Seeing with Different Eyes - Cosmology and Divination

14
Chapter One
All of this makes the Stoic thesis of fate nearly identical with the Stoic
idea of divine sympathy, as the causal force that connects everything
through the all-suffusing divine pneuma. But this does raise a kind of
problem. If divination is the attempt to develop a predictive system within
a deterministic cosmos by closely observing the natural world and
recording what signs precede what outcomes, how is divination any
different from the natural sciences? If a meteorologist predicts rain from
the appearance of a rain cloud, we don’t typically call him a diviner. And
in fact, Cicero has Quintus separate himself from such other arts of
prediction explicitly: “There are many things foreseen by physicians,
pilots, and also by farmers, but I do not call the predications of any of
them divination” (multa medici, multa gubernatores, agricolae etiam
multa praesentiunt, sed nullam eorum divinationem voco). 25
But what then is the difference? I think here we have to invoke a
doctrine that Quintus is shy about. He does not talk much about a point
that his brother makes hay of in his rebuttal. As Cicero is arguing against
Quintus, he invokes what must surely have been the principle that
separated the signs and causes that belong to divination from signs and
causes that belong to the natural sciences. Cicero tells us that Stoics think
“divination is the foreknowledge of things which depend upon chance”.
(Talium ergo rerum, quae in fortuna positae sunt, praesensio divinatio
est). 26 We might do a double-take here, given Stoic determinism, but they
did, as a matter of fact, have a definition of chance (which definition
Cicero by the way ignores): chance (tuchê, fortuna) is defined as cause
which is unclear (aition adêlon) to human reason. 27
So, we have here a view of divination that makes it, by definition, the
art of predicting outcomes whose causes are not known. Two pieces of
evidence support this view. First Quintus’ utter consistency in claiming
that he does not know why divination works, but will rather appeal to the
concrete examples in the past when it has indeed worked, in order to
construct an empiricist argument. He also consistently compares this
approach to the kind of approach taken by physicians. They may not know
precisely why a certain root or herb acts as an emetic or a purgative, or
aids in the healing process—nevertheless these things just do work. 28
Second is a sentiment that expresses this point rather clearly at the close of
Quintus’ argument in book 1. He here considers a limiting case:
If there were some human being who could see with his mind the
connection of all causes, he would certainly never be deceived. For
whoever grasps the causes of future things must necessarily grasp all that
will be. But since no one but god can do this, man must be left to gain his