138 CHAPTER FIVE
hasty interference. As he himself points out, the restraint is not in itself a
mark of modesty or humility. Rather, it is a cautious calculation that
measures each intellectual step and tests the ground: Is the foot holding
fi rm, or is this a treacherous quagmire? Is this an apodictic science, where
we know the facts and the way to deduce from them certain knowledge,
or is this a chimera leading us into perdition?
As part of this continuous examination, Maimonides tags each intel-
lectual enterprise, marking it as right or wrong and how much so. The
following section deals with one of his most distinctive tags: Ravings.
“Ravings”: Maimonides’ Concept of Pseudo- ScienceIn several of his writings Maimonides uses the word “ravings” (had-
hayan) to discredit certain theories and intellectual endeavors. This word
(which we have already encountered a few times in the present book)^63
appears in contexts as different as the reasons for the particulars of the
law, on the one hand, and the discussion of the movements of celestial
bodies on the other.
The frequent recurrence of this word was noticed by Jerome Gellman,
who attempted to examine its meaning in Maimonides’ thought.^64 Gell-
man observes that Maimonides uses this word whenever he “rejects views
he does not approve of in what seems to be an especially cavalier, un-
philosophical manner,” and that “his rejection of them seems little more
than mere name calling.”^65 But, Gellman argues, precisely because of its
nonphilosophical, nontechnical quality, this word may help us “uncover
something of Maimonides’ true mind.”^66 After examining four examples
of Maimonides’ use of the word, Gellman suggests that the word indi-
cates a metaphysical misconception, mostly such as contradicts Galen’s
dictum concerning the relations between matter and the individual. As
Gellman himself admits, the word occurs more than four times in Mai-
monides’ writings, and some of these other occurrences do not seem to fi t
this interpretation.
In what follows I shall argue that, rather than being an “innocent” word
that betrays his innermost views, for Maimonides hadhayan is almost a
technical term. I shall survey Maimonides’ use of the term, analyze it in
(^63) See chap. 2, note 91, above; chap. 4, above, apud notes 110 and 169; chap. 5, note 60,
above.
(^64) J. I. Gellman, “Maimonides’ ‘Ravings,’ ” Review of Metaphysics 45 (1991): 309– 28.
(^65) Ibid., 311.
(^66) Ibid., 310, 312.