of leftovers. Their stance was to compromise among all the important posi-
tions. This left them with inconsistencies, such as between their materialist
physics and cosmology and their immaterialist religious strains, or between
their original Cynic rigorism and their emphasis on conventional duties.^20
Here organizational strength made a virtue out of intellectual weakness.
A school stays alive by its controversies, and the Stoics attracted much atten-
tion and produced a series of creative thinkers through the next two centu-
ries. Immediately after Zeno, the school almost broke apart in internal con-
troversies, between the religious emphasis of Cleanthes (successor ca. 262–232
b.c.e.) and an extreme faction of logical rigorists led by Ariston of Chios
(Reale, 1985: 216, 320, 417). The inconsistencies of Stoic doctrine were
vigorously pointed out by rivals, the Academics in particular. The result was
not the destruction of Stoicism but its vitality. Chrysippus, “the second foun-
der,” carried out an impressive systematization on all fronts (unfortunately all
subsequently lost), deriving directly from his confrontation with the Academic
Arcesilaus.
The opposing schools shifted their intellectual contents together, their ideas
driven by underlying realignment of positions under the law of small numbers.
The Academy repudiated the Idealism and mathematics-centeredness of the
doctrine of Forms, and took over the stance of skepticism; the Peripatos aban-
doned Aristotle’s carefully wrought compromise with Platonism and moved
toward materialism and empirical science. The Aristoteleans under Theophras-
tus had already criticized the conception of an unmoved Mover outside the
world; the third scholarch, Strato (ca. 287–268 b.c.e.), allowed only immanent
forces of weight and motion, and excluded final causes (DSB, 1981: 13:91–95;
Reale, 1985: 103–105). Even the soul, he said, has no transcendent or immortal
qualities; mental activity is the movement of the breath (pneuma).
The Aristoteleans took this turn as a network connected with the outpour-
ing of scientific activity at Alexandria. Through one of the ironic reversals
characteristic of intellectual conflict, the Aristotelean-Alexandrian camp ended
up with the leadership in mathematics as well, even though Aristotle himself
had downplayed the role of mathematics as part of his struggle against that
faction in the Academy. The Academy’s shift to skepticism left mathematics
adrift to be picked up by whoever wanted it. Epicurus, however, had polemi-
cized against mathematics, even throwing out Democritus’ considerable ad-
vances, probably to keep himself at the opposite pole from the idealist camp;
and the Stoics had inherited the qualitative and teleological theme which had
played a role in Aristotle’s original formulations. The connection to mathemat-
ics and natural science at Alexandria proved an easy alliance for the Aris-
toteleans, especially in the case of astronomy. In this orbit were produced
Euclid’s systematization of geometry (ca. 300 b.c.e.), building on the Aris-
106 •^ The Skeleton of Theory