.

6
The Hellenistic Scientific Method

6.1 Origins of Scientific Demonstration

One essential characteristic of scientific theories, as we have defined them
and as we have encountered them in the Hellenistic works considered,
is the use of demonstrations, that is, deductions of certain statements from
others, following a chain of logical steps that makes these deductions, in
principle, irrefutable: someone who accepts the premises cannot reject the
conclusions, except by finding an error in the deduction.
The English word “demonstrate” is a calque, through Latin, of the Greek
verb , which initially meant “show, display, expound” (and
was interchangeable with the unprefixed ). The original meaning
of the corresponding noun, apodeixis ( ), was “a showing, display,
exposition” of an object or subject: Herodotus, for example, presents his
work as an apodeixis (exposition) of his findings.1 The evolution from this
wider meaning, still present in the English “demonstration”,2 to the scien-
tific meaning that interests us went hand-in-hand with the establishment
and consolidation of what is called the hypothetico-deductive method. This
evolution went through at least two intermediate stages, which we can
exemplify through the use of apodeixis in Plato and Aristotle.

1
Herodotus, Historiae, I §1.
2
This English word — also a calque, through Latin, of apodeixis — means showings of various
kinds, and it has even spawned the clipped version “demo”, which applies to some of these senses.
In the scientific meaning that is the subject of this chapter, it has been losing ground: it is now more
common to hear “proof” than “demonstration”. In this chapter we will generally write “demon-
stration” to underscore the semantic origins of the term.

L. Russo, The Forgotten Revolution

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004
172 6. The Hellenistic Scientific Method

In Plato the word is used in the sense of a rational argument capable

of convincing someone else. In the Hippias minor, for example, Hippias
proposes to demonstrate that Homer portrays Achilles in a better light
than Ulysses.3 The Republic gives various demonstrations of the possibil-
ity of realizing the proposed state model. Plato seldom uses the term in
connection with geometry.4 We have already remarked that Plato’s work
contains very interesting demonstrations (in the later, technical sense of
the word),5 but the method used in such cases is not distinguished by a
specific term from convincing arguments of another nature.
In Aristotle’s works on logic, apodeixis is associated with the feature of
absolute irrefutability considered today to be necessary in a mathematical
proof. This new type of demonstration stands out as the object of Aris-
totle’s Prior analytics, where he describes and analyzes syllogisms. 6 He
defines a demonstration as a true syllogism (one whose premises are true). 7
A survey of the evolution of apodeixis from general argumentation to
what we can call Aristotelian “syllogistic demonstration” would require
a reexamination of a good part of the history of Greek philosophy, with
special attention to the Eleatic school. But it would not be a story limited
to philosophy in the narrow sense that this word usually has now, for
the evolution owes much to the development of deliberative and judicial
rhetoric — the art of arguing convincingly in assemblies and courts — that
evolved especially in the Greek democracies of the fifth century. There was
a crucial link between the existence of certain forms of democracy and
the development of the argumentation skills that led to the hypothetico-
deductive method. The relationship between demonstrations and public
speaking is clearest in the Aristotelian Rhetoric, where the author stresses
that the so-called enthymemes are none other than syllogisms, and identi-
fies twenty-eight distinct types of rhetorical lines of argument. 8 Aristotle
presents rhetoric, in large measure, as an application of the instruments he
elaborated in his works on logic, but the historical order was clearly the
reverse. A century before his day there were already treatises on rhetoric
(now lost), so we can imagine that the theory of syllogisms arose, at least
to some extent, from consideration of the rhetoricians’ enthymemes.9

3
Plato, Hippias minor, 369c.
4
One exception is in the Theaetetus (162e–163a), where a contrast is drawn between methods that
do not provide “true demonstrations” and the method used by Theodorus and other geometers.
5
See page 37 and note 21 thereon.
6
Aristotle, Analytica priora, I, i, 24a:11–15.
7
Aristotle, Analytica posteriora, I, ii, 71b:18–25.
8
Aristotle, Ars rhetorica, 1355a + 1397a ff.
9
It seems that Aristotle was the first to use the title The art of rhetoric. Earlier works on the subject
had probably been called The art of discourse ( ), revealing in the very name the
genealogy of later works on logic (from logos). Mathematics too had certainly been food for thought