The “bankruptcy of science.”
184. With Leukippos our story should properly come to an end; for he had really answered the question first asked by Thales. We have seen, however, that, though his theory of matter was of a most original and daring kind, he was not equally successful in his attempt to construct a cosmology, and this seems to have stood in the way of the recognition of the atomic theory for what it really was. We have noted the growing influence of medicine, and the consequent substitution of an interest in detailed investigation for the larger cosmological views of an earlier time, and there are several treatises in the Hippokratean corpus which give us a clear idea of the interest which now prevailed.[[986]] Leukippos had shown that “the doctrine of Melissos,”[[987]] which seemed to make all science impossible, was not the only conclusion that could be drawn from the Eleatic premisses, and he had gone on to give a cosmology which was substantially of the old Ionic type. The result at first was simply that all the old schools revived and had a short period of renewed activity, while at the same time some new schools arose which sought to accommodate the older views to those of Leukippos, or to make them more available for scientific purposes by combining them in an eclectic fashion. None of these attempts had any lasting importance or influence, and what we have to consider in this chapter is really one of the periodical “bankruptcies of science” which mark the close of one chapter in its history and announce the beginning of a new one.
I. Hippon of Samos
185. Hippon of Samos or Kroton belonged to the Italian school of medicine.[[988]] We know very little indeed of him except that he was a contemporary of Perikles. From a scholiast on Aristophanes[[989]] we learn that Kratinos satirised him in his Panoptai; and Aristotle mentions him in the enumeration of early philosophers given in the First Book of the Metaphysics,[[990]] though only to say that the inferiority of his intellect deprives him of all claim to be reckoned among them.
Moisture.
With regard to his views, the most precise statement is that of Alexander, who doubtless follows Theophrastos. It is to the effect that he held the primary substance to be Moisture, without deciding whether it was Water or Air.[[991]] We have the authority of Aristotle[[992]] and Theophrastos, represented by Hippolytos,[[993]] for saying that this theory was supported by physiological arguments of the kind common at the time. His other views belong to the history of Medicine.
Till quite recently no fragment of Hippon was known to exist, but a single one has now been recovered from the Geneva Scholia on Homer.[[994]] It is directed against the old assumption that the “waters under the earth” are an independent source of moisture, and runs thus:
The waters we drink are all from the sea; for if wells were deeper than the sea, then it would not, doubtless, be from the sea that we drink, for then the water would not be from the sea, but from some other source. But as it is, the sea is deeper than the waters, so all the waters that are above the sea come from it. R. P. 219 b.
We observe here the universal assumption that water tends to rise from the earth, not to sink into it.
Along with Hippon, Idaios of Himera[[995]] may just be mentioned. We really know nothing of him except that he held air to be the primary substance. The fact that he was of Sicilian origin is, however, suggestive.