Lucrèce et les sciences de la vie (review)

P. H. Schrijvers. Lucrèce et les sciences de la vie. Supplement 186 to Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava. Leiden: Brill, 1999. ix + 231 pp. $91.25; Nlg. 155.00.

Much has been done in recent years in the field of ancient biology and medicine, as well as on the intellectual context at the time of Lucretius. It remained to tie together these two fields, as P. H. Schrijvers rightly pointed out several years ago. As a first step in this direction he has gathered, without introduction or modification, eleven of his studies relating to this topic, which were published between 1994 and 1997. Most of the papers are commentaries on successive passages of books 4 and 5 of De rerum natura, concerning the origin of life, language, and social life; sleep and dreams; visual illusions; and the use of analogy ("Le regard sur l'invisible").

Schrijvers's method is literary and philological. His readings help to elucidate grammatical and lexical obscurities, often against the interpretations of previous commentators. Difficulties are thus examined "au fil du texte" in order to understand Lucretius's views on biological topics--for example, on species (his "fixism"), the formation of semen, et cetera. In the same unsystematic way, interesting parallels are made with Aristotle's biological writings, and with other authors. The question of Lucretius's knowledge of Hippocratic or Hellenistic medical writings is briefly tackled. Elsewhere, allusions are made to the philosophical and cultural context of the Hellenistic period, such as the comparison in chapter 6 ("La vie sauvage") of Lucretius's construction of primitivism with Dicaearchus. In one of the most interesting studies, Schrijvers focuses on the obvious correlation between the visual illusions listed in De rerum natura, and the more extensive list (modes) reported by Sextus Empiricus. Schrijvers shows the important role played by analogy--for instance, in the representation of atoms, in the world as makranthropos, in theories of soul.

These studies, based on the painstaking reading of parts of the Latin text, offer much useful literal and more general analysis without giving a comprehensive and synthetic view of the problems evoked. But with its provocative claim of modernity, the title of the book makes the author's intention ambiguous. Far from being limited to a title chosen to attract a larger audience, the concept of a modern rational and rigorous "science" is consciously reiterated through expressions such as the "scientific basis of the narrative," "scientific evaluation," and so forth. Schrijvers is thus driven to accumulate negative judgments on a poet who, for him, has sacrificed "scientific accuracy" to poetry--an eclectic picking up diverse theories in an unorganic "bric à brac," a "collage." Surprisingly, these opinions do not deter Schrijvers from finding a great interest in the biologic themes in Lucretius. However, an enterprise like this clearly needs a more systematic approach regarding physiological functions, pathology, et cetera. For those who expect such a synthesis, this volume opens the way.

Armelle Debru
University of Paris V, France

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