Hippocratic Medicine: its Spirit and Method

Abstract

THE exact relationship of philosophy to the sciences has long been a much-debated subject, although there is today general agreement among the writers on ancient thought. The older generations of historians tended to regard the earliest philosophy as similar to modern science in object and method, although they admitted, or rather assumed, its strongly metaphysical character. Recently, however, efforts have been made to prove that Greek philosophy was entirely different from modern science. It did not aim, it is contended, at increasing man's control of Nature, but at satisfying his religious instinct ; the method adopted was not induction, with observation, experiment and verification, but dogmatic assertion of rational but unverified-sometimes unverifiable-hypotheses. In other words, it was a theology based on faith. This was 'philosophy' in its narrow sense. There was a wider, vaguer meaning, according to which it embraced logic, ethics, education and so on, if studied in a serious and systematic way, but it bore no resemblance to the physics and chemistry of modern times. Hippocratic Medicine: its Spirit and Method By William Arthur Heidel. Pp. xvii + 149. (New York: Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 13s. 6d. net.