1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

288 10. Lost Science
about the Platonist-Aristotelian method 229 to geometry, and discard (as
we must) the possibility that Euclid’s method, which remained for two
thousand years the very model of scientific method, might rate as “empty
verbiage and barren scholasticism”, we must deduce that the definitions
that we have been discussing — which are Platonist-Aristotelian not only
in methodology and tenor but often in actual wording — cannot be Euclidean.
Strangely enough, Popper did not draw this conclusion from his
perceptive analysis, but retained the traditional idea of a Platonist Euclid.
230
229 See page 155.
230 See [Popper: OSE], Addendum 1 (which appears in vol. 1 of the third and later editions). The
scientific importance of the Elements obviously cannot escape Popper, so he must deduce from his
assertion of Platonism (which he supports, in particular, with passages from Proclus) the consequence
that Plato was the “founder of modern science”. Since Popper also says that Plato founded
the essentialist method used in Aristotelian definitions, this latter statement is hard to reconcile
with the passage quoted on page 155.
Revision: 1.11 Date: 2003/01/06 02:20:46