1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

5.4 The Scientific Method in Medicine 129
and instrumental use of results from science do not in themselves warrant
labeling his work scientific. For that we must ask whether and to what
extent he shared with the luminaries of Hellenistic exact science not only
technical instruments and terminology, but also methodological elements.
Consider first that the dissection of cadavers is a complete novelty as page 170
compared to earlier medicine: for the first time a human body is handled
not for healing, or for embalming, or for other immediate practical
ends, but purely for knowledge’s sake. We also know from Celsus that
Herophilus was supplied by the king with condemned men for experimental
vivisections. 24 Thus Herophilus’ work certainly presents two of
the features typical of empirical sciences: research as distinct from professional
activities, and the experimental method.
For anatomy to be founded by Herophilus, two taboos of classical Greek
culture had to be overcome. One was religious in nature and obvious: the
ban on cutting human bodies open. The second taboo was intellectual and
subtler.
Fifth-century medicine developed without introducing neologisms. 25 In
all of classical culture, discussions about concepts had been inseparable
from discussions about the terms used to name them. The ancient doctrine
that things have “natural names”, still partly present in Plato, 26 was
already contradicted by Aristotle, 27 but the latter considered that humans
were free to choose only names as strings of sounds, not the demarcation
of the world into individual nameable objects. The De partibus animalium,
for example, takes for granted that the “parts” of which one can talk always
have a Greek name. The implicit assumption, in other words, is that
there exists a finite, static set of all knowable objects, corresponding to page 171
the vocabulary of Greek or any other language. Aristotle does seem to
have introduced new terms in zoological taxonomy, such as entoma (“segmented”)
for insects and coleoptera (“sheath-winged”) for beetles. 27a But
these terms were not being used conventionally; their meanings either
24 Celsus, De medicina, proem, 23–6 = [von Staden: H], text 63a. Von Staden, who discusses at
length all the available evidence (pp. 142–153), regards this statement as credible; in any case,
as he notes, it’s not possible to determine whether a nerve is sensory or motor, as Herophilus
did systematically, without experimenting in vivo. The ethical problems raised by vivisection are
certainly very serious; at the same time they have such a modern ring to them as to confirm, in a
sense, Herophilus’ proximity to modern “scientific method”.
25 See [Irigoin], where it is said, for example, that in the Hippocratic De locis in homine, two-thirds
of the anatomical terms had already been used in Homer.
26 Plato, Cratylus. Though recognizing that words are a human creation, Plato insists on the objective
similarity between a good name and the named object. Further, he denies the possibility that
a run-of-the-mill contemporary of his might introduce new words; in his view, all names had been
chosen by the original legislators who created the various languages.
27 Aristotle, De interpretatione.
27a Historia animalium 487a, 32 and 490a, 14–15, respectively.
Revision: 1.9 Date: 2002/09/14 19:12:01