University of Pennsylvania Press

Bringing Philosophy Down from the Heavens: Socrates and the New Science
Author(s): K. J. H. Berland
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1986), pp. 299-308
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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BRINGING PHILOSOPHY DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS:
SOCRATES AND THE NEW SCIENCE'
BY K. J. H. BERLAND
Socrates has been
nearly
as hard to
pin
down for writers
through
the
ages
as he must have been for the
poor Sophists
who had the misfortune to collide
with his
devastating
method of
questioning.
Several
philosophers
and scholars
have been
intrigued by
the
variety
of
ways
Socrates has been
interpreted;
Soren
Kierkegaard
comments:
Although
the immediate
testimony concerning
Socrates is
lacking, though
we
lack a
completely dependable conception
of
him, still,
we have in
exchange
all
the various nuances of
misunderstanding,
and with such a
personality
as
Socrates,
I believe this serves us best.2
Kierkegaard suggests
that each
age-indeed,
each thinker in each
age-
reinvents the Socrates it
needs,
and a historical examination of the
reputation
of Socrates in
English
letters bears this out. The
biographers,
historians of
philosophy,
miscellaneous
writers,
and
poets
of the
eighteenth century
were
concerned
very
little with "the historical
Socrates,"
and fewer still were involved
in what moder students of
philosophy
would
recognize
as
legitimate, historically
accurate
philosophical inquiry.
Instead,
they
wrote
polemics
of one sort or
another,
so that Socrates became a vehicle
for,
rather than a source
of,
instruction.
Curiously enough,
the traditional
legends
and
authority
of Socrates are
frequently
enlisted on both sides of various controversies.
Proponents
of the
doctrine of natural
religion pointed
to Socrates as the
exemplar
of the
scope
of
reason,
while their
opponents compared
his
professed ignorance
with the cer-
tainties of
revelation,
or
stooped
to attack the wickedness of the ancients. Socrates
was summoned to defend the
theater,
since he was
reputed
to have admired
(and
even
edited)
the work of
Euripides;
he was also made a
martyr
to the
license of the
stage
and the animus of
satire,
since the Clouds of
Aristophanes
was
widely
held
responsible
for his death. Socrates was
reputed
to have had
two
wives,
and so he even
appears
in the
controversy surrounding population
and
polygamy
that exercised such writers as
Delaney,
Madan,
and Malthus.
Because Socrates was known to have turned
away
from the
study
of natural
' A version of this
paper
was
presented
at the Canadian
Society
for
Eighteenth-
Century Studies, October,
1984. The author wishes to
acknowledge gratefully
the as-
sistance of a Research
Fellowship
from the
Pennsylvania
State
University
Institute for
the Arts and Humanistic Studies.
2
S0ren
Kierkegaard,
The
Concept of Irony,
With Constant
Reference
to
Socrates,
tr.
Lee M.
Capel (New York, 1965),
158-59. See also Mario
Montuori,
Socrates:
Physiology
of
a
Myth (Amsterdam, 1981),
6:
"Every period
of
history, every culture,
following
this
or that
image
of
literary
tradition,
or
emphasizing
this or that
aspect
of the
many
sides
of his
character,
has made
up
its own
Socrates,
seeing
in him
every
time an ideal or a
symbol
as variable as are the
possible interpretations."
A similar conclusion is drawn
by
Benno Bohm, Sokrates im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, (Neumiinster, 1966).
299
Copyright
1986
by
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF
IDEAS,
INC.
300 K. J. H. BERLAND
phenomena
in order to devote himself to other
studies,
his
reputation
became
a
weapon
in another
controversy-the question
whether the fixed attention to
natural
phenomena
often associated with the "New Science" was
dangerous
to
the
well-being
of moral
philosophy.
Seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century
com-
mentators noted that several classical sources
gave explicit warnings against
this
peril.
Cicero was often
cited,
since he had contended that Socrates turned
away
from the
physical
science of
Archelaus,
for whom
"philosophy
dealt with num-
bers and
movements,
with the
problem
whence all
things
came,
or whither
they
are
returned,
and ... the size of the
stars,
the
spaces
that divided
them,
their
courses and all celestial
phenomena."
Socrates was considered the father of
philosophy
because he shifted the focus from natural to moral
philosophy.
"Socrates on the other hand was the first to call
philosophy
down from the
heavens and set her in the cities of men and
bring
her also into their homes
and
compel
her to ask
questions
about life and
morality
and
things good
and
evil."3
After
quoting
the e caelo
passage,
historian Charles Rollin
goes
on to
suggest
how
important
was Socrates's distinction between the kind of
knowledge pursued
by
the Ionian
nature-philosophy
and the
knowledge
of what is
truly
valuable:
He found there was a kind of
folly
in
devoting
the whole
vivacity
of his
mind,
and
employing
all his
time,
in
enquiries merely
curious,
involved in
impenetrable
darkness,
and
absolutely incapable
of
contributing
to human
happiness;
whilst
he
neglected
to inform himself in the
ordinary
duties of
life,
and in
learning
what is
conformable,
or
opposite,
to
piety, justice,
and
probity;
in what
fortitude,
temperance,
and wisdom consist.4
Edward
Bysshe,
in his version of
Xenophon's
Memorabilia,
takes an even
stronger
tone
concerning
Socrates:
He
thought
those sciences
wholly
useless ... because
they
take
up
all our
Time,
and divert us from better
Imployments.
In a
word,
he could not allow of a too
curious
inquiry
into the wonderful
Workmanship
of the Gods in the
disposition
of the Universe.... He held
besides,
That it was
dangerous
to
perplex
the Mind
with these sublime
Speculations,
as
Anaxagoras
had
done,
who
pretended
to be
very knowing
in them.5
Sir William
Temple
links Socrates with
Solomon,
asserting
that both were
set on
"exploding"
the
"vanity"
of natural
philosophy
and that both labored to
introduce moral
philosophy
"to
busy
human minds to a better
purpose."6
The
gulf
between moral and natural
philosophy
is made to seem even
greater
by theological
writers who
subject
the end of
study
to careful examination. In
his
APETH-AOFIA,
Alexander Innes
explains
the Socratic doctrine that the
cause of vice is
ignorance,
not
pleasure.
Socrates "first fetch'd
Philosophy
from
Heaven,
and settled it
among
Mankind" in order to combat moral
ignorance.
3
Tusculan
Disputations,
tr. J. E.
King (London, 1927), V, iv,
1-3. See also Cicero's
Academica, I, iv,
15.
4
Charles
Rollin,
The Ancient
History (7th ed.; London, 1780), II,
487.
5
Edward
Bysshe,
The Memorable
Things of
Socrates
(London, 1712),
177.
6 Sir William
Temple,
"The Gardens of
Epicurus,"
in Five Miscellaneous
Essays by
Sir William
Temple,
ed. Samuel Holt Monk
(Ann Arbor, [1963]),
5.
SOCRATES AND THE NEW SCIENCE 301
"He
very firmly
maintains,
that all our
Safety
and
Happiness depends upon
the
Good Choice we make of Pleasure and
Pain;
Which cannot be done unless we
have some
particular
Science
whereby
to
govern
our
Judgment
in those Points."7
Whenever natural
philsophy
is tried and found
wanting,
it is
precisely
because
it cannot
provide light
for the essential
judgments
of human life.
Socrates could be used as an
authority
in the counterattack
against
certain
forms of
science,
as John Toland demonstrates when he attacks atomism with
the
contempt
Socrates had for the
writings
of
Anaxagoras (to
which
Xenophon
alludes),
and which
appears
in Socrates's attitude toward Pericles in the Phaedo.8
Socrates's
professed inability
to
comprehend
the
complex
theories of Heraclitus
also
appears
as a
testimony
of their foolishness. A succinct
representation
of
this kind of
polemical opposition
can be seen in the
frontispiece
of
Ralph
Cudworth's True Intellectual
System of
the
Universe,
which
portrays
the
theists,
Pythagoras,
Socrates,
and
Plato,
nourishing
the flame of
truth,
while the atheists
Anaxagoras,
Heraclitus,
and
Epicurus
stand around
looking dissipated
and con-
spiratorial.
A more
sweeping, general
counterattack
against
the incursions of the New
Science
appears
in another
eighteenth-century
work,
John Gilbert
Cooper's Life
of
Socrates.
Describing
Socrates's turn from natural to moral
philosophy, Cooper
identifies Socrates's
enemies,
the
priests
and
Sophists,
with the Ionian scientists:
"The divine Science of Moral
Philosophy began
now to
prevail
over those useless
Researches of the
Study
of
Physics,
and aerial
Speculations
of an absurd The-
ology."
These are
strong
words,
though
the term "useless" will
certainly
be
familiar to students of anti-virtuoso satire.
Cooper provides
his reader with a
footnote to this
attack, which,
like so
many
annotations of that
period,
is
furnished
ostensibly
as a kind of disclaimer but
actually
intensifies the criticism:
"The Author does not mean to
decry
the
Study
of
Physics
in
general,
which
properly employed,
no
doubt,
is of
great
Service to
Mankind,
but
only
those
useless Researches ... which too often
engage,
even at this
Day,
the
misapply'd
Hours of several
soberly disposed
Moder
Philosophers."9
Cooper
belabors an
array
of
authors, especially Sprat
and his "fustian
History
of the
Royal Society"
and
including
all the
"Metaphor-hunting
Mob of
silly
Witlings
in Charles the Second's
reign." Cooper
insinuates that the wits and
the scientists were all of a
piece,
all trivial men
corrupted
with "the Rottenness
of the
Age,"
all
conspiring
to
supplant
moral
philosophy
with the second-rate
exercises of
wordplay
and
experimentation.
No less concerned with the threat to moral
philosophy
is Dr. Johnson.
Although
he wrote several
positive
accounts of
developments
in
science, notably
when
they produced tangible improvements
in the human condition
(as
in the
Life of Boerhaave),
he is far from
unequivocal
in his attitude.
Commenting
on
Milton's
plan
for an ideal
education,
Johnson takes issue with the concentration
on natural
philosophy
which he sees in Milton's
proposed
curriculum:
But the truth is that the
knowledge
of external
nature,
and the sciences which
7 Alexander Innes
APETH-AOrIA, Or,
An
Enquiry
Into the
Original of
Moral Virtue
(Westminster, 1728),
215.
8 John
Toland,
Letters to Serena
(London, 1704),
26.
9
John Gilbert
Cooper,
The
Life of
Socrates
(3rd ed.; London, 1750),
64-65.
that
knowledge requires
or
includes,
are not the
great
or the
frequent
business
of the human mind. Whether we
provide
for action or
conversation,
whether
we wish to be useful or
pleasing,
the first
requisite
is the
religious
and moral
knowledge
of
right
and
wrong;
the next is an
acquaintance
with the
history
of
mankind,
and with those
examples
which
may
be said to
embody
truth and
prove by
events the reasonableness of
opinions.
Prudence and Justice are virtues
and excellencies of all times and of all
places;
we are
perpetually
moralists,
but
we are
geometricians only by
chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature
is
necessary;
our
speculations upon
matter are
voluntary
and at leisure....10
Johnson's
point
is that education must address first and foremost the de-
velopment
of moral
knowledge,
which is essential in the
growth
of
mature,
responsible
human
beings.
It is
unlikely
that Milton would have
disagreed
that
this is the
great
business of the human
mind,
though
he
clearly
failed to see
any
danger
in
providing
a scientific
component
in education.
Johnson, however,
continues his defensive
polemic by citing
the
authority
of Socrates to
support
his own distinction between
necessary
and
merely
curious
knowledge:
Let me not be censured for this
digression
as
pedantick
or
paradoxical;
for,
if
I have Milton
against
me,
I have SOCRATES on
my
side. It was his labour to
turn
philosophy
from the
study
of nature to
speculations upon life;
but the
innovators whom I
oppose
are
turning
off attention from life to nature.
They
seem to
think,
that we are
placed
here to watch the
growth
of
plants,
or the
motions of stars. Socrates was rather of the
opinion,
that what he had to learn
was,
how to do
good,
and avoid evil.
A similar attitude is evident in Vicesimus Knox's "Strictures on Moder
Ethics." Knox insists that "the
knowledge
of nature and her
operations,
com-
pared
with the
knowledge
of ourselves and our
duty,
is of small
consequence.
Sensible of this at a
very early period,
Socrates checked the
flight
of
philosophy
soaring
to the
airy regions
of
speculative physics,
and
taught
her to walk
among
the haunts of men.""1
These versions of the Ciceronian e caelo
commonplace
all sound a note of
caution. It is
surprising,
therefore,
to encounter another version that seems to
be
diametrically opposed. Apologists
for the New Science
bring
an
entirely
new
interpretation
of the Socratic decision to
change
the focus of
philosophy.
In his
History of
the
Royal Society,
Thomas
Sprat
offers his readers a brief
encapsulation
of the
progress
of
philosophy, carefully
(and
characteristically)
tailored to reflect
favorably upon
the historical mission of the New
Philosophy.
The
Athenians,
he
blandly explains,
were
"admirably fit,
for the
reducing
of
Philosophy
into
Method: ... But
yet
their Genius was not so well
made,
for the
undergoing
of
the first
drudgery
and burden
of
so
difficult
a work"-that
is,
the
development
of real science.
Sprat suggests
that the Greek nature
philosophers
had made a
good beginning,
but that the Athenian
passion
for mere "Discourse"
pre-empted
their work:
In that
City, therefore,
the
knowledge
of Nature had its
original,
before either
10
Samuel
Johnson,
"The Life of
Milton,"
Lives
of
the
English
Poets,
ed.
George
Birkbeck Hill
(Oxford, 1905), I,
99-100. Cf. Johnson's
Rambler,
24
(9 July 1750).
"
Vicesimus
Knox, Essays,
Moral and
Literary (London, 1779), II,
28-29.
that of Discourse or humane Actions: but it was
quickly
forc'd to
give way
to
them Both. For it was not
yet
come to a sufficient
ripeness,
in the time of
Socrates. And
he, by
the
authority
of his admirable
wit,
made all
Philosophy
to be taken off from a condition of
encreasing
much
farther,
that
they might
be
immediately
serviceable to the affairs of
men,
and the uses of life. He was
one of the first
men,
that
began
to draw into some
order,
the
confus'd,
and
obscure
imaginations,
of those that went before him: and to make
way
for the
composing
of the
Arts,
out of these scattered Observations. All these various
subjects,
the vastness of his Soul
comprehended
in his casual
Disputations:
but
after his
death, they
were divided
amongst
his
Followers,
according
to their
several Inclinations.12
There is none of the venom here which so
many
other
spokesmen
for the
New Science
customarily
direct at the ancients
(albeit
their
target
is
ordinarily
Aristotle).
Instead, Sprat explains complacently enough
that Socrates was
right
to
bring philosophy
down from the heavens-to redirect
philosophy
to the
discourse of humane matters-since the arts and moral
philosophy
were in need
of coherent
organization.
His was a titanic
effort, which, however,
time
inevitably
reversed,
for his
teachings
became
increasingly
diffused and
rhetorically
self-
justified
as
they
descended
through
the various sects and
schools, ultimately
devolving
into
merely syllogistic
discourse and
controversy.
The
polemical
thrust
of
Sprat's historiography,
of
course,
is manifest in his
suggestion
that Socrates
turned
philosophy away
from the "burden of Observation" because the time
was not
yet ripe
for the birth of the
Royal Society,
the Great Instauration.
Neither
Sprat
nor such critics as Johnson and Knox take into consideration
the
potential unity
of natural and moral
philosophy suggested by
Bacon13 and
fulfilled
by
Newton and
Boyle.
Indeed,
the devout scientists are
conspicuously
absent from the
polemical interpretations
I have encountered.
However,
the
spirit
of Newton and
Boyle
is
omnipresent-though they
are
never named-in
Amyas
Bushe's SOCRA
TES,
A Dramatic Poem.
Bushe,
about
whom we know
nothing except
that he was a Fellow of the
Royal Society
and
the author of this
work,
states in his "Advertisment" that the author recommends
the
system
or sentiments of Socrates "no farther ... than as
they
are considered
as the nearest
approaches
made
by uninspired
reason,
to that
perfect dispensation,
12
Thomas
Sprat,
The
History of
the
Royal Society of
London,
for
the
Improving of
Natural
Knowledge (London, 1667),
8.
Among
his
many
criticisms of
Sprat, Henry
Stubbe
complains
that he is "illiterate ...
having
never so much as read over
Diogenes
Laertius."
Sprat's ignorance,
Stubbe
insists,
has
produced
a number of
gross
historical errors.
Preface,
Legends
No Histories
(London, 1670), Sig.[*4]v.
13 "Neither is
my meaning,
as was
spoken
of
Socrates,
to call
philosophy
down from
heaven to converse
upon
the
earth;
that
is,
to leave natural
philosophy
aside,
and to
apply knowledge only
to manners and
policy.
But as both heaven and earth do
conspire
and contribute to the use and benefit of
man,
so the end
ought
to
be,
from both
philosophies
to
separate
and
reject
vain
speculations
and whatsoever is
empty
and
void,
and to
preserve
and
augment
whatsoever is solid and
fruitful;
that
knowledge may
not be as a
curtesan,
for
pleasure
and
vanity only,
or as a
bond-woman,
to
acquire
and
gain
to her master's
use;
but as a
spouse,
for
generation,
fruit,
and comfort." Francis
Bacon, Of
The Ad-
vancement
of Learning,
in The
Philosophical
Works
of
Francis
Bacon,
ed. John M.
Robertson
(Freeport,
New
York, 1970),
60.
which the
gospel
affords to mankind."14 This is a familiar
formula,
employed
by
those who viewed Socrates as a
protochristian martyr
for monotheism-a
notion favored
by
writers from Justin
Martyr
and Erasmus to Addison-but
the Socrates who
appears
in Bushe's
poem
is not
really
a
philosopher heroically
struggling
toward truths which
eighteenth-century
readers would
recognize
as
gifts
of revelation.
Instead,
Bushe has created a
truly
new version: the Newtonian
Socrates, boldly seeking
to understand the
operative
laws of the natural universe
in order better to
praise
the benevolence of the creator. In terms of method this
is not an innovation.
Cooper's
Socrates,
for
instance,
sounds like a latitudinarian
divine,
Voltaire's Socrates
(in
his satirical
play, Socrate)
like a dramatic mouth-
piece
for Voltaire's own
thought,
and other versions of Socrates
invariably
approximate
their author's voice.
Bushe
opens
his
play
with the conventional
interpretation
of Socrates as the
embodiment of the
power
of Reason and the
exemplar
of Natural
Religion.
The
dedicatory poem ("by
an unknown
hand")
describes the
"half-evangeliz'd,
in-
spired
store/Of sacred Socrates" as the
product
of a
"glorious
task,"
the
highest
rational achievement of "unassisted nature"
(vi-vii).
As the
poem progresses,
it
quickly
becomes clear that the heart of this achievement is not Socrates's de-
velopment
of a laudable
program
of moral
philosophy
but the link Bushe
hy-
pothesizes
he must have discovered between natural and moral
philosophy.
The
Newtonian Socrates has never
given up
the
study
of the
workings
of the natural
world.
Instead,
he follows the
example given by
Newton and the
physiotheol-
ogists-such dazzling
anachronisms come with the
territory-and
seeks to learn
what kinds of moral wisdom can be discovered from scientific
inquiry.
Socrates
begins
with an
exposition
of the
Argument
from
Design. Naturally,
it takes the form not of the
original
Platonic
notion,
but of a
modern,
Chris-
tianized version that takes into account the new discoveries of cosmic order:
... since this beauteous world
Was rais'd
by
God,
his Providence must rule
The vast machine-Chance is an idle
toy
For fools to
play
with-Should fixt nature
change
Her well-known
course,
and
vary
from the laws
That
guide
the
system:
should the
elements,
Whereof all
things
in this our lower world
Are
form'd,
desert the station which
they hold,
In concert with the whole: should the
great
frame
Of that
bright heavenly arch,
which o'er our heads
Shines with
refulgent light, give way
and feel
A dissolution.... should chance or fortune
reign
With
arbitrary sway:
what would become
Of man
himself,
for whom these
things
are made?
Idle surmise! There is a
living
God
Who rules
supreme,
under whose
brooding wing
All nature rests secure.
(7)
14
Amyas
Bushe, Socrates,
A Dramatic Poem
(London, 1758),
v.
Subsequent
references
will
appear parenthetically
in the text.
Just as
Socrates,
echoing Shakespeare
and
Milton,
finishes
expounding upon
the Great Chain of
Being,
his
pupil
Aristodemus comes to him burdened with
doubts
concerning
God and Providence. It
appears
that Aristodemus has fallen
under the noxious influence of the
Atomists,
so that his confidence is shaken.
Socrates doesn't
quarrel
about the intrinsic value of
empirical knowledge;
how-
ever,
he does take issue with
arrogant
and irreverent
extrapolations
from this
knowledge.
He taxes his
pupil
with the limitations of
merely
"scientific" knowl-
edge:
Can'st thou
perceive
How causes
operate?
what latent
springs
Move nature's works? know'st
thou,
what rounds the
hail,
Or
points
the
flaming
dart? how
icy
chains
Restrain the fluid
mass,
and
stay
the course
Of
limpid
streams,
that wont to
glide along
In
liquid lapse?
or,
grant
that
you
could view
Nature's
recess,
and see the hidden wheels
By
which
things
move,
and
operate
with
ease;
Are
they
at
thy disposal?
canst thou
wing
The feather'd snow? or bid the
brushing
winds
Sweep
the aerial
way?
canst thou
dispose
Of seasons and their
change?
do elements
Of
jarring
atoms
form'd,
at
thy
command
In
friendly league
combine?
Bushe here
joins
the tradition of
calling
the value of human science into
question by comparing knowledge
of second causes with the
power
of the First
cause-a tradition which
brings
to mind the
questioning
of the
scope
of human
knowledge
in the Book of Job.15 This tradition
usually operates
to
discourage
scientific
speculation,
and to
encourage
a more humble estimation of the
scope
of reason. Consider the
prayer
of
Theophilus
in James Harris's
"Dialogue
Con-
cerning Happiness":
ASSIST us
then,
THOU POWER
DIVINE,
with the
Light
of that
REASON,
by
which Thou
lightenest
the
World; by
which Grace and
Beauty
is diffused
thro'
every Part...;
that
Reason,
of which our own is but a Particle or
Spark,
like some Promethean
Fire,
caught
from Heaven above. So teach us to know
ourselves,
that we
may
attain that
Knowledge
which alone is worth
attaining.
Check our
vain,
our idle Researches into the
Laws,
and
Natures,
and Motions
of other
Beings,
till we have learnt and can
practise
those,
which
peculiarly
respect
ourselves.16
Such an attitude seems
congenial
with the traditional
interpretation
of Soc-
rates's stand
against
natural
philosophy.
In Edward
Bysshe's
The Memorable
Things of
Socrates,
the connection is
explicit:
15
This
parallel
was demonstrated to me
by
Professor James E.
May
of the
Pennsylvania
State
University;
both Job and Solomon
provide inspiration
for the
poetic
tradition of
calling impertinent
scientific
investigations
into
question.
16
James
Harris,
Three Treatises
(London, 1765),
229.
He said
besides,
that he should be
glad
to know of those
Persons,
if
they
were
in
hopes
one
Day
to
put
in Practice what
they
learnt... or if
they
did
imagine
that after
they
had found out the Causes of all
Things
that
happen, they
should
be able to
give
Winds and
Rains,
and to
dispose
the Times and Seasons as
they
had occasion for
them;
or if
they
contented themselves with the bare
Knowledge,
without
expecting any
farther Profit. This is what he said of those who
delight
in such studies.'7
Bushe's source
may
be either or both Job and
Xenophon;
what is
significant
is the fact that he draws
upon
the earlier source in such a
way
as to transvalue
or transform it
completely.
Socrates does not use the
argument
of the limitations
of human
knowledge
and
power
to dissuade his
pupil
from "such studies."
Instead,
he returns to the
Design Argument; significantly,
some of the secrets
of nature to which Bushe has Socrates refer had been accounted
for,
in
theory
or
demonstration, by
the
mid-eighteenth century.
Socrates devotes considerable
attention to the circulation of the
blood,
yet
another reason to
praise
the be-
neficent
dispensations
of the Creator. Bushe
may
have been familiar with the
speculation
that
Harvey's
discoveries had been
anticipated by
the ancient
phi-
losophers
and
physiologists. Henry
Stubbe,
in the course of his battle with the
Royal Society,
asserts that most of the discoveries claimed
by
the
Royal Society
are
really
ancient.18 Similar
arguments appear
in a more elaborate form in
Dutens's
Inquiry
Into the
Origin of
the Discoveries Attributed to the Moderns.
9
William Wotton discusses the
controversy
at
length
in his
Reflections
Upon
Ancient and Modern
Learning. Noting
that a late
seventeenth-century
edition
of
Hippocrates-probably
Almeloueen's
Inventa-antiqua (1684)-attempted
to
demonstrate that
Harvey merely
revived
Hippocrates's
theories,
Wotton con-
cludes that both
Hippocrates
and Plato believed in the circulation of the blood
"as an
hypothesis,"20
and in a
postscript
to the Preface in the second
edition,
Wotton notes that
Servetus, too,
offers
"imperfect glimmerings
of that
Light
which afterwards Dr.
Harvey
communicated with so
bright
a Lustre to the
Learned World." 21 Thus Bushe elevates a brief reference
(Timaeus, 80e)
to full-
fledged Harveyan theory.
The new discoveries lend
impact
to Bushe's main
point-whatever
human-
kind can
perceive
of the
operation
of
secondary
causes serves to
point
to the
First Cause. Bushe
jettisons
the traditional element of caution and
humility
entirely. Although
Socrates allows a
degree
of human
ignorance concerning
the
"springs"
of "nature's
works,"
he transforms the note of limitation into a
positive
opportunity
for moral
philosophy by insisting
that we know
enough
to deduce
17
Edward
Bysshe,
The Memorable
Things of
Socrates,
6.
18
Henry Stubbe,
A
Reply
Unto the Letter Written to Mr.
Henry
Stubbe in
Defense of
the
History of
the
Royal Society (Oxford, 1671),
49.
19
L.
Dutens,
An
Inquiry
into the
Origin of
the Discoveries Attributed to the Moderns
(London, 1769),
210-23.
20
William
Wotton, Reflections Upon
Ancient and Modern
Learning (London, 1694),
207-08,
215.
21
"Mr. Wotton's Additions to the Second Edition of His
Reflections, &c.,"
in Richard
Bentley,
A Dissertation
Upon
the
Epistles of
Phalaris. ..
(London, 1697), separate pagi-
nation,
46-53.
the existence and
operation
of an
Almighty
Hand. This
process
transforms
science into a
religious duty:
And
yet
all nature moves
By
certain laws that rule the vast machine
In each
degree
of
change,
and
speak
a
power
That
gives
it
motion,
and directs the
parts
To their
respective ends;
for
things
inert
Could never
act,
without a
living
soul
To
give
them
energy....
Socrates convinces
Aristodemus,
of
course,
and the
prodigal disciple
cries
out:
Amazing
are the laws
That rule the
universe,
and
keep
the world
In order
just!-my thoughts
have been
employ'd
On other
things.
Socrates
gently
scolds his
erring pupil,
and,
at the same
time,
restates the
commonplace
of devout natural
philosophy,
the warrant for all
empirical
investigations:
What can
employ your thoughts
With so much
pleasing joy,
as thus to view
The works of God?
... is this
oeconomy
A
proof
of Providence? or does it
speak
The laws of chance?
(7-10)
After Aristodemus thanks Socrates for
helping
him,
the
dialogue
continues
to
progress along fairly predictable
lines,
moving through
the
argument
which
deduces the benevolence of the Creator from the excellence of the "machine."
Each
part
of creation has its
use,
and Reason is no
exception:
By sequel
fair
Should
you
not thence
infer,
that
intellect,
Forecast,
and
wisdom,
from some
power
flow,
As from a source of
pure
celestial
light,
Which shews the moral world to reason's
eye
And
gives
it lustre.
(13)
Bushe's Socrates
explains
the source and
proper
use of Reason in terms that
resemble the "Candle of the Lord" of the
Cambridge
Platonists.
Again,
he
argues
that the
inquiring
mind is a Providential
gift
intended to
help
man discover
his Creator. He is at the
peak
of his Newtonian form
here,
as he reasons from
the
physical
machine of the human
body, through
the mechanisms of sense
perception
(in
Lockean
terms),
to the
ability
of the
imagination
to
develop "plans
of truth and science"
(23).
Thus,
with the aid of an extended
pattern
based on
the
Design Argument,
the
image
of Socrates is shifted from one of cautious
opposition
to
empirical investigation
to one of fervent
approval.
Although
Bushe's Socrates has
brought philosophy
down from the heavens
in an
entirely
new
manner,
his
physiotheological rhapsodies
confirm a traditional
Socratic
image
to which I have
already
referred. Bushe reinvents Socrates as a
profoundly religious
man,
the
protochristian exemplar
of natural
religion,
who
by reading
God's
handwriting
in the book of the natural world becomes the
archetype
of the devout scientist. With all
appropriate
detail,
the Newtonian
Socrates embodies the combined warrant for the use of reason in natural and
moral
philosophy.
This brief account should demonstrate that Socrates has meant different
things
to different writers. It is not so much that he was all
things
to all
people,
but that his
image
has
always
been so
compelling
that he has been
adopted,
and
adapted, by
an
amazingly
wide
variety
of
contradictory
causes. Bushe
may
have
been moved to create his own
interpretation
to counter the antiscientific
readings
of Socrates-his
poem
follows
Cooper's
brief but
pointed
attack
by
less than
nine
years,
and
Xenophon
was in
print
in a
variety
of translations
throughout
the era. But Socrates has
always
been
reflected
in the
understanding
of those
who
approach
him,
and so the
history
of his
reputation
is
necessarily comprised
of a series of
polemic interpretations
and
appropriations. Misunderstandings
they may
be,
in
Kierkegaard's
sense,
but
they
are
extremely revealing
misun-
derstandings.
Pennsylvania
State
University.

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Bringing Philosophy Down from the Heavens: Socrates and the New Science

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