Voltaire's Pangloss, the man who held among other things that noses were clearly created in order to support spectacles, is the very archetype of the lunatic teleologist; a caricature of sublimely confident faith in the general and undeniable goodness of the world's arrangement, a faith that managed astoundingly to survive the Lisbon earthquake and his own subsequent auto dafé. Voltaire, of course, is poking fun at such conceptions; and, no doubt, in their extreme sanguinity as well as in their apparent (...) imperviousness to devastating empirical counter-evidence, they do seem to be eminently risible notions. In the face of them we might be tempted to abandon ‘métaphysico-théologo-cosmolonigologie’, and to agree with Candide that ‘Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin’. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 69 - 89 Galen’s physiology—his theory of elements, mixtures and the emergence of natural capacities—compels him to conceive of each part of the soul as a peculiar mixture of elementary qualities in the material substance of the organ in which it is located. The reason why Galen, nevertheless, refrains from making a dogmatic assertion about the substance of the soul, or of human nature in general, is the acknowledged failure to account for two (...) goal-directed activities—the formation of bodily organs and human intelligence—in terms of elementary qualities and their mixtures. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider points of intersection between the Aristotelian and the Galenic notions of ‘ power of the seed’ and some of the key issues and key concepts developed within the power -structuralism paradigm and try to understand whether, and to what extent, the conceptual lens provided by the power -structuralism hypothesis may help us to shed fresh light on aspects of both the Aristotelian and the Galenic theory of the seed, which are still unclear or highly controversial, (...) like the role played by the female in the generative process; to better understand how much the Aristotelian and the Galenic theories of the seed have in common and, on the other hand, to what extent and in what regard they differ when it comes to considering the metaphysics of powers, which both theories are grounded upon. Specifically, I explore how far Marmodoro's theory of ‘ power -structuralism ontology’ can help us to make better sense of this metaphysics. I suggest that this theory helps us to recognize, below the s. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a description of the history of Pythagorean societies after the death of Pythagoras. It then considers the criteria used by Aristoxenus in compiling his list of Pythagoreans. Compared with those applied in modern works, it is argued that, beyond a critical approach to the sources, we enjoy no special advantages over the first historian of Pythagoreanism. This is followed by a discussion of the prosopography and chronology of the Pythagoreans.

This chapter examines Plato's recurrent response to the “Growing Argument” in the dialogue that exhibits Plato's most extensive evaluation of the concept of “number,” Phaedo. There, Plato illustrates mathematical Pythagorean argumentative techniques in the figures of Socrates's interlocutors Simmias and Cebes, and critiques them according to whether or not they exhibit a proper methodological rigor. The proposition of Forms and teleological causation generates new ways of thinking about number. When Socrates finally develops the most complete analysis of number that can (...) be found in Plato's oeuvre, in the final argument, he does so chiefly in order to lay the groundwork for a proof of the soul's immortality. The Phaedo thus illustrates Plato's most circumspect appropriation of mathematical Pythagorean concepts. (shrink)