What role, if any, does dialectic play in Aristotle’s epistemology in the Topics? In this paper I argue that it does play a role, but a role that is independent of endoxa. In the first section, I sketch the case for thinking that dialectic plays a distinctively epistemological role—not just a methodological role, or a merely instrumental role in getting episteme. In the second section, I consider three ways it could play that role, on two of which endoxa play at (...) least a co-starring role. But in the third section, I argue that endoxa don’t play that co-starring role, by arguing for a deflationary account of what endoxa are. For that reason, the third view emerges as the most plausible; but the third view is, I’ll suggest, Platonic. (shrink)

I present a systematic interpretation of the foundational purpose of constructions in ancient Greek geometry. I argue that Greek geometers were committed to an operationalist foundational program, according to which all of mathematics—including its entire ontology and epistemology—is based entirely on concrete physical constructions. On this reading, key foundational aspects of Greek geometry are analogous to core tenets of 20th-century operationalist/positivist/constructivist/intuitionist philosophy of science and mathematics. Operationalism provides coherent answers to a range of traditional philosophical problems regarding classical mathematics, such (...) as the epistemic warrant and generality of diagrammatic reasoning, superposition, and the relation between constructivism and proof by contradiction. Alleged logical flaws in Euclid can be interpreted as sound operationalist reasoning. Operationalism also provides a compelling philosophical motivation for the otherwise inexplicable Greek obsession with cube duplication, angle trisection, and circle quadrature. Operationalism makes coherent sense of numerous specific choices made in this tradition, and suggests new interpretations of several solutions to these problems. In particular, I argue that: Archytas’s cube duplication was originally a single-motion machine; Diocles’s cissoid was originally traced by a linkage device; Greek conic section theory was thoroughly constructive, based on the conic compass; in a few cases, string-based constructions of conic sections were used instead; pointwise constructions of curves were rejected in foundational contexts by Greek mathematicians, with good reason. Operationalism enables us to view the classical geometrical tradition as a more unified and philosophically aware enterprise than has hitherto been recognised. (shrink)

Classicists have long been wary of comparisons, partly for ideological reasons related to the incomparability of ‘the Classical’, partly because of the often problematic basis and limited illumination afforded by such efforts as have been made: the -reception of the work of the Cambridge ritualists — such as J.G. Frazer and Jane Harrison — is a case in point in both respects. Interestingly, even the specifically comparative interests of the much more rigorous projects of the Paris School, at the Centre (...) Louis Gernet, have not had much resonance outside France, notwithstanding the enormous influence of their work concerning purely Greek subject matter. In part, perhaps, this was a result of the shift from Vernant's originally Marxist framework, in which societies were comparable in terms of an evolutionary sociological scheme, to a structuralist one, entailing an emphasis on the uniqueness of different cultural traditions. The emphasis on the uniqueness of the Classical world was only reinforced by post-structuralism and post-modernism, which in their strongest forms suggested that cultures, like languages, were fundamentally incommensurable, and thus not accessible to outsider knowledge, let alone comparable. Indeed, so virulent was the post-structuralist virus that disciplines to which we might have expected to be able to turn for guidance, like comparative religion, are only now recovering the courage ‘to compare religious phenomena, theologies or artefacts outside of footnotes or less heavily policed epilogues’. (shrink)

Positivism and, especially, Max Weber's vision of the modern disen chantment of the world are incoherent because they separate human culture from the environment in which human agents pursue their life- projects. The same problem is manifested, more blatantly, in current social studies of science, which take the project of disenchantment further by disenchanting science itself. A different image of science is traced to classical empiricism, whose paradigm of learning is belief and, more specifically, the practical nature of the believer's (...) experience of the environment of his or her actions. The believer's ecological imagery of the world, as it was elaborated by classical empiricism, provides the means to transcend the disenchanted image of the world and its prob lems. (shrink)

Traditionally, Ancient Mesopotamian epistemic practices resulting in the vast corpus of cuneiform ‘lexical lists’ and other, similarly formatted treatises have been conceptualized as “ Listenwissenschaft ” in Assyriology. Introduced by the German Assyriologist Wolfram v. Soden in 1936 , this concept has also been utilized in other disciplines of the Humanities as a terminological means to describe epistemic activity allegedly inferior to ‘Western’ modes of analytical and hypotactic scientific reasoning. Building on the exemplary evidence of a bilingual list of cuneiform (...) compound graphemes from the early 2nd millennium BCE as well as on recent conceptualizations of ‘epistemic cultures’ and the instrumental function of material ‘representations’ in the context of epistemic practices, the present paper attempts to replace the essentialistic and teleological concept of an Ancient Mesopotamian “ Listenwissenschaft ” with a new epistemological model describing the underlying epistemic practices as highly adaptive non-linear epistemic practices comparable to what has been described as ‘practices with »epistemic things«’ in recent epistemology and practice theory. (shrink)

This article addresses how the sophistic-style analysis in Philostratus' Gymnasticus gives expression to the physical and social complexities involved in ancient athletic training. As a case in point, the article provides a close reading of Philostratus' description and criticism of the Tetrad, a four-day sequence of training, which resulted in the death of an Olympic athlete. To make physiological sense of the Tetrad, this method of training is compared to the role of periodization in ancient medicine and modern kinesiology. At (...) the same time, Philostratus' own critique of the Tetrad is compared to Foucauldian models of discipline and bodily attention. Ultimately, it is argued that the Tetrad fails because it does not incorporate καιρός, a theme common to athletics, medicine, and rhetoric. Overall, therefore, Philostratus' critique of the Tetrad helps us to appreciate the underrepresented role that γυμναστική occupied in the larger debates on bodily knowledge in antiquity. (shrink)

This paper explores the role the Panhellenic centers played in facilitating the circulation of wisdom in ancient Greece. It argues that there are substantial thematic overlaps among practitioners of wisdom , who are typically understood as belonging to different categories . By focusing on the presence of σοφοί at the Panhellenic centers in general, and Delphi in particular, we can acquire a more accurate picture of the particular expertise they possessed, and of the range of meanings the Greeks attributed to (...) the word σοφία. This approach seeks to challenge the conventional categories of modern scholarship and to offer a broader and more inclusive interpretive framework in its stead. One such thematic overlap is the way in which many σοφοί are described as exerting an almost uncanny, yet highly conventional ability to attract listeners and enchant them with their verbal performances. There is plenty of material to support the view that σοφοό, through tapping into the repository of σοφία that Delphi constituted and by aligning themselves with its authority, were seen as themselves being a conduit for a similar type of charismatic speech. (shrink)

Through a detailed analysis of the various modes of argumentation employed by Aristotle throughout his natural scientific works, I aim to contribute to the growing scholarship on the relation between Aristotle’s theory of science and his actual scientific practice. I challenge the standard reading of Aristotle as a methodological empiricist and show that he permits a variety of non-empirical arguments to support controversial theses in properly scientific contexts. Specifically, I examine his use of logical (logikôs) argumentation in the discussion of (...) mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8, rational (kata ton logon) argumentation in his discussion of cardiocentrism throughout the biological works, and the method of division in Posterior Analytics II 13. (shrink)

In Philolaus’ cosmology, the earth revolves around a central fire along with the other heavenly bodies, including a planet called the counter-earth which orbits below the earth. His theory can account for most astronomical phenomena. A common criticism of his theory since ancient times is that his counter-earth does no work in the system. Yet ancient sources say the planet was supposed to account for some lunar eclipses. A reconstruction of Philolaus’ cosmology shows how lunar eclipses occurring at certain times (...) of day cannot be explained by earth blocking the sun’s light. The counter-earth could explain these eclipses. (shrink)

The paper provides an innovative interpretation of the treatise De Victu, showing that, though Heraclitean, Anaxagorean and Empedoclean borrowings in the work are certainly pervasive, the author also develops a sophisticated and multi-purpose explanatory framework, which, being based on an original conception of the nature of man, the cosmos and the relationship between the two, provides an effective foundation for the medical enterprise, allowing him to propose his dietetics as a ‘way of life’. At the core of this enterprise is (...) the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm: in virtue of this relationship, I submit, the cosmos becomes both an active factor to be taken into account for the maintenance of individual physical well-being and the normative standard to which a dietician and whoever cares about health must refer in order to live the healthiest possible life. (shrink)

From the older handbooks to the more recent scholarly literature, Gorgias's professions about his art are taken literally at their word: conjured up in all of these accounts is the image of a hearer irresistibly overwhelmed by Gorgias's apagogic and psychagogic persuasions. Gorgias's own description of his art, in effect, replaces our description of it. "His proofs... give the impression of ineluctability" . "Thus logos is almost an independent external power which forces the hearer to do its will" . "Incurably (...) deceptive," logos has an "enormous power" that acts upon opinion, which is "easy to change" . Surprisingly, the urge to describe or paraphrase Gorgias's art has caused commentators to overlook the very best witness of it that we have: its enactment, which is to say the performative value of Gorgias's writings, especially the speeches. For if Gorgias's literary remains do nothing else, they demonstrate how one can do things with words without being explicit about what is being done, even if this means contradicting, performatively, what is being said-as for instance in his statements, so unconvincingly made, about the ostensible aims of rhetoric. Was Gorgias persuasive in practice? Was persuasion even the goal? Is logos the solitary arbiter of reality that it is so often made out to be? Through close examination of Gorgias's Helen and parts of On Not-Being, I attempt to show that persuasion is manifestly not the goal of his arguments, which in the first instance are aporetic paradoxes that expose the difficulties of defining the nature of either language or reality, and which in the last instance are instruments of cultural demystification. The only deception at work in Gorgias's writings is that of the self-deception of their audience. It is this that gives these curiously revealing documents of fifth-century Greek culture their "dissuasive," not persuasive, character. (shrink)

Archimedes’ Sand-Reckoner presents a system for naming extraordinarily large numbers, larger than the number of grains of sand that would fill the cosmos. Curiously, Archimedes addresses the treatise not to another specialist but to King Gelon II of Syracuse. While the treatise has thus been seen as evidence for the dynamics of patronage, difficulties in both Archimedes’ treatment of Gelon and his discussion of astronomical models make it fit incongruously within contemporary court and scientific contexts. This article offers a new (...) reading of the Sand-Reckoner based on a reconsideration of the relationship between author and addressee: deferring assumptions about the historicity of that relationship, it analyzes Gelon’s role in the treatise with respect to both the stylistic features of Archimedes’ prose and a broader tradition of narratives about a variety of cultural actors who engage with kings, speaking not so much truth as wit to power. Such a reading resolves the social and scientific difficulties of the treatise, and develops the literary-experimental qualities of Hellenistic science. In turn, the article proposes a revised approach, sensitive to broader patterns of authorship, to understanding ancient scientific authors’ relationship to royal authority. It concludes, finally, that the royal patronage seemingly exemplified by the Sand-Reckoner had greater significance as a cultural trope than as a social institution. (shrink)

This paper compares the cases of female ailments recorded in the Epidaurian Miracles Cures with the theory and therapeutics of the Hippocratic gynecological texts as a means of testing the extent of the assumptions shared between temple and Hippocratic medicine. I argue that where temple and Hippocratic practice hold common ground, it is readily explicable through widely circulating and historically rooted cultural presuppositions regarding female physiology and pathology, rather than through scientific borrowings. Rather than representing complementary outlets of medical care (...) in which Asklepios specialized in “hopeless” cases, I suggest that the iamata permit us to observe a process in which parallel medical traditions branched out from a common cultural substratum, and that more nuance is required in framing the relationship between Greek naturalist and religious medicine. (shrink)

Traditionally, Ancient Mesopotamian epistemic practices resulting in the vast corpus of cuneiform ‘lexical lists’ and other, similarly formatted treatises have been conceptualized as “Listenwissenschaft” in Assyriology. Introduced by the German Assyriologist Wolfram v. Soden in 1936, this concept has also been utilized in other disciplines of the Humanities as a terminological means to describe epistemic activity allegedly inferior to ‘Western’ modes of analytical and hypotactic scientific reasoning. Building on the exemplary evidence of a bilingual list of cuneiform compound graphemes from (...) the early 2nd millennium BCE as well as on recent conceptualizations of ‘epistemic cultures’ and the instrumental function of material ‘representations’ in the context of epistemic practices, the present paper attempts to replace the essentialistic and teleological concept of an Ancient Mesopotamian “Listenwissenschaft” with a new epistemological model describing the underlying epistemic practices as highly adaptive non-linear epistemic practices comparable to what has been described as ‘practices with »epistemic things«’ in recent epistemology and practice theory. (shrink)

Herodotus uses the encounter between the Milesian tyrant Aristagoras and the Spartan king Cleomenes to further his authorial self-presentation. He contrasts his own aims and methods as an inquirer with those of Aristagoras, who becomes a “rival” inquirer for Herodotus in this passage. Seeking military aid from Cleomenes for the Ionian Revolt, Aristagoras points to his bronze map of the world and gives an ethnographical and geographical account of the peoples and land of Asia, from Ionia to Susa. Aristagoras accordingly (...) takes on many of the characteristics of Herodotus himself, including the use of shared ethnographical language. Aristagoras' ethnographical account is marred, however, by a rhetorical strategy that depicts the Asians as wealthy, but weak adversaries. While careful not to criticize Aristagoras' map itself, Herodotus is able to exploit Aristagoras' verbal description of his map to illustrate his own forthcoming account of the Persian Royal Road , which Herodotus assures readers is even more “accurate” than Aristagoras' account had been . Aristagoras is “deceiving” Cleomenes “well,” says Herodotus, until he tells the “truth” about the length of the journey to Susa . Telling the truth is a mistake for the deceiver Aristagoras, but an obligation for the inquirer Herodotus. (shrink)