EMPIRICISM IN BABYLONIAN OMEN TEXTS AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF MESOPOTAMIAN DIVINATION AS SCIENCE.

• Author: ROCHBERG, FRANCESCA

INTRODUCTION: THE CLASSIFICATION OF BABYLONIAN DIVINATION AS SCIENCE

THE STUDY OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN SCIENCE HAS been largely devoted to the reading and analysis of the many astronomical records, both observational and computational, found in the southern Mesopotamian cities of Babylon and Uruk, dating mostly from the period after 500 B.C.(1) Earlier texts of astronomical interest, found in Assyrian sites such as Nineveh and Assur, provide evidence of the incorporation of astronomical events within a vast system of divination that predicted the future on the basis of natural and other events of many kinds.(2) Such events were viewed as signs produced by the gods by means of which humans were forewarned of future events. Foreknowledge could therefore be obtained by systematic consideration and interpretation of the omens.(3)

Assyriologists have considered the omen texts a form of science in Mesopotamia primarily because many of the phenomena of interest in these texts are of the physical, natural, world.(4) Thus many of the omen protases of the celestial omen series Enuma Anu Enlil, parts of Summa alu dealing with fauna, of Summa izbu focusing on anomalous animal and human births, of Alamdimmu, that deal with the variable forms of the human anatomy, and even parts of the Ziqiqu dreambook, have come to be inspected as sources for understanding the Mesopotamian attempt to grasp the workings of nature. Because the diverse systems of Mesopotamian divination all stemmed from a belief in the gods' involvement in the physical, as well as the social worlds, and because of the close relationship of divination to apotropaic ritual magic, the body of knowledge represented by the omen texts has not always been classified as science, particularly by historians of science who prefer to see in this material a form of pre-or proto-science.(5)

Beginning in the 1960s, however, philosophers and anthropologists have argued about the similarities and differences that relate or distinguish traditional (religious/magical) and modern (scientific) thinking. As well, they have also discussed the implications of accepting a relativism of "modes of thought" for defining both science and the criteria of scientific truth.(6) Those disposed toward relativism extend the term science to divination and magic. This discussion becomes relevant to the study of magical, alchemical, and astrological sources in the history of Western science, with the result that the criteria defining science "in general" established by Boyle and the Royal Society of London in the seventeenth century have at long last been rejected, as Barnes, Bloor, and Henry put it, "not least because philosophers and historians have now demonstrated repeatedly that the contents of the accepted, authentic history of science are not capable of being demarcated by this criterion, or indeed by any other."(7)

For historians in the current post-positivistic climate, science has ceased to be the exclusively logical and empirical inquiry it once was, clearly and cleanly separable from theology, metaphysics, and other speculative or "mythic" forms of thought.(8) The impact of this historiography is such that many philosophers of science no longer exclude all but "matters of fact and ratiocination" from science and have even come so far as to call into question the old demarcation game itself.(9) Historical considerations aside, on purely epistemological grounds some have argued that "there is apparently no epistemic feature or set of such features which all and only the 'sciences' exhibit.... It is time me abandoned that lingering 'scientistic' prejudice which holds that 'the sciences' and sound knowledge are coextensive; they are not."(10)

Where ancient Mesopotamian traditions are concerned, it would seem that the "scientistic prejudice" does linger and old demarcations prevail. Otherwise, why do ideas persist such as that science begins only with the Greeks and continues to evolve to the present day?(11) Or that genuine science in Babylonia begins with the mathematical astronomy at the end of the sixth century B.C.? The reason for this surely has to do with the fact that the cuneiform "scientific texts," whatever these are taken to include and however they are defined, are our earliest known historical sources for science; and so, inquiring into Mesopotamian science carries the extra burden of inquiring into the origins of science. To raise the question of when science begins already implies a demarcation between science and pre-science, or non-science, but the "scientistic prejudice" becomes explicit when, as von Staden said, "the quest for the 'origins' of science often is tacitly accompanied by a search for ancient motivations that resemble modern scientific ones."(12)

If, however, classification of the omen texts is not to be based on an argument from affinity with modern or other known sciences, on what set of criteria is it to be based? We may strive not to distort ancient systems of thought by the imposition of our own definitions and criteria and may try to determine the content, aims, and methods of such systems "from within." But surely if the discipline of scholarly divination bears no relation to the discipline we have defined and determined by our own social and cultural consensus to be science, why do we seek to classify the native discipline of omens as "science" at all? Without attributing any necessary universal criteria to science, I think a simple answer is that, correctly or incorrectly, we recognize in this Mesopotamian tradition aspects of what we term science in our, i.e., the Western tradition. However, carefully we may try to reconstruct the terms of an "alien" system on the basis of primary texts, the meaning of the term science is not entirely recreated in every scholarly historical investigation. Though our classification of Mesopotamian divination as "science" probably would make no sense to a Babylonian, it serves to make comprehensible to us some aspects of this ancient intellectual tradition by connoting a number of features: among them, empiricism and systematization of knowledge. Within the wider framework of assessing cuneiform sources in terms of the criteria by which Mesopotamian divination might be classified as science, the present paper tackles only one such criterion, namely, the empirical character of the omens.

THE EMPIRICAL CHARACTER OF OBJECTS OF (MESOPOTAMIAN) SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE

Most would agree that the desire to comprehend natural phenomena is the common denominator for science regardless of its cultural manifestation. However, in reference to the Mesopotamian omen texts, to equate omens with an inquiry into such phenomena does not fairly represent these sources and seems to lose sight of the fact that Mesopotamian omen texts concerned signs of many kinds, of which natural phenomena formed but one. That Enuma Anu Enlil and its companion piece, MUL.APIN, have generally been understood as the chief sources for Babylonian physical science before 500 B.C. takes these astronomical sources out of their broader intellectual context just to satisfy modern Western tastes. In an effort then to appreciate the full range of interests comprising the discipline developed for the study of phenomena, it seems important not to limit the general discussion of Mesopotamian divinations science to those parts of its, such as the astronomical omens, that have the greatest similarity to more familiar sciences. The "Babylonian" approach seemingly makes no epistemological or methodological distinction between astronomical omens and other items of scholarly divination, as we see clearly in the letters and reports of the Neo-Assyrian diviner-scholars.(13)

Beginning with Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, the discussion of scientific knowledge has taken sense perception as fundamental to science and the basis for generalizations about the natural world:

... we cannot employ induction

([Epsilon][Pi][Alpha][Gamma][Omega][Gamma][Eta]) if we lack

sense-perception, because it is sense-perception that

apprehends particulars. It is impossible to gain scientific

knowledge ([Epsilon][Pi][Iota][Sigma][Tau][Eta][Mu][Eta]) of them, since

they can neither be apprehended from universals without induction, nor

through induction apart from sense-perception. (Posterior

Analytics, I.xviii)

Speaking strictly of the protases, the arrangement of subjects into categorical groups within the various lists of omens seems to point toward an empirical foundation for the lists in general, since any sort of classification of subjects would be difficult to imagine without such a foundation. The study of signs, in the form of Babylonian omen series, however, does not exhibit the same empirical constraints as are found in the study of some natural phenomena, particularly astronomical phenomena that behave in accordance with certain limited parameters. The organization of tables in the series Summa alu, for example, assembles and classified phenomena of widely disparate subjects. The omens that deal with human phenomena would seem to be endlessly and unsystematically variable, as in the series Summa alu, which defines its interests rather broadly; Alamdimmu, which focuses on the physiognomic characteristics of people; and SA.GIG, which studies the symptoms of the sick. Clearly there is some overlap in what is of interest from series to series, but each series of so-called unprovoked (or non-impetrated) omens establishes a field of phenomena deemed appropriate for study within its particular confines. The scope of the series Summa alu encompasses things of "real life" relating to cities and houses, flora, fauna, water, fire, lights, or to an individual's thoughts, prayers, actions of daily life (sex, sleep, family quarrels), and his perception of demons and ghosts.

This last subject, contained in tablets 19 and 21, raises our primary question about the empirical nature of the omens...