Early Greek Philosophy Research Articles

Empathy, Mind, and Morals

Early Greek philosophers doubled as natural scientists; that is a commonplace. It is equally true, though less often remarked, that numerous historical philosophers doubled as cognitive scientists. They constructed models of mental faculties in much the spirit of modern cognitive science, for which they are widely cited as precursors in the cognitive science literature. Today, of course, there is more emphasis on experiment, and greater division of labor. Philosophers focus on theory, foundations, and methodology, while cognitive scientists are absorbed by experimental techniques and findings. Nonetheless, there are sound reasons for massive communication between philosophy and cognitive science, which happily proceeds apace. On this occasion I shall not try to enumerate or delineate these lines of communication in any comprehensive fashion. I just wish to illustrate the benefits to philosophy in two domains: the theory of mind and moral theory. Though this may sound like an ambitious agenda, I shall in fact examine just a single phenomenon: empathy. Using that term first broadly and later narrowly, I shall argue that empathy may be the key to one sector of the philosophy of mind and to several sectors of moral theory. But whether empathy can in fact unlock any doors depends heavily on the outcome of empirical research in cognitive science.

Methods and problems in Greek science

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The development of Aristotle's theory of the classification of animals 2. Right and left in Greek philosophy 3. Who is attacked in On Ancient Medicine? 4. Experiment in early Greek philosophy and medicine 5. Popper versus Kirk: a controversy in the interpretation of Greek science 6. The social background of early Greek philosophy and science 7. Greek cosmologies 8. Alcmaeon and the early history of dissection 9. The Hippocratic question 10. The empirical basis of the physiology of the Parva Naturalia 11. Saving the appearances 12. The debt of Greek philosophy and science to the ancient Near East 13. Observational error in later Greek science 14. Plato on mathematics and nature, myth and science 15. Science and morality in Greco-Roman antiquity 16. Aristotle's zoology and his metaphysics: the status quaestionis: a critical review of some recent theories 17. Galen on Hellenistics and Hippocrateans 18. The invention of nature Index of passages cited General index.

Sunbeams, Cucumbers, and Purple Bacteria: the Discovery of Photosynthesis Revisited

In November 1987, Robert Hill, of Cambridge (England) was awarded Copley Medal of Royal Society in recognition of his pioneering research on process of photosynthesis. During late 1 930s, Hill [2] demonstrated light-dependent production of oxygen (gas) by chloroplasts, tiny green bodies present within cells of plant leaves. These experiments not only localized actual site of photosynthetic machinery of plant cells but also proved that water is source of oxygen that plants produce. In fact, oxygen production by chloroplasts is a primary source of Earth's atmospheric oxygen, required for existence of all animal life. Hill's experiments were a major milestone in more than 200 years of research aimed at explaining fundamental physiology of plant life. In 1970, Hill wrote an article [3] on The growth of our knowledge of photosynthesis from ancient to modern times. After discussing concepts of plant nutrition held by early Greek philosophers, Hill reviews the beginnings of modern experiment in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but says little of brilliant investigations of Rev. Dr. Stephen Hales (1677-1761).

Object-oriented simulation: plant growth and discrete organ to organ interactions

This paper reviews and applies new hierarchical approaches to ecological modelling. These new approaches are made possible by the development of the object-oriented paradigm. This paradigm draws upon the notion of ‘universal’ or classes dating back to early Greek philosophy. It is an intriguing approach to simulation because it is based upon the concepts of hierarchy and taxonomy, two of the basic organizing principles in ecology. Adopting an object-oriented approach to simulation can result in a reduction of mathematical and statistical abstraction. The object-oriented approach lends itself directly to incorporation of mechanisms within appropriate hierarchies. A case study is presented outlining the design steps for simulating plant growth objects (roots, stem, leaves, fruit, whole plant, etc.). The design steps are shown in graphical form to illustrate the differences between object-oriented and traditional procedural approaches. Cotton growth and development has been selected for the case study because of the large knowledge base available for the explicit representation of age and size for each organ. Inclusion of mechanisms at the level of the individual organ provides additional information for crop management. Computing fruit growth at discrete branch locations results in the ability to manage for optimum fiber yield and reduced pest vulnerabilities for individual bolls. Variability in light interception, leaf age, and resulting carbohydrate supply for leaves at specific positions leads naturally to variability in individual boll fiber yield. The goal of the model to capture the behavior of individual organs as a function of their interaction with other organs was achieved. The object-oriented paradigm facilitates the formulation of a simulation procedure in which an individual organ interacted with other organs and the crop microclimate. This led us one step closer to answering the question, ‘How do individual characteristics and behaviors result in given population patterns?’.

Individuality and Commonality in Gestalt

"ABSTRACT. This paper explores a field perspective on Gestalt which acknowledges both its historical antecedents in early Greek philosophy as well as the theoretical adjacents from which Perls, Hefferline and Goodman drew in order to create Gestalt therapy in the 1950's. It is postulated that, since Gestalt itself is a growing, changing organism,' it is organismically healthy for Gestalt to be both proactive and reactive towards changing national and international developments in terms of Gestalt therapy in particular and psychotherapy in general as we move towards the next century. The important polarities of individuality and commonality are explored and it is suggested that creative growth or holistic evolution between these can be mediated by a third force which Heraclitus called 'Physis'. Bergson's elan vital, which inspired Perls, is seen as identical with this generalised creative life force which is particularly characteristic of Gestalt therapy and derives particularly from the legacy of Smuts, whom Perls acknowledged as a major influence on his work. Keywords; change, chaos, commonality, creative evolution, existentialism, field theory, holism, individuality, phenomenology, physis."

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics.

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics.

Democritus on Politics and the Care of the Soul: Appendix

The following texts and comments are a supplement to ‘Democritus on Politics and the Care of the Soul’, CQ 39 (1989), 307–31 (henceforth ‘Democritus on Politics’). The Democritean fragments there were quoted only in translation; detailed commentary on them would have taken up too much space and clogged the argument. They make their appearance here in the same order as they did there, preceded by a thumb-nail résumé of that argument and of their place in it. Text, spelling and numbering is that of the standard edition: H. Diels, W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin, 1951–2). Reference will also be made to collections by P. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos (Marburg, 1893), S. Y. Luria, Democritea (Leningrad, 1970) and G. Ibscher, Demócrito y sus sentencias sobre ética y education (Lima, 1983–4), as well as to translations by V. E. Alfieri, Gli Atomisti (Bari, 1936), K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Presocratics (Oxford, 1948) and J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth, 1987).

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics (review)

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics (review)

Early Greek philosophers on the infinite

Early Greek philosophers on the infinite

A philosophical inquiry to include trance in epistemology.

In a state of voluntary trance or meditation, the perception of reality appears to extend beyond the usual spatial and temporal boundaries that are normally perceived by the sense organs. It is argued that the problems of validity and reliability of trance experiences for scientific discourse are in principle no different than the problems associated with ordinary perception. The shift in early Greek philosophy from myth to an emphasis on logos (reason) has led to a neglect of those subtle qualities of reason that were considered to be gateways for divine revelation. Scientific methodologies cannot account for such revelation, and there are no criteria known to science that would enable people to utilize these phenomena. Shamanic experiences are intersubjectively accessible and provide data that is suitable for the construction of rational theories if appropriate methodologies are developed. However, for a scientist, shamanic experiences are considered at most to be psychological ones, and consequently without any value for empirical research. This article examines the possibility of reevaluating the terms "rational" and "consciousness," in order to expand scientific methodologies in such a way that volitionally altered perceptions of reality can be integrated into scientific research.

Early Greek Philosophy

Early Greek Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS Get access Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. By Catherine Osborne. Cornell University Press, 1987. 383 pages. $47.50. William D. Lindsey William D. Lindsey Xavier University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume LVII, Issue 3, Fall 1989, Pages 666–667, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/LVII.3.666 Published: 01 October 1989

REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy. Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. By CATHERINE OSBORNE. Pp. viii+383. London: Duckworth, 1987. N.p. ROBERT BUTTERWORTH ROBERT BUTTERWORTH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 40, Issue 1, April 1989, Pages 240–243, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/40.1.240 Published: 01 April 1989

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. Catherine Osborne

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsRethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics. Catherine Osborne Malcolm SchofieldMalcolm Schofield Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 79, Number 3Sep., 1988A Special Issue on Artifact and Experiment Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/354829 Views: 10Total views on this site Copyright 1988 History of Science Society, Inc.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy. Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics

Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy. Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics

The Presocratics in Context

book is intended be the starting-point from which new work on the will derive impetus and inspiration (p.vii). It stands ... as the beginning of a new programme of reading and interpretation of the Presocratics (p.13). It pretends to justify a new method of approach the reading of the Presocratics (p. 183).1 Audacious claims, iconoclastic and ambitious. The title is itself something of a boast. The argument is uncompromising. There is a swashbuckling vigour of thought, and a willingness an eagerness address folly by its proper name. And is there really room for a new approach the Presocratics? Can we really set about rethinking early Greek philosophy? Humph, the sceptical reader will mutter, such pretensions can only puff themselves into falsehoods or else deflate into familiar truths. Not so, not so. The boast is firmly grounded, the audacity a proper pride. This is be blunt the best book on the I have seen for years. I am minded rank it alongside Reinhardt's Parmenides and is there higher praise? Dr Osborne says some new things. She says some true things. She says some interesting things. She says some important things. And therefore for most of this review I shall growl and grumble.2

PAPINEAU ON CAUSAL ASYMMETRY

(7) The arguments of the preceding sections were based on T which is Putnam's version of incommensurability. But Putnam's version is not the version I introduced when examining the relation between comprehensive theories such as Newton's mechanics and relativity or Aristotelian Physics and the new mechanics of Galileo and Newton (cf. Feyerabend [1975] 268ff and [1981], Vol. i, chapter 4, section 5). There are two differences. First, incommensurability as understood by me is a rare event. It occurs only when the conditions of meaningfulness for the descriptive terms of one language (theory, point of view) do not permit the use of the descriptive terms of another language (theory, point of view); mere difference of meanings does not yet lead to incommensurability in my sense. Secondly, incommensurable languages (theories, points of view) are not completely disconnected-there exists a subtle and interesting relation between their conditions of meaningfulness. In my [1975] I explained this relation in the case of Homeric Commonsense vs. the language aimed at by the early Greek philosophers. In [i98I] Vol. i, chapter 4 I explained it in the case of Aristotle-Newton. I should add that incommensurability is a difficulty for philosophers, not for scientists. Philosophers insist on stability of meaning throughout an argument while scientists, being aware that 'speaking a language or explaining a situation means both following rules and changing them' (see section 5 of this paper) are experts in the art of arguing across lines some philosophers regard as insuperable boundaries of discourse.

Tradition and the Collective Talent: Oral Epic, Textual Meaning, and Receptionalist Theory

with a nagging and seemingly insoluble dilemma that has taken many forms and resists being held captive in any single, all-encompassing formulation. I mention as examples the academic jousting over analytical terms such as the phraseological "formula" and the narrative "theme" and the long debates over what is or is not a "motif. " The basic question amounts to this: can we agree on a grammar of compositional units and further, does our chosen model remain viable as we cross the linguistic line from one tradition to another? For the purposes of this essay and in order to speak directly to the concerns of this special collection of papers, I shall leapfrog both a bibliographical rehearsal of particular issues and the inevitable polemics involved, and instead concentrate on proposing a solution to the "unit problem" which, while perhaps rather radical in itself, finds its seeds in the writings of Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, Werner Kelber, Franz Bauml, Charles Segal, Robert Kellogg, and others. In concert with the general shift of critical focus from the text as object to the work as the reader's experience of that object, I suggest that we define the "units" of oral traditional discourse not strictly and exclusively as textual data, but also and equally as the necessarily subjective apprehension of those data by a reader or participant (whatever the prior experience of the reader or participant may be). I propose that we take as a starting point the idea of the work and its parts as processes rather than as an artifice and its discrete components, and that we stipulate that the unit of discourse-whether phraseological or narrative-cannot be understood as an object but only as a response. In other words, to summon the canonical Parry-Lord "oral formula" as an example, we need to realize that the phraseological unit consists not only of whatever chirographic avatar the highly literate reader uses as a reading mnemonic, but also and crucially of the informed but finally subjective response one makes to those "little black dots on the white page" in the larger context of the unexpressed (and inexpressible) reality of an oral tradition.

Theories of Weight in the Ancient World: Four Essays on Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle: A Study in the Development of Ideas, Vol. 1: Democritus: Weight and Size: An Exercise in the Reconstruction of Early Greek Philosophy. D. O'Brien

<i>Theories of Weight in the Ancient World: Four Essays on Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle: A Study in the Development of Ideas, Vol. 1: Democritus: Weight and Size: An Exercise in the Reconstruction of Early Greek Philosophy</i>. D. O'Brien

The reliability of psychiatric and psychological diagnosis

Experience suggests that many psychologists and psychiatrists, as well as most attorneys, judges, and other individuals whose work requires a knowledge of the extent of the reliability of psychologic and psychiatric diagnosis are not aware that recent research has dramatically influenced the conclusions one may draw in regard to the fallability of such human judgments. The purpose here is to provide a brief introduction of the history of such diagnostic judgments from the time of the early Greek philosophers through the decade of the 1960's. This will be followed by a review of a series of important studies from several research centers which were published during the past decade and which presented the first robust evidence that such clinician-to-clinician diagnoses have now attained remarkably high levels of reliability. In the last section, studies will be reviewed which show that the concurrent development of standardized interview schedules now allow layperson interviewers to achieve levels of reliability for psychiatric and psychologic interviews which are comparable to the high levels now attainable by mental health professionals.