Notes on G. E. R. Lloyd, "Comparative Studies and Their Problems"

Lloyd, G. E. R. “Comparative Studies and Their Problems: Methodological Preliminaries.” Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science, Cambridge UP, 1996. pp. 1-19.

Lloyd is a historian of science associated with the Needham Institute (named after Joseph Needham, who collaborated on a series of books about Science and Civilization in China), so this chapter is coming from a different perspective than that of Friedman, who's coming from comparative literature. Let's see how these two essays compare!

One of the first points he addresses is the question, "what does it mean to use the term 'science' at all in this context" (1)? [Interestingly, perhaps because she doesn't explicitly emphasize the idea of "comparative literature"--although it's clearly the perspective from which she's coming--Friedman doesn't ask about how the term "literature" figures into her analysis. Maybe this is because the question of what "literature" is has been dealt with elsewhere in comparative literature? (I think it has, but I don't have any sources on that at hand.) In comparative rhetoric, as I think is evidenced by some of the other articles we'll be reading in this seminar, the question of how or whether to use the term "rhetoric" has come up frequently.]

In response to this question, Lloyd calls on us to focus on "what the ancient investigators themselves thought they wee trying to do, their conceptions of their subject-matter, their aims and goals" (2), rather than on interpreting what they were doing from a modern perspective on what science is. He admits that it's impossible to completely identify with the ancient investigators or, on the other hand, simply accept what they say. But we need to start with what they saw as their subject. [It's notable, perhaps, that Friedman didn't say much about this, the "native's" viewpoint. I think Escobar said more about it in his essay.]

A second question is what we can achieve in this kind of comparative study. Here he mentions the problems of the archive: what has survived, what hasn't, and why (if we can know why); and how have later interpretations crept into the texts that have been transmitted up to today.

The third question he asks is about how we should do such comparative study. Here he argues against generalization and taking a "piecemeal" approach. He points out the need for considering the contexts (both in terms of sociohistorical contexts and domains of science) and not generalize about "Chinese" and "Greek" ways of thinking. (This includes generalizing within domains, such as "medicine"--assuming Hippocratic medicine is the standard in ancient Greece, and even assuming that Hippocratic medicine is homogeneous itself.) The piecemeal approach has the opposite problem--to look at a particular topic in Greek science and try to find "the Chinese equivalent" wrongly assumes that "there is  a single set of theories or concepts fundamental to early science that will turn out to play analogous roles in both China and Greece" (5-6). [This is one of the criticisms of some types of comparative rhetoric, as has been mentioned--for instance, looking for a Chinese term that is analogous to the term rhetoric.]

Lloyd goes on to argue that the basic thing to consider when trying to compare Chinese and Greek science, is what questions they were trying to answer. He admits that this is a difficult task that involves some speculation, since they would rarely if ever explain what their questions were. But, giving the example of the Greek contentions over the concept of elements, he tries to show what was probably at stake in these debates. "All of this means," he concludes, "that the agenda that we set ourselves must ... include (even if it is not limited by) the inquiry into the conditions under which knowledge, or what passed for it, was produced, and the conditions under which those who claimed to do the producing worked" (16). 

On top of that, he argues that we need to consider the values and social contexts into which these inquires fit--"[w]e have to go into the perceived or assumed values of philosophy and science, what they were thought to be for, and that takes us inexorably into the values of the society in which the philosophers and scientists operated" (16-17). 

Finally (at least for the purpose of my notes), he argues that "the contents of philosophical, and medical, debates cannot, or rather should not, be divorced from the modes of conduct of the debates themselves (written or oral, real or imaginary), including styles of adversariality, or consensuality, adopted, the appropriation or rejection of others', or of traditional, views, the whole gamut of the variety fo the tactics of persuasion" (18). The rhetoric, if I dare use the term.