Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Arts from Antiquity through the Thirteenth Century (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 131 of the scope of Pyrrhonism. (If one adopts the second, one will be inclined to think that Pyrrhonism attacks only scientific pretensions to discover the basis of reality, and hence that it leaves ordinary judgments alone.) Brunschwig shows that the meaning of the phrase is even more multiply ambiguous than that, and that the contexts cannot fully disambiguate it. His conclusion is, in fact, itself a sceptical one--sober, if a little depressing. I can do no more than indicate the scope of some of the other contributions. Fernanda Decleva Caizzi continues her program of research on early Pyrrhonism with a learned and careful piece on Timon's view of Protagoras. Philippe Mudry contributes to the growing body of literature on the scepticism of the medical Empiricists, relying on the evidence of Celsus. Curzio Chiesa analyzes Sextus' arguments concerning signs, and their coherence. Chiesa's conclusion is by now a commonplace (Sextus wishes to retain some signs, yet his arguments if successful do away with all); however Chiesa brings some fresh insights to bear upon the establishment of it. Marceilo Gigante offers "quelques pr~cisions" on the relations between Scepticism and Epicureanism, a longtime preoccupation of his. Frangoise Desbordes considers Sextus' treatise on the liberal arts, long recognized as being different in tone from the rest of his works; she accepts the general hypothesis that the material derives from an Epicurean source, which accounts for some at least of its negative Dogmatic coloration. It is a pity that she does not seem to have read Barnes's excellent piece on the subject ("scepticism and the Arts," in Hankinson, ed., Method, Medicine and Metaphysics[Alberta, 1988]). Finally, the editor himself contributes a piece to the growing recognition that Sextan Scepticism is basically therapeutic in nature, a fact which accounts (at least partially) for the peculiar attitude towards argument manifested by the Sceptical texts. In conclusion, this collection is indeed, as it sets out to be, wide-ranging; however it is not, I think, particularly ground-breaking. The student of ancient Scepticism will find few strikingly new lines of interpretation retailed here (at least, lines that I can understand). Nor is it ideal for the nonspecialist; too much of the discussion presupposes a level of engagement with the m/nut/ae of the subject beyond the grasp of all but the most dedicated of uomini universali. But for all that, it contains good stuff, and every Anglophone ancient philosopher should have it on his shelves, if only to remind himself that France (and indeed Italy) is another country--and they do things rather differently there. R. J. HANKINSON Universityof Texas,Austin Elspeth Whitney. Paradise Restored: The Mechanical Artsfrom AntiquiO through the Thirteenth Century. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Volume 8o, Part 1. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 199o. Pp. 169. Paper, ~20.OO. In this beautifully executed little book, Elspeth Whitney makes a genuine contribution to the growing interest in the cultural history of technology. ParadiseRestoreddoes not 13~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 31:1 JANUARY 199 3 set out to break new theoretical ground, nor does it bring to light hitherto unknown sources. By virtue of its breadth and clarity, however, it may be considered to be the finest review now available of medieval attitudes toward the mechanical arts. As such, it ranks with the invaluable compilations by Peter Sternagel in German and Franco Alessio in Italian, and renders a real service to English-language scholarship. ~ The history of technology has been a pronounced beneficiary of the preoccupation with the medieval roots of modern ideologies evidenced over the last half-century. What began as an interest in the technical innovations themselves (Lefebvre des No~ttes, Bloch'), evolved into a concern with predisposing factors in religious and intellectual life (White, Le Goff, Orvitts). According to Whitney, however, this prodigious literature has not yet resulted in a coherent assessment of the medieval philosophy of technology, of "the metaphysical and ontological status accorded to craftsmanship and the process of invention in medieval thought" (l). This, in essence, is the task the author has set for herself. She is concerned with the manner in which medieval thinkers appropriated the legacy of...