PHILOSOPHY SCHOOLS
Scientifi c theories formed an extensive and integral part of
several philosophical schools of the Roman age. In this con-
text, a school was a group of like-minded people who learned
from each other, sometimes at a shared physical location. No
qualifi cations or formal educational process was implied by the
term. Th ese groups had formed in Greece in the third century
b.c.e., though their arguments continued to develop. Two im-
portant schools were the Stoics and the Epicureans. Th ey had
systematic—though completely diff erent—theories about such
things as the basic materials of the universe, the physiology of
sense perception, and the workings of body and mind. Th ey
off ered a naturalistic understanding of every kind of phenom-
enon, from lightning to the way mirrors work to the develop-
ment of human society. Th ese theories were compatible with,
and used to supply evidence for, the Stoics’ and Epicureans’
theories on ethics, epistemology (the study of nature and the
grounds of knowledge), and theology. Th e Stoics, for instance,
considered God to be a material substance present throughout
the actual world. Everything that happened was according to
God’s plan via a mechanistic, completely determined, causal
chain. Th e Epicureans, on the other hand, maintained that the
gods were perfect beings made like everything else of constit-
uent particles and void, and they were completely irrelevant
to human aff airs. For both groups, science was not separable
from other areas of human understanding.
A third group, the Skeptics, was not committed to any
theory at all because their epistemological position was that
there was no defi nite, clear instance of incontrovertible knowl-
edge about anything and there was no defi nite proof that any
theory was more true than any other. Th ese radical Skeptics
in philosophy, and their medical equivalent, the empiricist
physicians, criticized the theories and beliefs of everyone else.
Th is meant that people who believed that some theories were
true had to improve their arguments against the Skeptics’ at-
tacks. It can be argued that skepticism was overall not helpful
to philosophy and science because it focused attention away
from the actual content of scientifi c theories and instead high-
lighted underlying epistemological positions. All theories,
whether they were well supported by the evidence or not, were
equally vulnerable to skeptical attack because 100 percent cer-
tainty was the only standard for truth they would allow.
Th e scientifi c theories of the philosophical schools were
not oft en updated. Th is is primarily because their main aim
was to off er the best understanding of the world as a means of
achieving what they called ataraxia, or a life without distur-
bance, fear, and worry. Th ey competed with each other as to
which of them off ered the most convincing way of achieving
this state of being, so the philosophical schools had no incen-
tive to revise their basic principles or their scientifi c theories
and tended to be conservative.MEDICAL SECTS
Professional physicians in ancient Roman society—most of
them Greeks—were divided into three broad methodologicalcategories: the Empiricists; the so-called Rationalists or Dog-
matists; and, from about the fi rst century c.e., the Method-
ists. Th ese groups were called the medical schools or sects.
Th e Empiricists emerged in the third century b.c.e.
as a group of doctors who shared a common epistemology
and methodology. Th ey seem to have been popular among
patients, including high-status ones such as kings. Th eir
position was in many ways similar to that of the skeptical
philosophers. Th e Empiricists said that there was no point
in investigating the body with the aim of deducing theories
about physiology or illness because no such theory could be
proved true beyond any doubt and so might be false. Th ey
also said that this kind of theoretical knowledge was unnec-
essary for good medical practice. Empiricist doctors relied on
their own experience of treating diseases (autopsia) and the
recorded or reported experience of other people (historia).
Th ey associated certain symptoms with particular successful
treatments and when they saw the symptoms again, they were
reminded to use the same treatments. But they did not draw
any conclusions from this about the nature of the disease or
why the treatment seemed to work. Empiricists rejected dis-
section as useless and maintained that observation of internal
organs exposed by accident when someone was wounded was
enough to learn basic anatomy for the purposes of surgery.
Methodism may go back to the physiological theory and
treatments of Asclepiades, a famous Greek doctor who lived in
the Roman province of Bithynia in the fi rst century b.c.e. and
taught himself medicine as a second career aft er having been
an orator. Asclepiades developed a theory in which he deter-
mined that pores in the body are sometimes blocked by some
kind of corpuscle (thought of as a minute particle) and that
this is what makes people ill. But Methodists themselves did
not think that this information was relevant to being a good
doctor. According to the Methodists, all diseases shared one
of three common features: the patient was too constricted, too
lax, or a mixture of the two. Th e y b e l i e v e d t h a t t r e a t m e n t s h o u l d
be based on that alone and that patients should be treated “by
opposites”; thus, patients who were too constricted should be
treated with relaxants. Th is was the method (methodos). Other
knowledge acquired through experience, deduction, or dissec-
tion may have been possible but was unnecessary for medical
practice. Medicine was, therefore, easy to learn—the Method-
ist founder Th essalus is reported to have said it took only six
months. Methodists did not think that dissection was useful,
though they may have thought it was interesting. One famous
Methodist, Soranus, a Greek physician of second century c.e.
who practiced in Rome, is remembered for his work on gyne-
cology, which has survived largely intact.
All physicians who were neither Empiricists nor Method-
ists contended that reliable knowledge about physiology and
illness could be rationally deduced to at least some extent. For
this reason they became collectively known as “Rationalists”
or “Dogmatists.” Th is very general agreement, however, was
their only common factor. Th ere were many subgroups and
even individuals within the rationalists who disagreed withscience: Rome 9430895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i943 943 10/10/07 2:30:31 PM