As the founder of the discipline of the history of science, George Sarton was the first generation of professional historians of science, and he is by no means unfamiliar to scholars in China. In 2007, Jiang Xiaoyuan and Liu Bing edited Sarton’s History of Science Series, bringing Sarton’s ideas on historiography into the Chinese context in a comprehensive way. One of the monumental representative works that reflects Sarton’s achievements in the history of science, Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, has also recently been introduced by Xiangxiang Press.
Regarding Sarton’s value, the translator Lu Xudong says in the preface: “Anyone reading the history of science cannot but read Sarton’s works, just as anyone reading philosophy cannot but read the works of Plato and Aristotle. This is so not only because Sarton was an outstanding founder of the discipline of the history of science and a master of his generation, and because his works have already become classics in this field, but also because he told us how to understand the history of science correctly and the great role the history of science plays in linking the natural sciences and the humanities.”
This sort of exaltation is obviously excessively inflated. Sarton’s founding position in the institutional establishment of the history of science is beyond doubt; however, in terms of historiographical method, Sarton was neither a pioneer nor a consummate master. Although Sarton shifted from the traditional specialized history of scientists to the synthetic history written by historians of science, in terms of method he still did not break free from the traditional positivist horizon, nor did he absorb historiographical approaches such as the history of scientific ideas or social history, which arose roughly at the same time. And the professional historians of science after Sarton in fact never continued his history of science along Sarton’s own path. Does that mean his successors were all unable to “understand the history of science correctly”? Sarton’s status certainly cannot be compared with that of Plato and Aristotle; to put it more practically, he probably cannot even be compared with Koyré or Kuhn.
Opposing the excessive aggrandizement of Sarton does not mean erasing Sarton’s value. We need not treat Sarton’s understanding of the history of science as the standard for “correctly understanding the history of science,” but in any case Sarton provided a distinctive perspective on understanding history. We may not necessarily have to imitate Sarton’s method, but we can always derive some inspiration from it.
In Sarton’s view, the history of science plays a major role in connecting science and the humanities—why is that? The key lies not so much in Sarton’s view of science, but in his understanding of “the humanities.” Similar to Snow, who proposed “the two cultures,” Sarton’s “new humanism” sought to reinterpret “the humanities,” that is, to place “science” at the center of humanistic concerns. Sarton repeatedly pointed out: “The history of science is the only history which can account for human progress.” In other words, in his view, the development of science is the center of the history of human civilization, and the development of the humanities is embodied in the progress of science.
Thus, the significance of the history of science is not merely that of a specialized topic within human history, but rather the core thread in narrating human history—just as military and political history are the core of traditional historical narrative. This means that Sarton’s historiographical method was bound to differ from the traditional positivist history of separate disciplines. The earlier scientists’ horizon was nothing more than the development of some particular field, whereas Sarton was concerned not only with science as a whole, but with the development of all human civilization. Or rather, precisely because Sarton took the development of all humanity as his horizon, he had to go beyond specialized history and move toward synthesis.
Sarton compared the development of human civilization to the growth of an individual, and thus civilization history became like a biography of a person. When we try to write a biography of someone, we must first determine that person’s “purpose,” that is, as what kind of person he is to be described. If he is a mathematician, then the biography should take his interests and achievements in mathematics as its main thread; although accounts of his birth, old age, illness, and death, or of other undertakings, will always be interwoven, the mathematical thread is what gives the biography its meaning. Sarton said: “A biography that concentrates attention on describing a man’s diseases or his loves and hates may be engrossing, it may appeal to some superficial readers, but it is wrong. The case of humanity is not substantially different from that of one individual.”[1] Then what is humanity’s main purpose? Sarton believed, without question, that it is creative activity, represented most conspicuously by scientific activity. So Sarton’s undertaking was precisely to retell human history through the history of science, thereby reinterpreting the meaning of the humanities.
The analogy between the history of science and biography also determined Sarton’s historiographical method. Like ordinary biographies, Sarton’s narrative is strictly structured in chronological order: a person’s life is divided into sections of months or years, while the history of science spans decades or even a century. Within the same period, after briefly introducing other background factors of the time, he then subdivides by field and by figure. Although every person’s life is a unified whole, when we write a biography, we often find it difficult to establish coherent connections among the different aspects of that person’s life—for example, in a certain year and month he joined a chorus, fell in love, studied calculus, took part in an election… We believe that the subject of these activities is one and the same person, that his life is unified, yet how many connections can we actually articulate among these activities in a biography? This is also the predicament encountered by Sarton’s history of science: although we proclaim that human civilization is a unified whole, in actual exposition the narratives of its various aspects still appear unrelated; even highlighting one main line cannot naturally weave together the other “branch lines.” Therefore Sarton’s history of science looks like a scattered piling up of various materials, and in a sense this is precisely due to his overemphasis on the unity of the humanities and his inability to make effective choices and exclusions.
In fact, Sarton did not simply pile up materials, but always interspersed narration with commentary from his own perspective. His historical outlook remained essentially Whiggish, but Sarton was not obtuse; he did not portray history as a monotonous pattern of truth triumphing over error, nor did he overindulge in contemporary scientific conceptual systems when understanding ancient thought. He also tried, as far as possible, to stand within the historical context to understand the meaning of ancient ideas. For example, he expressed full understanding and great reverence for Aristotle, pointing out: “It is normal to be astonished by the innumerable physical questions in Aristotle’s works, but one must resist the temptation to read too much in them that can be compared with modern ideas; their author could not have had in mind the meanings of modern ideas, nor could modern ideas have been germinating in him; those meanings and that germination became possible only in our own age.”[2]
But Sarton was not so indulgent toward every ancient thinker; his attitude toward Plato and toward Aristotle are almost two extremes. Aristotle was, in Sarton’s mind, the model of a scientist, arguably the greatest scientist in history. As for Aristotle’s views on slavery and war, Sarton also defended them from the standpoint of historical context; by contrast, Plato’s treatment is worlds apart. Whether in his thematic introduction to Plato or in later comparisons with Aristotle and others, Sarton did not spare any terms of contempt and disparagement—stupid, embarrassing, absurd, utterly wrong, harmful, benighted… Such strong contempt perhaps stems from Sarton’s hostility to Plato’s political views—Sarton devoted a great deal of space, including citations of Popper, to criticizing Plato’s political philosophy.
In any case, such strong contempt is hard not to let affect one’s judgment of Plato’s historical significance. Although Sarton once pointed out that one should not use contemporary scientific standards, but rather evaluate a scientist’s importance by his historical influence, he likewise showed great disdain for Plato’s influence on the tradition—“The Platonic tradition is very largely a chain of evasions and excuses.”[3]
If one ignores the significance of the Platonic tradition, it is probably very difficult to understand the rise of modern science as a revival of Platonism, in which Platonism played a crucial role during this period. Of course, Sarton’s Introduction to the History of Science only goes up to the fourteenth century, and thus precisely does not confront the problem of the rise of modern science. But even when merely understanding ancient Greek science, Plato is a link that cannot be ignored. For example, the so-called demand to “save the phenomena,” generally attributed to Plato, is almost not mentioned at all by Sarton; he brings up the phrase only when introducing Eudoxus’s homocentric spheres model, as if the matter had nothing whatsoever to do with Plato—“The aim of the theory is to provide a mathematical explanation of the position of the celestial bodies at any time, or, as we may say using a very Greek phrase, its aim is to ‘save the phenomena.’”[4] Seen this way, “save the phenomena” seems to mean nothing more than the activity of providing a mathematical explanation. But why is it called saving the phenomena? Understanding the concept of saving the phenomena bears on why Greek scientists were so concerned with constructing astronomical models. What was their basic attitude or spirit behind the pursuit of knowledge? Sarton did not explain what this phrase means, even though he knew full well that the phrase has a distinctly “Greek” flavor; still, he passed over it in such a cursory manner. And regarding the relationship between Eudoxus and Plato, Sarton merely mentioned in passing that Eudoxus had once studied under Plato, and because Plato “mentions Eudoxus nowhere” (Plato’s dialogues are mostly centered on Socrates; how could Eudoxus, who was at most in his early teens when Socrates died, possibly appear?) he speculates that they “could not understand each other”[5]. Thus Eudoxus at best studied the mathematical tradition of Pythagoreanism in the Academy, and benefited in no way from Plato—what an arbitrary treatment this is.
Contempt for Plato was not accidental. In fact, Sarton was rather dismissive of metaphysics as a whole. Although he did not spare words when discussing Aristotle’s achievements in all respects, he basically says nothing about Aristotle’s metaphysical thought. Sarton mentions Parmenides’s idea of dividing the earth into five zones—the central zone, the tropics, and so on—and mentions Parmenides’s concepts of the celestial sphere and the earth, yet pointedly says nothing about Parmenides’s signature proposition: “What is, is; what is not, is not.” This shows that from the beginning, the tradition of metaphysics or ontology never drew Sarton’s attention.
But we need not blame Sarton for narrowness of vision. In fact, as positivist historiography, Sarton’s horizon was broad enough. Sarton not only focused on mathematics, astronomy, physics, medicine, and other major topics of traditional history of science, but also brought historiography and the various human sciences into his scope of investigation. Especially notable is his emphasis on historiography and natural history (博物学), with “historiography” representing a scientific tradition opposed to the tradition of “philosophy,” the latter emphasizing logical deduction from metaphysical principles, while the former emphasizes recording and organizing empirical phenomena. But both are pursuits of knowledge or truth, and thus both belong to the enterprise of science. This scientific mode, which begins from recording, description, classification, and arrangement, becomes history in the narrow sense when confronted with human activity, and natural history (博物学) when directed at natural things. In the past, people’s understanding of the natural-science tradition often focused only on one branch of it as natural philosophy, while neglecting the tradition of natural history. Sarton gave equal weight to both research modes, and richly detailed the various achievements of the traditions of ancient Greek historiography and natural history, which is truly commendable.
By the way: the translator renders most occurrences of natural history as the more familiar “博物学” (natural history), except in a few contexts where it must correspond to “history,” for example in the relevant discussion of Herodotus, where it is translated as “自然史” (natural history)[6] (whereas I maintain that natural history must be translated uniformly as “自然史,” and that rendering it as 博物学 is wrong and misleading). This shows the translator’s care and thoughtfulness. There is no doubt that the translation of the whole book is also accurate and fluent.
October 24, 2010
[1] Sarton: “History of Science and the History of Civilization,” in Science History and New Humanism, trans. Chen Hengliu et al., Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2007, p. 11.
[2] Sarton: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, trans. Lu Xudong, Elephant Press, 2010, p. 647.
[3] Sarton: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, trans. Lu Xudong, Elephant Press, 2010, p. 563,
[4] Sarton: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, trans. Lu Xudong, Elephant Press, 2010, p. 559.
[5] Sarton: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece, trans. Lu Xudong, Elephant Press, 2010, p. 561.
[6] For example, on page 561 of the Chinese translation, corresponding to p. 311 of the original, checked against the source.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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