40 Lehoux
inheritance theory), meteorology, psychology, mathematics, acoustics,
and more. Just a glance at an index to Aristotle’s complete works will
suffi ce to show the breadth of the project. In one column alone, chosen
entirely at random, we fi nd the following entries: planets, plants, plea-
sure, plot, poetry, point (mathematical), political science, policy, popu-
lation, pores, porpoise, possibility, potentiality, poverty, practical think-
ing, prawn, predication, pregnancy, priests.^5 The importance of natural
philosophy in the school’s curriculum meant that fundamental scientifi c
investigation was part and parcel of the work undertaken there, although
the means of this investigation was variable. Sometimes it meant reading
everything written on a particular subject and analyzing and synthesizing
it critically. Sometimes it meant performing deliberate and diffi cult obser-
vations (anatomy, for example). Sometimes, a combination. The institu-
tional context of the school, however, provided the locus of the discussion
and determined the agenda for investigation, as well as the intellectual
framework within which results could be understood. That intellectual
framework was never static, but then it was not randomly variable ei-
ther. What emerged was a complex and very infl uential set of ideas and
methods that would form a kind of backdrop against which much later
science developed.
If we look toward the other end of our period, from Aristotle to Pliny
and then forward by a century or two, we are dealing with completely
different political and cultural contexts. The great learning of the day
was now happening in the cultural context of the huge and incredibly
diverse Roman Empire. Advanced learning was still largely restricted to
fairly well- to- do individuals, but the Roman political dominance, the in-
creased interconnectedness of the empire, and the political and cultural
centrality of the empire’s capital city, conditioned many of the relation-
ships of scholars to each other and to their work. Education meant not
only bilingualism (Latin and Greek) but also a familiarity with both Latin
and Greek scholarly traditions, with a general emphasis on law and rheto-
ric.^6 Philosophy, which had been seen as a questionable or even subversive
pursuit in the generation before Plato, had become respectable but also
diverse: upper- class Romans had the choice of sending their children to
learn under the best teachers of several different philosophical schools,
and Romans had a tendency to combine what they thought of as the best
ideas of each into their own individual amalgams rather than becoming
strict followers of any one school.^7 It was in this context that Pliny found
both the motivation and the market for his massive thirty- seven–book
collection of all the world’s known facts. So why then did Pliny make the