8/9/2019 Schönbeck, C. L. J._sunbowl or Symbol. Models for the Intepretation of Heraclitus' Sun Notion_1998 [Schofield, Malc…

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The Sun of HeraclitusSunbowl or Symbol. Models for the Interpretation of Heraclitus' Sun Notion by C. L. J.SchönbeckReview by: Malcolm SchofieldThe Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 50, No. 1 (2000), pp. 142-143Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3065344 .

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8/9/2019 Schönbeck, C. L. J._sunbowl or Symbol. Models for the Intepretation of Heraclitus' Sun Notion_1998 [Schofield, Malc…

2/3

THE

CLASSICAL

REVIEW

HE

CLASSICAL

REVIEW

except

that,

when an

individual

was

regarded

by

the

ancients as

the

founder of a

school,

the

chapter

includes

the

later members of the

school,

e.g.

Aristippus

and the

Cyrenaics,

Antisthenes

and the

Cynics.

There is a

one-page concluding

section on

anonymous

Socratic

dialogues, including

papyrus

fragments,

and another

magnificent

bibliography.

As in the section on the

sophists,

the

aim is

primarily

expository;

different

interpretations

are

mentioned,

but

in

general

critical discussion

muss

dahingestellt

werden .

It

goes

beyond

my

competence

to

discuss

the

content of the

sections on

mathemat-

ical and

medical writers.

I

must be content to note

that

they

are

very

different in

scope.

The

section

on mathematics contains an

essay

on sources and

substantial

discussions

of the work of

Euclid,

Archimedes,

Apollonius

of

Perga,

Pappus,

and

Diophantus.

Running

to over

fifty

double-columned

pages, plus twenty-seven

of

bibliography,

it is a substantial

piece

of

work.

The

medical

section,

by

contrast,

consists

(after

the briefest of introductions

to the

Hippocratic Corpus

and to

Hippocratic ethics) of

short

descriptions

of

eight Hippocratic

works,

some

less than

a

page

long

and

none

longer

than three

and

a

half.

It

amounts

to no

more

than a

collection

of

encyclopedia

articles,

plus

a

five-page

bibliography.

Overall,

this is

an

extremely

useful handbook.

Though

one

should not look to

it

for

in-depth

discussion,

it

contains

a vast amount of information

presented

in

a clear

and

extremely

accessible

form.

It

would

be worth

having

for the sake of the

bibliographies

alone.

Corpus

Christi

College,

Oxford

C. C. W.

TAYLOR

THE

SUN OF HERACLITUS

C.

L.

J. Sc

H N BECK:

Sunbowl

or

Symbol.

Modelsfor

the

Interpreta-

tion

of

Heraclitus

Sun Notion.

Pp.

xlvi

+

439,

ills. Amsterdam:

Elixir

Press,

1998.

Cased,

Hfl. 275. ISBN:

90-71409-03-1.

This

big,

strange,

and beautiful

book is

in

origin

a

doctoral

thesis,

which after

many

years

labours

in

the

composition

was

approved

by

the

University

of

Amsterdam

in

the

summer of 1998.

It is a

kind

of monument not

only

to a certain

conception

of

scholarship,

but

also to the book as

the

physical

object

we

used

to know.

Sunbowl or

Symbol, though

in the end

the outcome

mostly

of electronic

processes,

looks and feels

like the

product

of

one

of the

fine

art

presses

which

flourished

in

Britain

during

the inter-war

period.

It

is

printed

in a limited

edition

(each

copy

with

its own handwritten

number)

on 80

g

Caxton,

with

huge margins,

book

markers,

hand-pasted

ornamented

initials,

and

illustrations,

and

such a combination of

elegance

and

intricate

complexity

in

the

typography

that the author

was

awarded

the

Max

Reneman

Prize for

this

aspect

of the

book.

As

well

as a

general

introduction,

there

is

a

separate

prefatory

section on notations and

typography .

S. uses a

great

variety of typographical conventions, including various symbols in the margins to

indicate items

in

the

text

corresponding

to an

inventory

of

key

topics

(almost

all

wholly

neglected

in

previous scholarship,

in

his

opinion) presented

as one

of

six

appendices.

All

this

is in service

of his

conviction that

explicitness

and

ways

of

exhibiting explicitness

are

prime

desiderata

in

Heraclitus

scholarship,

once

again

barely appreciated by previous

workers

in

the field. Needless to

say,

there are excellent

tables

of

contents,

and the book is

superbly

indexed.

S. s

project

is

indicated

in his

subtitle: this is not a

study

of

Heraclitus

in

general,

but

?

Oxford

University

Press,

2000

except

that,

when an

individual

was

regarded

by

the

ancients as

the

founder of a

school,

the

chapter

includes

the

later members of the

school,

e.g.

Aristippus

and the

Cyrenaics,

Antisthenes

and the

Cynics.

There is a

one-page concluding

section on

anonymous

Socratic

dialogues, including

papyrus

fragments,

and another

magnificent

bibliography.

As in the section on the

sophists,

the

aim is

primarily

expository;

different

interpretations

are

mentioned,

but

in

general

critical discussion

muss

dahingestellt

werden .

It

goes

beyond

my

competence

to

discuss

the

content of the

sections on

mathemat-

ical and

medical writers.

I

must be content to note

that

they

are

very

different in

scope.

The

section

on mathematics contains an

essay

on sources and

substantial

discussions

of the work of

Euclid,

Archimedes,

Apollonius

of

Perga,

Pappus,

and

Diophantus.

Running

to over

fifty

double-columned

pages, plus twenty-seven

of

bibliography,

it is a substantial

piece

of

work.

The

medical

section,

by

contrast,

consists

(after

the briefest of introductions

to the

Hippocratic Corpus

and to

Hippocratic ethics) of

short

descriptions

of

eight Hippocratic

works,

some

less than

a

page

long

and

none

longer

than three

and

a

half.

It

amounts

to no

more

than a

collection

of

encyclopedia

articles,

plus

a

five-page

bibliography.

Overall,

this is

an

extremely

useful handbook.

Though

one

should not look to

it

for

in-depth

discussion,

it

contains

a vast amount of information

presented

in

a clear

and

extremely

accessible

form.

It

would

be worth

having

for the sake of the

bibliographies

alone.

Corpus

Christi

College,

Oxford

C. C. W.

TAYLOR

THE

SUN OF HERACLITUS

C.

L.

J. Sc

H N BECK:

Sunbowl

or

Symbol.

Modelsfor

the

Interpreta-

tion

of

Heraclitus

Sun Notion.

Pp.

xlvi

+

439,

ills. Amsterdam:

Elixir

Press,

1998.

Cased,

Hfl. 275. ISBN:

90-71409-03-1.

This

big,

strange,

and beautiful

book is

in

origin

a

doctoral

thesis,

which after

many

years

labours

in

the

composition

was

approved

by

the

University

of

Amsterdam

in

the

summer of 1998.

It is a

kind

of monument not

only

to a certain

conception

of

scholarship,

but

also to the book as

the

physical

object

we

used

to know.

Sunbowl or

Symbol, though

in the end

the outcome

mostly

of electronic

processes,

looks and feels

like the

product

of

one

of the

fine

art

presses

which

flourished

in

Britain

during

the inter-war

period.

It

is

printed

in a limited

edition

(each

copy

with

its own handwritten

number)

on 80

g

Caxton,

with

huge margins,

book

markers,

hand-pasted

ornamented

initials,

and

illustrations,

and

such a combination of

elegance

and

intricate

complexity

in

the

typography

that the author

was

awarded

the

Max

Reneman

Prize for

this

aspect

of the

book.

As

well

as a

general

introduction,

there

is

a

separate

prefatory

section on notations and

typography .

S. uses a

great

variety of typographical conventions, including various symbols in the margins to

indicate items

in

the

text

corresponding

to an

inventory

of

key

topics

(almost

all

wholly

neglected

in

previous scholarship,

in

his

opinion) presented

as one

of

six

appendices.

All

this

is in service

of his

conviction that

explicitness

and

ways

of

exhibiting explicitness

are

prime

desiderata

in

Heraclitus

scholarship,

once

again

barely appreciated by previous

workers

in

the field. Needless to

say,

there are excellent

tables

of

contents,

and the book is

superbly

indexed.

S. s

project

is

indicated

in his

subtitle: this is not a

study

of

Heraclitus

in

general,

but

?

Oxford

University

Press,

2000

14242

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8/9/2019 Schönbeck, C. L. J._sunbowl or Symbol. Models for the Intepretation of Heraclitus' Sun Notion_1998 [Schofield, Malc…

3/3

THE

CLASSICAL

REVIEW

of one

particular

theme in his

philosophy.

There

are

among

the

generally

acknow-

ledged fragments

of

Heraclitus

a handful about the

sun,

e.g.

(to

list

those

which

most

preoccupy

S.)

The sun is new

every day (fr.

6

DK);

it has the

breadth of a

human s

foot

(fr.

3

DK);

The

sun will not

overstep

its

measures;

otherwise

the

Erinyes,

helpers

of

justice,

will

find it out

(fr.

94

DK).

In recent

years

we have

become aware that in

the

Derveni

Papyrus

the last

two are recalled

together,

which has

prompted

further

debate

on their

original

form.

In the

gappy

text of col.

IV,

as restored

by

K.

Tsantsanoglou

(see

Studies

on the Derveni

Papyrus,

edd. A. Laks and

G.

W.

Most

[Oxford,

1997],

Chapter

VI),

the

Derveni writer

says

that Heraclitus

says:

The

sun

according

to

its

own nature

is a human foot

in

width,

not

exceeding

its boundaries.

For

if

it

goes

outside

its

width,

the

Erinyes,

helpers

of

justice,

will

find it out. But

S.

investigates

not

just

the

bearing

of

the

Derveni evidence on the

question.

Not

the least of

his

contributions

to the

study

of Heraclitus

is

another

appendix

in

which he

gathers

together

a

larger

collection of testimonia on the entire

body

of

sun

fragments

than we

have ever had before.

S.

evidently

thinks that

in

order to come to

terms with these

sayings

we

need at least

three

attributes.

First,

we need classical

scholarship,

i.e. the

panoply

of

knowledge

of

Greek

literature,

philosophy, philology,

history,

art,

and

archaeology, especially

in

the

archaic

period

but

ranging

well

beyond

that. But

reconstructing

an

archaic

Heraclitus,

even if

feasible,

would not be

enough.

Second,

we

approach

the material

seriously

underequipped

if

we do so without a

knowledge

of

science and the

history

of

science,

especially astronomy

and

psychology-for

how

big

the sun

appears,e.g.

at

the

horizon

vs.

in

the

meridian,

is

a

question

pre-eminently

for

psychology.

Third,

and

above all

else, we need to be awarethat nothing about these sayings of Heraclitusis self-evident.

In

fact

in

every

dimension

each

is

multiply problematical.

And

for

every

question

we can think

to

ask

there are a host of

prior methodological

issues to be

raised and

explored.

Few

earlier

writers,

in

S. s

view,

have

begun

to

see

the

necessity

for

doing

so.

One

exception

to which he

frequently

recurs is

Karl

Popper,

in

Back

to the

Presocratics ,

and

subsequently

in

his debate with

G. S.

Kirk. But he

thinks

Popper s

work succeeds

only

in

alerting

us

to the

need to

take

questions

of

methodology

seriously.

S. s

enquiry

is

really

a

meta-enquiry.

It

is

divided into three

parts,

devoted

to

a

characterization of the

material,

its

problems,

and

the

possibility

of

solutions. The

division makes it sound as though there might have been progress:as though by the

end one

might

perhaps

have

got

a

bit

closer than at

the

outset to

understanding

how

one

might

go

about

making

sense of

Heraclitus

remarks

about the sun.

In the

event,

this

expectation

is not

fulfilled. The

fundamental

reason

for its

non-fulfilment is

that

S.

is

a

sceptic.

He

is driven

not

by

a

sense of

how

despite

all

the

difficulties an

under-

standing

of what

Heraclitus

meant

might

be

achieved,

but

by

a

deep

and

apparently

irrefragable

conviction

that

there are

always

more

difficulties to be

negotiated

than one

is

yet

in

a

position

to

see one s

way

through,

and

that there is

always

more

ground-

clearing

work to

be done

before

building

can

begin.

S. s book

contains

immense and

varied

learning,

and

his

ingenuity

and

perspicacity

in

formulating problematics

is

boundless:

anybody

thinking

of

thinking

about Heraclitus on the

sun

will

want to

consult him.

But

in

the

end the

experience

of

reading

Sunbowl

or

Symbol

was

for me

dispiriting:

sustained and

inconclusive

meta-enquiry

leaves

one

weary

as well

as

hungry.

St

John s

College,

Cambridge

MALCOLM

SCHOFIELD

143

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