Doxography is a term used especially for the works of classical

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 historians, describing the points of view of past philosophers

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and scientists

Science

Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

. The term was coined by the German classical scholar Hermann Alexander Diels

Hermann Alexander Diels

Hermann Alexander Diels was a German classical scholar.-Biography:He was educated at the universities of Bonn and Berlin and in 1886 became professor ordinarius of classical philology at the latter institution....

.

Classic Greek philosophy

A great many philosophical works have been lost; our limited knowledge of such lost works comes chiefly through the doxographical works of later philosophers, commentators, and biographers. Philosophers such as Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 and Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

 also act as doxographers, as their comments on the ideas of their predecessors indirectly tell us what their predecessors' beliefs were. Plato's Defense of Socrates

Apology (Plato)

The Apology of Socrates is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he unsuccessfully defended himself in 399 BC against the charges of "corrupting the young, and by not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other daimonia that are novel"...

, for example, tells us much of what we know about the natural philosophy of Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...

.

Islamic doxography

Islamic doxography is an aggregate of theosophical works (like Kitab al-Maqalat by Abu Mansur Al Maturidi

Abu Mansur Al Maturidi

Muhammad Abu Mansur al-Maturidi was an Iranian Muslim theologian, and a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence and Qur'anic exegesis. Al Maturidi is one of the pioneers of Islamic Jurisprudence scholars and his two works are considered to be authoritative on the subject...

) concerning the aberrations in Islamic sects and streams.