Greek Miracle Research Articles

Logoi and Muthoi: Further Essays in Greek Philosophy and Literature edited by William Wians

This volume of essays is the second devoted to exploring philosophical themes in Greek literature that William Wians has edited. The first, Logos and Muthos: Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature, was published in 2010. Both attempt to correct and clarify the old schema of Nestle’s Vom Mythos zum Logos [1940], a work tinged with the ideology that prevailed in Germany at the time. To this end, the volumes propose to avoid simplistic schemas, such as that of the “Greek miracle” or of the transformation of the irrational into the rational. Muthoi and logoi are realities that have much richer and more complex relationships with each other than the mere substitution proposed by Nestle. Reviewed by: Alberto Bernabé, Published Online (2021-08-31)Copyright © 2021 by Alberto BernabéThis open access publication is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC BY-NC-ND) Article PDF Link: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/view/37724/28726 Corresponding Author: Alberto Bernabé,Universidad Complutense de MadridE-Mail: albernab@ucm.es

The Economy of Late Achaemenid and Seleucid Babylonia by Reinhard Pirngruber

Reviewed by: The Economy of Late Achaemenid and Seleucid Babylonia by Reinhard Pirngruber Marc Van De Mieroop Reinhard Pirngruber. The Economy of Late Achaemenid and Seleucid Babylonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. xiii, 249. $99.99. ISBN 978-1-107-10606-2. New Institutional Economics (NIE), a system of analysis developed by the Nobel laureate in economics Douglass C. North, is all the rage in the study of the ancient economy, and this book, too, explicitly invokes the approach as its guiding principle. The method has the advantage of getting us away from the tired formalist–substantivist debate, which contrasts caricatures of the ancient economy as market-driven and essentially modern to its diametrical opposite, where centralized distribution and barter dominated. NIE argues reasonably that economies are embedded in social institutions that explain performance and structure. The disadvantage for its use in ancient history is that it focuses on market performance, a very modern interest, at the expense of concerns about production, and that it ignores other means of exchange. Scholars of Greece and Rome promoted the application of NIE in ancient studies, and it is interesting to see it applied here to the ancient Near East, both before the region was part of the Hellenistic world and during that era. Probably unbeknownst to most nonspecialists, there exists an unparalleled database on prices of six commodities, most importantly barley and dates, the primary sources of nutrition in Babylonia and crops that produce yields at different times in the year. These prices are inserted in the Astronomical Diaries, a corpus with observations of astronomical (especially lunar) and meteorological occurrences, that was compiled from the mid-seventh to the mid-first centuries b.c.e. and is especially well preserved for the late Achaemenid and Seleucid periods. Since these texts are precisely dated and occasionally refer to historical events such as the battle of Gaugamela, they are ideal sources of information on how market prices react to noneconomic factors. Together with additional sources on prices and political history, these allow the author to present a detailed price history of Babylonia from c. 400 to c. 140 b.c.e., the end date set by the Parthian conquest of the region (93–163). Pirngruber is well aware of the danger that this is cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, and in another chapter he applies statistical methods [End Page 149] (which, I admit, are beyond my ability to evaluate) to determine how much specific categories of incidents had repercussions on market prices. It becomes clear that military actions inside and outside Babylonia and local rebellions had different consequences for individual commodities, but whether these episodes are "institutions" in the way NIE uses the term remains a question. In the final chapter, however, Pirngruber tries to explain the relatively weak ability of the Babylonian economy to deal with unexpected supply and demand shocks by taking institutional factors, such as the organization of land management, into account. For a typical reader of Classical World, chiefly interested in the Greco-Roman world, this book offers a fine demonstration of how rich in data the Babylonian material is, and that it can be more suitable for economic analysis than classical sources, which are often heterogeneous and geographically dispersed. The parts of this book that outline the economic developments in first-millennium Babylonia, based on research by Michael Jursa and his team in Vienna (Pirngruber is a member of that team), show how important it is for the ancient economic historian to take the entire Mediterranean region into account, including the Near East. The economic efflorescence visible there, with its population growth and increased household wealth starting in the late seventh century, sheds serious doubts on Josiah Ober's recent explanation that the "Greek miracle" resulted from that region's adherence to self-government, equality, and fairness (The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece [Princeton 2015]). And this exposes one of the problems of NIE, in that it seeks explanations in local institutions (at least when applied to ancient history), while transregional factors, such as climate change, may have played crucial roles. Pirngruber does not address this issue; nevertheless, his work shows clearly how informative Near Eastern...

Waarom wij studenten niet vertellen dat de Griekse cultuur uit ‘Zwart Afrika’ komt

Abstract Why we do not tell our students that Greek culture originates in ‘Black Africa’The present contribution is an offshoot of a public debate on Afrocentric criticisms of the teaching of Ancient History, held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in June 2015 (for a video recording of this event see <uri>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMu5IncT8OU</uri>). We argue that the central tenets of the Afrocentric view of Ancient History, viz. that the ‘Greek miracle’ was a derivative of Egyptian culture, and that pharaonic Egypt was a black civilization, are edifying myths rather than serious contributions to our understanding of the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Antiquity and that they should not be taught in public educational institutions.

From Ideality to Historicity, What Happens?

1. Historicity and Origin of Geometry1.1 as Prototype of Pure HistoricityIn his lecture about Philosophy and Crisis of European Humanity (1935), also known as Vienna Lecture Edmund Husserl describes development of philosophy and science as an irreversible transformation of human civilization. This transformation was due to introduction of a sense of Along with which established a system of ideal objects and deductive reasoning, there arrived possibility of manipulating universal and infinite objects by finite means of human reason.2 Infinite horizons for universal validity in knowledge, ideas and ideal objects that are not subjected to transformation and becoming, that stand eternally and omnitemporally both outside historical becoming and as regulative horizons for historical progression, were made possible for first time. But introduction of infinity not only entailed a shift in science and philosophy. Human values and human art, ethical and political life, also begin to be shaped and guided by infinite horizons. Thus Greek miracle involved a transformation of way in which human beings produce their own civilization. Human culture became a culture of trans-historical or trans-generational objects, and began producing humanity itself according to such infinite objects, indeed as infinite objects.3The introduction of infinity made possible concept of historicity itself. As Derrida puts it in his commentary on Husserl's posthumous essay concerning of published as an appendix to Crisis, the openness of infinite is only . . . openness of history itself, in utmost depths and purity of its essence (Derrida 1962: 143; 1989: 131). Historicity is not senseless mortality or senseless finitude; it is not opposed to infinite realization of human values; it is not realm of delusion and mere appearance against background of absolute being and truth. Historicity is realm in which infinity becomes actual, concrete and true for first time. Historicity is infinite horizon for infinite realization of humanity's true knowledge and absolute value.Husserl's phenomenological investigations into concept of history take as a prototype of science and philosophy in general, and therefore, ultimately, as a prototype of transformation giving rise to new idea of historicity defining European humanity. For that reason, question about origin of geometry, as surprising as it may seem at first sight, must be understood as a question concerning concept of historicity itself. The origin of geometry is origin of historicity, hence origin of any possible understanding of historical origins in general. Geometry will therefore be treated as being much more than, or something totally different from, a simple mathematical discipline or theory. It will not be taken, for instance, as general concept of normal way in which science is practiced, that is, as a 'paradigm' in Thomas Kuhn's sense (Kuhn 1996). It is not even taken as one horizon or one infinite task, among others. Geometry is analysed as infinite horizonality, as ideality as such, as possibility itself of an idea of infinite progression and infinite task, in sum as methodological basis upon which any historicity of truth is thinkable and therefore any concept of science and of history of science is possible, including idea of science as a cultural practice historically articulated through shift of paradigms that are incommensurable to each other.4 is considered a prototype of ultimate horizon for any trans-generational practice of meaning and for any formation of world-views or world-conceptions capable of providing representations of historical progression (Heidegger 2002; Derrida 2013: 196-202).The problem of origin of geometry is crucial for understanding formation and development of Derrida's early conception of historicity (1989). …

SCIENTIFIC GREEK-LATIN ELEMENTS USED TO EXPRESS NEW THINGS IN THE LANGUAGE

The affixoids are Greek and Latin scientific elements forming the core of the international terminological lexicon, as “the legacy left by the Greek and Roman people can be considered as the lullaby of Roman spirituality and through it, it’s mentation. Without the Greek miracle, systemized and transcribed by the Latin genius, the modern spirituality can not be conceived” (Horia C. Matei) .

The Coming Classics Revolution: Part I: Argument

The Coming Classics Revolution Part I: Argument COLIN WELLS Over the past half-century, scholars in a variety of disciplines have drawn new attention to the cognitive and historical implications of alphabetic literacy. They include media critic (and darling) Marshall McLuhan, classicist Eric Havelock, social linguist Walter Ong, and anthropological historian Jack Goody. McLuhan became well known to the general public for oracular tags such as “the medium is the message” and for his famous cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. His work on the consequences of communications technology included the impact of print starting in the fifteenth century, as well as the arrival of electronic media in the twentieth. Walter Ong and Jack Goody both made important contributions to our understanding of the alphabet’s consequences, along with Ian Watt. More than anyone else, however, it was Eric Havelock who put together the revolutionary new understanding of the alphabet’s origins and impact that goes under the name “the alphabetic thesis.” Havelock took alphabetic literacy back to its beginning, which lies in the classics, and which gives the study of classics a dynamic future, if one to which classicists have yet to awake.1 A British scholar who worked in North America, Havelock was at the University of Toronto with McLuhan, which is why they and their U. of T. coworkers on literacy, including McLuhan’s teacher Harold Innis, are often collectively referred to as “the Toronto school.” (McLuhan taught Ong at the University of St. Louis, bringing Ong into the Toronto fold intellectually.) Havelock also worked in the United States, where he chaired the classics departments of first Harvard and then Yale. He died in 1988, by which time, I arion 22.3 winter 2015 would argue, his work on the alphabet had done for the social sciences no less than what Darwin did for biology or Einstein for physics. It swept away previous theories of cultural evolution and replaced them with a coherent new explanatory model that accounts for the evidence from numerous disciplines, revealing deep connections among a wide range of apparently disparate phenomena. Moreover, the alphabetic thesis is entirely falsifiable. Among other things, it asserts that only the alphabet has allowed us to articulate new ideas and to spread them widely, and so the existence of a single revolutionary idea that has been articulated and widely spread without the alphabet would effectively refute it. Yet it has not been falsified, and there does not appear to be any such idea. Havelock’s achievement and its sweeping implications have cut sharply against the grain of academic fashion, and this is an unfinished revolution. Still, the alphabetic thesis has begun inching across the social sciences in a way that emboldens me to make a couple of predictions here. Within a few years, the orality-literacy continuum will consolidate its place as the go-to metric for those who are interested in contextualizing cultures and civilizations. Along the way, this process will put the classics—and, willy-nilly, classicists —where they rightly belong: at the center of how we study humanity. There are scattered signs this is already happening , starting with Walter Ong’s influential 1982 book Orality and Literacy, which did much to spread Havelock’s findings to the wider academic world.2 Yet despite these gains, there is still a long way to go in Havelock’s rehabilitation , and he remains under an ideological cloud for many academics, not least classicists themselves. Scholars still tend either to dismiss him without argumentation or to ignore him ostentatiously.3 I believe that this resistance is based on an inadequate understanding of Havelock’s ideas. Nobody, I suspect, has ever angered classicists of all political stripes quite as much as Eric Havelock, although he was one of their own. On the one hand, his insistence on what was the coming classics revolution 38 seen at the time as an unacceptably late date of around 750–700 BC for the invention of the alphabet, building on the work of Rhys Carpenter, popped the balloons of traditional highbrow conservatives, his elders, because it meant that the “Greek miracle” had sprung directly from a non-literate background. (The meaningful distinction...

World Art Studies: a radical proposition?

This paper argues that New Art History's radical critique of traditional art history just wasn't radical enough. Art history at the beginning of the 20th century was ambitious, lively and innovative. The main impediment to a global theory of art history however was a kind of ethnocentrism that for many art historians was simply an article of faith. Enthralled by the ‘Greek miracle’ and the classicism of the Italian Renaissance, it was almost impossible to imagine art history in cross-cultural, global terms. Post-Marxist art history shot some holes in this enterprise, but it ran scared of proposing viable alternatives. It is becoming clear, however, that a new movement is beginning to take shape that is already making the ‘New Art History’ look decidedly old. The World Art Studies movement, contrary to rumour, is not entirely devoted to essentialist neuroscience, nor does it seek to remake evolutionary claims. New courses currently being set up in the United States in fact show very much the opposite tendency. What then would a truly radical World Art History programme look like? How would it address the main stumbling block of Eurocentrism? The answers to these questions are only now beginning to emerge, and challenge articles of faith that even New Art Historians still hold dear. This paper will argue that a truly New Art History will only emerge if colleagues have the courage to attempt once again a macrohistorical point of view. Instead of burying the ‘old’ art history, it needs to be mined for pioneer radicals who similarly had the courage to challenge ‘Europocentrism’ thereby to propose new world-art-historical perspectives. This paper suggests how World Art Studies will dramatically change and improve a discipline that has become fragmented and surprisingly unambitious.

A culture of freedom: ancient Greece and the origins of Europe

Christian Meier is one of Europe's preeminent authorities on the classical world. A Culture of Freedom marks the apex of his lifelong research on ancient culture. Beginning with a section on medieval and modern Europe's enormous inheritance of institutions and ideas, the book moves on to chronicle the rise of civilization from the Bronze Age to the Greco-Persian wars. Throughout, the author provides fresh insight into the Greek miracle, as he illuminates the well-known features of culture--from epic and lyric poetry to warfare, athletics, philosophy, religion, and democracy. What made these achievements possible and so enduring? Meier argues that across the whole range of human experience--in politics and philosophy no less than in war, sport, and religion--there was one common denominator among the ancient Greeks: an attempt to find compromise, balance, and understanding in the face of problems others usually solved by means of power. A Culture of Freedom is an original and learned portrait of a civilization that still captivates and inspires.

Literatura Comparada e Estudos Clássicos: um diálogo interdisciplinar

<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ABSTRACT: The aim of such investigation is to discuss, firstly, the issue of the “Greek miracle” in the light of an interdisciplinary dialogue between Comparative Literature and Classical Studies; secondly, to establish, from such discussion, its role in the process of the</span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal; mso-layout-grid-align: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">constitution of the “western tradition”.</span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 11.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">KEYWORDS</span><span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 115%; font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Times-Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">: literary studies; classical studies; comparative literature; “Greek miracle”.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>

Literatura Comparada e Estudos Clássicos: um diálogo interdisciplinar

The aim of such investigation is to discuss, firstly, the issue of the “Greek miracle” in the light of an interdisciplinary dialogue between Comparative Literature and Classical Studies; secondly, to establish, from such discussion, its role in the process of the constitution of the “western tradition”.

‘What did the Greeks owe the Orient?’ The question we can't stop asking (even though we can't answer it)

AbstractReviewing five recent books in German classical and oriental studies, this essay argues that the question of archaic Greece's debts to the Orient remains a particularly lively one in German-speaking Europe. Like their predecessors in previous generations, iconoclastic classicists like Walter Burkert, oriental archaeologists like Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948) and maverick outsiders like Raoul Schrott have attacked the enraptured view of ‘the Greek miracle’ familiar to those educated in classicalGymnasien. And yet the question of Greek cultural autonomy is still alive, in part because there are too many uncertainties for it to be answered definitively, and in part because it continues to play a role in attempts to define modern European identity.

A Grécia pelos olhos dos picapaus: Lobato e sua Leitura da Grécia Antiga

Em alguns de seus livros mais famosos, Monteiro Lobato transporta as personagens do Sítio do Picapau Amarelo para a Grécia Antiga e conta histórias nas quais Emília, Narizinho, Pedrinho, Dona Benta e Tia Nastácia interagem com importantes personagens da mitologia e da história da antiguidade helênica. Mas Lobato não faz isso de maneira, digamos, isenta e imparcial. Ao contar suas histórias, ele revela quais são suas opiniões sobre os antigos gregos e esses pontos de vista, muitas vezes, podem ser considerados bastante preconceituosos. Porém, quando buscamos entender de onde vieram essas opiniões, ou seja, quando fazemos uma pesquisa naquilo que sobrou da sua biblioteca (por exemplo, no Centro de Documentação Cultural "Alexandre Eulalio", no IEL-UNICAMP) para saber que livros Lobato leu e de que maneira essas leituras marcaram suas interpretações acerca dos antigos helenos, então fica claro que suas opiniões baseadas na ideologia do chamado 'Milagre Grego'. Esse tipo de concepção, segundo a qual todas as realizações da Grécia Antiga não poderiam ser entendidas satisfatoriamente como uma simples sucessão de eventos históricos, teve grande aceitação nos meios acadêmicos e letrados do final do século dezenove até meados do século vinte. Meu objetivo, com este artigo, é discutir algumas passagens de algumas das obras infatis, especialmente 'O Minotauro' e 'Os Doze Trabalhos de Hércules', onde Lobato apresenta suas opiniões pessoais sobre a Grécia Antiga e demonstrar sua filiação em relação a autores, principalmente da segunda metade do século dezenove, que teorizaram acerca do 'Milagre Grego'. Além disso, é minha intenção mostrar que Lobato foi distanciando do mundo dos adultos e se aproximando do universo infantil ao mesmo tempo em que mergulhava na Grécia mitológica e clássica.

Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease (review)

Reviewed by: Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease Leonid Zhmud Philip J. van der Eijk. Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease. Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 418. $95.00. ISBN 0-521-81800-1. This volume contains a collection of Philip van der Eijk’s eleven previously published articles on the interrelations between philosophy and medicine in antiquity. The papers are as good as one can expect from the author, who has made already such important contributions to the study of ancient medicine as a highly valuable collection of essays by prominent scholars on historiography of medicine in antiquity (1999) and a two-volume edition of Diocles of Carystus’ fragments (2001). This volume, dealing mostly with the classical period (Hippocratic corpus, Diocles, Aristotle) and with some figures of late antiquity (Galen, Caelius Aurelianus), will no doubt be welcomed by all the specialists in the field. To make the papers more easily accessible for students, the author provides English translations of all the quoted texts and an extensive introduction featuring recent developments in the study of ancient medicine. I will concentrate on the introduction, since it raises more doubts in me than all the other papers taken together. Van der Eijk is very enthusiastic about the last thirty years, which are presented as highly innovative, and quite critical about previous scholarship, often characterized as naïve, anachronistic, old-fashioned, simplistic, positivist, presentist, etc. The new scholarship is much better, not because it finally superseded the antiquated editions such as Kühn’s Galen (1821–33) and Littré’s Hippocrates (1839–61) or finished Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, started 1901 by Diels—since it did not—but because it changed the approach to the ancient medicine from appropriating to alienating, from textual and content-oriented to contextual. “Postmodernism, plu ralism, cultural relativism and comparativism” brought about healthy changes, “the distinction between ‘science’ and ‘pseudo-science’ has been abandoned as historically unfruitful” (6), so that now a historian of Greek medicine is freed from the belief of its rationality, its superiority over traditional healthcare systems and thus of its greater relevance for modern medicine. This change “has made the subject much more interesting and accessible to a wider group of scholars and students” (5–6). I agree with van der Eijk that these developments have taken place, but disagree with him that they were beneficial for the study of ancient medicine or that they were as important in the field as he claims. As a matter of fact, I did not find in his papers any marked influence of the “new age.” The interaction of medicine and philosophy is a traditional topic in the classical scholarship, which is confirmed by the fifty-page bibliography including all the relevant studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is true that an average history of medicine was a success story, but van der Eijk’s history of the recent research is even much more so. I am not sure that it is Derrida (or Lacan, or Bourdieu, etc.) who has to liberate us from our old-fashioned approach towards the “Greek miracle.” On the contrary, as J. Rist pertinently noted on the history of philosophy, “It is against this tyranny of the present, of the up-to-date and overconfident teacher of philosophy, whether he sells some brand of analysis, Straussianism, or Heideggerian existentialism, that a proper study of the history of philosophy, and of Greek philosophy in particular, can protect us” (J. M. Rist, “Taking Aristotle’s Development Seriously,”in W. Wians [ed.], Aristotle’s Philosophical Development: Problems and Methods [London 1996] 362). [End Page 90] If, however, postmodernism and cultural relativism are really doomed to win, this can easily lead not to the flourishing of the history of Greek medicine but rather to disregarding it for the sake of the other traditional healthcare systems—Sumerian, Hittite, or Assyrian—over which it has no superiority. Since we have not reached this age of equality, I can only recommend reading attentively all eleven articles of this collection. Leonid Zhmud Institute for the History of Science, St. Petersburg Copyright...

The silence of the south and the absence of political philosophy

In The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies, Thomas McEvilley sees the great stage of philosophy's history as simply too vast for the Greek Miracle alone. There is an Indian Miracle that has always already shared in the act. This presence of Indian philosophy alongside Greek philosophy is not simply established through an articulate typological witnessing of parallels and similarities in philosophic subject matter. Such a witnessing could lure one into defending the position that "certain... words...[have] a metaphysical existence independent of any mind thinking them...waiting...for the moment when certain minds, no matter how far apart geographically, should become ready for their dawning" (McEvilley 2002: 59). Instead, "though typological comparisons may reveal something about the possibilities for thought in a particular age," McEvilley feels that "the present study would not...seem as alive without the lure of concrete historical contacts and influences." It is on the basis of his central claim that "Indian and Greek philosophies were historically interactive and partially formative upon one another" that McEvilley concludes "it would seem a mere cultural and ethnic prejudice to exclude Indian thought from that history of philosophy of which Greek thought is supposedly both the source and the central event" (653). McEviliey's book?by demonstrating the influence of Indian thought upon the pre-Socratic "Ur-fountainhead of the western tradition" and the influence of Greek thought upon the dialectic of N?g?rjuna and ?ryadeva which provided the basis for "the Hindu tradition from Sankara to Radhakrishnan"?success

Creating the world: the origins of all things in ancient Greek myth and medicine

In the sixth and fifth centuries BC, a series of dramatic shifts in science and the arts took place in the Greek world, and history, medicine, philosophy, and science came into being. This paper examines 'the Greek miracle', looking at how new ideas about 'the origin of all things' were rooted in traditional mythic patterns of thought. In particular, it examines how medical writers thought about the origins of the cosmos, and of disease. The multiple creations of the world present in Greek myth, where the origin of all things was seen as a process of differentiation out of original similarity, may have predisposed the Greeks to be open to the new theories of early scientific thinkers.

Praise of Astrology

By the end of the seventeenth century, high culture had banished astrology as a mixture of superstition and imposture. The great astrological treatises of the past - in particular the Ptolemaic Tetrabiblos (whose very authenticity was cast into doubt) - stopped being published; a hodgepodge of minor writings, mostly preserved in manuscript form, lay mouldering in oblivion in the far recesses of libraries. It was only in the latter decades of the eighteenth century that the learned world began once again to pay attention to the ancient art, when historians of ancient religions and science began to realize the impossibility of exploring their subjects without taking into account a presence that could be neither denied nor underestimated. The history of astrology then began to take shape as a specific field of study, and historicophilological research was able to employ it as a tool for penetrating the tie between mythos and logos, at the origin of western civilization. Along with the image of the Greek miracle, an overly simplistic and schematic definition of reason and science began to decline. It was necessary to isolate, as Hermann Usener sought to do, the “wild germ of science” and to acknowledge the fact that logic and magic bloom on the same stem, as Aby Warburg has often reminded us, with reference to Jean Paul.

Pederasty and pedagogy in archaic Greece

Combining impeccable scholarship with accessible, straightforward prose, Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece argues that institutionalized pederasty began after 650 B.C., far later than previous authors have thought, and was initiated as a means of stemming overpopulation in the upper class. William Armstrong Percy III maintains that Cretan sages established a system under which a young warrior in his early twenties took a teenager of his own aristocratic background as a beloved until the age of thirty, when service to the state required the older partner to marry. The practice spread with significant variants to other Greek-speaking areas. In some places it emphasized development of the athletic, warrior individual, while in others both intellectual and civic achievement were its goals. In Athens it became a vehicle of cultural transmission, so that the best of each older cohort selected, loved, and trained the best of the younger. Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional, the highest and most intense type of male bonding. These pederastic bonds, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the Greek miracle: in two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and civilization.

Science as a way of knowing: the foundations of modern biology

Introduction A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE 1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism The Paleolithic View Mesopotamia Egypt 2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature The Science of Animal Biology The Parts of Animals The Classification of Animals The Aristotelian System Basic Questions 3. Those Rational Greeks? Theophrastus and the Science of Botany The Roman Pliny Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine Erasistratus Galen of Pergamum The Greek Miracle 4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview The Bishop of Hippo Scholastic Thought Islamic Science Books on Beasts Antecedents of a Revolution 5. The Revival of Science Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure William Harvey and the Study of Function Sir Francis Bacon's Great Instauration Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction The Very Small--Animalcules Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells 6. Figur'd Stones and Plastick Virtue Marine Life on Mountain Tops? Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures Baron Cuvier Quarries of the Paris Basin Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism William Smith and the Geological Column Understanding Nature in 1850 PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7. The Paradigm of Evolution First Questions The Paradigm of Natural Theology First Answers 8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses Have Life Forms Changed over Time? Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time? Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution? Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change? The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection Accounting for the Diversity of Life 9. In the Light of Evolution Comparative Anatomy Embryonic Development Classification Microstructure Molecular Processes 10. Life over Time The Origin of Life The Rise of Multicelled Organisms What Is a Phylum? Burgess Shale Metazoans Early Evolution of the Vertebrates The Age of Dinosaurs Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Human Evolution The Role of Extinction in Evolution PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS 11. Pangenesis What Is the Question? Hippocrates and Aristotle The Darwinian Answer Assembling the Data Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction Galton's Rabbits 12. The Cell Theory The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke Schwann and Cells in Animals Gametes as Cells Omnis cellula e cellula? The Technology of Cell Research 13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity The Ephemeral Nucleus Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division The Chromosomes and inheritance Gamete Formation Fertilization 14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics Model for Monohybrid Crosses Model for Dihybrid Crosses Mendel's Laws Initial Opposition to Mendelism 15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910 Sutton's Model The Cytological Basis of Mendel's Laws Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets Variations in Mendelian Ratios The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes 16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly Morgan's First Hypothesis Morgan's Second Hypothesis The Fly Room Linkage and Crossing-Over The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over Mapping the Chromosomes The Final Proof The Determinants of Sex The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics 17. The Structure and Function of Genes One Gene, One Enzyme The Substance of Inheritance The Watson-Crick Model of DNA Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins The Genetic Code PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT 18. First Principles The Peripatetic Stagirite The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought Harvey and Malpighi A Two-Millennial Summing Up Preformation versus Epigenesis 19. The Century of Discovery Von Baer's Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum Darwin's Contribution to Embryology Haeckel and Recapitulation 20. Descriptive Embryology Germ Layers The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo 21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology His, Roux, and Mosaic Development Driesch and Regulative Development Novelty in Development Cell Lineage Nucleus or Cytoplasm? Fin de Siecle 22. Interactions during Development Amphibian Organizers Secondary Organizers The Reacting Tissue The Chemical Nature of the Organizer Putting It All Together Conclusion Further Reading References Illustration Credits Index

From Modern Roots to Postmodern Rhizomes

It has been commonplace to maintain of the phenomenon that occurred during classical times, the change from relying on myth to trusting in reason: (1) that the emergence of philosophy from myth was marked by an abrupt discontinuity; (2) that mythical thinking was left behind once philosophy was invented or discovered; and (3) that the ancient Greeks were the agents of this miracle. This paper suggests that the so-called “Greek miracle” was, in fact, a miracle manqué and, more importantly, that close examination of this failed miracle offers valuable insight into the philosophical crisis facing the world today.

The Greek miracle: classical sculpture from the dawn of democracy, the fifth century B.C.

The Greek miracle: classical sculpture from the dawn of democracy, the fifth century B.C.