tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post7682422791534876705..comments2024-03-23T07:33:30.972+00:00Comments on Quodlibeta: How to get ancient Greek Science almost completely wrongJameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01594220073836613367noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-71519196525619310042018-04-26T18:42:32.030+01:002018-04-26T18:42:32.030+01:00I'm very enjoyed because of this blog. Its an ...I'm very enjoyed because of this blog. Its an insightful topic. It help me very much to solve some problems. Its opportunity are so fantastic and working style so speedy.<a href="http://shnkafor-scientific-articles.com/blog/blog_2.html" rel="nofollow">how to write an abstract</a><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05704159231627046186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-67001639034110076042016-02-11T11:50:39.286+00:002016-02-11T11:50:39.286+00:00Where Aristotle, Galen and others scored was in th...Where Aristotle, Galen and others scored was in their appreciation of the importance of observation and . and this is increasingly recognised for Galen, the use of logic to organise material. Armand Marie Leroi's The Lagoon, How Aristotle invented Science is excellent on this. Despite their many misconceptions, these men were not inhibited by any outside institutions that judged or condemned their work and it was the better for it. It is good that practicing scientists such as Leroi are now getting into Greek science.<br />Read Mattern on Galen if you have not already done so. He was above all a practical man and able to spot patterns of disease that others could not. So it is not really a question of his theories not curing anyone. i suspect like really good doctors today a lot was by instinct and experience and he certainly knew how to avoid treatments that would, from his own experience, do more harm than good.<br />We really have to wait until Leonardo before we get such a sustained concentration on observing and it was, of course, of a higher quality that led to the the gradual dismantling of earlier misconceptions. A retired surgeon I met said that he now lectures on Leonardo after he discovered that he could have used his drawings as a template for his own surgery!<br />Of course, we have to wait until the late nineteenth century before doctors actually began to cure people!<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-14685344844288238422016-02-08T11:45:32.299+00:002016-02-08T11:45:32.299+00:00Thanks for your comment Anon.
I'm not sure I&...Thanks for your comment Anon.<br /><br />I'm not sure I'd say Ptolemy reached new heights of understanding as plainly he did not understand how the planets move. He did reach new heights of sophistication with his model, but that is not quite the same thing.<br /><br />As for Galen, we can be sure he never "cured" anyone since his medical theories would not have supplied him with the knowledge to do so. Yes, there is a lot of common sense in his voluminous works, not to mention plenty of self promotion. We can't take for granted his claims he cured "quite difficult illnesses". His patients got better (and he declined to mention the ones who didn't).<br /><br />Second century Rome was indeed abuzz with intellectual activity. Hardly any of it was science or maths in the sense we would understand them.<br /><br />Jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01594220073836613367noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5074683.post-44987228550666354112016-02-05T17:02:40.839+00:002016-02-05T17:02:40.839+00:00Ptolemy and Galen were both reaching new heights o...Ptolemy and Galen were both reaching new heights of understanding in the second century AD. Galen,in particular, as a man who used science creatively in the service of his patients ( and gained his prestige through his success in curing quite difficult illnesses) is on the up among academics. See the excellent Susan Mattern , The Prince of Medicine, Galen in the Roman Empire. One point that was fascinating was the enormous number of scientific treatises that Galen read before he began writing his own (although personal observation of the body always came first) . The author of this piece is right that there were too many schools of science. As Mattern shows, even second century AD Rome was a buzz of intellectual activity, contrary to some outmoded ideas about intellectual life being dead by this time. <br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com