Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T13:14:38.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Empirical Element in the Methods of Early Greek Medical Writers and Herodotus: a Shared Epistemological Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

Donald Lateiner
Donald Lateiner*
Affiliation:
Ohio Wesleyan University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Today one expects a truth or the truth to be characterized by objectivity, communicability, and unity. It should be testable, precisely expressed, consistent, and logical. To be all this, the truth must conform to the world of observation, and it must be based on data that can verify or falsify it. A truth may be general or particular, and research in different disciplines, of course, will pursue information and truths by different methods.

Some thinkers express dissatisfaction with the narrowness of this concept of truth, which is largely based on the specific needs of the inductive model of the natural sciences. It makes us uncomfortable, however, to say that the poet has one kind of truth, the philosopher another, the doctor, the physicist, and the geographer still others, and the historian another, yet autonomous truth. History is among the fields of study most subject to misapprehension, for it lies between human sciences and human arts, also between cases and laws.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 20 , 1986 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barnes, J. (1982): The Presocratic Philosophers (London, revised edition).Google Scholar
Barthes, R. (1967): ‘Le discours de l’histoire’, Social Science Information 6:65–75.Google Scholar
Bourgey, L. (1953): Observation et expérience chez les médecins de la collection hippocratique (Paris).Google Scholar
Cochrane, Ch. (1929): Thucydides and the Science of History (London).Google Scholar
Cornford, F.M. (1952/1965): Principium Sapientiae (New York).Google Scholar
Detienne, M. (1973): Les maîtres de vérité dans la Grèce archaïque (Paris, 2nd edition).Google Scholar
Diller, H. (1934): Wanderarzt und Aitiologe (Leipzig) = Philol. Suppl. 26/3.Google Scholar
idem, (1952): ‘Hippokratische Medizin und attische Philosophie’, Hermes 80: 385–409.Google Scholar
Edelstein, L. (1932): ‘The History of Anatomy in Antiquity’, orig. in German: Quellen u. Stud. z. Geschichte d. Nat. u. d. Med. 3/2: 100–56 = Ancient Medicine 247–301.Google Scholar
idem, (1939): ‘The Genuine Works of Hippocrates’, The Bulletin of the History of Medicine 7: 236–48 = Ancient Medicine 133–44.Google Scholar
idem, (1952): ‘The Relationship of Ancient Philosophy to Medicine’, The Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26: 299–316 = Ancient Medicine 349–66.Google Scholar
idem, (1967): Ancient Medicine, ed. O. and Tempkin, L. (Baltimore).Google Scholar
Festugière, A.J. (1948): Hippocrate, L’ancienne médecine (Paris).Google Scholar
Frankel, H. (1962/1975): ‘The Beginnings of the Empirical Sciences’, Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy (tr. Hadas & Willis; Oxford) 339–49.Google Scholar
von Fritz, K. (1952–54): ‘Die gemeinsame Ursprung der Geschichtsschreibung und der exakten Wissenschaften bei den Griechen’, Philosophia Naturalis 2: 200–23.Google Scholar
idem, (1967): Die griechische Geschichtsschreibung (Berlin), 2 vols.Google Scholar
Heidel, W.A. (1941): Hippocratic Medicine: Its Spirit and Method (New York).Google Scholar
Heinimann, F. (1945/1965): Nomos und Physis (diss. Basel; repr. Darmstadt).Google Scholar
Immerwahr, H. (1956): ‘Aspects of Historical Causation in Herodotus’, TAPA 87: 241–80.Google Scholar
idem, (1966): Form and Thought in Herodotus (Cleveland).Google Scholar
Jaeger, W. (1944): ‘Greek Medicine as Paideia’, Paideia 3 (New York) 3–45.Google Scholar
Jones, W.H.S. ed. (1923–31): Hippocrates, 4 vols. (Loeb Classical Library Edition, Cambridge, Mass.)Google Scholar
idem, (1946): Philosophy and Medicine in Ancient Greece, Suppl. 8 of The Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Baltimore).Google Scholar
Kleinknecht, H. (1940): ‘Herodot und Athen’, Hermes 75: 241–64.Google Scholar
Lachenaud, G. (1978): Mythologies, religion et philosophie de l’histoire dans Hérodote (Lille and Paris).Google Scholar
Lloyd, G.E.R. (1963): ‘Who is attacked in On Ancient Medicine?’, Phronesis 8: 108–26.Google Scholar
idem, (1966): Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge),Google Scholar
idem, (1975): ‘The Hippocratic Question’, CQ 25: 171–92.Google Scholar
idem, (1979): Magic, Reason and Experience (New York).Google Scholar
Miller, H.W. (1955): ‘Techne and Discovery in On Ancient Medicine’, TAPA 86: 51–62.Google Scholar
Moeller, C. (1903): Die Medizin in Herodot (Berlin).Google Scholar
Nestle, Wilhelm, (1908): Herodots Verhältnis zur Philosophie und Sophistik (Schöntal).Google Scholar
Page, D.L. (1953): ‘Thucydides’ Description of the Great Plague at Athens’, CQ 47: 97–119.Google Scholar
Pagel, K. (1927): Die Bedeutung des aitiologischen Momentes für Herodots Geschichtsschreibung (diss. Berlin).Google Scholar
Adam, Parry (1969): ‘The Language of Thucydides’ Description of the Plague’, BICS 16: 106–18.Google Scholar
Powell, J.E. (1939): A Lexicon to Herodotus (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Rawlings, H.R. (1975): A Semantic Study ofProphasis to 400 B.C. (Wiesbaden) = Hermes Einzelschr. 33.Google Scholar
Smith, W.D. (1983): ‘Analytical and Catalogue Structure in the Corpus Hippocraticum ’, Formes de pensée dans la collection hippocratique, ed. Laserre, F. and Mudry, Ph. (Geneva) 277–84.Google Scholar
Snell, Bruno (1953/1960): ‘Human Knowledge and Divine Knowledge among the early Greeks’, The Discovery of the Mind (tr. T. Rosenmeyer, New York) 136–52.Google Scholar
Starr, Chester (1968): The Awakening of the Greek Historical Spirit (New York).Google Scholar
Vlastos, G. (1955/1970): review of F.M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae, Gnomon 27: 65–76; repr. in D. Furley&R. Allen, Studies in Presocratic Philosophy 1 (London) 42–55.Google Scholar
idem, (1964): ‘Isonomia politike’, Isonomia …, ed. Mau, J. and Schmidt, E.G. (Berlin): 1–35.Google Scholar
Weidauer, K. (1954): Thukydides und die hippokratische Schriften (Heidelberg).Google Scholar
Wells, J. (1923): ‘Herodotus and the Intellectual Life of his Age’, Studies in Herodotus (Oxford) 183–204.Google Scholar