chapter 10
Galen’s use of the concept of ‘qualified experience’
in his dietetic and pharmacological works
1 introduction
It is well known that Galen, in the epistemological debate (as he saw it)
between the so-called Dogmatists and the Empiricists, adopted a position
which might be defined both as an attempt at maintaining his cherished
ideal of intellectual independence and as an endeavour to preserve the
valuable insights that the different strands of tradition provided. The latter
resulted in his conviction that medical knowledge is arrived at by means of
a rather special conjunction of, on the one hand, reason (logos), that is, a
set of theoretical and logical concepts, definitions, axioms, arguments, and
ideas referring both to observable and unobservable entities, and, on the
other hand, experience (peira), that is, a more or less systematic collection
of data derived from sense-perception.^1 What makes his position more
complicated is that according to Galen both reason and experience should
be used or appliedin a correct way, in a correct order, interrelation and/or
proportion. This requirement may have different consequences for different
areas within medical science. Moreover, it is precisely in this respect that
Galen explicitly distances himself from the other medical schools, who, as he
believes, either failed to take into account empirical data which would seem
to him to be inconsistent with their theoretical assumptions, deductions,
inferences or analogies, or who formulated unqualified generalising claims
on theexclusivebasis of empirical data.
As far as dietetics and pharmacology are concerned,^2 Galen simi-
larly stipulates on various occasions that both reason and experience are
This chapter was first published in A. Debru (ed.),Galen on Pharmacology. Philosophy, History and
Medicine(Leiden, 1997 ) 35 – 57.
(^1) See Frede ( 1987 c) 279 – 98 and ( 1985 ) xx–xxxiv.
(^2) These more or less overlap, given Galen’s views on the relative distinction between foodstuffs and
drugs (see below).
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