What Did the Romans Know?

by Lehoux, Daryn

• ISBN13: 9780226471143
• ISBN10: 0226471144
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-28
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

What did the Romans know about their world? Quite a lot, as Daryn Lehoux makes clear in this fascinating and much-needed contribution to the history and philosophy of ancient science. Lehoux contends that even though many of the Romans' views about the natural world have no place in modern science-the umbrella-footed monsters and dog-headed people that roamed the earth and the stars that foretold human destinies-their claims turn out not to be so radically different from our own. Lehoux draws upon a wide range of sources from what is unquestionably the most prolific period of ancient science, from the first century BC to the second century AD. He begins with Cicero's theologico-philosophical trilogy On the Nature of the Gods, On Divination, and On Fate, illustrating how Cicero's engagement with nature is closely related to his concerns in politics, religion, and law. Lehoux then guides readers through highly technical works by Galen and Ptolemy, as well as the more philosophically oriented physics and cosmologies of Lucretius, Plutarch, and Seneca, all the while exploring the complex interrelationships between the objects of scientific inquiry and the norms, processes, and structures of that inquiry. This includes not only the tools and methods the Romans used to investigate nature, but also the Romans' cultural, intellectual, political, and religious perspectives. Lehoux concludes by sketching a methodology that uses the historical material he has carefully explained to directly engage the philosophical questions of incommensurability, realism, and relativism. By situating Roman arguments about the natural world in their larger philosophical, political, and rhetorical contexts, What Did the Romans Know?demonstrates that the Romans had sophisticated and novel approaches to nature, approaches that were empirically rigorous, philosophically rich, and epistemologically complex.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
The Web of Knowledge	p. 1
A Roman World	p. 4
A Roman World	p. 8
Knowing Nature in the Roman Context	p. 10
Overview	p. 17
Nature, Gods, and Governance	p. 21
Divinity and Divination	p. 22
Roman Virtues	p. 25
Nature and the Legitimation of the Republic	p. 30
A Ciceronian Contradiction?	p. 34
Knowledge of Nature and Virtuous Action	p. 37
Fabulae versus Learned Observation	p. 42
Conclusion	p. 45
Law in Nature, Nature in Law	p. 47
Laws of Nature	p. 49
Natural Laws	p. 57
Human and Divine Governance	p. 59
Is a "Law of Nature" Even Possible in Antiquity?	p. 61
Divinity, Redux	p. 72
Conclusion	p. 74
Epistemology and Judicial Rhetoric	p. 77
Theory-Ladenness and Observation	p. 79
Observations as Models	p. 83
Observational Selectivity	p. 90
Examination of Witnesses	p. 93
The Natural Authority of Morals	p. 98
Declamation and Certainty	p. 102
The Embeddedness of Seeing	p. 106
Doubts about Vision	p. 107
Mechanisms of Seeing in Antiquity	p. 111
The Eyes as Organs	p. 116
Not Every Black Box Is a Camera Obscura	p. 121
Epistemologies of Seeing	p. 125
The Centrality of Experience	p. 129
The Trouble with Taxa	p. 133
Knowledge Claims and Context-Dependence	p. 136
Unproblematic Facticity	p. 140
Problems with Experience	p. 142
The Lab Section of the Chapter	p. 147
The Question of Worlds	p. 149
Epilogue	p. 151
The Long Reach of Ontology	p. 155
Four Kinds of Justification for Prediction	p. 159
Predictability and Determinism	p. 167
Physical Solutions to Determinism	p. 169
The Cascading Effect	p. 174
Dreams of a Final Theory	p. 176
Explaining the Cosmos	p. 176
Orbs, Souls, Laws	p. 181
Numbers in Nature	p. 188
Harmony and Empiricism	p. 193
Conclusion	p. 198
. Of Miracles and Mistaken Theories	p. 200
History as a Problem for Realism	p. 204
Quantum Magnum PI?	p. 206
Can We Avoid the Problems History Poses?	p. 209
First Strategy: We Have Something They Didn't	p. 209
Second Strategy: The Curate's Egg	p. 218
Other Ways Out	p. 220
Worlds Given, Worlds Made	p. 224
What's in a World?	p. 224
Kuhn's World	p. 226
What Good Is Relativism?	p. 229
Coherence	p. 233
Truth and Meaning	p. 236
Realism, Coherence, and History	p. 238
Conclusion	p. 243
Appendix: Lemma to the Mirror Problem	p. 247
Reference List	p. 251
Index	p. 269
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