Sextus Empiricus and the Modes of Skepticism

Sextus Empiricus (fl. c. 200 CE) is the only ancient skeptical author whose works survive substantially intact, and he is consequently the single most important source for reconstructing the entire Pyrrhonist tradition. A physician associated with the medical school of "Empiricism," which favored reliance on observed symptoms and accumulated experience over theoretical causal explanation, Sextus wrote the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyrrhōneioi Hypotypōseis, in three books) as a systematic introduction to skeptical method, alongside the longer and more detailed Against the Mathematicians (Adversus Mathematicos), which includes extended refutations of logicians, physicists, ethicists, grammarians, rhetoricians, geometers, arithmeticians, astrologers, and musicians.