130 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of Carystus
call focused anatomical research.^28 More elaborate views on the network of
cognitive faculties in the body are only rarely based on empirical observa-
tions, as in the case with the above-mentioned Alcmaeon, who is believed
to have arrived at an encephalocentric view on the mind on the basis of
the connection between the eyes and the brain. Yet the fact that this obser-
vation was known both to the author of the Hippocratic workOn Fleshes
and to Aristotle, who nevertheless do not attribute any significant role
in cognition to the brain, proves that it might equally give rise to other
interpretations.
The authors mentioned do in fact employ rather sophisticated termi-
nology for what we would call psychological, mental or spiritual faculties,
but they assume a close connection between these faculties and anatomical
and physiological factors. When speaking about exercising these faculties,
they virtually always do so in terms of certain substances (such as blood, air
or water) or qualities (hot, cold, dry, wet) and of processes such as flowing
and distributing or, in case the psychic faculties have been disturbed, of
stagnation, constipation, blockage, and so on. Another recurring element
is the emphasis on balance (isonomia,summetria,eukrasia) and on the risk
of an excess or shortage of a certain substance or quality.
An exception to this rule is Aristotle’s idea that the highest cognitive
faculty, thought, is not bound to a physical substrate. It is a kind of epiphe-
nomenon that, although it is unable to function without sense perception
(and therefore without physiological processes), cannot be located in a par-
ticular place of the body.^29 For this reason it is, strictly speaking, not correct
to attribute a cardiocentric view on the mind to Aristotle, as has frequently
been done both in antiquity and in modern literature.^30 The only text in
which the mind is explicitly located in the heart is in the Hippocratic work
On the Heart, which offers a remarkably detailed description of the anatomy
of the heart. The author of this presumably post-Aristotelian writing claims
thatgnom ̄ e ̄(‘mind’, ‘insight’) has its seat in the left ventricle of the heart,
from where it issues its decrees about ‘the other (part of the) soul’ (alle ̄
psuche ̄), which is situated in the rest of the body. To prove his stance, the
author argues that if autopsy were carried out on a body of a living being
that had just been killed, the aorta would still contain blood, but the left
(^28) See Lloyd ( 1979 ) 146 – 9 ; for views on the vascular system see the studies mentioned in Harris ( 1973 )
and Duminil ( 1983 ).
(^29) De an. 429 a 23 – 5 , 27 – 8. As stated above, the heart is given a leading role in co-ordinating perception,
movement and nutrition (seePart. an. 3. 4 andDe iuv. 3 – 4 ).
(^30) For instance by Duminil ( 1983 ) 310 ; on the absence of statements by Aristotle on the location of
the mind see, e.g., Mansfeld ( 1990 ) 3212 – 16. For the problems raised by Aristotle’s view see Barnes
( 1971 – 2 ) 110 – 12 , reprinted in Barnes, Schofield and Sorabji, vol.iv( 1979 ) 39 – 40.