{"_index":"sire","_type":"_doc","_id":"857","_score":null,"_source":{"id":857,"authors_free":[{"id":1261,"entry_id":857,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":304,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Robinson, John","free_first_name":"John","free_last_name":"Robinson","norm_person":{"id":304,"first_name":"John","last_name":"Robinson","full_name":"Robinson, John","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"The Framework of Greek Cosmology","main_title":{"title":"The Framework of Greek Cosmology"},"abstract":"A striking phenomenon of recent years (and one not without its significance for the historian of contemporary philosophy) has been the appearance of a substantial body of work on the early Greek philosophers. Most of this work is characterized by a new approach to the subject, an approach marked on the one hand by greater attention to the fragments themselves as opposed to the doxographic materials, and on the other hand by a more vigorous analysis of the relation of the language of the fragments to the wider non-philosophic context from which it was in so many instances borrowed. Charles Kahn's recent study, beautifully printed and bound by the Columbia University Press, is a worthy contribution to this growing body of literature and bears the impress of its characteristic method.\r\n\r\nThe single remaining fragment of Anaximander is not discussed until it has been firmly fixed in its historical context by a thoroughgoing consideration of the classical conception of the four elements; and one of the most striking features of this consideration is the use made by the author of the extensive body of Greek medical writings known as the Hippocratic Corpus. It was W. A. Heidel who first called attention to the extraordinary value of these writings\u2014the only complete scientific treatises to have come down to us from the early period\u2014for the elucidation of Greek thought. Since then, this material has been referred to more and more frequently by students of the early Greek philosophers, and the tendency is strikingly evidenced in the present study.\r\n\r\nThe use of this material is not without its difficulties. The treatises which form the Hippocratic Corpus are not the work of a single individual, and there is abundant evidence that they were written over a period of at least two hundred years. It is, therefore, essential, in attempting to reconstruct the scientific worldview of the early period, that we rely so far as possible on treatises belonging to this period. Unfortunately, in the present state of Hippocratic studies, it is impossible to date these works with any exactitude. On the other hand, certain of them belong pretty clearly to the fifth century; and it seems fairly well established that the view of the constitution of man which most of them assume dates from the time of Alcmaeon, who flourished around the turn of the century.\r\n\r\nSince this view is based upon an analogy between microcosm and macrocosm, the processes involved in sickness and health reflect on a small scale the greater processes which constitute the life of the cosmos as a whole; thus, indirectly, these treatises illuminate in striking ways aspects of the larger worldview implicit in the fragments of the early cosmologists, but obscured by the fewness of these fragments and the imperfect state in which they have been preserved. In the present study, they are used to illuminate just such obscurities. [introduction p. 676-677]","btype":3,"date":"1961","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/hN9oPATyWj4WjP6","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":304,"full_name":"Robinson, John","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":857,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"The Review of Metaphysics","volume":"14","issue":"4","pages":"676-684"}},"sort":["The Framework of Greek Cosmology"]}