92 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
- 56 (p. 178 , 13 – 14 Joly and Byl): !.
. 6
!(‘When preserved in vinegar they [sc. meats] are less warming because
of the vinegar’).
Considering these examples, we may be inclined to say that Diocles’
warnings against too automatic an application of causal explanation, as well
as his prescription (in section 11 of fr. 176 ) that causal explanation must make
the physician’s account more informative ()
), may well be
understood as applying to the occasionally just truistic explanations found
inOn Regimen.
4 diocles’ position in dietetics and in the
philosophy of science
It is not my intention to suggest that Diocles has the authors of the treatises
On Ancient MedicineandOn Regimenin mind as his targets, but only to
state some objections against associating Diocles’ own position with that of
these two Hippocratic writers. It rather seems to me that Diocles is arguing
against what he believes to be – in the context of dietetics – some undesirable
consequences of the search for causes or principles, or to put it in other
words, against too strict an application of what in itself – and in Diocles’
opinion too – remains a sound scientific procedure. These consequences
seem to have pervaded Greek scientific thought in the fourth century to
such an extent that opposition to it was also expressed by Aristotle and
Theophrastus (in their case, the opposition is probably directed against
certain tendencies in the early Academy). There are a number of passages
which reflect a similar awareness in Aristotle and Theophrastus of the
limits of causal explanation.^41 Indeed the whole Diocles fragment shows
(^41) Cf. Aristotle,Metaph. 1006 a 6 – 9 : ‘for it is characteristic of a lack of education not to knowof what
things one should seek demonstration, and of what one should not; for it is absolutely impossible for
there to be a demonstration of everything (for that would go on indefinitely, so that there would
be no demonstration)’ (
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)). Theophrastus,Metaphysics 9 b 1 – 13 : ‘Wherefore this too is
problematical or at any rate not easy to say,up to which point and of which entities one should seek the
cause, in the objects of sense and in the objects of thought alike: for the infinite regress is foreign
to their nature in both casesand destroys our understanding. Both of them are starting-points in
some way: and perhaps the one for us, the other absolutely, or, on the one hand, the end and the
other a starting-point of ours. Up to some point, then, we are capable of studying things causally,
taking our starting-point from sense-perceptions in each case; but when we proceed to the extreme
and primary entities, we are no longer capable of doing so, either owing to the fact that they do
not have a cause, or through our lack of strength to look, one would say, at the brightest things’
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