Greek Natural Philosophy Research Articles

The eminent Italian scholar Pietro d'Abano (1250-1315) and his contribution in anatomy.

Pietro d'Abano is recognized as a leading figure in the early history of European medical faculties. Translator and scholar, he translated and commented in Latin the doctrines of Greek and Arab physicians and philosophers having an ambitious attempt, to reconcile the opposing views of Arab medicine and Greek natural philosophy. Moreover he was one of the first to claim, three centuries before Harvey, that the heart is the source of blood vessels.

Danielle Jacquart, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (eds), La scuola medica salernitana: gli autori e i testi, Florence, Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007, pp. xiv, 592, €68.00 (paperback 978-88-8450-232-2).

Danielle Jacquart, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (eds), La scuola medica salernitana: gli autori e i testi, Florence, Sismel, Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2007, pp. xiv, 592, €68.00 (paperback 978-88-8450-232-2). - Volume 53 Issue 3

Teleology Without Tears: Aristotle and the Role of Mechanistic Conceptions of Organisms

In this paper I outline a role for mechanistic conceptions of organisms in ancient Greek natural philosophy, especially the study of organisms. By ‘mechanistic conceptions’ I mean the use of ideas and techniques drawn from the field of mechanics to investigate the natural world. ‘Mechanistic conceptions’ of organisms in ancient Greek philosophy, then, are those that draw on the ancient understanding of the field called ‘mechanics’ — hê mêchanikê technê—to investigate living things, rather than those bearing some perceived similarity to modern notions of ‘the mechanical.’ I have argued elsewhere that evidence of mechanistic conceptions of the natural world can be found, not only among seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘mechanical philosophers,’ but also—albeit in vestigial form — in some ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, these reports are slight, often by detractors of this approach, and offer only clues as to the motivational context for employing these mechanical conceptions. Here, my purpose is to suggest what role they might have played in the history of natural philosophy.

기원론적 접근법에 따라 개발한 과학사 프로그램이 학생들의 입자론적 물질관 및 과학의 본성에 대한 이해에 미치는 영향

In this study, science history program was developed to enhance student's concepts toward the particulate nature of matter and the understanding about the nature of science. And the effects of its application was investigated in the lesson of ‘Composition of Matter' in middle school science class. This science history program was based on genetic approach and included the contents from the old Greek natural philosophers to Avogadro. Before instruction, the test of understanding about nature of science was administered, and the science scores of the previous course were obtained, which were used as covariates. During 24 class hours, this study was conducted with two classes(experimental and comparison group) in a middle school in Seoul. The experimental group was received lessons by science history programs and the comparison group was received traditional lessons. After instruction, the scientific concept test, the test of understanding about nature of science were administered. The result of this study indicates that the scientific concept scores of experimental group were significantly higher than comparison group at p

A next step in naming and classification of eye movement disorders and strabismus

A next step in naming and classification of eye movement disorders and strabismus

Greek Thought and Forest Science

Two columns equally support the structure of European forest science, considered historically. On one hand, the progress of forest science rests on an experience of forest practices going back through the centuries to the Frankish Middle Ages. On the other hand, the column of modern analytical thinking rises from its base in Greek natural philosophy, striving toward an as yet hardly articulated science of the forest as natural phenomenon. It is fascinating, but not particularly easy, to trace the antecedents of this forest science in classical Greece. The wretched condition of most of the ancient texts often does not allow us to make a definitive determination of forest tree species mentioned by them or of the basic principles of forest lore therein contained. But in the last few decades botanists and philologists working on the botanical writings of Theophrastus have improved the state of the problems in regard to them, and have so advanced our knowledge of the facts, that the forester can also draw from them new conclusions concerning his picture of ancient Greece. The author can at least sketch a frame for such a new picture here. He does this in gratitude to his teacher Kurt Mantel, the Director of the Institute for Forest History in Freiburg, who through the creation of a Forest History Section sought to direct the diverse efforts and attempts of contemporary research into an integrated channel, and to establish it securely in the universities over the long run.

New Worlds in Physics

John G Taylor London: Faber and Faber 1974 pp 269 price £3.95 This is a popular account of the development of basic physics, beginning with a chapter on 'The old physics' ranging from the ancient Greek natural philosophers to the researches of Faraday, Maxwell and Mendeleev. Unfortunately, this chapter is marred by several bad historical mistakes.

Popper versus Kirk: A Controversy in the Interpretation of Greek Science

It is a minor scandal that specialists in the interpretation of early Greek thought have, in general, paid so little attention to Professor Sir Karl Popper's provocative foray into their territory in his Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society (Popper, 1958). That paper was answered by Professor G. S. Kirk in an article in Mind (Kirk, 1960), and since then both scholars have contributed a second paper which develops parts of their respective views (Kirk, 1961, Popper, 1963). But subsequently the debate has fizzled out. Nor, so far as I know, has any other classical scholar besides Kirk taken part (though Mr J. E. Raven repeated some of Kirk's criticisms of Popper in a paper read to the joint conference of the Hellenic and Roman Societies in I965). And yet their controversy raises two fundamental issues, first the major philosophical question of the logic of scientific discovery, and secondly the historical question concerning the characteristics and methods of Greek natural philosophy. It is this latter question that I wish to take up here.' In particular I wish to broaden the field of the discussion to take the whole of early Greek speculative thought (and not merely the work of the philosophers) into account. And I shall suggest where certain generalisations which may apply to those writers whose interests were primarily cosmological should be modified when we take all the available evidence for the period down to Plato into account. I shall, however, begin by rehearsing briefly the main arguments that have been advanced by Popper and by Kirk concerning the Presocratic philosophers. Popper's original paper was entitled 'Back to the Presocratics'. 'What I want to return to', he said, 'is the simple straightforward rationality of the Presocratics. The simplicity and boldness of their questions is part of it,

Early Theories of Hearing

The intellectual heritage of Greek natural philosophy includes a number of speculations and hypotheses dealing with the perception of sound. Through the middle ages all theories of hearing were characterized by the central role of the “aer internus.” As anatomical data became available concerning the structures in the middle and inner ear, and as the physics of sound became better understood, the need for theories in reasonable agreement with experimental facts arose. In 1683, the collaboration of the anatomist Duverney and the physicist Mariotte yielded the first “resonance theory” of hearing. Duverney identified the bony fibers of the cochlear partition as the tuned elements. This localized the high frequencies at the apex and the low frequencies near the stapes. But Duverney and his contemporaries continued to cling to the belief that air was present inside the cochlea. It was not until 1760 that Cotugno established definitely the presence of fluid throughout the labyrinthine cavity. During the 18th century there was much verbal disagreement among the various physiologists concerning the “resonators” in the ear and concerning the localization of high and low frequencies. In 1822, Magendie dismissed the whole resonance hypothesis with a single sentence since, as he said, “no one believes it at the present day.” When Helmholtz developed his theory in the second half of the 19th century the situation had changed: he had new building stones at his disposal, among which microanatomical data collected by Corti and Hensen, Fourier's theorem and Ohm's acoustic law were the most important.