History of Science in Sweden

Abstract

THIS essay will give a concise survey of the more important works in the history of science published during the last few years in Sweden. For natural reasons they are largely concerned with Swedish conditions, but even so they often seem to be of a more general interest, either because they deal with scholars whose works have achieved international renown, or because the Swedish material has been given a wider setting in the history of ideas. At present, classical research is being zealously pursued in Sweden, and several works dealing with problems of the history of science have appeared in this field. With his study entitled Griechische Pflanzennamen (G6teborg 1940), REINHOLD STR6MBERG has continued his researches into Greek botany. This time he investigates how the plant names found in THEOPHRASTUs, HIPPOCRATES, DIOSCORIDEs etc. are formed, and what grounds lie behind the choice of designation. INGEMAR DURING'S Herodicus the Cratetean (Stockholm 1941) brings to the fore a previously little known anti-Platonist and philologist of the Alexandrine Age, and sets him against a wider background of the history of ideas. The same author has also made a thorough study of Aristotle's De partibus animalium (G6teborg I1943), in which the interrelation and structure of the four Aristotelian books are discussed in detail, as also the textual tradition; in a commentary DURING has contributed towards establishing a new text of this work. Quite recently the same author has published yet another study on ARISTOTLE, Aristotle's chemical treatise: Meteorologica, Book IV (G6teborg I944). This work contains a free translation of the fourth book of the Meteorologica, regarded by the author as unquestionably authentic, and also a full commentary of it and an introduction, in which one of the subjects discussed is the Aristotelian theory of matter, or 'chemistry.' GUDMUND BJORK, the distinguished connoisseur of the veterinary medicine of Antiquity, has pursued his investigations in this sphere with a study entitled Apsyrtus, Julius ifricanus et l'hippiatrique grecque (Upsala I 944); here he devotes particular attention to the complicated literary problem which is linked up with the name SEXTUS JULIUS AFRICANUS, and investigates the fate of the hippiatric texts up to the present time. Considerable interest attaches to NILs ALMBERG'S extensive work, Platons vadrldsjaUl och Aristoteles' gudsbegrepp (Plato's world soul and if ristotle's conception of God) (Lund 1941). The author has undertaken to clarify, by means of an extremely detailed discussion of the text, the connection between the Platonic philosophy as outlined primarily in Timaios, and the Aristotelian theory of the first unmoved Mover who is God. His thesis is that this latter has its historical background in the Platonic theory of the world soul. This penetrating analysis of the important philosophical questions involved here has undoubtedly enriched our knowledge of the two thinkers, and has in particular, with more consistency than earlier research, brought out the elements which their metaphysical principles have in common. In his study latros och medicus (latros and medicus) (Lychnos 1940) AXEL W. PERSSON contributes some facts about the history of the physician during Antiquity, and MARTIN P :N NILSSON has, in the same publication (year 1943), summarized his far-reaching researches into the astrology of Antiquity, Astrologien iAntiken (Astrology in Antiquity). GUNNAR ASPELIN's study on Ralph Cudworth's interpretation of Greek philosophy (Goteborg 1943) akes us to the Platonic thought of the 1 7th century. This paper examines the development by the English philosopher of the philosophia perennis motivethe theory of the only true, primordial philosophy which was professed by Greeks and barbarians when the world was young. An interesting problem in the history of ideas has been taken up for treatment by WILHELM SJ6STRAND in Pedagogik och temperamentslEira. En pedagogisk-psykologisk historik fram till mitten av I 700-talet (Pedagogics and theory of temperaments. a pedagogico-psychological survey up to the middle of the i8th century) (G6teborg 1943). The well-known and now deceased biological historian, ERIK NORDENSKIOLD, has treated the historical development of the biological conception of species from early times in a posthumously published essay (Lychnos 1940). With his usual perspicacity, ERNST CASSIRER, for some years attached to the University of G6teborg, analyzes in Mathematische Mystik und mathematische Naturwissenschaft (Lychnos 1 940) important questions bearing on the history of the genesis of the exact ciences. Dui-ing the time he was working in Sweden,