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A CONFERENCE ON ANCIENT SCIENCE

Here are gathered annotated papers read at a conference held at Liverpool in 1996. The subjects are diverse, and ‘technology’ could have been included in the title of the resulting book. The level of scholarship is high throughout. In a short review some of the reasonings and conclusions can be reported, but the seventeen chapters deserve a longer, detailed discussion. Lewis Wolpert in the Foreword argues that love of knowledge, made possible by leisure, drove Greeks to philosophy and thence to science, but, he claims, ‘most of Greek science turned out to be wrong’. Wolpert’s admiration of Archimedes is manifest, but he is puzzled by the rarity of experiment in Greek science and the lack of a developed experimental method. The notion of air being the primary substance is ascribed to Anaximander (p. ix), but does not Anaximenes deserve a mention here? Rihll, writing on Greek science in context, has helpful thoughts about recent scholarship and rightly emphasizes that ancient scientists—except perhaps in mathematical astronomy—were not working in accordance with our scientific method. He discusses candidly the slavery that made intellectual pursuits possible for many Greeks. The reviewer applauds the conclusion that the emergence of scientific thinking in Greece is a historical problem of the first order, ‘and not just for ancient historians’. In ‘Words for Sounds’, Andrew Barker subtly explores mismatches between adjectives designating attributes of sounds and the acoustic domain. Barker, who believes Archytas 47 B1 D.K. to be genuine (p. 29), asks why Archytas seems to have connected high with loud and low with quiet. The suggested answer is that oddities in acoustical theories originate in the meanings of inherited terms. The terms are metaphorical, yet the metaphors, even as late as Ptolemy’s Harmonics, were assumed somehow to describe the phenomena. J. L. Berggren’s discussion of Ptolemy’s maps explains geometrical problems connected with latitude and lengths of daylight. He remarks upon the problem of determining the longitudinal extent of the known world; and the claim is made, reasonably (p. 54 n. 32), that winds with their directions form part of the ancient conception of the world. The entire chapter is a lucid contribution to the study of mathematical geography. Harry M. Hine examines ancient studies of earthquakes and volcanoes. Seneca wanted to learn more about the changing appearance of Mount Etna, but in general there was little demand for a geological literature concerned with earthquakes and eruptions. Hine points out that if Pindar’s Typhos was pressed down not only by Etna but also by the heights of Kyma, the monster was enormous. Such poetical evidence has a place in scientific study, because there were links, even if they are hard to perceive, between those who studied seismic events and those who suffered from them. A long contribution by Alan C. Bowen considers astronomical prediction with particular reference to the tale of a lunar eclipse associated with the battle of Pydna. Texts of Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Plutarch, and Pliny are pondered. In Pliny, Sulpicius Gallus predicts the eclipse before the battle, thus freeing the Roman army from anxiety. Bowen argues that here is an instance of cultural appropriation. Chaldeans and Babylonians had been known as predictive astronomers, but now, for Pliny, prediction 82   