totelean and Stoic methodology of definitions, postulates, and common no-
tions; the mathematics of Eratosthenes (who headed the Library ca. 234) and
of Archimedes;^21 the heliocentric astronomy of Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 270);
and the mechanics of Ctesibus and others. In addition, the Hippocratic medical
schools of Cos and Cnidus migrated to Alexandria at this time, where connec-
tions were kept up in medical science with the Aristoteleans, especially through
Erasistratus;^22 Herophilus the anatomist was directly connected with Strato’s
circle. This scientific tradition lasted down through Hipparchus’ astronomy in
the next century.
There was little in the external conditions of life of the Hellenistic period
that turned thought in the direction of natural science. The explanation lies in
competitive forces internal to the intellectual field. The Aristoteleans were
moving in response to the popularity of the two new schools—the Epicureans’
successful championing of materialism and the Stoics’ eclectic mix—and to the
Academics’ shift on the other side. It was safe to poach on Epicurean grounds,
for there was no danger of losing identity with them, and the Aristoteleans
were already leaning in a materialist direction because of their conflict within
the Academy. The Stoics probably tipped the balance toward a materialistic
extreme, for they had already usurped a middle position combining a material
world with a ruling spiritual form, the cosmic soul. The Aristoteleans’ attack
on the notion of an immortal soul, and their reduction of soul to material
pneuma, which seems directed against the Stoics, propelled them into the
materialist corner.
The Academy during this time underwent a paradigm shift amounting to
revolution. Under Arcesilaus, a generation after Strato and a contemporary of
Cleanthes at the Stoa, the Academics threw off their idealist metaphysics and
epistemology and adopted skepticism. The way was prepared structurally by
the disappearance of the Skeptic lineage after Timon (Arcesilaus himself is the
last known tie; see Figure 3.4), and the collapse of the Megarian school. The
Megarians, defending the Eleatic thesis and attacking all forms of pluralism,
including the Platonic forms (Reale, 1985: 50–53), had been, so to speak, the
“right wing” of the philosophical world, with the Platonists occupying a
slightly more moderate position. The Epicureans represented the “far left” of
materialism, with the Stoics in the compromise position at the center, and the
various dropout positions (Cynics, Skeptics, later Cyrenaics) taking a deliberate
tangent off from the center with a “plague on all houses” stance. In the
realignment of schools, the anti-intellectual positions disappeared, though their
moral force was appropriated by the Epicureans. The Aristoteleans switched
from a moderate position, a little to the “left” of the Platonists, to the extreme
materialist left—a move which I judge to have been in response to the compe-
tition from Stoics in the center.
Partitioning Attention Space: Ancient Greece^ •^107