Lloyd - The Agora Perspective

Presses Universitaires de Vincennes
The Agora Perspective

Author(s): Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd
Source: Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident, No. 14, REGARDS OBLIQUES SUR
L'ARGUMENTATION EN CHINE (1992), pp. 185-198
Published by: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42635665
Accessed: 12-08-2017 19:59 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
Presses Universitaires de Vincennes is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident
This content downloaded from 195.220.106.16 on Sat, 12 Aug 2017 19:59:35 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Extrême-Orient - Extrême-Occident 14 - 1992
Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd
Résumé : dans l'intention explicite de mieux mettre à jour les hypothèses

sous-jacentes aux travaux consacrés à la Grèce ou à la Chine ancienne,
Geoffrey Lloyd réagit à quatre articles de ce volume, en soulignant quel-
ques similarités, quelques différences, qu'ils lui suggèrent, entre écrits
grecs ou chinois. Cela l'amène à reprendre sous un angle parfois diffé-
rent certains aspects des analyses portant sur les textes grecs eux-
mêmes. Il insiste tout particulièrement sur la manière dont pareille dé-
marche doit prendre en compte le contexte social des échanges intellec-
tuels. L'article de Jean Levi le conduit à dresser un parallèle entre les dis-
cours des rhéteurs en Chine et en Grèce, et une opposition entre les réac-
tions qu'ils ont suscitées ici et là. C'est à la volonté de promouvoir, en
Grèce, un type de discours par oppostion à un autre type, qu'il associe
les développements sur la vérité et la démonstration chez Platon et Aris-
tote. La relation entre texte et diagramme dont Michael Lackner analyse
la pratique en Chine est l'occasion de rappeler quelques positions prises,
en Grèce, sur le rapport entre figure et discours. Après avoir insisté, en
réponse à l'article d'Alexei Volkov, sur la fréquence des raisonnements
par analogie dans les textes grecs, Geoffrey Lloyd souligne la corrélation
entre la volonté d'Aristote de produire une analyse formelle du raison-
nement et le fait de privilégier le syllogisme. Il pose la question de la pos-
sibilité d'une prise en compteformelle d'une argumentation par analogie,
qui exploite les potentialités sémantiques, les aspects pragmatiques...
L'article de Karine Chemla l'amène à insister, pour mieux inciter les his-
toriens des mathématiques à se déprendre du modèle euclidien, sur
l'existence de plusieurs modes rivaux de démonstration dans les textes
grecs, en compétition les uns avec les autres jusque dans les textes
d'Aristote lui-même. Dans le même but, il rappelle que le développement

des mathématiques les ont amenées à se démarquer d'options fonda-
mentales de la démonstration more geometrico telle que l'entendait par
exemple Aristote.
The editor has asked me to comment on four of the articles in the

current number. It might be thought risky to invite remarks from some-
one trained originally as a Hellenist, when one of the aims of several of
the contributors is, precisely, to free their interpretations from too heavy
a dependence on Western, and notably ancient Greek, models of argu-
mentation. However readers may be reassured that the same ambition has
been guiding my own comparative work now for several years - not that
I am under any illusions about the possibility of attaining some Olympian
vantage point from which Greek, Chinese, or who knows what other cul-
tures can be judged, for, clearly, no vantage point can be neutral, and our
best hope is to be as self-conscious as we can of the theoretical, metho-
dological and epistemological, assumptions of our own inquiries. One of
the more important that directs my own studies is that our primary initial
obligation is to attend to the terms in which the actors themselves - Greek
or Chinese - speak of their own work, or conduct it. If we are indeed to
identify styles of reasoning, it is the actors' own perceptions of their ac-
tivities that we need, so far as possible, to reconstruct, whether from their
own explicit statements or from aspects of their conduct of their inquiry.
Two types of question seem both promising and fundamental. First
there are investigations of the relations between styles of reasoning and
their contents or end-products. Secondly there are issues to do with the
connections between styles of reasoning and the social and cultural con-
texts in which the reasoners worked. It is not, of course, as if those
contexts determined the styles of reasoning : nor that such influences as
they exercised necessarily operated uniformly across all domains of
inquiry, let alone at all periods, in either culture. It is not just that, as
Karine Chemla remarks in her introduction, there are other features of
Chinese reasoning that are not discussed in this collection. More than
that, the idea of being able to arrive at generalisations to covertile whole
of Chinese reasoning, or the whole of Greek, is quite illusory. Neverthe-
less one recurrent feature of the comments that I have to offer concerns
186
the question of the social contexts of intellectual exchange and relates to

modes of rivalry as they existed in ancient Greece and how they mani-
fested themselves in demands for particular styles of justification. And
if that addresses a contrast between parts of Greek, and parts of Chinese,
reasoning, a good deal else of what I have to say concerns more striking
similarities than many, used to simple-minded oppositions between East
and West, would expect.
My remaries will be addressed to the papers of Jean Levi, Michael
Lackner, Alexei Volkov and Karine Chemla in that order.
First there is Jean Levi's discussion of the art of persuasion in the
Warring States period, where he concentrates, in the main, on the rich
materials in Xun Zi, in Han Fei Zi, and in Zhanguoce. Here indeed there
are some striking points of comparison with ancient Greece - and ones
that make the further points of contrast all the more intriguing. As Levi 's
paper amply shows, not only were the arts of persuasion practised, they
were practised self-consciously. The Shuo nan chapter of Han Fei Zi, for
instance, provides telling evidence for deliberate reflection on the
techniques to be used in persuasion.
In ancient Greece both the actual practice, and the self-conscious ana-
lysis, of rhetoric grew rapidly from the fifth century B. C. onwards. So
far as analysis goes, the tradition of works called technai, Arts, devoted
to this question, goes back to Corax and Tisias in the mid fifth century,
though their books have not survived. But in the next century Plato's
Phaedrus offers constructive comments as well as criticism of the
practices of past and contemporary orators, and in the next generation
Aristotle's Rhetoric, in three books, is our first extant comprehensive
treatise dealing with the whole subject.
Meanwhile we also have a wealth of actual examples of Greek
forensic and deliberative oratory dating from the fifth and fourth centuries.
It is clear that the analysis of techniques of persuasion developed, in
both East and West, during a period when the actual practices themselves
flourished and when able speakers were in considerable demand. However
beyond that point we must pay due attention to some striking differences.
Three that seem particularly important are the following.
1) The primary contexts in which persuasion is deployed in China and
in Greece exhibit some significant differences. The circumstances that
187
play the role of model for many applications in China relate to the per-
suasion of the prince or ruler. Aristotle's analysis distinguishes three
main fields of rhetoric, deliberative, forensic and epideictic (this last to
do with speeches of praise or blame). While in the first and the third of
these the target might be a single individual, for example a monarch or
a tyrant, all three were more often directed at persuading a group, usually
a group of the speaker's own peers. Thus one important context in which
epideictic oratory was practised was in speeches of praise for the dead
fallen in battle, where a prominent citizen was chosen to speak about his
fellow citizens. Similarly deliberative oratory was typically addressed to
the assembly or the council, and forensic presupposes the scenario of
ancient Greek courts of law, where the people to persuade were the
dicasts who acted as both judge and jury, who often numbered hundreds
and who were, again, fellow-citizens.
2) These differences in context can be related, secondly, to certain
differences in the tactics of persuasion. As the chief target in China was
often the prince, the stakes are higher. Levi points out how often the
Chinese orator's life was imagined to be at risk, and sometimes not just
imagined to be. Greek orators, too, when they dealt with tyrants, ran
similar risks, and so too losing a political or a legal argument could have
grave consequences. However the situation was not as clear-cut as when
the target of persuasion was a single powerful ruler. Even if you were
temporally in a political minority in ancient Greek city-states, you hoped
with time to convert the majority.
3) Thirdly in both China and Greece there is a certain sense in which
cleverness in speaking was often treated as suspect But the form that
suspicion takes, and what is contrasted with that cleverness, exhibit
differences. Levi shows how both Xun Zi and Han Fei Zi manifest a
certain ambivalence towards the art of speaking. But what is opposed to
that art is, principally, the living embodiment of the sage. Education, true
education that is, proceeds through his « gestes », by which I take it that
what is meant covers both gestures and acts. But what happens in
Greece ? What is opposed to rhetoric - at least by certain authors - is true
philosophy. What is opposed to persuasion is demonstration : but both
are a matter of logos, word, speech, account.
188
It seems significant that in the famous Shuo nan chapter of Han Fei
Zi the focus of attention is on the psychological aspects of persuasion.
Advice is offered as to how to avoid offending the prince. The topic of
avoiding the dangerthe speaker may run appears repeatedly. In Aristotle's
Rhetoric there is certainly plenty of attention paid to the emotions and
prejudices of the audience, and to such points as how to present yourself
as a man worthy of credence. At the same time there is a thorough
analysis of the arguments used in rhetoric, where Aristotle develops his
theory of the enthymeme, or rhetorical syllogism, and the paradigm, the
counterpart, in rhetoric, of induction (more on that later). But beyond
providing a clear analysis of the modes of argument that are available to
the orator, one of Aristotle's evident intentions was to contrast those
arguments with those of the philosopher, the demonstrative ones discus-
sed in the Posterior Analytics and the dialectical ones of the Topics. So
at the very same time as he provided rhetoric with a schema of analysis
for its arguments, he downgraded it in relation, not to indicating the truth
by « gestes », but to a superior form of argument.
In the opening chapter of the Rhetoric Aristotle himself complained
that earlier writers of the Arts did not deal with enthymemes, which are
the « body » of persuasion, but spent most of their time treating of matters
that are outside the subject (from Aristotle's own point of view, of
course), the arousing of prejudice, compassion, anger and similar emotions
that have no connection with the topic in hand but are directed only at the
dicasts. That might be taken to suggest that before Aristotle himself
Greek treatises on rhetoric may have been much closer to the Shuo nan
chapter than Aristotle's own Rhetoric is. When we add further that one
particular reason why Aristotle proceeds in the way he does is to locate
rhetoric below philosophy, we can relate the modes of analysis in his text
to the rivalry that, like Plato before him, he apprehended between diffe-
rent claimants to intellectual leadership and prestige. Of course why
some Greek writers contrasted the orator with the philosopher, while
some Chinese ones contrasted the orator with the sage, raises further pro-
blems. Yet at least we can see that the status of oratory and the mode of
analysis to which it was subjected reflect, in each case, important wider
aspects of the cultural background. Among the higher forms of activity,
some Chinese were for contrasting saying with doing. That is a contrast
189
that can readily be exemplified in Greece as well. But among those who
there competed as educators, some chose to contrast one kind of speaking
with another kind - with the consequent problem of justifying the
difference, a matter, in the case of Plato and Aristotle, of their developing
their notions of truth and demonstration.
Michael Lackner presents a sophisticated analysis of the role of

diagrams in reasoning, taking as his chief example the Ximingtu. He
suggests that ontology and linguistics are thereby interrelated, and that
the understanding of the contents of the texts depends on « reading » the
diagram that accompanies it.
Once again there are curious parallels and divergences with ancient
Greek materials, and I am not thinking just of the points of similarity with
Epictetus, Plotinus and late antiquity to which Lackner himself refers.
We may recall that the term grapfw in Greek signifies « write »,
« draw », « construct », but also, on occasions, « prove », and as such
continues to be used even in Plato (e. g. Theaetetus, 147d) and Aristotle.
To cite just one of the most striking texts, Prior Analytics, 65a, 4ff, when
Aristotle there complains that certain mathematicians think they can
graphein parallels, it is not that he criticises them for drawing them, but
for thinking that they can prove them, without, that is, being guilty of
circularity in their proof.
Indeed the close relationship between the construction of the figure
and the proof of a theorem continues, even though « what has to be
demonstrated » is distinct from « what has to be done », and it is well
known that uncritical assumptions about the generalisability of features
of a diagram constitute one of the weaknesses of some Greek geometry.
That is because that geometry prided itself on being judged by the crite-
ria of strict proof developed in both philosophy and mathematics. That
was a matter of connections between propositions, and already in the
Republic Plato contrasted mathematics unfavourably with dialectic pre-
cisely on the point that the mathematicians' methods make appeal to
diagrams.
Of course, this is a far cry from the examples taken by Lackner. But
his discussion suggests yet another feature of the rivalry I have spoken
of in Greece. Where the Chinese evidently were happy with either and
190
used both, some of the Greeks eventually sought to contrast propositions

with diagrams, even though others had earlier associated both with
« proof ».
Alexei Volkov's interesting article raises a number of fundamental
issues concerning the use of analogical reasoning in classical Chinese
texts and in general. Is this - or how far is this - a distinctive feature of
classical Chinese reasoning? Several passages illustrate that some
classical Chinese authors were quite self-conscious about the use of
comparisons - the text from Liu Xiang cited being a case in point. But
were their perceptions of their use the same of ours ? Volkov insists that
we cannot assume that their intuitions about correct reasoning corres-
pond to our own.
A Hellenist's first reaction may well be to register the very conside-
rable parallelisms, here, between East and West Even though the term
« correlative thinking » was coined in relation to Chinese materials in the
first instance, it is as common in ancient Greece as it is in China.
Although the classical Greeks had no overarching pair of concepts
corresponding to Yin and Yang, they elaborated complex schemata of
correspondences between the four elements, the primary opposites, the
principal humours and much else besides. Again, the citing of analogies
of various types, including real or imaginary historical parallels and
fables, is as common in Greek as in Chinese techniques of persuasion.
Aristotle has a whole chapter (20) of the second book of his Rhetoric
devoted to what he calls paradigms, the equivalent, in rhetoric, as I have
noted, to induction. Thirdly the movement from a known case to an
unknown one, for example in connection with trying to understand
puzzling natural phenomena, was not just extensively practised in
ancient Greece but elevated to a principle - or at least a recommendation
- in the famous slogan opsis adêlôn ta phainomena - the appearances are
a vision of the obscure.
No doubt the domains from which the preferred analogies were drawn
and those to which they were applied differ - from individual to
individual, and from one field to another, as well as between China and
Greece - according to the interests and concerns involved. But this very
general movement of thought is common to both cultures, and no doubt
to many others as well.
191
The question arises, however, as to whether there are distinctive

Chinese uses or whether Chinese perceptions of their use are distinctive.
Volkov rightly criticises an approach that takes Western deductive ar-
gument as the model and downgrades every other style of reasoning by
comparison. To get away from Western preoccupations he suggests
evaluating Chinese analogical reasoning using the notion of « mapping »
developed by Hall in his work in artificial intelligence - though that
might be thought to run the risk of substituting one kind of Western
prejudice for another. To be sure, focussing on the two domains between
which the analogy is articulated - the source domain and the target
domain - and again on the conditions of transferability of points between
them has the advantage that the discussion tackles the central issue of si-
milarities and differences. This certainly has one major merit, that is
avoids imposing a purely deductive framework on the analysis. Howe-
ver, as Volkov concedes, any analysis that concentrates on structural
features of the argument alone will not capture those aspects of analogi-
cal reasoning that depend on exploiting the lull range of the semantic
resonance of terms. Otherwise said, the perception of the correctness or
incorrectness of the invocation of an analogy will depend on much else
besides the formal analysis, however that is carried out.
It is, we should recall, the very attempt to give a purely formal ana-
lysis of argument schemata that drives Aristotle in his exploration of
deductive syllogistic. What his style of high philosophising required was
incontrovertibility, to be secured only where deductive chains of reaso-
ning proceed from self-evident indemonstrables to unchallengeable
conclusions. But that in turn depends, of course, on the terms throughout
meeting the strictest criteria of univocity. For the conclusions to be
incontrovertible, there could be no question of allowing the associations
of natural language terms - their semantic stretch - or the personal
perceptions of individuals and their implicit common knowledge to play
any part.
But the trouble with this was not so much that what Aristotle offered
was incomplete or inadequately theorised formalisms, though, to be sure,
improvements can easily be suggested and some were indeed proposed
already in antiquity, for example with the Stoic introduction of variables
standing for propositions ratherthan for terms. No, the trouble, from one
192
point of view, relates simply to the very nature of formal logic itself and
its relation to informal modes of reasoning. It is not as if we need more
and more sophisticated formal accounts of reasoning : but rather more
sensitive treatments of informal reasoning. It is not as if we need ascribe
some alternative logic to Chinese - or Greek - analogical reasoners.
Rather we need to pay more attention both to the semantics and to the
pragmatics of their reasonings, to the implicit knowledge of the reasoners
and to the contexts of their communicative exchanges, a topic broached
but not developed by Volkov (n. 5).
The depersonalising of argument was one of the aims Aristotle set
himself for what I called his style of high philosophising, and parts of his
motivation are reasonably clear. Like Plato before him, he was preoccu-
pied by the problems posed by the weakness of arguments that could be
criticised as merely persuasive - the styles cultivated so effectively by
the Greeks in the law courts and the assemblies, as well as in much of their
natural philosophy and medicine ! But persuasion depended on the
audience's reaction to arguments, indeed it often deliberately exploited
their feelings, not to say prejudices. But while orators, politicians,
« sophists », poets, were irremediably entangled with the snares of per-
suasion, the salvation for philosophy as Aristotle saw it, was that ideally
it could be taken right out of that framework. Here was a way to claim a
new style of wisdom indeed.
But while part of the background to Aristotle's endeavour is provided
by the rivalry he so often alludes to, between himself and other would-
be masters of truth, it is as well to bear in mind one point with which I
began these comments on Volkov. In addition to his formal logic and
theory of demonstration, Aristotle offered an analysis of informal
reasoning and persuasion in his Rhetoric - as well as a sophisticated
account of question and answer dialectic in the Topics. Although the
actual examples he gives of paradigms are less imaginative, less poetic,
than those that figure in such classic Chinese discussions as those in
Meng Zi and Liu Xiang, he shows as much appreciation as anyone could
wish of some, at least, of the ways in which analogies work in persuasion.
Thus he notices {Rhetoric, 1394a, 14ff) that there is an advantage in
putting paradigms after, rather than before, the conclusion they are de-
signed to support. « If they stand before, you must use many of them »
193
(for there they look like an induction) : « but if put afterwards, one alone
is sufficient, for even a single witness will serve, if he is a reliable one. »
At the same time one of the concrete examples Aristotle takes when
he comes to give a formal analysis of the paradigm in the Organon re-
veals the difficulties that any such account encounters. « Paradigm is
when the major term is shown to belong to the middle term by means of
a term which is like the minor term » ( Prior Analytics , 68b, 38ff). That
is opaque, but the example clarifies what he has in mind. If you want to
show that it is wrong for the Athenians to wage war against the Thebans,
you do so via the universal proposition « making war against neighbours
is evil » which itself is based on consideration of similar cases (the para-
digms), such as that of the war between the Thebans and the Phocians.
This gives Aristotle his deductive syllogism : making war against
neighbours is evil, Athenians waging war against Thebans is a case of
making war against neighbours, so the Athenians waging war against the
Thebans is evil. However the artificiality of the analysis is striking. From
the point of view of the deduction, everything depends, of course, on the
truth of the universal proposition that making war against neighbours is
evil. In any context of practical reasoning that is going to be open to
challenge and certainly cannot be claimed to be known independently.
Of course it might be argued that the deductive analysis is not totally
useless, because at least it enables one to identify the universal proposi-
tion that meets the condition that if it is true, the conclusion follows. Yet
we must note first that if it is not true, the particular proposition expressed
in the conclusion (here about war between Athenians and Thebans) may
still be true. And secondly that the articulation of the deduction may even
detract attention from the analysis of the particular cases, the paradigms.
A Chinese reasoner, or a Greek orator, might well have insisted that the
more important focus of attention should be the points at which the
Athenian-Theban case is like, and where it differs from, such other cases
as the Theban-Phocian one. The relevant points of similarity will be a
matter of judgement : where, in Volkov 's terms, there are points that can
be transferred from the source, to the target, domain, should be the crucial
focus of attention. Nor can that attention and judgement be thought ever
to terminate : for there may always be further points of possible similarity
or difference that could be adduced that may be relevant. And when that
194
is pondered, the inadvisability of any settling for formalisms is apparent

- and the wisdom, maybe, of Chinese thinkers for not having attempted
such can be granted. For whatever may be said of their perception of the
strengths and weaknesses of particular analogies, as for instance those
between human nature and water exchanged between Gao Zi and Meng
Zi, formalism was not the path they took in their evaluation.
My comments on Karine Chemla's paper can pick up several of the

themes I have already mentionned. How can one fail to agree with the
main thrust of her argument ? Clearly the investigation of demonstration
in mathematical traditions across the world is far more than merely a
matter of a study of its Euclidean axiomatic-deductive forms. What more
can or should we expect of a demonstration in mathematics than the
explanation of why a procedure works and how it does ? That enables one
fundamental point to be made concerning the mathematics of the Nine
Chapters and Liu Hui's commentary on them. Moreover, secondly,
Chemla's theses on the interconnections of those two, and the continuities
within text and commentary between the arithmetical, the algebraic and
the geometrical, seem broadly convincing to me and they certainly throw
new light on works that have no doubt often been misinteipreted in the
West thanks to the imposition of strictly Euclidean models of deductive
reasoning.
But if one accepts Chemla's rewriting of the importance of rewriting
in Chinese mathematics, what comments may be made from a compara-
tivist perspective ? The first point that is worth stressing is one to which
Chemla alludes but does not elaborate, namely that within Greek patterns
of reasoning themselves there is not just one, but several competing,
models of demonstration, apodeixis. As I have pointed out in the paper
to which Chemla refers, in Aristotle himself there is not just one theory
of demonstration, the one defined and defended in the Posterior Analytics
(and subsequently the focus of so much commentary, both ancient and
modern). Rather there are several. There is, indeed, rhetorical demons-
tration, though that does not have to meet the criteria we are familiar with
from the Organon. Rhetorical demonstration does not deal with neces-
sary truths - for who would ever think that they need demonstrating ?
Rather it proceeds from permisses that are probable. And over and above
195
this second theory of rhetorical demonstration, it is clear that in his actual

practice, in his philosophy and science, Aristotle is prepared to catego-
rise as demonstrations dialectical procedures that fall squarely neither
into the mathematical/logical nor into the rhetorical patterns. Thus he is
prepared to talk of a style of demonstration that is appropriate to the
sphere of becoming in the context of his zoology ( Parts of Animals, 639b,
30ff).
The implications of this should not be missed. The concentration on
the model of demonstration in the Organon and in Euclid, the one that
proceeds via valid deductive argument from premisses that are themselves
indemonstrable but necessary and self-evident, that concentration is
liable to distort the Greek materials already - let alone the interpretation
of Chinese texts. To do justice to what the Greeks themselves considered
demonstrations, apodeixeis, we have to bear in mind the plurality of com-
peting models. But both the point that the Greeks themselves developed
an elaborate and explicit terminology to talk about these various modes
of demonstration, and the point about their competitiveness, are significant.
The question of what may have stimulated those two developments,
in ancient Greece, seems all the more worth pressing in view of the Chi-
nese evidence discussed by Chemla. To begin with, the two features in
question are, fairly evidently, connected. The explicit analysis of« strict »
demonstration ( Organon style) proceeds in part via the contrasts first
with other merely persuasive modes of reasoning, and then further with
other rhetorical styles of demonstration. Once again, the key point, at
least where Aristotle himself is concerned, is the question of the definition
and justification of the high style of philosophising, even when other
modes of reasoning are accorded their, inferior, usefulness. Clearly the
Organon mode of demonstration captured the philosophical high ground
insofar as it could be used to legitimate claims to yield incontrovertibility.
But if that was certainly one role it played in Greek intellectual exchan-
ges, its influence was certainly not all benign, even if we limit ourselves
to those exchanges. The bid to construct arguments in what was repre-
sented as the geometrical manner, more geometrico, became an obses-
sion with a large number of philosophers and scientists. They include the
second-century A. D. medical writer Galen. Yet the artificiality of at-
tempting to base reasoning in medicine on indemonstrables that have the
196
status of axioms or postulates is obvious. The paradox is that what Galen

himself does, in his often impressive explorations of anatomical and
physiological problems, is to give what we may well call, in accordance
with modern English usage, anatomical demonstrations, using dissec-
tion and vivisection, to show, in the most appropriate way possible, that
the structures and processes of the body are as they are. Yet only when
the reasoning was cast, when it could be cast, into axiomatic-deductive
form was it accepted by Galen himself as the ¿esf kind of demonstration.
The dominance of a particular view of demonstration in ancient
Greece can be understood, in part, in terms of the perception of ancient
theorists that it alone could secure the intellectual high ground, it alone
could yield incontrovertibility. But the long dominance of the same
notion of what a demonstration should be among historians of science
may owe more to the conservativeness with which that subject is studied
- and to its parochialism - than to any other factor. With the development
of non-Euclidean geometries, one might have thought that one of the
principal foundations of the claims that Aristotle (at least) made for the
strictest style of demonstration would have been seriously undermined.
Let us recall that Aristotle's conception of the conditions that the inde-
monstrables have to meet includes that they should be both necessary and
true according to his, correspondence, conception of truth. Similarly, we
may suppose, though we cannot confirm the point from the text of the
Elements, Euclid too held that his geometry is a true account of the spatial
relations that hold in the world. Whether or not it was he who first
adopted the parallel postulate as a postulate is controversial : but that
move is a well-judged reaction to the perceived problem, already alluded
to, as we have seen, by Aristotle, that any attempt to prove it as a theorem
within the system was liable to the charge of circularity. Yet the
subsequent history of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries via the
exploration of the denial of that postulate has its deepseated irony from
the point of view of the conception of strict demonstration. For whatever
may have been the case, with geometry, in antiquity, after that discovery
it was clear that the most that could be claimed for the Euclidean axiom
set was that it is internally consistent
While that feature and those episodes in the history of mathematics
might have led historians to reflect more critically on the notions,
197
theories and practices (in the plural) of demonstration in play in Greek

antiquity, it is only comparatively recently that due attention has begun
to be paid to the alternative models that the Greeks themselves develo-
ped, both within individual domains, and across them. As for a truly
international history of demonstration, to which Karine Chemla refers,
that will need to take far more into account, notably those other tradi-
tions, such as the Chinese, that did not attach such importance to the need
for strident self-justification. Clearly self-consciousness about the pro-
cedures used, and a deliberate effort at reflective analysis of the how and
the why they work, are not necessarily accompanied by a concern to
distance oneself from, and to put down, rivals and alternatives. No more
does the unification of procedures deployed in a variety of contexts in
arithmetic, algebra and geometry have to proceed via the construction of
a would-be comprehensive survey of the whole of mathematics in the
style of the Euclidean Elements. Indeed for that latter point confirmation
could be found if we turn to other Greek mathematical texts that proceed
quite satisfactorily from starting-points that make no pretensions to
completeness.
If I may permit myself one final observation, it is that the effect of
pressing difficult comparativist questions on material from both China
and Greece should be not just that we can hope to do the job of comparing
better. In addition, aspects of each of the two cultures that we are dealing
with come to be seen in a new light, and indeed some cherished opinions,
much favoured within each of our several disciplines, come to be seen to
need radical revision. If that perception is shared by the other contribu-
tors to this number, that should encourage us all in the comparativist
endeavour.
198

Lloyd - The Agora Perspective

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Lloyd - The Agora Perspective

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Presses Universitaires de Vincennes

The Agora Perspective

Presses Universitaires de Vincennes is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

The Agora Perspective

Résumé : dans l'intention explicite de mieux mettre à jour les hypothèses

d'Aristote lui-même. Dans le même but, il rappelle que le développement

The editor has asked me to comment on four of the articles in the

the question of the social contexts of intellectual exchange and relates to

Michael Lackner presents a sophisticated analysis of the role of

used both, some of the Greeks eventually sought to contrast propositions

The question arises, however, as to whether there are distinctive

is pondered, the inadvisability of any settling for formalisms is apparent

My comments on Karine Chemla's paper can pick up several of the

this second theory of rhetorical demonstration, it is clear that in his actual

status of axioms or postulates is obvious. The paradox is that what Galen

theories and practices (in the plural) of demonstration in play in Greek

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi