This book is based on the Tarner lectures given at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2012. It asks three interrelated questions about all kinds of ‘investigation’ in the ancient world: how its practitioners thought it should be pursued, what they assumed about what was to be investigated, and what they thought investigation was good for. L.’s goal, as in other previous comparative studies of ancient Greece and China, and to a lesser extent, India and Mesopotamia, is to explore how inquiry itself became a focus of attention, analysis and controversy from the earliest ancient investigations of the physical world. As elsewhere, he frames the inquiry in terms of what ancient investigators themselves sought to find, rather than the relevance of their investigations for contemporary science (pp. 1–2).
The book consists of five dense chapters, dense in historical information, in the range of information from several social, biological and physical sciences, and in extensive visual illustrations. The first chapter focuses on ‘experts’ and problems attendant on claims for certainty: both on what constituted ‘truth’, how to deliver it and what modes of argument were used to justify it. Here L. is particularly interested in the relation – if any – between demonstration and political institutions, especially democracy (p. 6). The chapter reviews Greek tensions between democracy and persuasion and claims for the importance of certain demonstration by Plato and Aristotle among others. This history is used to consider connections between demonstration and democracy. L. argues that demonstration is democratic and transparent in so far as it does not depend on the authority of the demonstrator. But it is anti-democratic in several senses: in its origins as an argument against explicitly democratic modes of argument, in the difficulty of agreeing on self-evident primary premises, and in the implication that incontrovertible arguments ruled out dissent or discussion by their very certainty (pp. 17–19).
L.’s counter-examples are India and China, where mathematicians engaged in active debate but without the Greek ambition for certainty and incontrovertible conclusions. According to L., the Indian and Chinese evidence suggests that the rise of strict axiomatic-deductive demonstration required a particular combination of competitiveness and elitism, in which some members of the elite set up new modes of argument in direct opposition to democratic and populist modes of argument aimed at majority approval. He concludes that although the desire for incontrovertibility was inherently anti-democratic, it nonetheless arose in part from the negative stimulus of democracy.
Chapter 2 offers a taxonomy of ancient debate: by subject matter, formality, adjudication method and overall purpose. It also addresses a range of ideals in debate, including transparency and accountability. But other aims of debate included pure entertainment and the examination of paradoxes and puzzles. In some cases, light-hearted beginnings had important scientific consequences. For example, Archimedes’ Sand Reckoner began with the problem of counting the number of grains of sand the universe could hold, but went on to develop a sophisticated arithmetical notation for large numbers that significantly improved on the Greek practice of naming them with letters of the alphabet. L. concludes by noting some of the problems of (perhaps too) firmly established ancient modes of inquiry and debate, where established authorities controlled intellectual access through long apprenticeships, the mastery of textual canons and even literacy itself (p. 55).
Chapter 3 takes up potential negative consequences of Greek interest in certainty. These included a disinclination for heuristics and the relatively low status of empirical research. L.’s examples include extensive comparative discussion. For example, he notes that Chinese forensic uses of dissection to determine the cause of death had no Greek or Roman equivalent, just as the Greek motivation to show that nature does nothing in vain had no parallel in China. He then turns to extensive Greek and Chinese ‘databases’ in the form of medical case histories, and the related problems of how to interpret their data and derive valid generalisations from it. The chapter also discusses the problem of idealisation in apparently empirical measurements, such as Eratosthenes’ and Posidonius’ calculations of the circumference of the earth, and the Zhoubi suanjing calculation of the distance to the sun (‘the height of heaven’).
Chapter 4 argues for the importance of attention to the questions posed by ancient investigators and the values they held. Here L. focuses on three interrelated questions: the right way to pursue inquiry, its proper subject matter and its value, and what it is good for. The result is not a ‘single ancient royal road to “science”, but rather multiple routes to different goals’ (p. 113). Some of these findings may surprise. For example, when it comes to what science is good for, L. identifies ‘wellbeing’ as an important motivation in both Chinese and Greek scientific inquiry, albeit for different reasons. On the Greek side, these include an ongoing preoccupation with eudaimonia – how to live well. Chinese scientific inquiries sought to further the welfare of the people, be it through astronomical (and thence cosmological) order, agriculture or irrigation.
Chapter 5 tackles a broad issue that informs the entire book: the ‘Great Divide’ problem of whether we should assume – or accept – that there are radical differences in the faculty of reason across human populations. It turns to questions on the character of human reasoning in populations separated by space, time and linguistic, social and cultural differences. L. counterposes ‘Great Divide’ theories of human divergence (e.g. due to the scientific and industrial revolutions, literacy and even rationality) to universalist theories in which essential characteristics of human reasoning date from the Pleistocene and have changed little since. L. argues that all humans share the capacity to investigate, but do so in a wide variety of ways. He emphasises both the differences in modes of inquiry by thinkers in several ancient cultures, the pluralism of modern science, and suggests that the coexistence of diverse and even conflicting scientific theories enhanced scientific inquiry both past and present.
This chapter focuses the book on questions of universalism or cultural particularism that has been central to several of L.’s recent writings since Cognitive Variations (2007). As elsewhere, he argues that while the social and intellectual frameworks for scientific inquiry have changed radically over time, the faculty of reason did not, nor did the potential ability to conduct investigations, albeit in different ways and with different interests and agendas, which varied according to cultural, social and even personal differences (p. 132). Individuals in all societies, he argues, process information they receive, exhibit curiosity and engage in persuasion and social exchange. But the details of these activities differ in ways that reflect the tools available – importantly including literacy – and differences in modes of inquiry, social institutions and underlying motives, values and ideals (p. 135). As elsewhere, he steers a nuanced course that will trouble proponents of either extreme view.
