A Word of the Empirics: The Ancient Concept of Observation and its Recovery in Early Modern Medicine

Summary

The genealogy of observation as a philosophical term goes back to the ancient Greek astronomical and medical traditions, and the revival of the concept in the Renaissance also happened in the astronomical and medical context. This essay focuses primarily on the medical genealogy of the concept of observation. In ancient Greek culture, an elaboration of the concept of observation (tērēsis) first emerged in the Hellenistic age with the medical sect of the Empirics, to be further developed by the ancient Sceptics. Basically unknown in the Middle Ages, the Empirics’ conceptualisation of tērēsis trickled back into Western medicine in the fourteenth century, but its meaning seems to have been fully recovered by European scholars only in the 1560s, concomitantly with the first Latin translation of the works of Sextus Empiricus. As a category originally associated with medical Scepticism, observatio was a new entry in early modern philosophy. Although the term gained wide currency in general scholarly usage in the seventeenth century, its assimilation into standard philosophical language was very slow. In fact, observatio does not even appear as an entry in the philosophical dictionaries until the eighteenth century—with one significant exception, the medical lexica, which featured the lemma, reporting its ancient Empiric definition, as early as 1564.

Acknowledgements

Inspiration and support for this paper have come from the project on the History of Scientific Observation at the Max-Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin. I would like to thank the project director, Lorraine Daston, for her invaluable help at all stages of research and writing. Many thanks also to the other project participants, in particular Daniel Andersson, Mary Morgan, Katharine Park, Ted Porter, Fernando Vidal, for their insightful comments. I am grateful to Maurizio Bettini for useful references on ancient sources, and to Francesco Borghesi for an update on Pico scholarship.

Notes

¹Giovanni Battista Bernardi, Seminarium totius Philosophiae […] (Venice, 1582–1585); Johann Heinrich Alsted, Compendium lexici philosophici (Herborn, 1626); Rudolph Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum (Frankfurt, 1613, Hildesheim: Olms reprint, 1980, which includes his Lexicon philosophicum Graecum, originally published 1615); Antoine Le Roy, Floretum philosophicum […] in terminos totius philosophiae (Paris, 1649); Johann Adam Scherzer, Vade mecum, sive Manuale Philosophicum quadripartitum (Leipzig, 1654); Johannes Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum (Jena, 1653; I have consulted the second edition, Stettin, 1662); Henning Volckmar, Dictionarium philosophicum (Frankfurt, 1675); Pierre Godart, Lexicon philosophicum (Paris, 1675); Etienne Chauvin, Lexicon rationale (Rotterdam, 1692) 2nd edition as Lexicon Philosophicum (Leeuwarden, 1713); Thomas Corneille, Le Dictionnaire des arts et des sciences (Paris, 1694, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968); Joh. Georg Walch, Philosophisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1726); Heinrich Adam Meissner, Philosophisches Lexicon (Bayreuth, 1737). As a guide to these sources I have used Giorgio Tonelli, A Short-Title List of Subject Dictionaries of the 16 ^th , 17 ^th and 18 ^th Century, rev. edition (Florence, Olschki, 2006). Some of these dictionaries are available on line at http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/

²Chauvin was a Cartesian, inspired by Bayle: see Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958) vol. 8, pp. 299–301.

³Bernardi, Seminarium, has only one reference for observationes (in the astronomical sense). Goclenius's Lexicon philosophicum graecum has no entry for tērēsis or paratērēsis (observation) but uses the term observatio, and the verb observare in the entry peira (experience). Micraelius's Lexicon philosophicum lists tērēsis under the index of Greek philosophical words, referring to the entry ‘Apparens’ (phenomenon): ‘Apparens astronomis est phainomenon, quod se sensui oculorum sistit videndum et per tērēseis seu observationes deprehenditur’ (col. 151). Observatio appears in Micraelius also inside the entry Medicina: ‘Medicina alia est empirica, ex sola observatione et experientia (col. 727) and in the definition of experientia: ‘ “experientia” est […] ejus quod saepe et eodem modo visum est, observatio et memoria’ (col. 486).

⁴With the exception of Goclenius, all the most important dictionaries, such as those of Bernardi, Micraelius, and Chauvin, have lengthy entries for experientia and experimentum.

⁵Johann Heinrich Zedler, Grosses Vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (Halle und Leipzig, 1732–1754, repr. Graz: Akademischer Druck, 1995) vol. 25 (pub. 1740), cols. 272–287; Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751–1780) vol. 11 (pub. 1765), pp. 313–324. The Encyclopédie ‘observation’ entry was written by a medical doctor, Ménuret de Chambaud. See Anne Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) pp. 52–65. A short entry for ‘Observation’, but not meant as a philosophical term, appeared in: John Harris, Lexicon technicum, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1704–1710; Johnson Reprints: New York and London, 1966): ‘in the Sea-language, the Seamen call an Observation the taking the Sun's, or any Star's Meridian Altitude, in order thereby to find their Latitude’ (vol. 2, pub. 1710, s.v.). The identical entry appears in Chambers's Cyclopaedia (1728) (vol. 2, p. 651), which also has lengthier entries for ‘Coelestial Observations’ (vol. 1, p. 245) and ‘Observatory’(vol. 2, pp. 651–652) but no discussion of observation as a philosophical term.

⁶On the conservative character of philosophical dictionaries in the early modern period see Tullio Gregory, ‘Sul lessico filosofico latino del Seicento e del Settecento’, Lexicon Philosophicum, 5 (1990) pp. 1–20, at p. 20.

⁷Jean de Gorris, Definitiones medicae (Paris, 1564) 350r, s.v. tērēsis/observatio. Although observatio was certainly an important term of astronomical/astrological language, the entry does not appear in the early modern dictionaries of astronomy and astrology I have consulted: Otto Brunfels, De diffinitionibus et terminis astrologiae libellus isagogicus, in Astronomicorum libri VIII, edited by Nicolaus Prucknerus (Basel, 1551); Gerolamo Vitali, Lexicon mathematicum, astronomicum, geometricum (Paris, 1668).

⁸The first edition of Bartolomeo Castelli's Lexicon medicum Graeco-Latinum was published at Messina in 1598. The editions from 1598 to 1644 have only the first sentence from de Gorris's definition of tērēsis. In 1651 the whole of de Gorris's lemma was entered. The lemma was extensively revised and bibliographical references were added in the 1746 edition. On Castelli's medical lexicon see the brief introduction by Michael Stolberg to the microfiche edition in the ‘Archive of European Lexicography’, Harald Fischer Verlag, 1994. Some seventeenth-century medical dictionaries do not include a lemma for observatio: that is the case of Johann Conrad Dieterich, Jatreum hippocraticum; continens narthecium medicinae veteris et novae (Ulm, 1661) and Stephanus Blancardus (Blankaart), Lexicon medicum (Halle, 1748). On early modern medical dictionaries see Bernard Quemada, Introduction à l’étude du vocabulaire médical (1600–1710), Besançon: Annales Littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, 2e Série, Tome II, fasc. 5, 1955, pp. 35–39.

⁹De Gorris, Definitiones, 350r: ‘τη'ρησω, Observatio, Empiricorum vox est, qui quicquid observassent fieri in morbis, ιη'ρησω vocabant: quorum cum magna haberent copiam, eam omnem ?α'θρ?ισµα nuncupabant: & ab observatione quidem memoriam, a memoria vero experientiam manare dicebant, & ab ea proxime artem constitui, dum meminibus quid cum quo, quid ante quod, quid post quod observavimus, atque id quidem vel semper, vel plerumque, vel utrovis modo, vel raro: semper, ut vulnerato corde mortem sequi: plerumque, ut scammonia ventrem purgari: utrovis modo, ut percussa superiori membrana cerebri mortem sequi: raro, ut vulnerata cerebri substantia salutem contingere’ (emphasis added).

¹⁰Cf. SE, p. 58: ‘Omnes autem concursus ab observatione quidem scivimus, ad memoriam vero recommendantes nunc ex rememoratione utimur. Utimur enim emperia observantibus et memorantibus nobis quid cum quo et quid post quod et quid ante quod vidimus vel semper vel ut plurimum vel secundum utrumlibet vel raro; semper quidem ut in cordis plagatione mortem; ut plurimum vero ut in scamonea purgationem; secundum utrumlibet autem ut in grosse miringe plagatione mortem; raro autem ut in plagatione cerebri salutem’ (emphasis added; translation in Frede, p. 31).

¹¹ Die Concordanciae des Johannes de Sancto Amando, edited by Julius L. Pagel (Berlin, 1894) pp. 102–104.

¹²No entry observatio in Symphorien Champier, Vocabularius sive collectaneum difficilium terminorum naturalis philosophiae, ac medicinae, in S. Champier, De triplici disciplina […] (Lyon, 1508) nor in Otto Brunfels, Onomastikon medicinae (Strasburg, 1534).

¹³ Antonii Musae Brasavolae Index Refertissimus in omnes Galeni libros, qui ex secunda Iuntarum editione extant (Venice, 1551).

¹⁴Luigi Mondella, Theatrum Galeni (Basel, 1568).

¹⁵The works in which Galen discussed the ideas of the Empirics, as known in the early modern period, were De sectis, Subfiguratio empirica, and De optima secta (On the sects for beginners, An Outline of Empiricism, On the Best Sect). De optima secta was believed to be genuine in the early modern period, but is now considered pseudo-Galenic: see below, note 94. Three of the four references to observatio in Brasavola's Index are from Galen's De optima secta and Subfiguratio empirica, the other reference is to a passage in De dignoscendis pulsibus, which also deals with the Empirics (K vol. 8, p. 854). Mondella referred to De optima secta. In the Index to Kuehn modern edition of Galen, all the four references under observatio are to De optima secta.

¹⁶Iain M. Lonie, ‘The Paris Hippocratics: Teaching and Research in Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century’, in The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, edited by A. Wear, R. K. French and I. Lonie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) pp. 155–174, 318–326.

¹⁷Anuce Foës, Oeconomia Hippocratis (Frankfurt, 1588).

¹⁸ Tērēsis or the variant paratērēsis do not appear in Foës, Oeconomia Hippocratis, or in Henry Estienne, Dictionarium medicum […] ex Hippocrate, Aretaeo […] (Geneva, 1564), or in the ancient Hippocratic lexicon by Erotianus: Erotiani vocum Hippocraticarum Conlectio, edited by Josephus Klein (Leipzig, 1865). The Index to the Latin Hippocrates compiled by Pietro Matteo Pini, Compendium instar indicis in Hippocratis opera omnia (Venice, 1597) has no entry for observatio, while it has several for experientia and experimentum.

¹⁹For a survey of observational practices in the Hippocratic Corpus see Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) pp. 291–322; Louis Bourgey, Observation et expérience chez les médecins de la collection hippocratique (Paris: Vrin, 1953) pp. 124–125, 136–139, 142–143, 150–165, 177–185.

²⁰See Humours 12–19 (Loeb, vol. 5, pp. 492–500); In the Surgery I (Loeb, vol. 3, p. 59); Epidemics VI, 8.17 (Loeb, vol. 7, p. 285). On the observation of weather and seasons: Epidemics I, 1–26 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 147–186); Aphorisms 3, 1–23 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 123–131).

²¹Σκϵ'πτ?µαι, γινω'σκω, σκ?πϵ'ω, all from Prognostic, 2 (Loeb, vol. 2, pp. 9–10); πρ?σϵ'χω τ?'ν νó?ν from Prognostic, XXII, 18 (Loeb, vol. 2, p. 44); ϵ?θ?µ??µα? from Airs, Waters, Places, I (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 70, 72).

²²See the list of verbs associated with empirical observation in Louis Bourgey, Observation et expérience chez Aristote (Paris: Vrin, 1955) pp. 37–39, 85. The nouns employed to indicate observation are also various (aisthēsis, theoria, skepsis, peira, phantasia) and do not include tērēsis, though the verb tērein is used in two instances, to indicate the Egyptians’ and Babylonians’ caelestial observations (On the Heavens, II. 12, 292a 7–9); and to denote the observations of fishermen and naturalists on the reproduction of fishes (Generation of animals, III. 3, 756a 30–34).

²³Celsus's De medicina (first century CE), contains the most ancient description of the Empirics’ ideas that has reached us: see Fabio Stok, ‘Celso e gli empirici’, in La médecine de Celse, edited by Guy Sabbah and Philippe Mudry (Saint-Etienne: Université de Saint-Etienne, 1994) pp. 63–75. Over a century after Celsus, Galen left a much more detailed and philosophically sophisticated discussion of the Empirics in several short works (listed above, note 15). Another work where Galen discussed the ideas of the Empirics, De experientia medica, was unknown in the West until the twentieth century except for a brief fragment. The entire text survives only in Arabic translation: see Galen, On medical experience, with English translation and notes R. Walzer (London: 1944). Galen's works on the Empirics, including De experientia medica (but minus the pseudo–Galenic De optima secta) are collected and translated in Frede.

²⁴Quite extensive, in contrast, the literature on the Greek concept of experiment: see H. von Staden, ‘Experiment and Experience in Hellenistic Medicine’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 22 (1975) pp. 178–199 (with bibliography in note 3); A. Debru, ‘L'expérimentation chez Galien’, ANRW, II, 37, 2 (1994), pp. 1718–1756; M. Grmek, Il calderone di Medea. La sperimentazione sul vivente nell'antichità (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1996).

²⁵ Peira is the experimentum fallax (the treacherous experience) of the first Hippocratic aphorism (See Loeb, vol. 4, p. 99, where it is questionably translated as ‘experiment’).

²⁶ Gorgias 448 C; Laws, 720a-b, 857cd, Phaedrus 270B.

²⁷Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980 b 28–981 b 13 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 2–6). See Bourgey, Observation et expérience chez Aristote, pp. 35–68; David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, 2nd edition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007) pp. 53–55, 62–65; Curzio Chiesa, ‘L’épistémologie génétique dans la philosophie ancienne’ in Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 129 (1997) pp. 31–49.

²⁸Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London: Routledge, 2004) pp. 128–139; R. Jim Hankinson, ‘Art and Experience: Greek Philosophy and the State of Medicine’, Quaestio, 4 (2004) pp. 3–24.

²⁹On the Empirics, the fundamental study (with collection of sources) is Karl Deichgräber, Die griechische Empirikerschule (Berlin/Zürich, 1965). Among recent studies see especially Michael Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) pp. 243–260; R.J. Hankinson, ‘The Growth of Medical Empiricism’ in Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions, edited by Don Bates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 41–59; Lorenzo Perilli, Menodoto di Nicomedia. Contributo a una storia galeniana della medicina empirica (Munich-Leipzig: Saur, 2004). On the Empirics’ claim to be the true interpreters of Hippocratic doctrine see Galen, De experientia medica, XIII 4 (translated by Walzer in Frede, pp. 108–109).

³⁰Galen, De sectis, 1 (K vol. 1, p. 65, translated by Frede, pp. 3–4).

³¹ SE, pp. 44–45 (and Deichgräber's comments at pp. 292–297); cf. Perilli, Menodoto, p. 17.

³² SE, p. 58: ‘Utimur enim emperia observantibus et memorantibus nobis quid cum quo et quid post quod et quid ante quod vidimus vel semper vel ut plurimum vel secundum utrumlibet vel raro’. See note 10 above for the entire passage. The ‘quid cum quo et quid post quod et quid ante quod’ was going to be a much quoted Empiric formula for observation. See note 64 below for its use by Sextus Empiricus. Cf. also Cicero, De divinatione, book 1, 109.

³³ SE, p. 47; cf. De sectis 2 ( K vol. 1, p. 67).

³⁴ SE, p. 64 ( translated by Frede, p. 33). Originally historia referred generically to research, either on the natural world or on the ways of people: see Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, L'Historia. Commencements grecs (Paris: Gallimard, 2007) pp. 111–191. In Hellenistic culture, however, historia indicated mostly research on books, and it was in this second sense that the Empirics used it: see SE , pp. 65–67, where historia is defined as ‘quod scriptum est in libris’. On the Empiric concept of historia see Deichgräber, Empirikerschule pp. 298–301; W.J. Slater, ‘Asklepiades and Historia’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 13 (1972) pp. 317–33; D.L. Blank's commentary to Sextus Empiricus's Against the Grammarians (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) pp. 257–258; B. Cassin, ‘L'Histoire chez Sextus Empiricus’, in Le Scepticisme antique, edited by A.-J. Voelke (Geneva, 1990) pp. 123–38.

³⁵ SE, p. 49 (translated by Frede, p. 26).

³⁶ SE p. 62 (translated by Frede, p. 33); cf. De sectis, 5 (K vol. 1, pp. 77–78). On epilogismos see Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 141–153; M. Schofield, ‘Epilogismos: An Appraisal’, in Rationality in Greek Thought, edited by Michael Frede and Gisela Striker (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) pp. 221–237; James Allen, Inference from Signs. Ancient Debates about the Nature of Evidence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) pp. 112–113, 237–238. Epilogismos was a concept already used by Epicurus and his school, from which the Empirics apparently borrowed it: see Ph. De Lacy, ‘Epicurean ϵπιλ?γισµ?'ς’, American Journal of Philology, 79 (1958) pp. 179–183; Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 118, 143, 149–510.

³⁷ Epilogismos is ‘an inference common and universally used by the whole of mankind’ (Galen, On medical experience, XXIV, translated by Walzer in Frede, p. 132). Cf. also Galen, In Hippocratis Prognosticum commentarii III, 1, 6: K, vol. 18/2, p. 26: ‘First of all we should proceed by means of epilogismos about signs, because it is better to offer a first explanation proceeding by what is shared and common to men, rather than use analogismos immediately’ (translation in Perilli, Menodoto, p. 151).

³⁸ SE, p. 64 (translated by Frede, p. 33); p. 71 (translated by Frede, p. 37); cf. De sectis, K vol. 1, p. 68. Galen reports that one of the Empiric physicians, Theodas, spoke of a rationabilis experientia (SE, p. 50). See also Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 148, 154, 158.

⁴⁴ SE, p. 48 (translated by Frede, p. 26, slightly modified for fidelity's sake, emphasis added).

³⁹A commentator on the first extant grammar of Greek, The Art of Grammar of Dyonisius Thrax (170–90 BCE), distinguished between peira and empeiria in a way that was directly reminiscent of the Empirics: Grammatici Graeci (Leipzig: Teubner, 1867–1910) vol. I, III, p. 10ff.). See Walter Belardi, ‘Il costituirsi del campo lessicale dell'experientia in greco e in latino’, in Experientia, edited by Marco Veneziani (Florence: Olschki, 2002) p. 26.

⁴⁰Galen noted that autopsia was a term newly coined by the Empirics: ‘In the ancient Greek authors, I have found the word ‘somebody-who-has-seen-for-himself [autoptes], but I have not found the word ‘one's-own-perception’ [autopsia]. […] But somebody perceiving something for himself consists of an activity and not a cognition. Yet earlier Empirics were in the habit of speaking of one's own perception not only as an activity but also as a cognition, and, what is more, they even used ‘experience’ in this way’ (SE, p. 47, translated by Frede, p. 25, slightly modified). Galen himself used autoptes, not autopsia: see Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke's Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 121. See ibidem, pp. 34–41, 120–123, for a detailed philological history of the words autoptes and autopsia in ancient Greek sources.

⁴¹On the double meaning of tērēsis see David L. Blank, Ancient Philosophy and Grammar. The Syntax of Apollonius Dyscolus (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982) p. 71, note 2; Jonathan Barnes, ‘Pyrrhonism, Belief and Causation. Observations on the Scepticism of Sextus Empiricus’, in ANRW, II, 36, 4 (1990) pp. 2608–2695 at p. 2642, note 138.

⁴²Other primary meanings include surveillance, vigilance, guarding; custody, preservation, safekeeping.

⁴³On the similarities between the Epicurean and the Empiric views of knowledge see Ph. H. De Lacy's and Estelle A. de Lacy's commentary on Philodemus's De Signis: On Methods of Inference (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1978) p. 100, note 34; p. 112, note 77; p. 129, note 114; p. 176. On the Epicurean contribution to an empiricist view of knowledge see James Allen, ‘Experience as a Source and Ground of Theory in Epicureanism’, in Re-Inventions. Essays on Hellenistic and Early Roman Science, edited by Philippa Lang (Kelowna: Academic Printing, 2004) pp. 86–109.

⁴⁵As noted above, note 15, all the references to tērēsis in the early modern Galenic glossaries (and in the Index to Kuehn's edition of Galen's works) indicate that he used the word only when he discussed the ideas of the Empirics. To the references quoted in note 15, one should add Galen, De differentiis febrium, 1, 3 (K vol. 7, p. 281): ‘From the observation (tērēsis) [of generally known causes] the Empiric physician draws help towards therapy’; In Hippocratis Prognosticum commentarii, 3, 39 (K vol. 18/2, p. 307), where Galen distinguishes ‘empirical observation’ from ‘logical inference’; and De praesagitatione ex pulsibus, 2, 3 (K vol. 9, p. 278), where Galen says that Herophilus ‘gave an account of some observation (tērēsis) and experience rather than teaching a rational method’. Erophilus was not an Empiric, but Galen seems to have associated him with the Empirics in this respect. Richard J. Durling, A Dictionary of Medical Terms in Galen (Leiden: Brill, 1993) does not include tērēsis. It has, however, one reference for paratērēsis (p. 260) used to mean empirical observation at Galen's In Hippocratis Prognosticum Commentaria Tria, edited by J. Heeg (in CMG V, 9, 2: Leipzig:Teubner, 1915) p. 343 line 24 (=K vol. 18/2, p. 257).

⁴⁶Galen, De sectis, 14. 8. Cf. PH, I. 23.

⁴⁷On Hesiod see Laura M. Slatkin, ‘Measuring Authority, Authoritative Measures: Hesiod's Works and Days, in The Moral Authority of Nature, edited by Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) p. 26. On Plato, Aristotle and Ptolemy, see Liba Chaia Taub, Ptolemy's Universe. The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy (Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1993) pp. 5, 135–153.

⁴⁸Blank, Ancient Philosophy and Grammar, pp. 11–19.

⁴⁹Hans Joachim Mette, Parateresis. Untersuchungen zur Sprachtheorie des Krates von Pergamon (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1952) pp. 11, 45–47. For critical objections to Mette see Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginning to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968) p. 245. For an update on Crates scholarship see Maria Broggiato (editor), Cratete di Mallo. I frammenti (La Spezia: Agorà, 2001).

⁵⁰The meaning of tērēsis as the observance of a rule drawn from observation is particularly clear in the case of language, as explained by Sextus Empiricus: we learn to speak correctly by observing linguistic usage, in the double sense of making note of the way people speak, and following it as a norm (AM, 1. 178–179; 1. 207: Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 106–107, 118–119). Cf. Blank's comment in Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians (Adversus Mathematicos I), tr. intro. and comm. D.L. Blank (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998) p. 212.

⁵¹Aristotle, De coelo, I. 10. 279b 21; II. 14 296b 29 (phainetai). II, 14, 298a 3–5; (orōntai: are seen); II. 8. 289b 6; II. 13 293a 25–28; II. 14 297a 4 (phainomena). The Loeb translation (Aristotle, On the Heavens, translated by W.K.C. Guthrie, Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 1939) often renders ‘observation’ where the text simply has phainomena: for instance II. 14 296b 29 (ōsper phainetai, lit. ‘as it appears’, translated ‘as observation shows’, p. 247). When using a verb to indicate the act of observing Aristotle uses theōrein (for instance III. 4 302b 13: theorēteon: ‘one should observe’). Only once does he use tērein, referring to the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians who ‘watched the stars’ from the remote past (at II.12 292a7: Loeb translation, p. 204). He never uses the noun tērēsis to indicate observation, but he uses for instance phantasia (at II, 14, 297b 31–32: dia tēs tōn astrōn phantasias, lit. ‘through the spectacle of the stars’). On Aristotle's terminology of observation, more in general, see note 22 above.

⁵²See Geminos, Introduction aux phénomènes, edited and translated by Germaine Aujac (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1975) II, 8, pp. 10–11; VIII, 23, p. 51; XVII, 6, p. 84; XVII, 7, pp. 84–85; XVII, 9, p. 87; XVII, 20, p. 87; XVII, 23, p. 88; XVIII, 14, pp. 96–97. Paratērēsis and paratērein are included in the lexicon o f technical terms as words that ‘designate systematic observation, most often carried out by means of instruments’ (p. 199).

⁵³I have examined Ptolemy's Almagest in the edition by J.L. Heiberg: Syntaxis Mathematica, in Claudii Ptolomaei Opera quae extant omnia, I, 2 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898–1903), which contains unfortunately no index of Greek words. The examples abound: see for instance V. 12, V. 13 (Heiberg vol. I, p. 408); VII. 4 (Heiberg, vol. II, p. 34) X. 1 (Heiberg vol. II, p. 296, 298). For the Tetrabiblos, I have used Claudius Ptolomaeus, AΠOTEΛEΣMATIKA, edited by W. Hübner (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1998, with word index): examples of the use of tērein and paratērein at I. 9. 22, II. 9. 89–90, II. 12. 97, II. 13. 100; paratērēsis at I. 3. 17, etc.

⁵⁴Records of observations by Heliodorus (dating from 475–510 CE) were named tērēsis. See Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy, vol. 2 (New York: Springer, 1973) pp. 1038–1039.

⁵⁵See Jonathan Barnes, ‘Scepticism and the Arts’, in Method, Medicine and Metaphysics, edited by R.J. Hankinson (Edmonton: Academic Printing, 1988) pp. 53–77. On the links between the Empirics and the Sceptics, see Deichgräber, Empirikerschule, p. 19; Mette, Parateresis, p. 32, note 1; Carlo Augusto Viano, ‘Lo scetticismo antico e la medicina’, in Lo scetticismo antico, vol. 2, edited by G. Giannantoni (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1981) pp. 563–656. There were, however, some differences between their philosophical views, which are summarised by Allen, Inference from Signs, pp. 97–106, esp. p. 99.

⁵⁶The main additional sources are Cicero's Academica and Diogenes Laertius's ‘Life of Pyrrho’ in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. See Charles B. Schmitt, Cicero Scepticus (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972) pp. 12–13.

⁵⁷Next to nothing is known about Sextus, and no firm consensus has been reached on the dates of his life. He must have lived before the third century CE, because Diogenes Laertius wrote about him, saying that he was the pupil of the physician Herodotus of Tarsus, himself a student of Menodotus's (Lives, 9. 116). Since Menodotus probably flourished around 80–100 CE, Sextus's life possibly spanned ca. 140–160 to ca. 220–230, which would make him roughly contemporary of Galen. See Luciano Floridi, Sextus Empiricus. The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) pp. 4–5, 7.

⁵⁸As in AM 5.2 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 322–323); 5. 105 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 368–369) referring to astrological observation; I. 207 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 118–19) referring to the observation of linguistic usage. See also the examples of the use of the verb tērein to indicate observing the heavens at AM, 5. 53 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 344–345).

⁵⁹ PA I. 23 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 17); 2.246 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 314–315); 2.254 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 320–321); 3. 235 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 482–483). On the significance of the concept of tērēsis for Sextus Empiricus see Emidio Spinelli, ‘L'esperienza scettica: Sesto Empirico fra metodologia scientifica e scelte etiche’, Quaestio, 4 (2004) pp. 25–43, at p. 28.

⁶⁰See Blank's commentary in Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians (cited above, note 50) p. 212; and Spinelli's commentary in Sesto Empirico, Contro gli Etici, intro., transl. and comm. Emidio Spinelli (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1995) p. 337.

⁶¹ AM 5. 2 (Loeb, vol. 4, p. 322–323). By ‘astronomy’ in this passage Sextus means astrometeorology.

⁶⁴ AM 8. 288, emphasis added. Bury's translation (Loeb, vol. 2, p. 391) has ‘retentive sense of sequence’, which I have emended to ‘observant sense of sequence’ for a better rendition of the adjective tērētikos. The verb used for ‘observing’ is theōreō. ‘Together with what, after what and before what’ was an Empiric formula for observation (see the quotation from Galen's Subfiguratio Empirica, above, note 10).

⁶² AM 10.165. My translation; R.G. Bury's translation (Loeb, vol. 3, p. 465) has ‘non-philosophic regulation of life’. Cf. Spinelli, ‘L'esperienza scettica’, who translates ‘a-filosofica osservanza’ (p. 37). Sextus's tērēsis therefore should not be confused with the ancient notion of philosophy as a way of life (on which see Pierre Hadot, Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique, 3rd edition (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1993).

⁶³ AM 5. 105 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 368–369).

⁶⁵As in PH 2, 100–101 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 214–215); AM 8, 143, 152 and 154 (Loeb, vol. 2, pp. 312–313, 314–315, 316–317). On the use of sumparatēreīn see the comments by Spinelli in his Introduction to Sesto Empirico, Contro gli astrologi, edited by Emidio Spinelli (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2000) p. 44, note 47. The verb sumparatēreīn appears also in two pseudo-Galenic texts, De optima secta 13 (K vol. 1, p. 137) and Historia philosopha 9 (Doxographi Graeci, edited by H. Diels, Berlin, 1929, p. 605) with reference to the distinction between indicative and commemorative signs.

⁶⁶ PH 2. 100–101 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 214–215); AM 8. 152–154 (Loeb, vol. 2, pp. 314–315). The notion of commemorative signs was a specific contribution of the Empirics: see Allen, Inference from Signs, pp. 106–122.

⁶⁷ AM 8. 254–255 (Loeb, vol. 2, 370–371).

⁶⁸As reported by Galen: see above, note 10. Allen (Inference from Signs, pp. 252–253) notes that the Empirics’ approach ‘broke the stranglehold of the for-the-most-part’, which had dominated Aristotelian science. See L. Judson, ‘Chance and “Always or for the Most Part” in Aristotle’, in Aristotle's Physics: A Collection of Essays, edited by L. Judson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) pp. 73–99.

⁶⁹ AM 5, 103–104 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 368–369).

⁷⁰ AM 5, 105 (Loeb, vol. 4, pp. 368–371).

⁷¹Blank, Ancient Philosophy and Grammar, pp. 14–15, 72–73.

⁷²See Taub, Ptolemy's Universe, pp. 44–45, 83–84. Ptolemy praised Hipparchus for having compiled observations, and for having criticised the astronomers of his time because their hypotheses were not in agreement with the phenomena (ibidem, pp. 44 and 159, note 9). See also G.J. Toomer, Introduction, in Ptolemy's Almagest, translated and annotated by G.J. Toomer (New York: Springer, 1984) pp. 23–24.

⁷³See Olaf Pedersen, A Survey of the Almagest (Odense: Odense University Press, 1974) pp. 12–13 and Appendix A’ Dated observations in the Almagest’, pp. 408–422. Pedersen lists 94 observations, about one-third of which Ptolemy attributed to himself. On the issue of ‘fictitious’ observations in Ptolemy see Otto Neugebauer, A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (New York: Springer, 1975) vol. 1, pp. 101, 653, 965; vol. 2, p. 1029 f.

⁷⁴Taub, Ptolemy's Universe, pp. 130–133.

⁷⁵On Galen's compromise between rationalism and empiricism see Michael Frede, ‘On Galen's Epistemology’, in Galen: Problems and Prospects, edited by Vivian Nutton (London: Wellcome Institute, 1981) pp. 65–86; Philip J. van der Eijk, ‘Galen's Use of the Concept of “Qualified Experience” in his Dietetic and Pharmacological Works’, in Galen on Pharmacology, edited by Armelle Debru (Leiden: Brill, 1997) pp. 35–59.

⁷⁶ Tetrabiblos, I. 2. 4–5 (Loeb, pp. 8–10).

⁷⁷On the parapegmata see Daryn Lehoux, Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). These texts had to a large extent a predictive rather than descriptive purpose, although the ancient authors themselves emphasised observation as one of the foundations of the parapegmatic tradition (ibidem, p. 55).

⁷⁸Geminos, XVII, 23 (edited by Aujac, cited above, note 52, p. 88) my translation. Cf. also XVII, 6–7 (edited by Aujac, pp. 84–85). See Lehoux, Astronomy, Weather and Calendars, p. 57.

⁷⁹Lehoux, Astronomy, Weather and Calendars, p. 158.

⁸⁰ AM 8. 270 (Loeb, vol. 2, p. 379); 1. 55 (Loeb, vol. 4, p. 33).

⁸¹ AM 8. 291 (Loeb, vol. 2, pp. 392–393). The Empirics regarded expertise as ‘largely a matter of acquiring dispositions to be reminded of certain things by certain observations’ (Allen, Inference from Signs, p. 111). For them, the collective memory of co-observed phenomena took the place of theory. So ancient Empiricism as expounded by Sextus can be described as a form of memorism. See Michael Frede, ‘An Empiricist View of Knowledge: Memorism’, in Epistemology, Companions to Ancient Thought: 1, edited by Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 225–250, esp. pp. 234–248. See also Chiesa, ‘L’épistémologie génétique’, cited above, note 27, pp. 44–45.

⁸²Katharine Park, ‘Observation in the Margins, 500–1500’, in Histories of Scientific Observation, edited by Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: Chicago University Press, forthcoming), p. 38, note 14. See also the entry observatio in Mario Nizolio, Lexicon Ciceronianum, 3 vols (London, 1820): Nizolio gave reverentia, veneratio as the primary meaning, and animadversio as the secondary meaning. On the semantic history of the terms referring to empirical knowledge in classical Latin see Walter Belardi, ‘Il costituirsi del tempo lessicale dell’experientia in greco e in latino’, in Experientia, edited by Marco Veneziani (Florence: Olschki, 2002) pp. 1–61. Though the essay is very useful for experientia/experimentum, it contains nothing on observatio.

⁸³Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, I. 6. 16.

⁸⁴Cicero, De divinatione, II. 89–91; Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, XIV, 1. 7–19 (Loeb, vol. 3, pp. 4–10) which reports the Sceptic philosopher Favorinus's critique of astrology. See A. A. Long, ‘Astrology: Arguments Pro and Contra’, in Science and Speculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, edited by Jonathan Barnes et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) pp. 164–192.

⁸⁵Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales, VII, 3 (Loeb, vol. 2, p. 232): ‘Nova haec caelestium observatio est et nuper in Graeciam invecta’ (referring to the observation of comets). Cf. also Quaestiones Naturales, II, 32 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 152) referring to the Chaldaeans. For Pliny the examples abound: see for instance Natural History, II. 6. 35 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 190–191); II. 45. 117 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 258–259) and II. 48. 129 (Loeb, vol. 1, pp. 268–269; several occurrences of the word in the section on farming (book XVIII), in particular the verb observare used for Caesar's astrometeorological observations (XVIII, 65. 237: Loeb, vol. 5, pp. 338–339) and for the observation of the moon (XVIII, 75.323: Loeb, vol. 5, pp. 392–393). For the use of observationes in an astronomical sense, see also Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, 1. 19.

⁸⁶Celsus, De medicina, Proemium, 57 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 30); Proemium, 71 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 38); I. 3 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 50).

⁸⁷Ibidem, 6. 6. 35 (Loeb, vol. 2, pp. 222–23); I. 10 (Loeb, vol. 1, p. 78). On the specific meaning of observatio as ‘medical remedy’, see D.R. Langslow, Medical Latin in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) p. 177.

⁸⁸We find it used in this sense, for instance, in De Observatione ciborum, a dietary regimen written by the physician Anthimus for the Ostrogoth king Theodoric at the beginning of the sixth century. See Anthimus, On the Observance of Foods, edited and translated by Mark Grant (Blackawton: Prospect Books, 1996).

⁸⁹Arnaldus de Villanova, Regimen sanitatis ad regem Aragonum, in Opera Medica Omnia, edited by Luis García Ballester and Michael R. McVaugh, vol. X.1 (Barcelona: C. S. I. C, 1996) p. 429; Commentum in quasdam parabolas et alias aphorismorum series, ibidem, vol. VI. 2 (1993), p. 201. Similarly, he most often employed the verb observare to indicate the keeping of a rule: see vol. VI. 2, pp. 436, 443, 450, 454, 461, 462. I find one case, however, in which the primary meaning seems to be ‘paying attention to, noting, checking’: ‘observandum erit ut substancia sit qualis est dicta’ (vol. VI.2, p. 458).

⁹⁰ Etymologiae, IV. 2.

⁹¹Nutton, entry ‘Empiriker’ in Der Neue Pauly, vol. 3 col. 1016. See also William Eamon’, ‘Plebs amat empirica’: Nicholas of Poland and his Critique of Medieval Medical Establishment’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 71, 2 (1987) pp. 180–196.

^{92 1} Collections of recipes were often called Experimenta. See Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani, ‘Per una ricerca su experimentum-experimenta: riflessione epistemologica e tradizione medica (secc. XIII–XV)’, in Presenza del lessico greco e latino nelle lingue contemporanee, edited by Pietro Janni and Innocenzo Mazzini (Macerata: Università degli Studi di Macerata, 1990) pp. 9–49, at pp. 39–47; Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958) vol. 2, pp. 751–808. In medieval philosophical language, however, experimentum kept a wider cognitive meaning: see Jacqueline Hamesse, ‘Experientia/Exper imentum dans les lexiques médiévaux et dans les texts philosophiques antérieurs au 14e-siècle’, in Veneziani, Experientia, pp. 77–90.

⁹³ De sectis had been part of the Alexandrian Canon of Galen's works (Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 45–46) and it was taught in the West in Ravenna sometime between the sixth and eighth century: see Agnellus of Ravenna, Lectures on Galen's De Sectis (Buffalo: State University of New York, 1981) p. xiv; see also J. Kollesch and D. Nickel, ‘Bibliographia galeniana, 1900–1993’, ANRW, II, 37, 2 (1994) p. 1405. It was known in pre-Salernitan medicine: see Nicoletta Palmieri, L'antica versione latina del ‘De Sectis’ di Galeno (Pal. Lat. 1090) (Pisa: ETS, 1992). It was published in the first edition of Galen's collected works in Latin in 1490, in a translation possibly by Niccolò da Reggio according to Durling, p. 291. For the modern edition of De sectis see Galen, Scripta Minora, vol. III, edited by G. Helmreich (Leipzig: Teubner, 1893) pp. 1–32.

⁹⁴For the text of De optima secta see K vol. 1, pp. 106–223. On its dubious authenticity see Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 198–209. The text of Subfiguratio empirica survives only in the Latin translation by Niccolò da Reggio: see SE. According to Durling, p. 291, De optima secta was first printed in the first edition of Galen's collected work in Latin in 1490. Subfiguratio was first printed in the 1502 edition of Galen by Girolamo Suriano: see Galens ‘Subfiguratio emperica’, German transl. and comm. Jens Atzpodien (Husum: Matthiesen Verlag, 1986) p. 13. Durling lists three Renaissance translations of Subfiguratio, and four of De optima secta (pp. 288, 291). To the Galenic works on the Empirics known in the Renaissance one should add the fragment of De experientia medica published as Sermo adversus empiricos in the Giunta edition of Galen (1550): see Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 44–50.

⁹⁵See Deichgräber's retrotranslation in SE.

⁹⁶See Lynn Thorndike, ‘Translations of Works of Galen from the Greek by Niccolò da Reggio (c. 1308–1345) in Byzantina Metabyzantina, 1,1 (1946) pp. 213–235. Niccolò himself described his method of translation as ‘de verbo ad verbum, nihil addens minuens vel permutans’ (cited in Nikolaus Mani, ‘Die Editio princeps des Galen und die anatomysch-physiologische Forschung im 16. Jahrhundert’, in Das Verhältnis der Humanisten zum Buch, edited by Fritz Krafft and Dieter Wuttke, Boppard: Boldt, 1977, p. 32, note 12).

⁹⁷Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS Lat. 14700, cc. 83r–132r: [P]irroniarum informationum libri. Several scholars have attributed this early fourteenth-century translation of Sextus's Outline of Pyrrhonism to Niccolò. The attribution is considered ‘plausible’ by Floridi, Sextus Empiricus, cited above, note 57, p. 67. On this translation, see the forthcoming study by Roland Wittwer, Die erste lateinische Übersetzung von Sextus Empiricus’ Pyrrôneioi Hypotypôseis (Leiden: Brill).

⁹⁸For autopsia rendered with visio see for instance the thirteenth-century transl. of pseudo-Soranus, Quaestiones medicinales, cited in Deichgräber, Empirikerschule, pp. 90–91.

⁹⁹The immediate reception of Niccolo's translations seems to have been quite limited: see Michael McVaugh, ‘Niccolò da Reggio's Translations of Galen and Their Reception in France’, in Early Science and Medicine, 11, 3 (2006) pp. 275–301; but his translations were published and widely read in the Renaissance.

¹⁰⁰The manuscript was discovered in Siena in 1426 and first published in Florence in 1474: R. Sabbadini, Storia e critica dei testi latini, 2nd edition (Padua: Antenore, 1971) p. 215 ff.

¹⁰¹On the humanist rediscovery of Sextus Empiricus, see Richard Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp. 17–28, and Floridi, Sextus Empiricus, pp. 32–51. On a medieval translation of Sextus see above, note 97. For a reassessment of the history of skepticism in the middle ages, see Henrik Lagerlund (editor), Rethinking the History of Scepticism: The Missing Medieval Background (Leiden: Brill, 2010), which, however, does not offer new evidence of Sextus's influence in the medieval period.

¹⁰²On Politian see Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, ‘Sesto Empirico e una dispersa encyclopedia delle arti e delle scienze di Angelo Poliziano’, Rinascimento, 20 (1980) pp. 327–358; Anna De Pace, La scepsi, il sapere e l'anima. Dissonanze nella cerchia laurenziana (Milan: LED, 2002) pp. 32–34. Savonarola himself did not read Greek, but was highly interested in Sextus's ideas and reportedly asked one of his followers, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, to translate Sextus into Latin. See Walter Cavini, ‘Appunti sulla prima diffusione in occidente delle opere di Sesto Empirico’, Medioevo, 3 (1977) pp. 1–20, at pp. 11–20. On Giovanni Pico see below, note 105.

¹⁰³Popkin, History of Scepticism, pp. 6–7; Charles Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) and his Critique of Aristotle (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967) and now especially Gian Mario Cao, Scepticism and Orthodoxy. Gian Francesco Pico as a Reader of Sextus Empiricus (Pisa-Rome: Serra Editore, 2007). Cao argues that ‘Pico's commerce with Sextus remained embryonic, given his mission to proclaim the patrimony of truth revealed through the Scriptures, codified by the Catholic tradition and preserved by the Roman papacy’ (p. 302). On the varieties of Renaissance scepticism see Emmanuel Naya, ‘Renaissance Pyrrhonism: A Relative Phenomenon’, in Renaissance Scepticisms, edited by Gianni Paganini and José R. Maria Neto (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009) pp. 15–32.

¹⁰⁴Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence: MS. Laur. Plut. 85.11. On the history of the manuscript see Gian Mario Cao, ‘The Prehistory of Modern Scepticism. Sextus Empiricus in fifteenth-century Italy’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 65 (2001) pp. 252–256, 259.

¹⁰⁵Sebastiano Gentile, ‘Pico filologo’, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, vol. 2, edited by G.C. Garfagnini (Florence 1997) pp. 465–490 (at p. 479, note 47). See also Cao, ‘Prehistory’, pp. 259–260. A manuscript Contra Arithmeticos et Astrologos, presumably book 5 of Sextus's Adversus Mathematicos, was listed in the inventory of Giovanni Pico's library: see Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936) pp. 210, 258.

¹⁰⁶The textual parallels between Pico's and Sextus's arguments have been indicated first by Gentile, ‘Pico filologo’, p. 479, note 47, and examined in more detail by Cao, ‘Prehistory’, pp. 259–260, note 147. Strangely enough, Sextus's possible influence on Pico has not been given much attention by historians: no mention of Sextus, for instance, in Sheila J. Rabin, ‘Pico on Magic and Astrology’, in Pico della Mirandola. New Essays, edited by M.V. Dougherty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) pp. 152–178; nor in Marco Bertozzi (editor), Nello specchio del cielo. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e le Disputationes contro l'astrologia divinatrice (Florence: Olschki, 2008). In contrast, some sixteenth-century readers argued that Pico had plagiarised Sextus. See Floridi, Sextus, p. 38, and Popkin, History of Scepticism, pp. 7 and 304, note 10.

¹⁰⁷Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, vol. 2, edited by Eugenio Garin (Florence: Vallecchi, 1943) pp. 154–160, 288–292. Cf. AM 5. 50–87. Like Sextus, Pico argues that a fundamental difficulty is the problem of determining the moment of ‘birth’—is it the time of the emission of semen, or of impregnation, or of childbirth? Each of these happens at different times, and in the case of impregnation it is impossible to establish the exact moment.

¹⁰⁸Pico, Disputationes, vol. 2, pp. 456–469; cf. AM 5, 103–105.

¹¹¹Pico, Disputationes, vol. 1, p. 162: ‘Observavi hieme ista in suburbana mea villa, in qua haec scripsimus, insignem omnem singulis diebus aeris mutationem, ipsis interim ante oculos positis decretis astrologorum. Ita salubre mihi ubique faveat caelum, ut in dierum supra centum atque triginta iugi observatione non plus sex aut septem tales vidi dies, quales in eorum libris futuros ante praevideram!’.

¹⁰⁹It is certainly incorrect to say that ‘Pico's Adversus Astrologiam and his nephew's writings on the subject are nothing but the writings of Sextus’ (Popkin, History of Scepticism, p. 27). Popkin claims that ‘Eugenio Garin analyzed the content of Pico's work on astrology and indicated that much of it is really Sextus Empiricus reworked’ (History of Scepticism, p. 310, note 63). This is definitely a mistake. In the text that Popkin cites (E. Garin, Prolusione generale, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494–1994), edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, Florence: Olschki, 1997, pp. XLV–LV) Garin did not compare Sextus's work on astrology with Giovanni Pico's Disputationes. He simply mentioned that a manuscript of Sextus circulated in Savonarola's circles, and was used by Gianfrancesco, Pico's nephew (Prolusione, pp. LII–LIII).

¹¹⁰Pico, Disputationes, vol. 1, p. 156. ‘paucos enim invenies… qui ut veram positionem siderum assequantur, ad ephemeridas non confugiant’.

¹¹²Pico's religious mentor Girolamo Savonarola, for instance, in his vernacular summary of Pico's text (Trattato contra li astrologi, 1497), used osservare and osservazione primarily to indicate observance, or ritual practice, not empirical observation, for which he used the noun esperienzia and the verb considerare. See Girolamo Savonarola, Contro gli astrologi, edited by Claudio Gigante (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2000) pp. 49–50, 98, 117, 122 (osservare as ‘to follow a rule’); p. 56 (‘considerare le stelle’); p. 112 (‘la esperienzia procede da certa cognizione molte volte iterata’).

¹¹³Pico, Disputationes, vol. 1, p. 42: ‘experimenta tam diuturnis observationibus, tam diligentibus annotamentis corroborata’; vol. 2, p. 34: ‘priusquam factura experimentum observatio de illorum proprietatibus institueretur’; vol. 2, p. 460: ‘saepius iterata observatio faciet experimentum’; p. 468: ‘Erit igitur imperfecta talis observatio qua sua colligunt experimenta’. He also uses experimenta and observationes as synonyms: vol. 1, p. 335; vol. 2, p. 472, 482. But he also uses observationes in the Plinian sense to indicate rules established by the long cumulative experience of shepherds, sailors, peasants: for instance: vol. 1, pp. 182; 282–284; 342, 356, 360–362.

¹¹⁴On the medieval use of considerationes see Park, ‘Observation in the Margins’, pp. 31, 33 Gerard's translation was published as Almagestum Cl. Ptolomei (Venice, 1515). I have compared it with Ptolemy's text as edited by J.L. Heiberg: Claudii Ptolomei Opera quae extant omnia: Syntaxis Mathematica (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898–1903). The uses of considerare/considerationes by Gerard seem to correspond closely to the use of tērein/paratērēseis in the original Greek. See for instance at 109r: ‘non invenimus in eo considerationes antiquorum […] Et nos invenimus in considerationibus quae pervenerunt ad nos ex considerationibus Taionis doctrinalis […] Et consideravimus nos in anno quarto annorum Antonii…’ (cf. Almagest, X. 1, ed. Heiberg vol. 2, p. 296).

¹¹⁵George of Trebizond's translation of the Almagest (1451) was published in Venice in 1528. I have consulted a later edition: Cl. Ptolemaei … Omnia quae extant (Basel, 1541). For the use of observare and observationes compare the passage at X. 1, quoted above in note 114 in Gerard's translation, with the same passage as translated by George of Trebizond: ‘quam quidem ad rem priscas observationes non potuimus exquisitas habere. Sed ab observationibus nostri temporis haec nobis investigata sunt. Invenimus enim conscriptam observationem in his quas Theon mathematicus nobis dedit […] Nos quoque observavimus anno Antonini quarto […]’ (p. 202, col. 1). For more examples, see for instance p. 130, col. 2; p. 185, col. 1. Peuerbach's and Regiomontanus's translation appeared as Epytoma Joan[n]is de Mo[n]teregio in Almagestum Ptolomei (Venice, 1496). It was meant as an ‘epitome and clarification’, rather than a literal translation. In the prefatory letter to Cardinal Bessarion, Regiomontanus tells how Bessarion himself commissioned the work to Peuerbach, ‘who knew the Almagest by heart’, and how Peuerbach died before completing it. Peuerbach translated the first six books, Regiomontanus the rest. Examples of the use of observare/observatio appear especially in the books translated by Regiomontanus. On the medieval and Renaissance translations of the Almagest see Pedersen, A Survey of the Almagest, pp. 15–17.

¹¹⁶Park, ‘Observation in the Margins’, pp. 32–35.

¹¹⁷Robert S. Westman has suggested that Pico's criticism of the astrologers’ inability to establish the order of the planets was a source for Copernicus's rejection of the Ptolemaic system: ‘Copernicus and the Prognosticators: The Bologna Period, 1496–1500’, in Universitas, 5 (1993) pp. 1–5, quoted in Rabin, ‘Pico on Magic and Astrology’, p. 178. See also Sheila J. Rabin, ‘Kepler's Attitude toward Pico and the Anti-Astrology Polemic’, Renaissance Quarterly, 50 (1997) pp. 750–770.

¹¹⁸Steven vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence. Pico, Louvain and the Crisis of Astrology (Leiden: Brill, 2003).

¹¹⁹Paola Zambelli, ‘Giovanni Mainardi e la polemica sull'astrologia’, in L'opera e il pensiero di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nella storia dell'Umanesimo, vol. 2 (Florence: Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1965), pp. 205–255.

¹²⁰Pico's epistemology was rather eclectic, combining Platonic, Aristotelian and Kabbalistic elements: see Carl N. Still, ‘Pico's Quest for All Knowledge’, Pico della Mirandola. New Essays, pp. 179–201.

¹²¹This is the case both in the Giunta edition (Venice, 1541–1542) and in the Froben edition (Basel, 1542) of Galen's collected works.

¹²²See above, notes 14, 15, and below, notes 131, 132. Further research is needed to reconstruct the influence of the Galenic works on the Empirics in the early modern medical and philosophical culture.

¹²³See Ian Maclean, ‘The “Sceptical Crisis” Reconsidered: Galen, Rational Medicine and the Libertas Philosophandi’, Early Science and Medicine, 11 (2006) 3, pp. 247–274, esp. pp. 253–259. First translated by Niccolò da Reggio, like Galen's works on the Empirics, De optimo modo docendi was retranslated by Erasmus. Erasmus's version was the one appended to Estienne's translation of Outline of Pyrrhonism and Hervet's translation of Against the Professors (Maclean, pp. 253–254).

¹²⁴Maclean, ‘Sceptical Crisis’, p. 258.

¹²⁵The role of medicine in the history of early modern scepticism is largely ignored in Popkin's classic account. Disappointing is also J.-P. Pittion, ‘Scepticism and Medicine in the Renaissance’, in Scepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, edited by R.H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1987), pp. 103–132.

¹²⁶ Sexti Empirici Pyrrhoniarum Hypotypωseωn [sic] libri III (Geneva, 1562): see Floridi, Sextus Empiricus, pp. 38, 72–77.

¹²⁷C.B. Schmitt, ‘The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times’, in The Skeptical Tradition, edited by Myles Burnyeat (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 225–252, at p. 231.

¹²⁸See De Gorris, Definitiones medicae, s. v. autopsia: ‘vocabulum est Empiricae sectae proprium, quo significabant memoria eorum omnium quae frequenter et eodem modo visa essent’ (49v, cross-ref. with empeirikē, which is the entry devoted to the Empirical sect at 103v). For the lemma peira, introduced in the second edition of de Gorris's Definitiones (Frankfurt, 1578), see below, note 131.The entry phainomenon is particularly interesting, as it distinguishes the Empiric acceptation of phenomenon, rigorously limited to ‘what falls under sense perception’ from other ancient philosophical usages (343v). On the semantic history of phenomenon in the early modern period, see Gabriele Baroncini, Forme di esperienza e Rivoluzione scientifica (Florence, Olschki, 1992), pp. 116–123.

¹²⁹Bacon called Galen ‘desertor experientiae’, in Temporis partus masculus: see Francis Bacon, Works, vol. 3, edited by Spedding et al. (London: Longman, 1858–1874), p. 538. Bacon's view was most unjust, since actually, and very much in consequence of the Empirics’ challenge, Galen tried to recognise and conceptualise the role of experience in medical knowledge; see above, note 75. Bacon seems to have known the ideas of the Empirics only through Celsus, whom he quoted in De Augmentis Scientiarum (Works, vol. 1, p. 617). He does not seem to have known Galen's Subfiguratio empirica. According to Deichgräber, Bacon's concept of empiricus was Scholastic, and had no reference to the ancient Empirics (Empirikerschule, pp. 342–343 ).

¹³⁰Francisco Sanches, That Nothing is Known, edited by Elaine Limbrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 184, note 44; p. 281, note 178. The other explicitly acknowledged sources of Sanches's scepticism are Diogenes Laertius's ‘Life of Pyrrho’ and Plutarch's Adversus Colotem.

¹³¹Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum (1662), s. v. experientia: ‘ex pluribus singularibus cognatis scientia universalis extructa: aut et ejus, quod saepe et eodem modo visum est, observatio et memoria’. Cf. de Gorris, Definitiones, 2nd edition (1578), s.v. peira: ‘[…] definire potes, experientiam esse eius quod eodem modo visum est, observationem atque memoriam’, quoting Galen, De optima secta, 11 (K vol. 1, p. 131). Cf. SE p. 51. This same definition of experience is also given in the medical dictionaries: see the various editions of Castelli's lexicon (cited above, note 8), s. v. experimentum, and Johann Conrad Dieterich, Jatreum hippocraticum (Ulm, 1661) s. v. experientia.

¹³²Chauvin's Lexicon distinguishes three kinds of experientia: (a) ‘simplex sensorium externorum usu, quo quasi fortuito & aliud fere agendo rerum naturalium phenomena percipimus; (b) quando premeditate … circa res naturales varia tentamus […]; (c) quod ratio praecedit, quaeque an illud verum, an falsum sit determinat’. Cf. SE , pp. 44–45, where three forms of experientia are distinguished: automatica (casual), autoscedia (intentional) and imitativa (mimetic). On the three forms of peira for the Empirics see above, note 32 and Perilli, Menodoto, pp. 128–129.

¹³³Lorraine Daston, ‘The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800’, in Histories of Scientific Observation, edited by Daston and Lumbeck, pp. 81–133.

¹³⁴Daston, ‘The Empire of Observation’, p. 82.

¹³⁵Park, ‘Observation in the Margins’, pp. 21–26.

¹³⁶Dedication to Henri des Mesmes, in Sextus Empiricus, Opera Graece et Latine, edited by A. Fabricius (Leipzig: Kuehn, 1841–1842) pp. XXII–XXV. Together with other self-revealing aperçus scattered in Estienne's publications, this text is reprinted in Jean Céard et al., ed. La France des humanistes. Henri II Estienne, éditeur et écrivain (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003) pp. 89–93. See Emmanuel Naya, ‘Traduire les Hypotyposes Pyrrhoniennes: Henri Estienne entre la fiévre quarte et la folie chrétienne’, in Pierre-François Moreau, ed., Le scepticisme au XVIe et au XVIIe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001) pp. 48–94, with a translation of Estienne's text at pp. 94–101.

¹³⁷Popkin, History of Scepticism, p. 18, referring to François de La Mothe Le Vayer for ‘le divin Sexte’. For another story of ‘conversion’ after reading Sextus see ibidem, pp. 64–65, 175.

¹³⁸‘Miraris, Henrice, Henrici tui metamorphosin, in Scepticum quasi quodam virgulae divinae miraculo transformati? At ego nunc a Te unica differo literula. Tu enim es, ut mos est hominum venustiorum, ego vero . Quodsi huius metamorphosis tragicomicam historiam audieris, ad eam certe multo magis quam ad ullam Ovidianam attonitus stupefactusque discedes’. (Dedication to Henri des Mesmes, cited above, note 136, p. XXII.)

Note: All the translations are mine, unless otherwise specified.