Reviewing a book and write an essay about it.

distinctive about Ancient Scepticism: its claim to be a way of living that leads to psychological well-being.

Mohamed Mehdi, Oakton Community College

Daniel Graham. Science before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New As- tronomy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. 304. $49.95.

The thesis of Daniel Graham’s book is simple and elegant: Anaxagoras de- serves credit as the first Greek to practice demonstrably scientific astronomy, even though he did not leave us with any of the precise mathematical proofs later astronomers use to express their work. According to Graham, Anaxag- oras’s contribution was to verify empirically and then publicize two funda- mental astronomical observations: (1) heliophotism, the observation that the moon borrows its light from the sun, and (2) antiphraxis, the observation that eclipses occur when the sun’s light is blocked, whether by the earth coming between it and the moon or by the moon intervening between it and the earth. Against scholars who dismiss Anaxagoras’s astronomical ideas as “unfounded speculation” (10), Graham presents a strong case, arguing that the historical record shows his protagonist engaging in a collaborative process of formulat- ing hypotheses and testing them empirically—a process that deserves to be called Science (about which Graham says interesting and provocative things).

While Graham is not the first modern investigator to claim scientific cre- dentials for pre-Socratic philosophy, he is careful to distance himself from tra- ditions of scholarship that make early pre-Socratics responsible for scientific insights their successors inherit as a foundation for derivative (and arguably less significant) work. Graham is justly suspicious of these traditions, which rest for the most part on unverified observations by doxographers writing long after the events they describe. To correct the doxography, Graham’s first tactic is to prefer direct quotation as a historical resource. This makes him au- tomatically skeptical of doxographical claims that attest (1) heliophotism be- fore Parmenides or (2) antiphraxis before Anaxagoras and Empedocles. When doxographers attribute these observations to Thales and Pythagoras, Graham raises legitimate questions about anachronism: we have no theory of Pythago- rean astronomy quoted before Philolaus, who postdates Graham’s pre-Socratic pioneers in astronomy (Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles), and later au-

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thors crediting Thales with unusually accurate empirical knowledge of astron- omy may assume he would predict eclipses in the sixth century as Aristarchus of Samos did in the fourth—an assumption modern historians would be un- derstandably unwilling to make.

Graham constructs a plausible historical narrative explaining how Par- menides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles discovered and publicized heliopho- tism and antiphraxis when these were not known (or at least not yet openly touted) among prior Greek stargazers on record (i.e., the sixth-century pre- Socratics whose astronomical theories he presents in chap. 2 as so many dif- ferent versions of what he terms the meteorological model of the heavens). Reading direct quotations of pre-Socratics early and late against the doxo- graphy, Graham shows how heliophotism and antiphraxis fail to appear in any astronomical theory extant from the sixth century, while in the wake of Parmenides (who asserts heliophotism in the fifth) they are accepted by every- one, more or less uniformly. Moreover, in the wake of Anaxagoras, pre-Socratics make theoretical models of the heavens that diverge significantly and consis- tently from the meteorological model: specifically, they routinely posit that heavenly bodies are stony and heavy (rather than light and airy), requiring some kind of cosmic vortex to hold them in suspension as they travel over, under, and around the earth (rather than wandering around or over it exclu- sively in the manner of windblown clouds or leaves). Graham sees these later theories as so many versions of a new astronomy—the lithic model of the heav- ens that appears first in the work of Anaxagoras, who on Graham’s reading de- serves to be credited as its originator.

The strongest part of Graham’s narrative is his portrait of Anaxagoras as empirical astronomer. Few readers will come away from this book unconvinced that Anaxagoras proposed that the moon is a large stony mass (accepting he- liophotism and extrapolating from it to arrive at the idea of antiphraxis) and then tested his proposition, most likely in the solar eclipse of 478 BCE, which created a shadow Anaxagoras would have been well situated to observe through Ionian inquiry (especially if he were resident in Athens at the time, as Graham gives us good reason to believe). Given what the historical record attests—Anaxagoras’s geographically precise estimate of the size of the moon and the sun relative to the earth and the widely supported tradition that he “predicted” the meteor that fell in Aegospotami in the year 466—it seems very hard to dispute that he was a vocal proponent of the lithic model and that he tested it through empirical observation. That he published his astronomical theory is a historical fact, as is the reality that successors regard some of his observations (heliophotism and antiphraxis) as a given, taking the lithic model of the heavens and making it their own. This and the enduring astronomical

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acceptance of heliophotism and antiphraxis give Graham a strong position from which to argue that Anaxagoras was an empirical astronomer: at the least, Anaxagoras acted in his time much as astronomers do today, and his obser- vations continue to appear valid.

The weakest part of Graham’s narrative is his portrait of Empedocles, whose work is dismissed as derivative (copying Parmenides and Anaxagoras) on the grounds that his location in Sicily made it impossible for him to confirm he- liophotism and antiphraxis empirically before Anaxagoras. This presumes that Empedocles would have no access to reports from other places, a presumption that remains questionable (however justifiable the state of the evidence might make it appear). While we have no clear smoking gun for Empedocles (such as Graham provides for Anaxagoras), that does not mean the Sicilian deserves no credit. Graham’s dismissal of Thales is also troubling, inasmuch as it rests fun- damentally on ignorance: we simply do not know what Thales’s astronomical theories or observations were, having lost any clear trace of them in the histori- cal record. Perhaps he was a legitimate precursor to the precocious Parmenides. (Both men could likely have conducted empirical observations—and probably Ionian inquiry too.) Perhaps our record of sixth-century pre-Socratic cosmology and astronomy, admittedly scant, is even less representative than we think (and than Graham asserts when he makes the meteorological model uniformly deny heliophotism and antiphraxis). The universality or uniformity of the meteoro- logical model before Parmenides may be overstated in the record (as in Graham’s reading of it). Maybe Heraclitus’s assertion of the sun’s ephemerality and small- ness existed to combat assertions that it was permanent and large—ancient assertions Anaxagoras went on to prove empirically in a very public way. At least one observer closer to these events than we are may have thought so: Democri- tus is reported to have rebuked Anaxagoras for taking personal credit for ideas about the sun and the moon that he took from ancient tradition (perhaps famil- iar to Thales and Parmenides). To what extent is Democritus’s charge to be taken seriously? Graham’s dismissal of the doxography where it undermines his thesis is plausible, but not indisputable. Critics will probably attack Graham here, questioning Anaxagoras’s originality or priority in laying the groundwork for the lithic model (i.e., recognizing heliophotism and antiphraxis as ideas ver- ifiable by observation) rather than attempt to refute the strong case Graham articulates for his empirical vindication of it.

Graham’s most controversial claims reach beyond the question of which pre-Socratic deserves most credit for discovering heliophotism or antiphraxis. As part of his campaign to give Anaxagoras due glory, Graham asserts the ex- istence of something he calls Science—a positive understanding of empirical reality that advances over time without ever being utterly destroyed—and then

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makes it an object of worship: “When any culture arrives at a scientific practice [a process that produces Science], the occasion is worthy of study and offers a cause for celebration” (257; emphasis added). Graham argues against Popper’s negative idea of science (any theory not as yet empirically disproven) on the grounds that Anaxagoras represents a historical refutation of it. Over centuries of careful observation, no astronomer has ever refuted Anaxagoras. Heliophotism and antiphraxis thus appear to be absolute astronomical truths, no matter their place in time or space, and Graham would have us pay these ideas—along with the Science that underlies them, whatever that is (Graham’s definition appears on 256)—respect commensurate with this exalted status. Even if Graham per- suaded me to abandon Popper’s science, I find the requirement for celebration strange. Granted that “Science works” (30)—whether by the persistence of em- pirical absolutes (Graham) or their negation (Popper)—how is this inherently cause for celebration? Historians might find good reasons to lament some of the progress that people like Graham call Science. If I were Graham, I would offer this book as a contribution to our historical understanding of the art(s) of empirical astronomy rather than invoke a universal and universally beneficent Science—as though differences between fields like astronomy and biology were definitely less important than similarities, and the public emergence of empirically proven truth always constituted an unqualified blessing. But other readers will disagree, and Graham undeniably offers all of us a thoughtful and thought-provoking attempt to identify the science in our history of science.

Joseph G. Miller, Illinois Institute of Technology

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