Scientific Realism and the Objects of Medicine in the Hippocratic Treatise On the Art

• Authors: Kevin Ray Cales

Abstracts

EN

On the Art is a polemical treatise in the Hippocratic corpus that has been dated to 450–400 Bce. As a polemical work, the author defends the existence of medicine against detractors. i argue that the author employs two arguments for scientific realism in defense of medicine that are among the earliest known. First, i situate the work in the context of the sophistic movement and the nomos vs. physis debate. Second, i analyze the two arguments in On the Art ii, and i argue by contraposing spatiotemporalist, constructivist, and realist interpretations of the passage that the author grapples with the semantic stretch of the word εἶδος. thereafter, i propose the arguments are best understood as indispensability arguments in which medical realism is defended in order to explain clinical practice.

Keywords

EN

scientific realism; medicine; ancient Greek philosophy; sophism; abstract objects; ontology

• Publisher: International Étienne Gilson Society
• Journal: Studia Gilsoniana
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 229-248

Dates

published

2022

Contributors

author

Kevin Ray Cales

• Southern Illinois University Carbondale

• https://orcid.org/0000000295756411

References

• Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 1. edited by Richard Sorabji. translated by William Dooley. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
• Berman, Scott. 1994. “Plato’s refutation of constructivism in the cratylus.” The Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 2 (2): 37–70.
• Bonazzi, Mauro. “ethical and Political thought in Antiphon’s Truth and Concord.” in Early Greek Ethics, edited by David conan Wolfsdorf, 149–168. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Diels, Hermann, and Walter Kranz. Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3 vols. Dublin: Weidmann, 1972.
• Else, Gerald Frank. “the terminology of the ideas.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 47, (1936): 17–55.
• Gagarin, Michael. Antiphon the Athenian: Oratory, Law, and Justice in the Age of the Sophists. Austin: University of texas Press, 2002.
• Gomperz, theodor. Die Apologie der Heilkunst. Eine griechische Sophistenrede des fünften vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts. 2nd ed. leipzig:Viet & comp., 1910.
• Gillespie, c. M. “the Use of Εἶδος and Ἰδέα in Hippocrates.” The Classical Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1912): 179–203.
• Guthrie, W. K. c. The Sophists. cambridge: cambridge University Press, 1971.
• Helmig christoph. Forms and Concepts: Concept Foprmation in the Platonic Tradition. Vol. 5 commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca et Byzantina Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.
• Hermann, Fritzgregor edt. Words and Ideas: The Roots of Plato’s Philosophy. Swansea: the classical Press of Wales, 2007.
• Jones, W.H.S. Hippocrates. Vol. ii. loeb classical library. cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923.
• Jori, Alberto. Medicina e medici nell’antica Grecia: Saggio sul peri technes ippocratico. Bologna and Naples: il Mulino, 1996.
• Jori, Alberto. “Note per un’attribuzione del peri technes pseudoippicratico.” Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arte. 143, (1985): 237–267.
• Jouanna, Jacques. Hippocrates. translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.
• Kerferd, G. B. The Sophistic Movement. cambridge: cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Liddell, Henry George, robert Scott, and James Morris Whiton. 1871. A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English lexicon. New York: American Book co.
• Mann, Joel e. Hippocrates, On the Art of Medicine. Boston: Brill, 2012.
• Putnam, Hilary. Mathematics, Matter and Method. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
• Roochnik, David. Of Art and Wisdom: Plato’s Understanding of Techne. University Park, PA: the Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007.
• Schiefsky, Mark J. Hippocrates: On Ancient Medicine. Boston: Brill, 2005.
• Sedley, David. Plato’s Cratylus. New York: cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Taylor, A. e. Varia Socratica. Oxford: clarendon Press., 1911.
• Vegetti, Mario. Technai e filosofia nel Peri Technes pseudo-ippocratico. Atti della Academia della Scienze di Torino 98 (1964): 308–380.
• Whitmarsh, tim. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. New York: Penguin, 2015.

Identifiers

DOI

10.26385/SG.110209

Biblioteka Nauki

2057140