In the last twenty years or so there has been a renewed interest in Pliny the Elder, once an immensely popular author whose reputation began to suffer after Renaissance scholars challenged the accuracy of his work. The recent interest has been interdisciplinary, producing contributions from classical scholars, historians, scientists, and technologists, sometimes working as a team. What “interdisciplinary” has meant in practice is a collaboration rather than a blend of disciplines. What you see in Pliny is what your training makes (...) obvious.John Healy's book is a robust defense, indeed promulgation, of the thesis that Pliny practiced “science.” This thesis implies not only that science was a recognizable, and recognized, activity in antiquity but that “science” can tell us more clearly than any other rubric what Pliny was up to. Science can certainly tell us about Pliny's natural world, because it was very much like our own, but it does not tell us anything about Pliny's enterprise. We may feel a sense of intellectual satisfaction in knowing the formula for the acetic acid in vinegar and the chemical equation that represents its attack on calcareous rocks, but Pliny's story is about something else.In this study Healy, a distinguished classical scholar, has taken aboard a lot of science. He provides us with valuable information about the suitability of the Latin language for the development of technical terms and about its borrowings from Greek and other languages. After Healy the classicist considers Pliny as a writer and describes his life, sources, mode of work, language, and style, Healy the scientist addresses the topic of ancient science. Chapter 10 lays down the program, taken from a modern classification of fields of research. Healy takes the ten subdivisions of the “natural sciences, technologies and engineering” as a structure for his investigation into Pliny and for the format of the book. He thus looks at Pliny's thought in relation to chemistry, physics, earth sciences, engineering , applied sciences, biology, and agriculture. A footnote tells us that he has omitted any reference to medicine, pharmacology, and astronomy—a pity, as these subjects, with their own identities and practitioners, come closer to science than most of what either Pliny or Healy discusses. In the style of a modern scientific textbook, Healy's text is broken down into numerous subsections to accommodate modern categories. The chapters on minerals and gems are alphabetical lists.The combination of classical learning and scientific knowledge looks formidable and is certainly unusual. But the book is more an exercise in applying science to classical studies than an example of science illuminating history. The confidence his scientific material gives Healy leads to a certain historical insensitivity. I declare an interest here, for he badly misreads what I have argued about “science” in antiquity. His rigid use of modern—our—categories inevitably leads to instances in which he finds Pliny confusing them or failing to separate them. Our categories take on a life of their own in this exposition: the section on “electricity,” for example, is largely independent of Pliny. Its subsection 12.2.1c is on piezoelectricity, of which “neither Pliny, nor other ancient authorities, appear to have been aware.” Gravity has to be there, because it is part of modern physics, but Pliny does not mention it.There is no reason why classical scholars and scientists should not be interested in Pliny and find each other's disciplines enlightening. But the claim that Pliny was, as Healy says, making “contributions” to our science is a historical one and relates to Pliny's purposes. No amount of modern mathematical or chemical formulas will tell us what was in Pliny's mind, and he was fairly clear, after all, on his purposes in writing the Natural History. It's back to “Science in Antiquity?” again. (shrink)

1. Stoicism in classical Latin literature -- 2. Stoicism in Christian Latin thought through the sixth century.

The Stoics maintained that virtue was the only good; everything else, therefore, was not-good. On the other hand, regarded by itself, this huge class was not equally valueless. Vice, of course, was bad; but everything else was thought to be ‘indifferent’: wealth, health, for example; indifferent, that is, with regard to the summum bonum. Of these Intermediates, men, from human nature, had a leaning to some; these were , had value, were called , that is, preferred, and virtue itself lay (...) in choice exercised among them. (shrink)

Volume 1 presents the texts in new translations by the authors, and these are accompanied by a philosophical and historical commentary designed for use by all readers, including those with no background in the classical world. With its glossary and indexes, this volume can stand alone as an independent tool of study.

The Stoics maintained that virtue was the only good; everything else, therefore, was not-good. On the other hand, regarded by itself, this huge class was not equally valueless. Vice, of course, was bad; but everything else was thought to be ‘indifferent’: wealth, health, for example; indifferent, that is, with regard to the summum bonum. Of these Intermediates, men, from human nature, had a leaning to some; these were, had value, were called, that is, preferred, and virtue itself lay in choice (...) exercised among them. (shrink)

'A fascinating book. It contains a sweeping survey of approaches to causation and explanation from the Presocratic philosophers to the Neo-platonist philosophers. Hankinson pays a visit to every major figure and movement in between: the sophists, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans and a variety of medical writers, early and late... impressive... Hankinson's observations are regularly intriguing, at times refreshingly trenchant, and in some cases straightforwardly arresting... the history itself is excellent: clear, intelligently conceived and executed, and broadly (...) accessible. Those in search of a philosophically astute history of clasical philosophy given in terms of one of its own central unifying obsessions will delight in reading R. J. Hankinson's work.' -Christopher Sheilds, Times Literary SupplementR. J. Hankinson traces the history of ancient Greek thinking about causation and explanation. He examines how the Greeks dealt with questions about how and why things happen as and when they do, about the basic constitution and structure of things, about function and purpose, laws of nature, chance, coincidence, and responsibility. Such diverse questions are unified by the fact that they are all demands for explanation, for an account of the world that will render it amenable to prediction and control. (shrink)