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Levels of explanation in Galen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

P. N. Singe
P. N. Singe
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Extract

Galen's æuvre presents a remarkably varied body of texts–varied in subject matter, style, and didactic purpose. Logical tracts sit alongside tomes of drug–lore; handbooks of dietetics alongside anatomical investigations; treatises of physiology alongside ethical opuscula. These differences in type have received some, though as yet insufficient, scholarly attention. Mario Vegetti demonstrated the coexistence of two ‘profili’ or images of the art of medicine: Galen presents the art as an Aristotelian deductive science, on the one hand, and as a technician's craft, on the other. The former image, offering an ambitious elevation of the doctor's cultural status, has medicine as a philosophical episteme analogous to the mathematical sciences, exercised above all to provide causal accounts and logical demonstrations, and centred on the knowledge of anatomy. The second image is that of the clinician, concerned with the body in its pathological manifestations and using as its prime model the ‘pre-anatomical’ theory of the humours. And the content of the treatises shifts in relation to this dual image: ‘profilo alto’ and ‘profilo basso’ are reflected in different types of work. Polemical writings such as the Protrepticus, as well as the great treatises of anatomy and physiology, De usu partium and De naturalibus facultatibus, present medicine in the former light, while works like De temperamentis or Quod animi mores base themselves on humoral pathology and accord with the earlier, artisan-like image.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 1997 , pp. 525 - 542
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Copyright © The Classical Association 1997

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References

1 Vegetti, M., ‘Modelli di medicina’, in Nutton, V. (ed.), Galen: Problems and Prospects: A Collection of Papers Submittedat the 1979 Cambridge Conference (London, 1981), repr. in Vegetti, Tra Edipo e Euclide: forme del sapere antico (Milan, 1983). See now also his fuller discussion, ‘L'immagine del medico e lo statuto epistemologico della medicina in Galeno’, in ANRW II.37.2 (1994) 1672–1717.Google Scholar

2 Ed.Marquardt, J. in Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta Minora, vol. I (Leipzig, 1884)Google Scholar and Barigazzi, A., De optimo docendi genere, Exhortatio ad medicinam (Protrepticus), Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V.I.I (Berlin, 1991),Google Scholar trans. Singer, P. N., in Galen: Selected Works (Oxford, 1997). Page references to Galen's works are wherever possible by volume and page of C. G. Kühn's edition (Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, 22 vols [Leipzig, 1821–33]), abbreviated ‘K’; but in cases where a more modern edition exists this has been cited at the first reference to the work, as has any English translation.Google Scholar

3 De usupartium libri XVII, ed. Helmreich, G., 2 vols (Leipzig, 1907–9);Google Scholartrans. May, M.T., Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, 2 vols (Ithaca, NY, 1968).Google Scholar

4 Ed. Helmreich, G. in Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta Minora, vol. Ill (Leipzig, 1893).Google Scholar

5 De temperamentis libri III, ed. Helmreich, G. (Leipzig, 1904), trans. Singer, in Galen: Selected WorksGoogle Scholar

6 Ed. Müller, I. in Claudii Galeni Pergameni Scripta Minora, vol. II (Leipzig, 1891), trans. Singer, in Galen: Selected Works.Google Scholar

7 There is not a straightforward superiority of one image over the other. Galen's attitude is perhaps best summarized in the remark he attributes to the emperor Marcus Aurelius, that Galen is ‘first among doctors, but the one and only philosopher’ (, De praecognitione (ed. V Nutton, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V.8.1, Berlin, 1979) 11, K XIV 660). He revels in the self-image of a philosopher and in his ability to give verbal accounts–an ability which may provoke hostile criticism from other kinds of practitioner, cf. De praecognitione passim, De optimo medico cognoscendo (Arabic text ed. and trans. A. Z. Iskandar, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, Supplementum Orientale IV [Berlin, 1988]), esp. p. 95 and Thrasybulus (ed. G. Helmreich in Scripta Minora, vol. Ill [Leipzig, 1893], trans. Singer, in Galen: Selected Works) for the terms in which he contrasts himself with rivals: they lack his understanding of causes, his analytical abilities, above all the ability to make the correct distinctions. And the merely manual workers in medicine () are looked down on (e.g. De methodo medendi VI.6, K X 454–5; cf. the attack on Thessalus, the apparently artisan founder of the Methodic school of medicine, in De methodo medendi 1.1, K X 5). But Galen is at pains to emphasize the need for long practical experience and training of the doctor's perceptive faculties (see esp. De dignotione pulsorum, I.I, K VIII 770–1); and regularly attacks those who are more interested in words than things. More generally on the ‘philosopher-doctor’ in Galen, see my ‘Galen on the Soul: Philosophy and Medicine in the Second Century AD’ (Ph.D Diss., Cambridge, 1993), ch. 1 (esp. pp. 68–73), with the bibliography there cited. 8

8 Platonic psychology: Depeccatis and De affectibus (ed. Marquardt, J. in Scripta Minora, vol. I [Leipzig, 1889];Google Scholar trans, in Harkins, P W. and Riese, W., Galen on the Passions and Errors of the Soul, [Ohio, 1963]Google Scholar and in Singer, Galen: Selected Works) and De moribus (which survives only in an Arabic summary, trans. J. N. Mattock, A Translation of the Arabic Epitome of Galen's Book , in Stern, S. M., Hourani, A., AND Brown, V. (edd.), Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition: Essays Presented by his Friends and Pupils to Richard Walzer on his Seventieth Birthday [(Oxford, 1973]);Google ScholarAristotelian biology: De usu partium; Alexandrian medicine and anatomy: e.g. Anatomicae administrationes and the body of works on reading the pulse; dietetics: e.g. De sanitate tuenda (ed. Koch, K. in Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V.4.2 [Leipzig, 1923],Google ScholarDe alimentorum facultatibus (ed. G. Helmreich in Ibid.) and several of the Hippocratic commentaries. See my ‘Galen on the Soul’, pp. 118–21 and ch. 2 generally. V. Nutton, ‘Galen and Medical Autobiography’, PCPS 198 (n.s. 18) (1972) 50–62, repr. in From Democedes to Harvey: Studies in the History of Medicine (London, 1988), explored the relation of one of Galen's works, De praecognitione, to a genre (cf his remarks in the Prolegomena to his edition of the work, pp. 59–61); but the approach has not been followed up. (Cf. also Walzer, R., A Diatribe of Galen′, HTR 47 [1954] 243ff, repr. in Greek into Arabic: Essays on Islamic Philosophy [Oxford, 1962] on Galen's De moribus, with my remarks, ‘Galen on the Soul’, pp. 210–11.)Google Scholar

9 See Manuli, P., ‘La passione nel De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis', in Manuli, P. and Vegetti, M. (edd.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno: atti del terzo colloquio galenico intemazionale, Pavia, 10–12 settembre 1986 (Naples, 1988)Google Scholar and ch. 3 of my ‘Galen on the Soul’: the point is essentially that elements of a heart-centred psychophysiology appear to interfere with Galen's "official′ tripartition. As for difficulties in actual understanding of a scientific theory, see for example the texts regarding movement of the blood and the purpose of breathing discussed in Harris, C. R. S., The Heart and the Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine from Alcmaeon to Galen (Oxford, 1973) and in D. I Furley and J. S. Wilkie, Galen on Respiration and the Arteries (Princeton, 1984), and note the difficulty which those scholars experience in arriving at unequivocal interpretation.Google Scholar

10 Deplacitis, ed. De Lacy, P., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V.4.1.2, 3 vols (Berlin, 1980–4).Google Scholar

11 VI.8, KV 577.Google Scholar

12 De substantia naturalium facultatum, KIV 757–8. (This treatise is in fact a fragment of a late summation, ‘On his own opinions’, preserved in Latin;Google Scholarsee Nutton, V., ‘Galen's Philosophical Testament: "On my own Opinions"’, in Wiesner, J. ed., Aristoteles: Werk und Wirkung: Paul Moraux gewidmet, Pt II: Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben [Berlin and New York, 1987Google Scholar

13 For example, De sanitate tuenda II.4, K VI 105. Of course, this form of argument has a strong rhetorical sense in Galen, assisting his appropriation of the views of ‘the ancients’ as consonant with his own. This appropriation is often extraordinarily tendentious, particularly in the case of HippocratesGoogle Scholarsee Smith, W D., The Hippocratic Tradition [Ithaca, NY and London, 1979];Google ScholarManuli, P., ‘Lo stile del commento’, in Lasserre, F. and Mudry, P. [edd.], Formes de pensee dans la Collection Hippocratique [Geneva, 1983];Google Scholar id., ‘Traducibilita e molteplicita dei linguaggi nel De placitis di Galeno’, inCambiano, G. [ed.], Storiografla e dossografia nella filosofia antica [Turin, 1986];Google Scholar M. Vegetti, ‘Tradizione e verita: forme della storiografia filosofico-scientifica nel De placitis di Galeno’, in Ibid.; G. E. R. Lloyd, ‘Galen on Hellenistics and Hippocrateans: Contemporary Battles and Past Authorities’, in his Methods and Problems in Greek Science [Cambridge, 1991]; P. N. Singer, ‘Notes on Galen's Hippocrates’, in M. Vegetti and S. Gastaldi [edd.] Studi di storia della medicina antica e medievale [Florence, 1996]–though there are some remarkable features of the Galenic interpretation of Plato too; see, most recently, my ‘Galen on the Soul’, ch. 3.) (On Galen's Hippocratic commentaries see now also D. Manetti and A. Roselli, ‘Galeno commentatore di Ippocrate’, in ANRW II.37.2 [1994] 1528–1635.)

14 , Deordine librorum (ed. Müller, I. in vol. II of Scripta Minora [Leipzig, 1891],Google Scholartrans. Singer, Galen: Selected Works) 1, K XIX 49. On different audiences see Garofalo, I. and Vegetti, M., Opere scelte di Galeno (Turin, 1978), p. 1001; also Manuli, ‘Lo stile del commento’ on the notion of the Hippocratic commentary as a literary essay for the cultivated amateur rather than a work of actual medical usefulness. Note that its ‘uselessness’ in this case by no means detracts from the cultural cachet of the enterprise.Google Scholar

15 Ad Glauconem de methodo medendi I.I, K XI 3–4: . (See D. W. Petersen, ‘Galen's "Therapeutics to Glaucon" and its Early Commentators’ [Diss. Johns Hopkins, 1974], p. 46, on the view that Ad Glauconem was written for the ‘layman’.)Google Scholar

16 See De sanitate tuenda, IV. 1, K VI 233; cf. 1.5, K VI 13–14 ()- There is, relatedly, a distinction between theoretical exposition and what is ‘of practical value for therapy’ e.g. De usupartium XVII 1, KIV 351; but note here that what is of practical value is by no means coextensive with the subject-matter of Galen's great works of therapeutics.Google Scholar

17 ‘Galen on the Soul’, ch. 2, esp. pp. 87–112.Google Scholar

18 Consider esp. Ad Glauconem de methodo medendi I.I, K XI 2: ) ).Google Scholar

19 Issues of logic and scientific methodology in Galen have received more detailed attention from recent scholarship than have the specifics of his physical explanations.Google ScholarSee e.g. Frede, M., ‘On Galen's Epistemology’, in Nutton, Problems and Prospects, repr. in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Oxford, 1987);Google ScholarHankinson, R. J., ‘Galen on the Foundations of Science’, in Lopez Ferez, J. A. (ed.), Galeno: obra, pensamiento e influencia: colloquio internacional celebrado en Madrid, 22–25 de Marzo de 1988 (Madrid, 1991) and id., Galen on the Therapeutic Method, Books I and II (Oxford, 1991); J. Barnes, ‘Galen on Logic and Therapy’,Google Scholarin F. Kudlienand Durling, R. J. (edd.), Galen's Method of Healing: Proceedings of the 1982 Galen Symposium (Leiden, 1991)–Google Scholarnone of whom, however, addresses the question of differences across the Corpus which I am raising here. (Hankinson considers specifically Galen's causal system: ‘Galen and the Best of All Possible Worlds’, CQ 39:i [1989] 206–27; with specific reference to soul-accounts: ‘Actions and Passions: Affection, Emotion, and Moral Self-management in Galen's Philosophical Psychology’, in Passions and Perceptions: Studies in Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind: Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium Hellenisticum, ed. Brunschwig, J. and Nussbaum, M. C. [Cambridge, 1992], and especially in ‘Galen's Theory of Causation’, ANRW 11.37.2 (1994) 1757–74; but not in terms which are closely tied to Galen's different levels of physical analysis which will concern us in this paper. The last article mentioned, in particular, addresses the formal logical categories of causes, not the functioning of Galen's causal system as it were in practice–that is, within the complexity of his own physical and physiological theories.)Google Scholar

20 For example, Nutton in Wiesner, Aristoteles, p. 45: ‘[Galen] is, to a great extent, a materialist, and for all practical purposes, he sees the soul entirely as the servant of the body. Yet he is also a dualist... ’ Actually, one must admit a qualification even to such an apparently uncontentious balancing of the issue as that: Galen does recognize a specifically practical sense in which the soul is not the servant of the body, in the dietetic context where exercises are prescribed for both body and soul, and the influence of the latter may at times predominate. See De parvae pilae exercitio (trans Singer, in Galen: Collected Works) 1–2, esp. K V 900: and cf. De sanitate tuenda 1.8, K VI 40, on the importance of exercising the soul so that its affections (such as anger and fear) do not cause illness in the body. (On the extent to which there is an independent domain of the ‘mental’, especially in Galen's theory of health and in his psychopathology, see L. Garcia Ballester, ‘Soul and Body, Disease of the Soul and Disease of the Body in Galen's Medical Thought’, in Manuli and Vegetti, Le opere psicologiche; id., ‘On the Origins of the "Six Non-Natural Things" in Galen’,Google ScholarinKollesch, J. and Nickel, D. [edd.], Galen und das hellenistische Erbe: Verhandlungen des IV. Internationalen Galen-Symposiums [Stuttgart, 1993] and ch. 5 of my ‘Galen on the Soul’.)Google Scholar

21 De libris propriis (ed. I Miiller in vol. II of Scripta Minora, trans. Singer, in Galen: Selected Works); chronology: chs 1 and 2; theme: chs 3–5, and also 10 and 12, though with the latter there are clear relations with specific authors too; author: chs 6–10, 13–17. (Note that the three categories are overlapping ones: there is repetition of the titles of treatises.)Google ScholarSee now Mansfeld, J., Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author, or a Text (Leiden and New York, 1994), esp. chs 4 (‘Galen's Autobibliography and Hippocratic Commentaries’) and 5 (‘Galen on Exegesis and on Teachers and Pupils’), pp. 117–76, for discussion of Galen's account of his own works, emphasizing the didactic context. Also relevant is V. Boudon, ‘Les oeuvres de Galien pour les debutants ("De sectis", "De pulsibus ad tirones", "De ossibus ad tirones", "Ad Glauconem de methodo medendi" et "Ars medica"): medecine et pédagogie au IIe s. ap. J.-C, ANRW II.37.2(1994) 1421–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 De ordine librorum 4, K XIX 58–9.Google Scholar

23 On the cross-references see further belowGoogle Scholar

24 Considerable attention has been paid to the shifting manifestations of Galen's soul-theory in different treatises, but this is not quite the same as investigating the relationship between different areas of Galenic thought.Google Scholar(See Moraux, P., Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen, vol. II [Berlin and New York, 1984], pp. 778–780CrossRefGoogle Scholar[a developmental analysis, on which further below]; J. Kollesch, ’Anschauungen von den ‘ in der Ars Medica und die Seelenlehre Galens’, in Manuli and Vegetti, Le opere psicologiche [on the difficulties of reconciling the doctrines of one ‘Galenic’ treatise with Galen's soul-theory elsewhere]; most recently, my ‘Galen on the Soul’, esp. ch. 3.) The closest approaches to the question we are here considering are by Manuli (‘La passione nel Deplacitis’) who identifies the interference of different models of the soul present in the use of the term (cf. n. 9 above) and by M. Vegetti (‘I nervi dell′ anima’, in Kollesch and Nickel [edd.]), Galen und das hellenistische Erbe), who distinguishes a ‘mechanical’ and a ‘pneumatic’ system in Galen's accounts of psycho-physiological activities, related to different technological models. The subject of soul-theory in relation to physical theory is clearly of considerable relevance to the analysis of Galen's physical/biological theory, though it is beyond our scope now to address it head-on. For present purposes, soul-accounts may be regarded as constituting just another level of physical analysis, with the same attendant problems of transition as between other physical levels.

25 See the bibliography cited in n. 19 above.Google Scholar

26 Georg Harig, Bestimmung der Intensität im medizinischen System Galens: ein Beitrag zur theoretischen Pharmakologie, Nosologie und Therapie in der Galenischen Medizin (Berlin, 1974), is in a sense an exception, investigating the relationship between the humoral theory underlying Galen's pharmacological works and that which appears in the works of physical theory proper.Google Scholar

27 For example, De ordine librorum 2, K XIX 56: De temperamentis ‘follows’ () De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, which is in turn followed by De simplicibus medicamentis.Google Scholar

28 Different starting-points () are suggested for different kinds of people: those who are will want to start with De demonstration; but others too will be able to gain instruction from his other works (De ordine librorum 1–2, KXIX 53–4). The distinction is the Platonic one that the latter will have only , of the subjectsGoogle Scholar

29 II.6 (K X 122): . (Cf. the list at Ibid. 1.2, K X 15, which adds De optima constitutione but omits the works on the soul.) 30 In this context

30 In this context one must also consider the more elaborate curriculum proposed in the Ars medica (trans Singer, in Galen: Selected Works). (Doubt has been cast on the authenticity of this work [by Kollesch, ‘Anschauungen von den ’]; I am not ultimately convinced by her arguments, though this is not the place to go into them. The work is acknowledged at least to contain Galenic material, though it is not in any case central to my argument here. For what it is worth, though, the passage in question does seem to accord with Galen's general principles of ordering his own works, while adding some interesting details with respect to the other lists.) At Ars medica 37 (K I 407–12) some of the more abstract works are proposed to begin with (Ad Patrophilum, preceded by two on the ‘composition of arts’ [perhaps Protrepticus and Thrasybulus]); then the same central scheme as above, with De elementis succeded by () De temperamentis and De inaequali intemperie following () the first two books of De temperamentis (and the additional suggestion that book III of De temperamentis is important for the understanding of the pharmacological works); then also De optima constitutione and De bono habitu; and De naturalibus facultatibus read either after book II of De temperamentis or after De elementis. The works on psychological faculties come after these; but for this purpose works on anatomy, as well as works , are useful, and a substantial list is given of these–ots De usu partium. We then get a curriculum of treatises on diagnosis and prognosis. More useful than any other for therapeutic method is De differentiis morborum, as well as De differentiis symptomatum and thirdly De causis morborum; ols three more: De causis symptomatum, De simplicibus medicamentis (also mentioned above) and De compositione medicamentorum, which are followed by De methodo medendi and De sanitate tuenda. But before all this one must be schooled in the logical method, as was shown in De optima secta.

31 , K I 509

32 In the context of the definition of the subject of De sanitate tuenda, health: , I.I, K VI2. Cf. 1.2, K VI3; 1.4, K VI 12–13Google Scholar

33 Cf. n. 28 aboveGoogle Scholar

34 K I 232–5. See D. E. Dean-Jones, ‘Galen "On the Constitution of the Art of Medicine": Introduction, Translation, and Commentary’ (Diss. Texas, 1993), esp. pp. 36–7 for a full account of the slight variations in formulation of this distinction.Google Scholar

35 , ch. 9, K I 254Google Scholar

36 ., Ibid. K I 255.

37 , Ibid. KI 258. The language of ‘being composed from’ (), like the language of ‘consisting in’ (cf. n. 36 above) might already lead one to believe that the nature of the causal relationship is less than entirely certain.

38 Ch. 3, K VI 841.

39 1.1, K VII 275–7 (see also 1.3, K VII281): an account of the three basic types of heat related to the heart; 1.4, K VII283: innate heat is given as the source of on particular kind of fever

40 Ch. 2, K VII 2–3.

41 Whether the teleological analysis is in conflict with low-level physical determinism is a question which has given rise to much debate, especially in the context of discussions of Aristotle's biology and soul-theory.Google ScholarSee esp. Nussbaum, M. C., Aristotle's De motu animalium (Princeton, 1978);Google Scholarthe relevant essays in Gotthelf, A. and Lennox, J. G. (edd.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (Cambridge, 1987);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nussbaum, M. C. and Rorty, A. O. (edd.), Essays on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1992),Google Scholaresp. M. F. Burnyeat, ‘Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of Mind Still Credible? A Draft’ and M. C. Nussbaum and H. Putnam, ‘Changing Aristotle's Mind’. Our question here is somehow parallel to that at issue between the interpreters of Aristotle as a ‘functionalist’ (which involves a compatibilism between his material and formal or teleological accounts) and those who point to the radically alien nature of Aristotelian physical conceptions as an obstacle to incorporation of Aristotelian philosophy of mind within modern terminology. Which is not to say that to answer such a question for Aristotle is the same as to answer out question for Galen. But certainly Burnyeatian strictures as to the limits to the explanatory power of Aristotelian matter seem of central relevance to our conclusions in Galen's case.

42 The body is the instrument of the soul in De usu partium, and the usefulness of each part of the body is to be explained in terms of this relation (esp. 1.2–3, K III 2–7). It is true that the statements there do not actually entail independent existence of souls, only causal priority; and indeed De usu partium is consistent with other of Galen's works in professing agnosticism on the definition of the soul in its own right (VII.8, K III 542; this very hedging of the subject may be seem to fit with the conclusion of indeterminacy for Galen's system of causal explanations arrived at below). But Galen does say later in De usu partium–in the summing-up in book XVII of his argument from design–that ‘an intelligence endowed with wondrous power is present on earth and pervades all the parts’, and that this intelligence ‘arrives from the bodies above’, the fact that such intelligence as Plato's or Hipparchus‘ can come about in the mire of physical substances that is this earth, and that vovs inhabits the filth of flesh and juices, providing testimony to the far greater intelligence of the heavenly bodies (XVII. 1, K IV 358–60). It is true, still, that the independent existence or survival of individual human souls is not entailed; nevertheless the relation of intelligence and matter seems far from that of De temperamentis or Quod animi mores.

43 De sanitate tuenda I, K VI 15: .Google Scholar

44 Lloyd, G. E. R., ‘Scholarship, Authority and Argument in Galen's Quod animi mores’, in Manuli and Vegetti (edd.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno.Google Scholar

45 For example, those regarding the effects of diet and nurture as expounded in Plato's Timaeus and Laws (QAM 9–10, KIV 806–14).Google Scholar

46 See Hankinson, ‘Actions and Passions’, for a strong statement of this interpretation. Arguing against the interpretation of Lloyd (‘Scholarship, Authority and Argument’), he says (p. 218, n. 99): ‘[Galen's] position is compatible with the hardest determinism you care to espouse, and his motivation in this passage is precisely to show that whatever view one takes of causal determination, you [sic] can still rescue a notion of responsibility that will do the work you require of it in forensic and moral contexts.’ Cf. Ibid. p. 221, n. 103, where Hankinson defends the position that Galen is a ‘materialist’, but only (at this point in his argument) on the evidence of Quod animi mores. Against this it should be pointed out that the position of that work itself is not univocal, especially in the matter of soul-krasis identity statements. At Quod animi mores 4, KIV 782, for example, we have the doctrine that ‘the mortal part of the soul’ is identical to the mixture of the body, not the full-blown identity suggested elsewhere. Hankinson's summing-up after his reconstruction of Galen's position is in a way a summing-up of the problems for such reconstructions: ‘Whether Galen ever really espoused that picture in its full generality is unclear. That he is committed to it seems obvious enough on the evidence I have presented’ (p. 222). The question for the seasoned Galenist is, rather, precisely that of whether Galen is committed to the full generality of a picture he espouses.

47 The treatise has as a specific polemical target those Platonists who do not accept any talk of the body's influence on the soul, at least in healthy states, and it may be adopting a particularly extreme stance in the context of this rhetoric (QAM 9, K IV 805: .). AS to lateness, see my argument below on developmental accounts. (On the chronology of Galen's works in general, the fundamental account is that of J. Ilberg, ‘Uber die Schriftstellerei des Klaudios Galenos’, Rheinisches Museum 44 [1889] 207–39; 47 [1892] 489–514; 51 [1896] 165–96; 52 [1897] 591–623; to be considered in conjunction with K. Bardong, ‘Beitrage zur Hippokrates- und Galenforschung’, Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Phil.-hist. Klasse [Jahrgang 1942] 577–640.)Google Scholar

48 De temperamentis II.6, K I 625: . It should, however, be borne in mind in this context that Aristotle himself sometimes expresses himself in similar terms in his biological works, and that some would argue that such verbal formulations are not of great philosophical importance. See n. 41 above on the arguable ‘compatibility’ of Aristotelian teleological and material accounts.

49 We note in passing that the other possibility mentioned–the first of the alternatives–at least seems to imply a particular interpretation of , namely that of complete determination: only two possibilities are mentioned, that of following and that of the higher cause; so it would seem to be a consequence that on the former account all relevant causal factors must be included in this ‘following’ of the mixture, and so we would have low-level determinism.

50 We may compare also De naturalibus facultatibus 1.5–6, K II 10–11, where there is a dichotomy between the transformation of the underlying to bring about such substances as bone and nerve, and the of the thus transformed to give it the right shape, position, etc.

51 De foetuum formatione (trans. Singer, in Galen: Selected Works) 6, K IV 700–1.

52 This intuition of a ‘rift’ can be related to Platonism and in particular to Middle Platonism; see P. Donini's (somewhat involved) account of the philosophical problems of De foetuum formatione in relation to other works of Galen: ‘Motivi filosofici in Galeno’, Parola del passato 35, fasc. 94 (1980) 333–70 and, on Middle Platonism more generally, id. Le scuole, I'anima, I'impero: lafilosofia antica da Antioco a Plotino (Turin, 1982) and J. M. Dillon, The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity (Hampshire and Brookfield, VT, 1990).

53 1, K. IV 734. For this text see R. J. Penella and T. S. Hall, ‘Galen's "On the Best Constitution of our Body": Introduction, Translation and Notes’, BHM Al (1973) 282–96 (also trans, in Singer, Galen: Selected Works); but the article does not address directly the fundamental question raised by this first sentence of the treatise.

54 KIV 749.

55 See n. 37 above.

56 Again (cf. n. 41 above) cautions as to the fundamental differences in ancient conceptions of matter must be of relevance. And these cautions function, as it were, in both directions: it is true both that the purport of such a reductivist statement as that which I have just formulated tends to rely on a notion of simple, lawlike (Newtonian) behaviour on the part of the lowest material level in question, so that to ‘reduce’ a higher level to a lower is to bring it within such a lawlike framework (whereas Galenic elements or qualities are endowed with properties not to be anticipated within such a scheme) and that the ‘composition’ or ‘construction’ that the Galenic elements or homoiomeries undergo in the process of ‘ascending’ levels is something which must be imposed upon that level, i.e. is not a feature of the physics of that level considered on its own. So that in this case the question ‘do events at level Y constitute sufficient conditions of events at level X?’ seems almost to be an ill-formed question: it is the composition of (mixture of, construction from) that is the sufficient condition of the higher-level events; but this composition/construction/mixture is precisely what constitutes the higher level.

57 Moraux, Aristotelismus, pp. 778–80. (Ilberg, ‘Die Schriftstellerei’, incidentally also identified a shift of emphasis over time, but this a broader one, from more scientifically abstract interests to the more practical.)

58 Nutton has pointed to the potential importance of De sententiis, a work summing up Galen's own philosophical opinions towards the end of his life, for the analysis of Galen's philosophical progression, or at least of his final position (see n. 12 above); but, at the same time, his own summary of that work shows that Galen does not evaluate his own work in terms of a chronological progression, let alone repudiate early works which he might have ‘gone beyond’. (Galen's change of mind on the temporal order of development of organs in the foetus, mentioned in ch. X 2–3 of De sententiis and attested also at Defoetuumformatione, K IV 663–4, is an isolated case.) Rather, the different types of analysis which raise the problems under discussion in this paper are mentioned alongside each other, with no consciousness of a conflict. This ‘philosophical testament’ thus further undermines the value of a developmental analysis.

59 Cf. Bardong, Nachrichten, pp. 633–6: De usupartium I, a.d. 162–6; Deplacitis V, A.D. 162–6; De praesag. ex puls., A.D. 169–75Google Scholar

60 Ilberg, ‘Die Schriftstellerei’, II, p. 513. Note that the statement of the relation of soul faculties to the body at De foetuum formatione 3, K IV 674––is quite ambiguous as to causal priority (in spite of a cross-reference here to Quod animi mores).

61 Though it does contain the striking claim that the substance of each organic part, including the brain, is identical with the particular mixture of elements in that part.