Abstract

This little book contains lectures given by Vlastos in the summer of 1972 in the Danz Lectures series of the University of Washington. His theme relates to that often rather paternalistic exercise of plotting out the extent to which Science was Revealed to the Greeks. In his view, "it was not given to them... to grasp the essential genius of the scientific method." However, they did discover "the conception of the cosmos that is presupposed by the idea of natural science and by its practice". This discovery, an intellectual "revolution," was of the view, upheld by the Presocratic physiologoi, that the world is characterized by "unbreachable regularities" which make the world a "cosmos," which "constitute the order of nature and, if known, would yield the ultimate explanation of every natural phenomenon". This was revolutionary since it rejected the traditional belief in an unlimited area of possible divine supernatural intervention in the world, a belief which made perception of the universe a perception of an "irrational universe". Thus, "for the first time in history", man achieved, with Presocratic physiologia, "a perception of a rational universe". In the remaining two chapters of the book, Vlastos examines Plato, represented as a "fierce opponent" of the revolution who appropriated the newly discovered cosmos, refashioning it "on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics". This interpretation of Plato is developed mainly through a study of the Timaeus and especially of the "Theory of Celestial Motions" and of the "Theory of the Structure of Matter". Plato appears as opposed to the "impiety" of the physiologoi, proposing himself in the Timaeus a transcendent god as his primary cosmological principle. At the same time, the Timaeus reflects, as Vlastos shows in a brief survey of earlier and contemporary Greek astronomy, an awareness of the "empirical facts" established by the astronomers and Plato’s desire to reconcile these facts with his metaphysical, theological, a priori convictions. This reconciliation involved postulating a system of celestial circular motions, a theory whose "scientific value" Vlastos does not doubt, despite its dependence on a "metaphysical scheme". Vlastos concludes that although Plato fully acknowledged a supernatural power in the universe, he guaranteed the regularities of nature against divine intervention. There is an unfailing natural law. However, its ground for Plato is not natural but supernatural. In examining the "Theory of the Structure of Matter", Vlastos again finds that Plato’s world-order resembles very much that of the physiologoi and, like theirs, is "safe from supernatural interference". The "elementarism" of the Timaeus is shown to be indebted to the Atomists, but also to innovate by opening the way to the intertransformability of elementary corpuscules. What "scientific value" does this theory of the transformation of elements have? It is neither entailed nor contradicted by observation. Vlastos suggests rather that its grounds are "aesthetic". At any rate, Vlastos concludes that although Plato opposed the physiologoi in reintroducing supernatural agency, he annexed their conception of cosmos. In his "perversely original way," he thus "sustained the faith that our world is cosmos. He gave rational men a pious faith to live by in two millennia all through which science was more prophecy than reality". Some of Vlastos’ more extensive footnotes are collected in an Appendix, which is followed by a Bibliography and Indices.