On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical. William Whewell

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СКАЧАТЬ facts by successive discoverers, we have even yet no Science of Medicine. The question with regard to the number and nature of the Elements of which bodies are composed began to be agitated, as we have seen, at a very early period of Greek philosophy, and continued long to be regarded as a chief point of physiological doctrine. In Galen's work we have a treatise entitled, On the Elements according to Hippocrates; and the writer explains[36] that though Hippocrates has not written any work with the title On the Elements, yet that he has in his Treatise on the Nature of Man shown his opinion on that subject. That the doctrine of the Four Elements, Hot, Cold, Moist, Dry, subsisted long in the schools, we have evidence in Galen. He tells us[37] that when he was a student of nineteen years old a teacher urged this lore upon him, and regarded him as very contentious and perverse, because he offered objections to it. His account of the Dialogue between him and the teacher is curious. But in Hippocrates the doctrine of these four elements is replaced, in a great measure, by the doctrine of the Four Humours of which the human body is constituted; namely, Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile. Galen dwells with emphasis upon Hippocrates's proof that there must be more than one such element[38].

      "What," he asks, "is the method of finding the Elements of bodies? There can, in my opinion, be no other than that which was introduced by Hippocrates; namely, we must inquire whether there be only one element, everywhere the same in kind, or whether there are more than one, various and unlike each other. And if the Element be not one only, but several, various and dissimilar, we must inquire in the second place, how many elements there are, and what, and of what kind they are, and how related in their association.

      "Now that the First Element is not one only of which both our bodies and those of all other creatures were produced, Hippocrates shows from these considerations. And it is better first to put down his own expressions and then to expound them. 'I assert that if man consisted of one element only he could not fall sick; for there would be nothing which could derange his health, if he were all of one Element.'"

      The doctrine of One Element did not prevail much after the time of Hippocrates: the doctrine of Four Elements continued, as I have said, long to hold possession of the Schools, but does not appear as an important part of the doctrine of Hippocrates. The doctrine of the Four Humours (Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile and Black Bile) is more peculiarly his, and long retained its place as a principle of physiological Science.

      But we are here not so much concerned with his discoveries in medicine as with his views respecting the method of acquiring sound knowledge, and in this respect, as has been said, he recommends by his practice a prudent limitation of the field of inquiry, a rejection of wide, ambitious, general assertions, and a practical study of his proper field.

      In ascribing these merits to Hippocrates's medical speculations as to the ethical speculations of his contemporary Socrates, we assign considerable philosophical value to Hippocrates, no less than to Socrates. These merits were at that time the great virtues of physical as well as of ethical philosophy. But, as Mr. Grote well observes, the community of character which then subsisted between the physical and ethical speculations prevailing at that time, ceased to obtain in later times. Indeed, it ceased to exist just at that time, in consequence of the establishment of scientific astronomy by the exertions of Plato and his contemporaries. From that time the Common Sense (as we call it) of a man like Socrates, though it might be a good guide in ethics, was not a good guide in physics. I have shown elsewhere[39] how the Common Sense of Socrates was worthless in matters of astronomy. From that time one of the great intellectual lessons was, that in order to understand the external world, we must indeed observe carefully, but we must also guess boldly. Discovery here required an inventive mind like Plato's to deal with and arrange new and varied facts. But in ethics all the facts were old and familiar, and the generalizations of language by which they were grouped as Virtues and Vices, and the like, were common and well-known words. Here was no room for invention; and thus in the ethical speculations of Socrates or of any other moral teacher, we are not to look for any contributions to the Philosophy of Discovery.

      Nor do I find anything on this subject among later Greek writers, beyond the commendation of such intellectual virtues as Hippocrates and Galen, and other medical writers, schooled by the practice of their art, enjoined and praised. But before we quit the ancients I will point out some peculiarities which may be noticed in the Roman disciples of the Greek philosophy.

      CHAPTER VII.

       The Romans.

       Table of Contents

      The Romans had no philosophy but that which they borrowed from the Greeks; and what they thus received, they hardly made entirely their own. The vast and profound question of which we have been speaking, the relation between Existence and our Knowledge of what exists, they never appear to have fathomed, even so far as to discern how wide and deep it is. In the development of the ideas by which nature is to be understood, they went no further than their Greek masters had gone, nor indeed was more to be looked for. And in the practical habit of accumulating observed facts as materials for knowledge, they were much less discriminating and more credulous than their Greek predecessors. The descent from Aristotle to Pliny, in the judiciousness of the authors and the value of their collections of facts, is immense.

      Since the Romans were thus servile followers of their Greek teachers, and little acquainted with any example of new truths collected from the world around them, it was not to be expected that they could have any just conception of that long and magnificent ascent from one set of truths to others of higher order and wider compass, which the history of science began to exhibit when the human mind recovered its progressive habits. Yet some dim presentiment of the splendid career thus destined for the intellect of man appears from time to time to have arisen in their minds. Perhaps the circumstance which most powerfully contributed to suggest this vision, was the vast intellectual progress which they were themselves conscious of having made, through the introduction of the Greek philosophy; and to this may be added, perhaps, some other features of national character. Their temper was too stubborn to acquiesce in the absolute authority of the Greek philosophy, although their minds were not inventive enough to establish a rival by its side. And the wonderful progress of their political power had given them a hope in the progress of man which the Greeks never possessed. The Roman, as he believed the fortune of his State to be destined for eternity, believed also in the immortal destiny and endless advance of that Intellectual Republic of which he had been admitted a denizen.

      It is easy to find examples of such feelings as I have endeavoured to describe. The enthusiasm with which Lucretius and Virgil speak of physical knowledge, manifestly arises in a great measure from the delight which they had felt in becoming acquainted with the Greek theories.

      Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ

      Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore

      Accipiant, cœlique vias et sidera monstrent,

      Defectus Solis varios, Lunæque labores! …

      Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas!

      Ye sacred Muses, with whose beauty fir'd,

      My soul is ravisht and my brain inspir'd:

      Whose Priest I am, whose holy fillets wear,

      Would you your Poet's first petition hear,

      Give me the ways of wand'ring stars to know,

      The depth of Heaven above and Earth below;

      Teach me the various labours of the Moon,

      And whence proceed th' eclipses of СКАЧАТЬ