Classical Scholarship Today: Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd’s Methodological Principles

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Notes

1. See especially Claude Calame, “The Rhetoric of Muthos and Logos: Forms of Figurative Discourse,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. Richard Calame (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Marcel Etienne, The Creation of Mythology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), where he criticizes the validity of the term “myth.”

2. Lloyd has more recently insisted on this idea in “Styles of Enquiry and the Question of a Common Ontology,” in Ancient Worlds, Modern Reflections: Philosophical Perspectives on Greek and Chinese Science and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004). Lloyd claims that all our observations or perceptions of the world are without exception laden or penetrated by theory (concepts); in other words, that there are no perceptions of nude facts, only interpretations of them (following Nietzsche). Yet Lloyd, and this is a fundamental contention, also admits that, although all observations are theory-laden, there are different “degrees of theory-ladenness” (Ancient Worlds, 84). This last assertion is essential, for it is the methodological key that enables him to steer a middle course between dogmatism and relativism, between naïve forms of realism and cultural constructivism.

3. This precautionary note on generalizations, however, is not wholly new. The French école led by Jean-Pierre Vernant et al. also insist on the importance of contexts, that is, on the realization of different contexts. For them, avoiding futile generalizations is the indispensable condition for recognizing the different forms of rationality (and different logics) that formed the background of Greek science, philosophy, and myth. Thus the more contextualized the research, the better.

4. In the Greek language, as Lloyd points out, there is no single term that embraces all these functions. Moreover, not all of these functions were included under the category of iatroi (doctors). The rizotomai (root-cutters), the pharmakōpolai (drug-sellers) and the maiai (midwives) all appear in different contexts. Besides, even though there were in antiquity some “medical centres,” there was no “union” that controlled the proliferation and the practice of their activities. Cf. Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience (London: Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth, 1999), 37–39.

5. Obviously, Lloyd does not propose to eliminate generalizations. That would be nonsense and a radical impossibility, which he, by the way, does not accomplish. Rather, what he is doing is calling attention to a methodological problem of which every scholar should be aware.

6. See, for example, Marcel Detienne, The Creation of Mythology (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1986); Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought (New York: Cornell University Press, 1982), Myth and Thought among the Greeks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone Books, 1996); and Jean-Piere Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone Books, 1988).

7. Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, “Mythology from a Chinese Perspective,” in From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought, ed. Richard Buxton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 164.

8. Cf. Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, “Metaphor and the Language of Science,” in The Revolutions of Wisdom (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987); see also Aristotle, Mete., 357a24ff., Metaph., 991a20ff, 1079b24ff, Po. 1457b6ff, Apo., 97b37–38, Top. 139b32ff., but compare other passages where he praises the use of metaphor: Rh. 1405a8ff., 1410b13ff., Po. 1459a5ff., Apo. 97b7ff, Top. 105a21ff.

9. On what Lloyd understands by semantic stretch, see his The Revolutions of Wisdom, 172ff.

10. On theory-ladenness, see Lloyd, “Styles of Enquiry and the Question of a Common Ontology.”

11. Although it is not my intention to examine Lloyd’s epistemological contentions, his affirmation that “there are different degrees of theory-ladenness” needs to be carefully qualified. On the one hand, we certainly praise Lloyd’s determination not to give in to the different forms of cultural constructivism and the gnoseological skepticism these positions entail. We also understand (and share) Lloyd’s precautions regarding a very difficult subject: the problem of cross-cultural universals. On the other hand, to affirm without further justification that all our perceptions are permeated, albeit in different degrees, by “theories,” presents a number of difficulties. Thus, assuming such a theory, how do we know which observation is more or less loaded with a theoretical charge? Furthermore, which criterion are we to apply in deciding such a question? Perhaps appealing to another, a third, observation? But that, of course, would be an infinite regress. All in all, I don’t think this objection makes Lloyd’s position illegitimate or less worthy; it simply reveals a critical point that has nowadays become the object of ongoing debate—“Theory of perception” has almost become a separate branch within philosophy—which demands further clarification. This debate applies to both the physical and the human sciences, insofar as these are required to ground their methods and their knowledge “in” observation to prove or falsify a given hypothesis. It seems less problematical philosophically to argue in favor of the pre-theoretical constitution of multiple layers of meaning (i.e., configurations) in perception as, for instance, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception does, than to theoretically assume that all observations are “theory-laden.”

12. On the problem of “cross-cultural universals,” see Lloyd, “The Use and Abuse of Classification,” in Ancient Worlds; and Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), chaps. 1–4, where he discusses this problem in some detail regarding color-perception, animal and plant classification and emotions.

13. “Sufficiently robust”: even if we do not fully endorse Lloyd’s notion of theory-ladenness, his attempt to steer a middle course between naïve forms of realism and relativism, is the right one. That we would like to see him clarify certain issues does not rule out his approach nor does it diminish the value of his methodology. Thus to introduce degrees of theory-ladenness allows him to maneuver between gnoseological skepticism and affirmations which all too easily invoke common (universal) categories, as well as to render them in different cultures. That there is a certain veil of opacity does not mean that we can see nothing through such a veil. Patience and methodological discipline, through generations of scholarship, can help unveil the dust of centuries of misconceptions that obscure the vision a particular Greek man in the fifth century BC might have had of Apollo, and thus over time to catch a glimpse, perhaps even more than a glimpse, of what he might have seen.