GREEK STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Editor

ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University

Editorial Advisory Board

ADOLF GRONBAUM, University of Pittsburgh

SYL V AN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University

JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University

MARX W. WARTOFSKY, Baruch College of the City University of New York

VOLUME 121

GREEK STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE

Edited by

P ANTELIS NICOLACOPOULOS

National Technical University of Athens

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greek studies in the philosophy and history of science J edited by Pantelis Nicolacopoulos.

p. em. -- (Boston studies in the philosophy of science; v. 121>

1. SCience--Greece--History. 2. Science--Philosophy--History. I. Nicolacopoulos. Pantel is. 1952- II. Series. 0174.B67 vol. 121 [0127.G71 001' .01 s--dc20 [509' .381

ISBN-I3: 978-94-010-7403-2 e-ISBN-I3: 978-94-009-2015-6 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-2015-6

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EDITORIAL PREFACE

PANTELIS D. NICOLACOPOULOS / Introductory Re­marks

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part I: SCIENCE AND CLASSICAL GREECE

1. GREGORY VLASTOS / The Role of Observation in

XI

XIII

XVII

Plato's Conception of Astronomy 1 2. JOHN P. ANTON / The Unity of Scientific Inquiry and

Categorial Theory in Aristotle 29 3. GERASIMOS SANT AS / Knowledge and Belief in Plato's

Republic 45 4. GEORGIOS ANAGNOSTOPOULOS / Some Thoughts on

Explanation in Ancient Philosophy 61 5. D. z. AND RIO POULOS / Alcmeon's and Hippocrates's

Concept of Aetia 81 6. THERESA PENTZOPOULOU-VALALAS / Experience

and Causal Explanation in Medical Empiricism 91 7. THEODORE SCALTSAS / Soul as Attunement: An Anal-

ogy or a Model? 109 8. v ASS ILlS KARAS MANIS / The Hypotheses of Mathe­

matics in Plato's Republic and His Contribution to the Axiomatization of Geometry 121

9. KATERINA IERODIAKONOU / Rediscovering Some Stoic Arguments 137

10. DEMETRA SFENDONI-MENTZOU / Models of Change: A Common Ground for Ancient Greek Philosophy and Modern Science 149

11. v ASSILIS KALFAS / Criteria Concerning the Birth of a New Science: The Case of Greek Astronomy 171

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part II: SCIENCE AND THE MODERN GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT

12. PASCHALIS M. KITROMILIDES I The Idea of Science in the Modem Greek Enlightenment 187

13. PANAYIOTIS NOUTSOS I The History of the Theory of Natural Sciences: A Paradigm 201

Part III: SCIENCE STUDIES

14. COSTAS B. KRIMBAS I Evolutionary Epistemology on Universals as Innate Classificatory Devices 209

15. A. TZAVARAS and G. PAPAGOUNOS I The Develop­ment of Freudian Theory: The Role of the 'Centre' and the 'Excentric' in Theory Production and Diffusion 227

16. PETROS A. GEMTOS I Law and Economics: Methodo-logical Problems in Their Interdisciplinary Cooperation 239

Part IV: STUDIES OF PHYSICS

17. KOSTAS GA VROGLU I From Gases and Liquids to Fluids: The Formation of New Concepts During the Development of Theories of Liquids 251

18. YORGOS GOUDAROULIS I A Matter of Order: A Controversy between Heisenberg and London 279

19. ARISTIDES BALTAS I Once Again on the Meaning of Physical Concepts 293

20. EFTICHIOS BITSAKIS I Locality: A New Enigma for Physics 315

Part V: PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

21. NIKOLAOS A VGELIS I Schlick's Epistemology and Its Contribution to Modem Empiricism 335

22. G. PAPAGOUNOS I On Theoretical Terms 353 23. D. A. ANAPOLIT AN OS I Leibniz on Density and Sequen-

tial or Cauchy Completeness 361 24. IOLI PATELLIS I Frege: Theory of Meaning or Philoso-

phy of Science? 373 25. ARIS KOUTOUGOS I The Plato-Wittgenstein Route to

the Pragmatics of Falsification 385

TABLE OF CONTENTS ix

26. STAVROULA F. TSINOREMA / Wittgenstein, Rationality and Relativism 397

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS 415

INDEX 423

EDITORIAL PREFACE

Our Greek colleagues, in Greece and abroad, must know (indeed they do know) how pleasant it is to recognize the renaissance of the philosophy of science among them with this fine collection. Classical and modern, technical and humane, historical and logical, admirably original and respectfully traditional, these essays will deserve close study by philosophical readers throughout the world. Classical scholars and historians of science likewise will be stimulated, and the historians of ancient as well as modern philosophers too. Reviewers might note one or more of the contributions as of special interest, or as subject to critical wrestling (that ancient tribute); we will simply congratulate Pantelis Nicolacopoulos for assembling the essays and presenting the book, and we thank the contributors for their works and for their happy agreement to let their writings appear in this book.

R.S.C.

xi

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

Neither philosophy nor science is new to Greece, but philosophy of science is. There are broader (socio-historical) and more specific (academic) reasons that explain, to a satisfactory degree, both the under-development of philosophy and history of science in Greece until recently and its recent development to international standards. It is, perhaps, not easy to have in mind the fact that the modem Greek State is only 160 years old (during quite a period of which it was consider­ably smaller than it is today, its present territory having been settled after World War II). One must especially remember this when one visits the Parthenon, or reads Plato, or thinks of Greece in the context of a broader geographical area that has made so many important - and early - contributions to civilization, or even when one realizes the sense of history that influences both private, every-day acts and large­scale, policy decisions in today's Greece. It is, perhaps, not easy to appreciate the burden of another fact, this one particular to philosophy: in philosophy, "Greek" is synonymous to "ancient" and "classical", in just about any language in which philosophy has been written -including the Greek language.

That philosophy is not new to Greece, thus, needs no evidence other than philosophy's own terminology. That science is not new to Greece is convincingly demonstrated in the first eleven essays of this volume. But it is classical philosophy and ancient science that is not new to Greece, for it is, indeed, Greek philosophy and science. What about philosophy of science, however? What about the contemporary disci­pline of philosophy and history of the sciences? Why not in Greece until now - despite the valuable and significant contributions that constitute the exception to the rule - and why now?

Why not until now? Firstly - and most importantly - because Greece is an old country but a new state. This new state gave first priority to its national existence through periods of war that led to negotiations at times of peace that led to wars; at a time of turmoil, in a part of the world so often involved in turmoil, it had very little time for science, and almost no means for scientific and technological develop-

P. Nicolacopoulos (ed.), Greek Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, xiii-xvi © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

xiv INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

ment of its own. And whenever the questions of national existence and economic stability permitted it, the new state gave priority to its political and cultural identity, which emphasized ties to specific historical periods of the near or distant past, rather than participation in the scientific enterprise of the present.

Secondly, because the Greek academia followed, or perhaps led, this effort to identify the new with the old Greece, the dubious future with the glorious past. Now, if there is one element that has remained essen­tially the same through all periods of Greek history, it is the Greek language. It is, therefore, understandable that any effort to show ethnic, political and cultural identity would point to the continuous use of the same language and to the achievements of (and in) that language. Thus, the University of the modem Greek State (a State University ever since its foundation - which, to its credit, came quite early in the life of the new State), and the academic community in general, emphasized disci­plines such as Philosophy, Humanities and the Letters, but limited the educational and research efforts in philosophy to classical Greek philosophy and - to a smaller degree - to such subsequent areas as Hellenistic, Byzantine and (the sporadic) modem Greek philosophy, to neoPlatonism and neoAristotelianism, and to classical German phi­losophy, especially idealism.

With almost no home-grown science and technology, with a State policy having set priorities other than science, and with the academic community looking to philosophy to serve other purposes, philosophy and history of science did not have a chance. Yet, there were isolated efforts of various kinds that constitute important exceptions to the general lack of interest and work in this field: individual monographs, occasional textbooks, sporadic translations, a few references, the contributions of the ever-present Hellenic Diaspora, and some attempts to trace a problem or two in contemporary philosophy of science to classical Greek philosophy. In fact, if we go back to the period that preceded the foundation of the modem Greek State, then we may find examples of the influence of modem science and its historical develop­ment, and, to a lesser degree, of modem philosophy and its interaction with science, on the modem Greek Enlightenment. The two essays of Part II of this volume demonstrate this point. But the fact still remains that, until now, there has been no organized field, community or disci­pline of the philosophy and history of science.

Why now? In the last twenty-five years or so, there has been a

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS xv

continuous rise in interest in, and a constantly improving organization of, the field of the philosophy and history of science, or, as it is often called, epistemology. This is due, firstly, to the State policy that preceded it, which has placed more and more emphasis on Science and Technology (both in Industry and in Education) since World War II and the Greek Civil War. It is characteristic that, although the National Technical University of Athens existed as a Technical School since 1837 and as a Technological University since the turn of the century, it is only in the 1950's that other Greek Universities started offering courses and degrees in engineering.

Secondly, it is due to the restructuring and modernization of the Greek University system that began in earnest in 1975, took an impor­tant tum in 1982, and is about to tum another comer. Despite the serious problems that remain unresolved, this restructuring brought into the academic life a number of new disciplines as well as interdisci­plinary fields, and among them epistemology. (The term "epistemology", originally Greek, has returned to its mother language in its French, rather than its Anglosaxon ('theory of knowledge'), meaning of phi­losophy and history of science, or at least of theory of episteme; it concerns science in particular, not knowledge in general.) This modern­ization effort brought the contemporary probLematique into traditional fields, such as philosophy. It should also be noted that the development of new fields and disciplines, as well as the restructuring of the Univer­sity that preceded it and contributed to it, was considerably influenced by the exile of many Greek intellectuals during the 1967-74 military dictatorship and their subsequent return to Greece and its national University system.

The publications coming out of Greece, the conferences organized here, as well as the participation of Greek scholars in international conferences and international publications in the last few years, are good evidence of the existence of a well-organized community of epistemology as well as of the development of the discipline to inter­national standards. Now, these introductory remarks are not to be taken as even a sketch of the history of philosophy of science in Greece; it is much too early for such a history. They are simply a brief attempt to point to a fact, namely that of the existence of a field of study, and to the factors that may explain it. And this volume aims only to provide a representative picture of the interests, the branches and the achievements in and of that field. Other volumes addressed to the

XVI INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

international community have preceded it, and more will follow. But this volume may lay claim to be the first of a kind, in that it is neither a monograph, nor a Proceedings-volume, nor one dedicated to a special problem (as those preceding it), but rather a volume attempting to present the work of a local branch of an international community that is bound together through sharing the research of global problems.

The volume is divided into five parts. Part I consists of studies of classical Greek Science, that attempt to evaluate its philosophical, historical, theoretical and practical significance from a contemporary point of view. The first four essays are invited papers, and represent the achievements of the Hellenic Diaspora in this field. Though, in a narrow sense, they fall outside the volume's principal aim, namely to present the work coming out of mainland Greece, they are an essential part of the volume, since in all fields of knowledge, the production of mainland Greece has benefited from the work of the Greeks that have distinguished themselves abroad. Part II deals with the concept of science in the modem Greek Enlightenment, and its influence on the development of intellectual life. Part III consists of studies of sciences other than physics; in fact as diverse as psychoanalysis, biology, law and economics. Part IV presents studies in physics; the supremacy of the latter as a model for philosophical and historical studies, though challenged - and for good reasons - has not yet collapsed. Part V consists of essays focusing mostly on the history of philosophy and its development vis-a-vis science. Though the volume aims to be as representative as possible of branches, interests and scholars, it goes without saying that it was impossible to include all.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Gregory Vlastos's essay ''The Role of Observation in Plato's Concep­tion of Astronomy" was first published in Science and the Sciences in Antiquity, edited by J. P. Anton (N.Y., 1980, Eidos Publications). I extend my thanks to Professors Vlastos and Anton for their kind permission to publish it in this volume.

Much of the editorial work for this volume was done at the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, during my stay there during the 1987-88 academic year and in September 1989, while on sabbatical leave of absence from the National Technical University of Athens. I would like to thank the Center and Boston University for my Research Appointment; the benefits resulting from such an appointment and the means it makes available are well known to the international community of the philosophy of science and greatly appreciated by the Center Associates in all parts of the world. But I wish to thank Bob Cohen, not only for the opportunities associated with the Center (including that of my return to New England, where I spent the best part of nine years studying philosophy), but also for his particular care and help in the preparation of this volume, and espe­cially in September 1989.

My work for this volume was supported by a grant from the Latsis Foundation, and I wish to thank the Foundation and in particular Dr. Spiro Latsis for his continuous generosity.

Finally, I would like to thank Deborah Wilkes, of the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University, for her assist­ance in the administrative work, and Aleka Gavrielidou, of the Depart­ment of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, for her assistance with the manuscript.

xvii