Theophrastus

Greek scientist and philosopher

• Born: c. 372 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Eresus, Lesbos, Greece
• Died: c. 287 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Athens?, Greece

Successor of Aristotle as head of his school, the Lyceum, Theophrastus became father of the sciences of botany, ecology, and mineralogy. He also wrote literary sketches of human psychological types.

Early Life

Theophrastus (thee-uh-FRAS-tuhs), originally named Tyrtamus, was born in Eresus, a small city-state on the Greek island of Lesbos, near the coast of Asia Minor. His father was Melantas, a cloth-fuller. He studied under the philosopher Alcippus in Eresus, later traveling to Athens to broaden his intellectual horizons. It is not known when he became Aristotle’s student. It was Aristotle who called him Theophrastus, “he of godlike speech,” a compliment to his polished Greek style. According to tradition, both men studied under Plato, but in Theophrastus’s case this study must have been brief.

Theophrastus was in his mid-twenties when Plato died. Since Plato had not made Aristotle head of his school, the Academy, Aristotle moved to Assos at the invitation of its ruler, Hermias, and stayed three years. Theophrastus followed him there. When the Persians threatened Hermias, Theophrastus took Aristotle to the relative safety of his native island, Lesbos. The men were only twelve years apart in age, and the relationship between them was as much that of friends and colleagues as that of master and disciple. Soon Philip II, King of Macedonia, invited Aristotle to come there as tutor of his son, the future Alexander the Great. He accepted, and Theophrastus went with him, remaining until after Philip’s death seven years later.

Life’s Work

In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded a school at the Lyceum, a cult center with a colonnade and park, where the Peripatetic philosophy flourished under his leadership for thirteen years. Theophrastus lived there, discussing, lecturing, and writing. It was a creative period. Alexander was conquering the East as far as India, and philosophers who went with him, at first including Aristotle’s nephew, Callisthenes, sent back scientific specimens never seen before in Greece. Not least among these were seeds and living plants that were tended in the garden of the Lyceum and studied by Theophrastus. His books on botany thus contain descriptions of the plants of India. He traveled through Greece collecting plants and making observations of natural phenomena.

Around the time of Alexander’s death in 323, Aristotle retired to Chalcis, and a few months later he also died. His choice of Theophrastus as his successor at the Lyceum proved to be a wise one. At this time Theophrastus was about fifty years old, and statues give some idea of his appearance. He was a vigorous, healthy man, but lines around his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks suggest the heavy responsibilities of leadership and the hard work of empirical research. He remained at the Lyceum as scholarch (senior professor) until his death in about 287. His will provided for the maintenance of the Lyceum garden, where he asked to have his body buried. He designated Strato of Lampsacus, known as “the physicist,” his heir as head of the school.

Theophrastus taught some two thousand students, among them Demetrius of Phalerum, who became ruler of Athens and presented Theophrastus with the land on which the Lyceum and its garden were located. Thus the school came to possess its own real estate, instead of leasing its grounds from the city. This step was important, because many Athenians regarded Aristotle and his followers as pro-Macedonian; Theophrastus had even been charged with sacrilege in 319. He had managed to stay in the city, and the reestablishment of Macedonian power in Athens two years later had made Demetrius governor. Demetrius was not popular, and when his rule ended in 307 a law was passed forbidding the operation of philosophical schools without special permission. Theophrastus then had to leave Athens, but the law was repealed within a year, and he was able to return.

Theophrastus produced his most important writings during his years at the Lyceum. He continued to revise them until the end of his life. The titles of 227 works by Theophrastus have been recorded, but only a small fraction have survived. They fall into three major categories: scientific, philosophical, and literary.

It is in science that Theophrastus made his most significant contributions. Here he continued the work of Aristotle, achieving important insights of his own. He pointedly repeated Aristotle’s statement that “nature does nothing in vain” and added his own comment, “Anything which is contrary to nature is dangerous.” In describing natural objects, Theophrastus established sets of opposing characteristics, such as cold and hot, wet and dry, male and female, wild and domestic. This method is typical of the Peripatetic school and is derived from Aristotle. In some respects, however, such as his emphasis on the autonomous purposes of living things and his avoidance of the ideas of final causation and the prime mover, he rejected Aristotle’s authority and marked out an independent line of investigation.

His longest extant writings are the nine books of Peri phytikōn historiōn (translated in Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs, 1916; often designated by the Latin title, De historia plantarum) and the six books of Peri phytikōn aitiōn (translation in De causis plantarum, 1976-1990). Aristotle had written on animals; Theophrastus’s works are the first careful treatment of botanical subjects. Enquiry into Plants describes the parts of plants and the characteristics of more than five hundred species, arranged in four groups: trees, shrubs, sub-shrubs, and herbs. Peri phytikōn aitiōn discusses generation, propagation, cultivation, and diseases of plants, as well as their tastes and odors. Theophrastus originated many terms in the botanical vocabulary and distinguished some of the main divisions of the vegetable kingdom. These works are also notable for their ecological viewpoint. Theophrastus always discusses a plant in the context of its relationships to the environment: sunshine, soil, climate, water, cultivation, and other plants and animals. His conclusions are sometimes wrong—for example, he believed in spontaneous generation—but even in such cases he showed caution and skepticism.

The works of Theophrastus dealing with other sciences are extant only in fragmentary form. Only excerpts remain of his Peri physikōn (on physics) and Peri pyros (De Igne: A Post-Aristotelian View of the Nature of Fire, 1971). Geology is represented by Peri lithōn (translated in Theophrastus’s History of Stones, 1746; also as On Stones), a long fragment that investigates the properties of metals, minerals, gems, and substances whose animal origin he recognized, such as pearls, coral, and ivory. Fossils are handled in Peri ichthyōn en xera katastasei (on fishes in dry condition). Then there are fragments on meteorology such as Peri semeiōn hydatōn kai pneumatōn kai cheimonōn kai eudiōn and Peri anemōn (translated together in On Winds and On Weather Signs, 1894); the treatise on winds accurately describes many of the Mediterranean winds and goes beyond Aristotle in affirming that winds are moving air. Human physiology is discussed by Theophrastus in other treatises on sense perception, odors, weariness, fainting, paralysis, and perspiration. One called Peri hypnou kai enypniōn (on sleep and dreams) has disappeared.

The surviving philosophical work of Theophrastus is an important section of the Tōn meta ta physika (Metaphysics, 1929), which criticizes Aristotle’s doctrine that all things have a final cause, or telos. Aristotle said that the final cause of all living things is the service of the higher rational nature, that is, of human beings. Rejecting his teacher’s excessive teleology, Theophrastus remarked,

We must try to find a certain limit . . . both to final causation and to the impulse to the better. For this is the beginning of the inquiry about the universe, that is, of the effort to determine the conditions on which real things depend and the relations in which they stand to one another.

So he maintained that, by nature, each living thing always aims at assimilating its intake to its own goal, and the goal of a plant is not to feed humans or to give them wood but to produce fruit containing seed for the perpetuation of its species—in other words, to produce offspring similar to itself. Aristotle would not have denied species perpetuation as a goal but would have made it a subsidiary cause in his hierarchical organization of nature. For Theophrastus, it is the whole point.

Other authors often quoted from his now-lost reference works, Physikon doxai (doctrines of natural philosophers), a history of philosophical opinions about major problems, and the Nomoi (laws), a compilation of the statutes and traditions of Greek cities. Charactēres ethikōi (c. 319; The Moral Characters of Theophrastus, 1616, best known as Characters) is Theophrastus’s only surviving literary work and his most famous writing. In it he sketches thirty aberrant human personality types, giving as much care to their description as he did to plant species in his botanical works. These are not objective treatises, but satirical, dryly humorous jabs at disagreeable people such as the flatterer, the faultfinder, and the miser. This genre established by Theophrastus was much imitated, particularly in Great Britain and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Significance

Theophrastus was, as Diogenes Laertius wrote, “a man of remarkable intelligence and industry.” His fame has suffered because he has remained in the shadow of Aristotle. In the areas where he differed from his teacher, he was more scientific, more dependent on observation, and less ready to make universal statements of principle that could not be supported by perceptible facts. Aristotle had moved away from Plato in that direction; Theophrastus went even further.

In doing so, Theophrastus anticipated some of the methods of modern science. More than Plato’s or Aristotle’s, his philosophical stance was congenial with scientific discovery, emphasizing as it did efficient causes, not final causes. He has been recognized as the founder of the science of botany, having made many observations about plants for the first time and having established the basic terminology in that field. In modern times, he is also recognized as the first ecologist, for he viewed species not as isolated phenomena but in interaction with their physical environment and other species. He was distinguished as a perceptive investigator of lithology and mineralogy. Many of his ideas have been corrected in the light of later work; many others have so far withstood the test of time. It is hard to criticize him too severely, since he was among the first to set out on the journey of scientific inquiry. All told, he is impressive for his rationality and good sense and for his wish to depend on observations and to criticize the reports that he received. His practical attitude may be discerned in his rejoinder to those who advised him to plant and fell trees by the moon and signs of the zodiac: “One should not in fact be governed by the celestial conditions and revolution rather than by the trees and slips and seeds.”

Among those who followed him were the researchers of the Museum and Library of Alexandria in Egypt in the second and first centuries b.c.e. The Latin natural historian Pliny the Elder quoted him extensively, and his influence can be traced in other ancient writers on sciences such as botany and medical pharmacology. Arabic commentators studied, preserved, and translated his writings during the medieval period. When interest in the sciences was reawakened in early modern Europe, the botanical works of Theophrastus were revived and printed. A Latin translation appeared in 1483, and the Greek text was published in Venice between 1495 and 1498. An English translation of the Peri phytikōn historiōn was published in 1916 and of the first two books of the Peri phytikōn aitiōn in 1976.

Bibliography

Baltussen, H. Theophrastus Against the Presocratics and Plato: Peripatetic Dialectic in the “De sensibus.” Boston: Brill Academic, 2000. Interprets and offers insights into Theophrastus’s De sensibus and criticizes the methods of the Presocratics and Plato. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Diogenes Laertius. “Theophrastus.” In Lives of Eminent Philosophers, edited by R. D. Hicks. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925. Because Diogenes wrote his set of biographies about five hundred years after the death of Theophrastus, his work is not entirely reliable, but it does preserve many ancient traditions about him.

Fortenbaugh, William W., et al., eds. and trans. Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for His Life, Writings, Thought, and Influence. New York: Brill Academic, 1992. An ambitious series of volumes dedicated to the translation of and commentary on Theophrastus’s works. See in particular the volumes of commentary.

Fortenbaugh, William W., Pamela M. Huby, and Anthony A. Long, eds. Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1985. Contains numerous scholarly essays on the major issues in literary, philosophical, scientific, and historical research on Theophrastus. Three of these deal with the Arabic tradition.

Fortenbaugh, William W., and Robert W. Sharples, eds. Theophrastus as Natural Scientist and Other Papers. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987. Volume 3 in the Rutgers Studies in Classical Humanities series and a companion to Theophrastus of Eresus, this is another collection of articles on Theophrastus’s shorter scientific works, and others on botany and ecology, metaphysics, ethics, religion, and politics.

Theophrastus. The Character Sketches. Translated with an introduction and notes by Warren Anderson. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1970. A translation of the Characters, with useful explanatory notes and an introductory essay on the development of the “character” as a literary genre.

Theophrastus. De causis plantarum. Translated with an introduction by Benedict Einarson and George K. K. Link. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976-1990. This translation of the Peri phytikōn aitōn has the Greek and English texts on facing pages and includes a fine introduction on the author and the work, Theophrastus’s predecessors, his calendar, and more.

Theophrastus. Enquiry into Plants and Minor Works on Odours and Weather Signs. Translated with an introduction by Sir Arthur Hort. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1916. This has the Greek text and English translation on facing pages; it includes a short but useful introduction. The difficult Greek of Theophrastus is rendered accurately, but in an eccentric English style.