194 Aristotle and his school
It is further the task of the student of nature to study the first principles of health
and disease; for neither health nor disease can occur with that which is deprived
of life. For this reason one can say that most of those people who study nature end
with a discussion of medicine, just as those doctors who practise their discipline
in a more inquisitive way (philosoph ̄oter ̄os) start dealing with medicine on the basis
of principles derived from the study of nature. (Sens. 436 a 17 –b 2 )
Concerning life and death and the subjects kindred to this inquiry our discussion
is practically complete. As for health and disease, it is the business not only of
the doctor but also of the student of nature to discuss their causes up to a certain
point. However, in what sense they are different and study different things, should
not be ignored, since the facts prove that their discussions are to a certain extent
contiguous: those doctors who are ingenious and inquisitive do have something to
say about nature and think it important to derive the principles of their discipline
from the study of nature; and concerning those students of nature who are most
distinguished, one may well say that they end with the principles of medicine.
(Resp. 480 b 22 – 31 )
In these passages Aristotle says that it belongs to the task of the student
of nature (phusikos) to deal also with health and disease, because health
and disease are characteristics of living beings.^41 However, this interest is
limited to a discussion of theprinciplesor thecausesof health and disease.^42
Those who do so are called the ‘most distinguished students of nature’; the
same wordcharieisis used here as in the passage fromOn Divination in
Sleep, where it is said of doctors. He further remarks that there are doctors
who base their medical practice on the principles of the study of nature in
general: these are called the doctors who ‘practise their discipline in a more
inquisitive way (philosophoter ̄ ̄os)’ and who are ‘ingenious and inquisitive’.
This is reasonable, he says, because natural science and medicine, though
being different and studying different things, are ‘contiguous’ (sunoroi): up
to a certain point their procedures run parallel or even overlap.
In a passage from theNicomachean Ethicswe find the same expression as
inOn Divination in Sleep:
clearly it is the task of the student of politics to have some acquaintance with the
study of the soul, just as the doctor who is to heal the eye should also know about
the body as a whole, and all the more since politics is a higher and more honourable
art than medicine; and among doctors those who are distinguished devote much
(^41) I.e. animals and plants. The scope of theParva naturaliais the ‘affections’ experienced by beings that
possess soul, e.g. life and death, youth and old age, respiration, sense-perception, sleep, dreaming,
memory, recollection. See the preface toOn Sense Perceptionand the discussion in van der Eijk ( 1994 )
68 – 72.
(^42) Similar remarks about the limited interest of medicine for the student of nature are to be found in
Long. et brev. vitae 464 b 32 ff. andPart. an. 653 a 8 ff.