1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

172 6. The Hellenistic Scientific Method
Of course, there are important differences between the experimental
method of Hellenistic science and the contemporary one. In comparison
with the early modern age, Hellenistic exact science was project-oriented
rather than experimental: technology was more important than experimentation
in driving the interplay between theory and practice. And a
concept long considered essential to modern science was absent in Hellenistic
science, namely the “crucial experiment”. If by that expression we
understand an experiment designed for choosing between two alternative
hypotheses on a particular phenomenon, then crucial experiments are
present in ancient science: the nerve section practiced by Herophilus to de- page 219
cide if it was a motor or a sensorial nerve is an example of this type. But
crucial experiments in the sense of something decisive for establishing the
truth of a whole theory are certainly absent.
Notwithstanding these differences, if (as is usually the case) we want
to regard not only twentieth-century physicists and biologists but also
Galileo, Francesco Redi and Robert Grosseteste as users of the experimental
method, it seems perverse to exclude Ctesibius, Herophilus and Philo
of Byzantium.
6.8 Science and Orality
The importance of oral culture in the Greek world was for a time underestimated,
but in the last few decades it has been the subject of a great
deal of literature. 79 In the fifth century and to some extent down to Plato’s
time, writing had a subordinate role relative to oral culture, in the sense
that books were written and bought not for readers, but as professional instruments
for those who performed the contents in song, theater or declamation.
The genetic link between rhetoric and the hypothetico-deductive method
suggests that perhaps the scientific method, too, had its roots in oral culture,
thus going back to long before the Hellenistic period. 80
Naturally, it is difficult to demonstrate fully the existence or nonexistence
of particular practices in an oral culture of which, by definition,
we lack direct documentation. But while, as we have seen, the connection
with rhetoric (a verbal art by definition) implies that the origins of
the hypothetico-deductive method go back to oral culture, the diffusion
of books certainly caused important changes, above all in uniformizing
the choice of postulates. 81 Indeed, a fundamentally oral culture is no bar
79 For a recent bibliography one can consult [Harris].
80 This belief is expressed in [Cerri].
81 On this point see [Cambiano].
Revision: 1.7 Date: 2002/09/14 23:17:37