Ancient Botany

Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, Ancient Botany, Routledge 2016

a book of the series Sciences of Antiquity, ed. Liba Taub

 

Review by James Jope © James Jope

Gavin Hardy is known for his work on medicinal uses of plants. Laurence Totelin is a historian of Greek and Roman science. I refer to the authors as H&T.

Although this book’s meticulous documentation makes it useful for researchers in either classics or the history of science, its main attraction is as a superb interdisciplinary introduction to ancient botany for students of both fields. Its aim is to provide an overall understanding of ancient botany from the point of view of the ancient ‘actors’, including their cultural context. H&T argue throughout that given the unavoidable limitations of ancient knowledge (such as no microscopes) actors’ theories were generally reasonable and worthy of attention. They take care to explain the conventions and concepts of classicists and botanists for students of the other discipline, which not only makes the book more understandable, but incidentally teaches readers much about the other discipline. Classicists will learn about the cause of oak galls, why fungi are not plants, etc., while botanists will be given a sense of the vicissitudes of manuscript transmission, pseudepigraphy, etc. Both will learn the differences between the plant sexuality on which Linnaeus’ system is built and the anthropomorphic sexuality ascribed to plants by the ancients.

In an apparent compromise between scientific and classicist conventions, H&T minimize notes, placing parenthetical references in the text instead. Occasional long lists with documentation may annoy some readers.

The book is not organized chronologically, but rather by themes: the classification and description of plants, their life cycles, and their environments. However, topics within each theme are usually discussed chronologically.

‘Actors’ includes ‘handlers’, or people other than authors, who dealt in herbal remedies, farming, etc; for, the first principle emphasized by H&T is that the separation of pure and applied science which has become so deeply ingrained in modern botany can not apply to the ancient knowledge, since there is much to be learned about the ecology and morphology of plants from these sources. H&T draw upon not only authors like Theophrastus, Dioscorides, or Galen, but also the Roman agronomists, Pliny’s encyclopedia, Virgil’s Georgics, even Homer.

Identifying plants mentioned in ancient sources-- i.e., matching them with modern genus and species names-- is a thorny issue which has taxed scholars for a couple of centuries. H&T do not offer any new identifications; instead, they examine how ancient plants were named. Theophrastus and Dioscorides did not coin names, they took them from the handlers. Those names could be meaningfully based on morphological or physiological characters, habitat, or medical uses. However, the ancient terms ‘genus’ and ‘species’ were used so loosely that H&T argue they should both be translated ‘type’. Ancient authors were aware of the nomenclatural disarray, and tried to promote clarity by producing lists of synonyms.

Theophrastus classified plants under four categories: trees, shrubs, undershrubs and herbs. Pharmacologists like Dioscorides classed them by their medical uses. Some sources, especially in Late Antiquity, simply arranged them alphabetically.

Ancient plant descriptions were not without value. Theophrastus constructed technical terms for plant parts much like those used today (e.g. ‘pericarp’); but when describing individual plants he, like others, used comparisons with more familiar plants or other objects.

Many readers may know of the justly famed plant illustrations in the Vienna manuscript of Dioscorides; but plant illustrations existed much earlier. Ancient authors distrusted them, partly because they would show only one stage of a plant’s life. H&T note that this was a valid criticism. Here, however, their usual helpfulness in explaining scientific matters to classicists flags. They should have mentioned that botanical illustrations of the modern era often include smaller drawings of seeds, fruits, etc to fix this limitation.

Pliny has been criticized because his work on plants is organized loosely. H&T try to defend him. They argue that books 12-16 are arranged by geographical regions, while book 17 focuses on agriculture, albeit with ‘excursuses’. --In other words, the work is loosely organized.

A more important issue on which H&T take a controversial stance is whether there was widespread deforestation in the classical Mediterranean region, as some scholars have suggested. They briefly list several arguments against this. However, they do give a fair presentation of their opponents’ arguments, and they conclude that “In order for definitive conclusions to be reached on this question, classicists, archaeologists, botanists and environmental historians need to join forces in multi-disciplinary themes.”

Chapter 5 on plants’ life cycles compares ancient and modern concepts of plant sexuality, but also asexual propagation, such as grafting. The environmental chapter 6 demonstrates ancients’ awareness of plant habitats and their success in transplanting economically useful plants throughout the Roman empire.

The fifth chapter concludes surprisingly with a Priapic poem, which actually shows how common good botanical knowledge was. The sixth, in a sly wink to classicists, is titled “Airs, Waters and Places”, although the Hippocratic work is only once mentioned and not discussed. Sparks of humour also occur in a few other places, as when our authors list some topics discussed in Plutarch’s Table Talk: “why women do not eat the middle part of lettuce (4.10, 672) (unfortunately, the answer to that last question is lost).”

There are a number of typographical errors, all of which suggest that the publisher relied too much on computerized proofreading: confusion of singular and plural, wrong words such as ‘were’ for ‘where’. Only once did I see a mistake which even a computer should have spotted: ‘Romands’ for Romans.

Aristotle's Biology; Philosophy or Science?  

                                                                                   Copyright©James Jope

Aristotle has always been recognized as a major philosopher, but his biology has received less attention from philosophers than the subjects which are still regarded as philosophy today, such as metaphysics. Modern science, on the other hand, developed largely in opposition to Aristoteleans, and most scientists have little interest in the Stagyrite’s superceded achievement. Those who do (e.g.,Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker) sometimes find his thought surprisingly compatible with their own.

The two books on Aristotle’s biological work reviewed here open intriguing new perspectives. One exhibits recent work in the budding discipline of the philosophy of biology, and the other is a balanced appreciation of Aristotle as a scientist by an informed biologist.

While the philosophers derive from Aristotle interesting solutions to modern issues in the philosophy of biology, the biologist shows a more empathetic understanding of the Stagirite’s life and method.

Heinemann, Gottfried and Rainer Timme (edd.). Aristoteles und die heutige Biologie: vergleichende Studien. Lebenswissenschaften im Dialog, 17. Freiburg; München: Verlag Karl Alber, 2017. 352 p. € 39.00 (pb). ISBN 9783495486924.

Leroi, Armand Marie. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. London: Bloomsbury, hb 2014; pb 2015, 502 p., £9.99, ISBN 978-1-4088-3622-4 Aristoteles und die heutige Biologie is a collection of papers originally presented at a conference at Kassel University in 2009. The contents are shown at the end of this review.

Georg Toepfer opens his essay with these words: “Die Teleologie des Organischen bei Aristoteles soll in diesem Beitrag nicht primaer aus der Perspektive der Aristoteles-Forschung untersucht werden, sondern aus der Perspektive der Philosophie der Biologie und deren Diskussionsstand der letzten Jahrzehnte.” The same could be said of most of the papers in Heinemann and Timme. The book could have been titled “Aristotle and Biophilosophy”; there is much on issues like teleology, ontogeny and Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of body and soul as ontologically inseparable aspects of a single entity (matter and form, respectively), but only a secondary interest in the Stagirite’s extensive empirical observations and analyses. Contributors occasionally disagree, launching philosophical discussions from their Aristotelian point of departure. The essays are arranged in five parts and summarized on p. 19-22. Biophilosophy has become well established in recent decades, and a focus on Aristotle is welcome. Readers who may have expected a study of Aristotle more specifically qua biologist will like Armand Marie Leroi’s The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Leroi is a professor of evolutionary developmental biology who, taking as a role model D’Arcy Thompson, another biology professor who could not restrain his interest in classical studies, undertook to master adequate classical scholarship to freshly interpret Aristotle showing how a scientist can offer new insights concerning the ancient philosopher.

Turning first to Heinemann and Timme, Gottfried Heinemann’s own contribution is a thorough study of problematic Aristotelian texts cited in an ongoing dispute with David Sedley and others. Sedley has postulated that ‘nature’ (physis) must mean a global figure like the modern ‘Nature’ in passages where, for example, Aristotle says that plants and animals are made by ‘Nature’ for man’s benefit. Heinemann insists that Aristotle’s physis is always only the nature or ‘form’ of a particular species. This controversy cannot be resolved here. If we accept the orthodox assumption that Aristotle gradually distanced himself from Plato, Heinemann’s view fits more smoothly with Aristotle’s mature philosophy, in which there is neither creation nor a providential agent. A global Nature is rather reminiscent of Plato’s creating demiurge. Yet I believe that Sedley’s interpretation of some texts is more straightforward, while Heinemann’s seems forced.

It is regrettable that Heinemann chose to quote these texts only in translation. Readers following a controversy over verbal usage need to see the Greek. Jochen Althoff, to his credit, is the only contributor who reproduces extensive quotations in Greek. When his opponent Georg Toepfer discusses a familiar “zentrale Textstelle” from Aristotle on p. 294, he assesses conflicting translations without even providing a reference to the Greek text.

Althoff and Toepfer dispute to what extent Aristotle can be credited as the source of the concept of an ‘organism’ even though he did not use the word. They agree that some features of the concept, such as describing the living entity and its organs in terms of functional teleology (the eye is to see, etc.), are Aristotelian. But Toepfer disputes Althoff’s ascription of the origin of the concept to Aristotle. A critical feature of the modern concept of an organism is the interdependency of its organs. Althoff suggests that the processing of food by heat into blood and then sperm or menstrual blood as it passes through the body—i.e., the basic animal functions of nutrition and reproduction according to Aristotle—is an interaction of the organs comparable to metabolism. Toepfer argues that Aristotle’s use of the soul as the organizing principle in an animal, instead of just the interaction of the organs themselves, kept him from realizing the importance of their interaction, which Toepfer believes was first acknowledged with the concept of ‘sympathy’ in Galen and the Stoics. But arguably, the Stoics too employed an organizing principle, viz., the ‘fire’ which energizes organisms and the universe.

The key to such disputes is, of course, how generous one wishes to be towards Aristotle, how closely his theories must approximate their modern comparanda. Niko Strobach shows how reducing two compared theories to exact propositions on which both would agree formulated in symbolic logic can reveal unexpected similarities and differences. This method might be useful in settling disputes. However, for Strobach’s own example regarding the constancy of species he has to dwell disproportionately on exceptional cases such as mules to obtain significant results. If we try to reduce, e.g., Althoff’s metabolic comparison to such a statement, it would be trivial: “Living things ingest and assimilate materials from outside.” Thus, crude comparisons which may nevertheless have heuristic or historical value could be rejected.

The essays by Kirsten Schmidt, Kristian Koechy, and Martin Norwig all discuss important issues of modern biology and indicate solutions proposed by other philosophers which they believe to be compatible with Aristotle. Schmidt and Koechy review historical theories of ontogeny (embryological development) after Aristotle, leading up to the deciphering of the genetic code, and then show that more recent biological evidence following that discovery does not support the common view that genes exclusively dictate the complete development of an organism. Popularly promoted by Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene 1978), this meme is typified in the current cliché that any interest or achievement of an individual “is in her DNA”. This oversimplified belief still largely dominates popular opinion, so that these papers are timely and constructive. However, the respective alternatives proposed by the authors are diametrically opposed. According to the meme, the genome comprises a program which solely determines and controls the development of an organism, a role comparable to that of Aristotle’s ‘form’ or ‘soul’. However, further research has revealed other, ‘epigenetic’ causal factors. For example, activation of the genes to develop particular body parts can be determined by their position in a foetus through chemical gradients. Such positional mechanisms were explored in depth by Gerald M. Edelman (1988), who coined for them the term ‘topobiology’. For a proper understanding of the interaction between genes and other embryological factors, Schmidt advocates Susan Oyama’s ‘Developmental Systems Theory’ (The Ontogeny of Information 1985), which follows the ontogenetic process without postulating any one guiding agent, be it ‘form’ or genome. For Schmidt, ontogenetic development is contingent on environmental influences to such an extent that it has no regular final outcome. That allows for the long-term evolutionary variation of species but does not explain their short-term constancy. As for Aristotle, Schmidt does not adequately discriminate between his hylomorphic soul, which is inseparable from the body, and the Platonic-Christian version, a vitalist “Entitaet… die zum Entwicklungsprozess in einer Beziehung von Schoepfer und Schoepfung steht” (p. 79, my emphasis).

According to Koechy, Aristotle’s view tracing the ‘form’ of the species to the father (“anthropos anthropon genna”) prevailed until twentieth-century biologists located it either in the genes (molecular biology) or in populations (evolutionary biology). However, some (Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould are best known) have argued that the focus should return to individuals, as they both control epigenetic factors and supply the mutations on which natural selection works. Koechy refers to Denis Walsh (Evolutionary Essentialism 2006) to restore an essentialist view more like Aristotle’s by rewording the principles of natural selection: For example, instead of describing the environment as selecting mutations, we should say that the mutations must occur in a sufficient number of individuals to become established.

Norwig discusses the issue of physicalist reductionism, i.e., the belief that biological phenomena can be explained by the underlying purely physical properties, so that biology should eventually no longer be a separate science from physics. He surveys variants of physicalism from the extreme version proposed by logical positivists early in the last century to moderate recent models which allow some scope to study such concepts as evolution or biodiversity, and finally advocates J. Kim’s ‘supervenience’, a special type of covariance between two sets of properties, physical and biological, such that the latter are dependent on the former but without any assumption of causality. Norwig argues that this concept accommodates such recent advances as the correlation of mental processes with physical events in the brain in cognitive science. He compares the supervenient correlation of cephalic and mental processes with Aristotle’s hylomorphism. This comparison is workable, but only insofar as the soul is inseparable from the body. However, led by his own choice of cognitive science as an example, Norwig applies the theory to mind and thought without any mention of Aristotle’s belief in an ‘agent intellect’ which is separable from the body—a remnant of Platonism, perhaps, but if one must discuss cognitive activities, it should be considered.

What this book offers is a philosophical discussion positioning Aristotle on issues in the philosophy of biology. The issues are current and the overall understanding of Aristotle is satisfactory, but the emphasis is on modern biophilosophical theory. It may be symptomatic in this regard that while these authors turn to (modern) third-party theorists to bridge Aristotle with modern thinking, Leroi argues that Aristotle himself is compatible with modern findings if correctly interpreted.

As mentioned above, Leroi, who teaches developmental biology at the university of London, set out to interpret Aristotle from a biologist’s point of view. From his own experience he can tell when Aristotle actually did perform a dissection, how he made mistakes, and when he only read other sources; Aristotle did not dissect a dolphin, but he definitely did dissect cuttlefish. Leroi also observes, for example, that Aristotle’s account of animal life cycles satisfies the modern finding that the reproductive fertility of a species is inversely proportional to its infant mortality rate and longevity, a relationship which scholars may fail to appreciate in Aristotle. As scholarly sources he lists David Balme, Allan Gotthelf, Wolfgang Kullmann, James Lennox, Goffrey Lloyd, and Pierre Pellegrin, but his reading extends beyond these in ancient as well as modern sources, including not only philosophers like Empedocles, but miscellaneous authors such as Athenaeus.

Whereas contributors to Heinemann and Timme compare historical background material mainly after Aristotle, Leroi’s historical comparisons relate Aristotle back to Empedocles, Democritus and the Hippocratics, as well as forwards to Cuvier, Harvey etc.

His account of Aristotle’s four causes exemplifies the biological orientation which characterizes the entire book: “The efficient (or moving) cause is an account of the mechanics and movement of change. It is now the domain of developmental biology and neurophysiology… The formal cause is an account of the information transmitted that any creature received from its parents, and that is responsible for the features that it shares with other members of its species—that is, the subject matter of genetics. The final cause is teleology, the analysis of the parts of animals in terms of their functions. It is now the part of evolutionary biology that studies adaptation.” (p. 92). However, Leroi also targets a wider audience. He personally retraced Aristotle’s expedition to a lagoon at Pyrrha where they both collected specimens, and he enlivens his account with descriptions of local flora, fauna and topology, with sometimes irrelevant illustrations, and with amusing, albeit patronizing reports of encounters with Greek fishermen.

Some of these efforts to make the book attractive for any educated reader may deter scholars. I have not reproduced the table of contents, because it is not a useful guide: It mysteriously lists a chapter on “The Soul of the Cuttlefish”, which turns out to discuss de Anima. “Instruments” is about the Organon. “Foam” is de generatione Animalium, and “Figs, Honey and Fish” concerns life cycles. The reason for this is that it is precisely with regard to these organisms that Leroi analyses Aristotle’s doctrines. The cuttlefish chapter, for example, gives a full account of the nutritive soul, in which Leroi too compares its action to metabolism. However, scholars will find little guidance to specific topics apart from the index. Documentation is provided in endnotes and appendices, but when Aristotle’s text is quoted the reader will not always find an exact reference. Footnotes serve, instead, to enlighten the classical reader on relevant aspects of science, or the scientist on additional ancient material.

On page after page, Leroi illustrates zoologically relevant aspects of Aristotle’s thought in concrete examples from the biological treatises. He shows how Aristotle used the interaction of functional teleology (the eye is to see) and ‘conditional necessity’ (if it is to see, it must be vitreous) to approximate in his static species a modern understanding of adaptation. Leroi even has a plausible argument to relate Aristotle’s scientific method to biology: “For all its limitations, Aristotle’s theory of demonstration is a genuine scientific method. It is part of ours. Scientists may quarrel about methodology but… They understand the domain of science… They understand… the reciprocal role of theory and evidence and the distinction between hypothesis and fact. They understand that science begins with induction to give generalizations from observations and then deduction to give firm causal claims from generalizations… That they understand all this is because Aristotle told them it was so.” (p. 131-2).

But beyond this, he grapples with overall issues like the unity and chronology of Aristotle’s thought. He is sometimes less impressive here, as when he explains the cosmos as an organism or compares ‘natural slaves’ to modern factory workers, but it does enable this book to serve as a complete introduction to Aristotle. Leroi’s major criticisms of Aristotle—and they are undoubtedly correct--are that his rejection of atomism and his embrace of ‘homoiomerous’ basic materials led to errors throughout his work; and that methodically looking for the truth in received wisdom made him too conservative. Regarding spontaneous generation, for example, Leroi argues that it was contrary to Aristotle’s own theories, and then proceeds to show how, step by step, Leeuwenhoek and others refuted it—with a nod to Homer.

Leroi’s exploration of Aristotle and his lagoon is a captivating interdisciplinary disquisition, and both books offer a wealth of material for reception studies.

Richard Carrier, The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire: review by a classicist

©James Jope

Richard Carrier (www.richardcarrier.info) is a prominent freethinker and historian of natural philosophy. His previous books include Science education in the early Roman Empire. 

In The Scientist, Carrier argues regarding science (then known as natural philosophy) what Gibbon argued regarding classical civilization: that it made progress until  it was extinguished by the Church. In particular, he rejects the view that the Romans themselves neglected science because they lacked the mindset to continue the scientific activity of Hellenistic Greeks, and sets out to demonstrate not only (1) scientific progress, but (2) a positive attitude towards scientific progress in Roman society during the High Empire.

In spite of the quibbles which it will be my duty as a reviewer to express, this is a very impressive book. The documentation is more than extensive; it is immense. The argumentation is skillful and persuasive. And the thesis is a timely contribution to an important issue.

 (1) Scientific progress

Literary classicists who have read one or even a few handbooks on ancient science will be surprised at the array of discoveries which Carrier recounts. I did not know, for example, of the work of Strato of Lampsacus on gravity and inertia, which approximated Galileo’s findings. Chiding others for emphasizing what the Romans did not do instead of what they did, Carrier discusses lost as well as extant works. While the former are simply omitted by some scholars, we do know something about them from other ancient sources, and Carrier ferrets out such information. Works were lost, he argues, not because they lacked merit or even popularity in the Roman world, but because of medieval copiers’ “preference for simple, fabulous, amusing, or entertaining work, over the boring but… technically superior scientific books”. Carrier documents more than two hundred useful, scientifically based inventions under Rome. He does exaggerate a few of these: medical application of eels is “electroshock therapy”, the Corinthian diolkos is a “railway”, five-story buildings are “high-rise apartments”. But this hardly diminishes the impact of the entire assemblage. However, some items might be susceptible to his own strict criteria by which he dismisses medieval accomplishments as trivial modifications, rediscoveries of previously known facts, or not science-based (p. 16).

(2) Attitudes

It was a common topos under the Empire to bemoan contemporary circumstances as manifestations of decline, in natural science as well as other areas of discourse. However, Carrier succeeds in revealing a diversity of views which included also an awareness and appreciation of progress, not only among scientists themselves, but from surprising sources like Cicero and Seneca. Even the complaint of decadence could be cast as a call for more dedicated efforts by contemporaries or as implying the existence of other observers who disagreed with such pessimism. Every philosophical sect with the exception of the Cynics valued natural philosophy. The symposia recorded or imagined by Imperial authors also praised science. Texts like the Aetna make clear that knowledge could still be sought for its own sake by the ‘practical’ Romans. And although the emperors did not formally create research institutions like the Hellenistic ones, there were appeals for them to do so. Finally, while some senators may have disdained experimentation, the most  notable scientists tended to come from equestrian backgrounds.

Christians

Carrier ascribes to the view of some previous authors (e.g., Marshall Claggett, G.E.R. Lloyd) that, although Christians did not originate the anti-intellectual values which arrested scientific progress, taking them up especially from less educated pagans, they greatly escalated them. Carrier examines the attitudes of Tertullian, Lactantius, Origen and others and finds scientific knowledge and methods dismissed contemptuously, replaced entirely by supernatural criteria.

Although the New Testament nowhere discusses natural philosophy in particular, Carrier reveals a core of antiscientific values in its implicit epistemology. Nothing is ever “proven” by logic or investigation, but always by spiritual inspiration, miracles, etc.

Medievalists

The Middle Age is beyond the scope of the book, but Carrier offers his rather dark view, arguing against medievalists’ attempts to find some creditable scientific advances. It is usually suggested that the scribes made a contribution to science by transmitting a few ancient works. Carrier argues that preservation is not progress. The glass is not half-full, but half-empty.

Quibbles

I have mentioned the strength of Carrier’s argumentation. Sometimes he is perhaps too combative--dismissing rivals’ views as “stupid”, ridiculing their inconsistencies, and once even suggesting that their books be burned! (p. 464)—yet his own logic and evidence suffice to refute them. In spite of his assiduous documentation, Carrier seems to have surprisingly missed some very relevant works. He presents Aristotle as the founder of science, but is unaware of the excellent work on this point by Armand Marie Leroi (The Lagoon: How Aristotle invented Science, 2014, also reviewed on this site). He cites Marcus Aurelius, but not the famous diatribe of Lucretius, for the view that life essentially does not change and has nothing new to offer.   In fact, serious use of Lucretius is surprisingly absent from this book. Carrier’s principal authority on Epicureanism is Cicero, and he cites Virgil’s felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas without acknowledging that it alludes to Lucretius. Finally, it is a little unfair to classify men like Ptolemy and Galen as Roman simply because they flourished under the Pax Romana. Lucian and other Second Sophistic authors made it very clear that the Greeks still clung to a separate cultural identity throughout this period. However, it is true, as Carrier argues, that although technical scientific works (Ptolemy, Galen) were in Greek, the excellent popularizations which appeared in Latin (Celsus, Seneca, Pliny) attest the interest of Romans in the scientific enterprise.

Slowly but surely, ancient science was moving in the right direction until it fell under Christian domain.