Le mythe de la connaissance ou la construction de la pensée scientifique dans les Questions Naturelles de Sénèque

Abstract

The scientific myth underlying all the branches of science in Antiquity is of course the cosmological myth. We here understand by myth a rational intellectual construction aiming at giving the clues of Nature and of Man, at thinking the universe as a macrocosm and man as a microcosm. Seneca, however, in the Natural Questions, contrary to Cicero, Lucretius, Pliny or Vitruvius, for instance, does not devote any chapter of his work to a thoroughgoing exposition of the structure of the universe. We shall concentrate on showing how that myth, while it does supply the clue of a naturalistic explanation of the universe, with for instance the theory of the four elements, never distracts the scientist from searching the physical -and not the theological or divinatory- causes of natural phenomena. Book VII, on the comets in particular, through the method he sets to work, through the linking of interrogations, seems to be oriented towards a form of methodical doubt and questioning of the cosmological truths themselves.

Keywords

• natural questions
• Roman science
• Seneca
• cosmology
• astronomy
• stoicism