turn. 99 97 The fragments of the others are collected by Wehrli (1944Wehrli ( -1978. 98 He corrected some Aristotelian mistakes. For instance, he found out that the central organ of thought is the brain, not the heart. In Hellenistic times, some schools, especially that at the Museion in Alexandria (in touch with Aristotle's) 100 and the one in Pergamon, became government sponsored, which, of course, sped up their advances significantly (recall the 'community effort' feature above). Both places also accumulated libraries of hitherto unseen size and quality. An important feature of Hellenistic and Roman times are the philosophical schools. Among them, Aristotle's remained the leading one for science in Antiquity. The other ones, especially the Platonists, Stoics, and Epicureans, focused less on scientific study and much more on ethics, and they tended to be more dogmatic. 101 Some very important Greek scientific works that were to set standards for the millennia to come were written in these Hellenistic and then, to a lesser degree, Roman times. 102 Unfortunately, most of Hellenistic science is lost, and we are even hardly informed about centres and schools. Prime examples of texts that became of great importance for the development of science in early modern times are Euclid's Elementa (see fig. 10; linguistically examined in chap. 22 below) for geometry, and from Roman times the works of Hero of Alexandria 103 for the development of mechanics and physics, as well as those of Ptolemy (ca. 100-ca. 170) for astronomy, and those of Galen (ca. 129-ca. 210) for medicine. Works of other, presumably important, scientific authors such as later Peripatetics, Alexandrian biologists, or the Stoic Posidonius (ca. 135-ca. 51 BC) are lost. Some of the extant authors tell us what they understood ἐπιστήμη to be; for instance, the great astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus (De iudicandi facultate et animi principatu, ed. Lammert, vol. 3.2, p. 6) writes: τούτου δ' ἡ μὲν ἁπλῆ καὶ ἀδιάρθρωτος ἐπιβολὴ γίνεται δόξα καὶ οἴησις, ἡ δὲ τεχνικὴ καὶ ἀμετάπιστος, ἐπιστήμη καὶ γνῶσις. 'the simple and unconnected application of it [i. e. thought] becomes opinion and point of view, one that is, according to the rules of art and unmovable by persuasion, science and knowledge.' Thus, ἐπιστήμη is gained by rules of art and is to reach a degree of certainty that is not easily moved by rhetorical means. Here it is joined by γνῶσις, which can depict various types of knowledge (see chap. 3 §2). Ptolemy also speaks of κατάληψις ἐπιστημονική ('scientific grasping') in the Almagest (ed. Heiberg, vol. 1.1, p. 6), which is again βεβαίαν καὶ ἀμετάπιστον ('certain and unmovable by persuasion'). Above, Galen was mentioned for his simile likening theory and observation to the two legs on which science moves forward (chap. 4 §5). The surviving works that have been mentioned changed science fundamentally when they finally became available again to Latin readers: Galen in the twelfth century, Euclid and Archimedes in the thirteenth, and all of them on the brink of the Scientific Revolution (sixteenth century). The rigorous structure of the Elementa, in particular, was to become a rôle model for a truly scientific approach. It was emulated in early modern times, for instance by Tartaglia's Nova scientia (1537), Spinoza's Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata (1677), or Newton's Principia mathematica (1687). Already in later Antiquity, there were dissenting voices to Aristotle, who did not use mathematical methods in natural science, such as Iamblichus (ca. 245-ca. 325), who advocates the use of mathematics in all sciences (De communi mathematica scientia 32, ed. Festa & Klein, p. 93): Ἔθος δ' ἐστὶ τῇ μαθηματικῇ θεωρίᾳ καὶ περὶ αἰσθητῶν ἐνίοτε μαθηματικῶς ἐπιχειρεῖν, οἷον περὶ τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων γεωμετρικῶς ἢ ἀριθμητικῶς ἢ ἁρμονικῶς, καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὡσαύτως.
[…] οὕτω γὰρ οἶμαι περὶ πάντων τῶν ἐν τῇ φύσει καὶ τῶν ἐν τῇ γενέσει μαθηματικῶς ἐπιχειροῦμεν. 'It is customary for mathematical science to sometimes also tackle physical things, as when considering the four elements in a geometrical or arithmetical or harmonic way, and other fields similarly.
[…] Thus, I think we should handle all physical things and all that comes to be in a mathematical way.' What kind of language did these later authors use? The later philosophical schools, especially the Stoics, 104 continued to use much of the Aristotelian terminology, amplifying it in the fields they were especially interested in. In many scientific fields, the Aristotelian terminology was hardly changed but was used to express new insights. In metaphysics and theology, the neo-Platonists are an ex-of being able to make any λόγος win in debate. 108 Plato's Socrates changes the sophists' endit becomes truthwhile keeping their means, as can be well seen, for instance, in Plato's Gorgias. Plato remained sceptical about reaching 'scientific' knowledge of changeable things, and only his pupil Aristotle and his school applied this kind of dialectic inquisitiveness decidedly to all kinds of phenomena, including the changeable world. This may be seen as the actual birth of science, an Aristotelian Denkstil. After Aristotle, many of his scientific and philosophical approaches are further developed. Many of them will be taken up in the Late Middle Ages when they finally reach the Latin medium. Aristotle made some compromises concerning the early ideals of certainty and necessity (see chap. 4 §3): he is cautious enough to stress that science describes that which happens all the time or most of the time; besides, there are phenomena that do happen occasionally but neither always nor usually. Whether such phenomena can be and should be described by science does not become clear in Aristotle's works. Modern statistical approaches have been able to group many such occasionally happening phenomena into larger classes and to study them scientifically.