ron
(Ron)
#1
14 Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity
as well as mathematicians and other ‘scientists’, and there is good reason
to believe that disciplinary boundaries, if they existed at all, were fluid and
flexible. As we get to the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, the evidence
of specialisation is stronger, but this still did not prevent more ambitious
thinkers such as Galen or John Philoponus from crossing boundaries and
being engaged in a number of distinct intellectual activities such as logic,
linguistics and grammar, medicine and meteorology.
3 aristotle and his school
A case in point here is Aristotle, to whom the middle section of this vol-
ume is dedicated. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of ancient
medicine would have been very different without the tremendous impact
of Aristotelian science and philosophy of science throughout antiquity, the
Middle Ages and the early modern period. Aristotle, and Aristotelianism,
made and facilitated major discoveries in the field of comparative anatomy,
physiology, embryology, pathology, therapeutics and pharmacology. They
provided a comprehensive and consistent theoretical framework for re-
search and understanding of the human body, its structure, workings and
failings and its reactions to foods, drinks, drugs and the environment.
They further provided fruitful methods and concepts by means of which
medical knowledge could be acquired, interpreted, systematised and com-
municated to scientific communities and wider audiences. And through
their development of historiographical and doxographical discourse, they
placed medicine in a historical setting and thus made a major contribu-
tion to the understanding of how medicine and science originated and
developed.
Aristotle himself was the son of a distinguished court physician and had
a keen interest in medicine and biology, which was further developed by
the members of his school. Aristotle and his followers were well aware of
earlier and contemporary medical thought (Hippocratic Corpus, Diocles
of Carystus) and readily acknowledged the extent to which doctors con-
tributed to the study of nature. This attitude was reflected in the reception
of medical ideas in their own research and in the interest they took in the
historical development of medicine. It was further reflected in the extent to
which developments in Hellenistic and Imperial medicine (especially the
Alexandrian anatomists and Galen) were incorporated in the later history
of Aristotelianism and in the interpretation of Aristotle’s works in late anti-
quity. Aristotelianism in turn exercised a powerful influence on Hellenistic
and Galenic medicine and its subsequent reception in the Middle Ages and
early modern period.
