Alcmaeon and empedocles biography

It should be underlined that pioneered by Alcmaeon empirical trend in Greek philosophy was later developed by Hippocrates ca. Importantly, Alcmaeon probably conducted autopsies on animal organisms [ 5 ]. In ancient times, he was considered as a father of anatomy, which is proof of his very knowledgeable [ 3 ]. Diogenes Laertius defined Alcmaeon as a teacher, whose leading field was a medicine.

However, the writer pointed out that alcmaeon and empedocles biography was not the only of his interest. Philosopher from Croton also conducted research in the field of natural philosophy, which was guided by the principle of opposites, expressed in the saying, "Most human things go in pairs", which also Aristotle mentioned in the Metaphysics [ 16 ].

Thus, he rejected the possibility of learning by similarities — just as later Anaxagoras did [ 7 ]. Favorinus in the Various stories admitted that Alcmaeon was the first Pythagorean philosopher who wrote a treatise On nature which title was given to many various papers in Antiquity [ 18 ]. Of course, sharing the views of the Pythagoreans did not mean personal contact with Pythagoras ca.

According to K. Panegyres, there is no evidence that Alcmaeon has ever met Pythagoras [ 9 ]. As it is known, Pythagoras did not leave any writings, and knowledge of his study was mainly due to Neoplatonic thinkers. Aristotle said that Alcmaeon defined the nature of the celestial bodies as eternal, comparing them to the soul — immortal as opposed to the body and which is like the sun, in constant motion [ 10 ].

The philosopher of Croton believed that a person can rely on a limited analysis of the facts. And in consequence that only gods can know anything about what imperceptible [ 1 ]. It is not a negation of religion but limiting its role to which transcends human cognition and what does not transfer directly into the life or health. According to Alcmaeon, our health depends on the balance of properties, wet and dry, hot and cold, bitter, sweet, and so on, and that any disproportion leads to diseases.

In his opinion, domination of even one is harmful to the body. He said that the disease develops, in some alcmaeon and empedocles biographies, the excess heat or cold, with some of the excess food in another fault of the blood, bone or brain. Moreover, we should take into account external factors as water quality, soil, environment and other factors causing disease.

Thus, health depends on the equal distribution of proportion [ 11 ]. Alcmeon in his medical studies also dealt with what is now called embryology. He disagreed with the prevailing view in Greek science next centuries preserved by Aristotle that the offspring were born solely from the seed of a father, without maternal material. Censorinus underlined that the subject of the various authors' controversy is whether the offspring are born solely from the semen of the father, as Diogenes, Hippo and Stoic thought, or also from maternal seed material, as — according to Censorinus — Anaxagoras, Alcmaeon, Parmenides, Empedocles and Epicurus [ 12 ].

Thus, Alcmaeon also explained the sex on a proportional basis. In his opinion, the sex of a child was the same as the sex of the parent from which the greater number of semen; moreover, he believed that semen is included in the brain [ 12 ]. Alcmaeon considered that equilibrium is a condition of health, what then Empedocles repeated [ 13 ]. This equilibrium will be called homeostasis, but it will only be in the twentieth century i.

As we know, Alcmaeon was the first scientist who thought that the brain plays a guiding role in the body gr. Exactly in the body, he invested the source of intelligence unlike Empedocles [ 15 ]. Alcmaeon's theory based on the Pythagorean beliefs that the brain is a source of mind, soul, and logic, and the heart he called the place of formation of feelings [ 16 ].

Alcmaeon claimed directly that the chief power in the human body is the brain, what Robert Doty compared to the Copernican or Darwinian breakthrough [ 17 ]. It should be underlined, that Alcmaeon certainly had a lot of courage and curiosity in conducting such studies. Therefore, he is similar to Copernicus or Darwin not only thanks to his discoveries but also because of his inner determination and huge obstinately.

Alcmaeon initiated the right path, which was finally confirmed in modern times. According to the philosopher's constatations — the head is already full development in utero, which does not mean that the brain gets the fullness of their potential [ 11 ]. Finally, in the fourteenth year of life, as he claimed, the brain develops in man "perfect reason", which was also the conviction of Zeno of Kitio and Aristotle [ 3 ].

Therefore, Alcmaeon seems to be the precursor of the organic equilibrium theory, which has survived until modern times. As he pointed out, the moderation called substantial balance is the guarantee of human health Alcmaeon used the term politically inspired — gr. He mentioned food as one of the possible causes of disease states; for Hippocratic medicine the question of nutritionist was crucial.

Alcmeon also wrote about the threat posed by the ongoing processes in the organs. It is all about the brain, which, like other organs, it can become a place where the various diseases are generated. Alcmaeon emphasized the importance of external factors from the environment — it seems to be the prototype of environmental medicine. This is not only one resemblance to Hippocratic study.

In fact, Alcmaeon in many ways seems like Hippocrates. Such skepticism about human knowledge is characteristic of one strand of early Greek thought. Most of the subjects that Alcmaeon went on to discuss in his book could not be settled by a direct appeal to sense perception e. Alcmaeon is decidedly not an extreme skeptic, however, in that he is willing to assign clear understanding about such things to the gods and by implication admits that even humans have clear understanding of what is directly perceptible.

Moreover, while humans cannot attain clarity about what cannot be perceived, Alcmaeon thinks that they can make reasonable judgments from the signs that are presented to them by sensation tekmairesthai. He thus takes the stance of the scientist who draws inferences from what can be perceived, and he implicitly rejects the claims of those who base their account of the world on the certainty of a divine revelation e.

There are difficulties with the text of Fr. Some scholars exclude the material in brackets above because it is hard to see how to connect it to what precedes e. Gemelli Marciano18—22on the other hand, has suggested that the material in brackets above should be kept but made dependent on the immediately preceding phrase rather than coordinated with it, so that the fragment would read:.

Passages in the Greek medical writings of the fifth century provide clear parallels for the difficulty of knowing about the interior of the body and invisible maladies Gemelli Marciano20— On this reading Fr. Parallels with medical treatises suggest that, after first raising difficulties about medical knowledge in these matters, Alcmaeon may have gone on to assert that these difficulties can be overcome with the proper teaching, the teaching that followed in his book.

If this is the correct context in which to read the fragment, it is not so much about the limits of understanding as the success of medical teaching in overcoming apparent limits.

Alcmaeon and empedocles biography: Alcmaeon (flourished 6th century bc)

According to Theophrastus, Alcmaeon was the first Greek thinker to distinguish between sense perception and understanding and to use this distinction to separate animals, which only have sense perception, from humans, who have both sense perception and understanding DK, B1a, A5. Alcmaeon is also the first to argue that the brain is the central organ of sensation and thought DK, A5, A8, A There is no explicit evidence, however, as to what Alcmaeon meant by understanding.

Animals have brains too, however, and thus might appear to be able to carry out the simple correlation of the evidence from the various senses, whereas the human ability to make inferences and judgments DK, B1 appears to be a more plausible candidate for the distinctive activity of human intelligence. He also reports the view that it is the brain that furnishes the sensations of hearing, sight, and smell.

Socrates connects this view of the brain with an empiricist epistemology, which Aristotle will later adopt Posterior Analytics a3 ff.

Alcmaeon and empedocles biography: Alcmaeon of Croton was an early

This epistemology involves three steps: first, the brain provides the sensations of hearing, sight and smell, then, memory and opinion arise from these, and finally, when memory and opinion achieve fixity, alcmaeon and empedocles biography arises. He has also been hailed as the first to use dissection, but this is based on a hasty reading of the evidence.

Most of what Calcidius goes on to describe, however, are the discoveries of Herophilus some two centuries after Alcmaeon LloydMansfeldSolmsen The only conclusions we can reasonably draw about Alcmaeon from the passage are that he excised the eyeball of an animal and observed poroi channels, i. There is no evidence, however, that Alcmaeon dissected the eye itself or that he dissected the skull in order to trace the optic nerve all the way to the brain.

It is striking in this regard that Alcmaeon gave no account of touch DK, A5which is the only sense not specifically tied to the head. It would be a serious mistake then to say that Alcmaeon discovered dissection or that he was the father of anatomy, since there is no evidence that he used dissection systematically or even that he did more than excise a single eyeball.

Theophrastus says that Alcmaeon did not explain sensation by the principle of like to like i. Unfortunately he gives no general account of how Alcmaeon did think sensation worked DK, A5. Alcmaeon explained each of the individual senses with the exception of touch, but these accounts are fairly rudimentary. He regarded the eye as composed of water and fire and vision as taking place when what is seen is reflected in the gleaming and translucent part of the eye.

Hearing arises when an external sound is first transmitted to the outer ear and then picked up by the empty space kenon in the inner ear, which transmits it to the brain. Taste occurs through the tongue, which being warm and soft dissolves things with its heat and, because of its loose texture, receives and transmits the sensation.

Smell is the simplest of all. Barnes— and Hankinson30—3 provide the most insightful analysis. Alcmaeon appears to have started from the assumption that the soul is always in motion. At one extreme we might suppose that Alcmaeon only developed the simple argument from analogy, which Aristotle assigns to him De An. The soul is like the heavenly bodies, which Alcmaeon regarded as divine and immortal DK, A1, A12in being always in motion, so it is also like them in being immortal.

This is clearly fallacious, since it assumes that things that are alike in one respect will be alike in all others. The version in the doxographical tradition is more sophisticated DK, A Alcmaeon thought that the soul moved itself in continual motion and was therefore immortal and like to the divine. The similarity to the divine is not part of the inference here but simply an illustrative comparison.

Examination of the context in Aetius shows that the self-motion of the soul, which is attested independently for Plato and Xenocrates, was projected back on Pythagoras and Thales, who are very unlikely to have held such a view. The core of the simpler argument is the necessary truth that what is always in motion must be immortal. Plato makes no mention of Alcmaeon in the passage.

There are still serious questions for Alcmaeon, even on the more sophisticated version of the argument. We might well recognize that things with souls, i. We might also conclude that the soul, as what moves something else, must be in motion itself the synonymy principle of causation. But why did Alcmaeon suppose that the soul must be always in motion?

Hankinson [, 32] provides two possible answers and discusses the difficulties with them.

Alcmaeon and empedocles biography: Alcmaeon of Croton was

Horn argues that there is no obvious meaning to the idea that the human soul is in continual motion so that Alcmaeon must be talking about a world soul, which has the continual motion of the heavens—8. Finally, what sort of motion is being ascribed to souls? Plato describes the soul as composed of two circles with contrary motions, which imitate the contrary motions of the fixed stars and the planets, so that the soul becomes a sort of orrery in the head Timaeus 44d.

It has been suggested that this image is borrowed from Alcmaeon Barnes; Skemp36 ff. It seems likely, however, that Alcmaeon distinguished between human beings as individual bodies, which do perish, and as souls, which do not Barnes There is no evidence about what Alcmaeon thought happened to the soul, when the body perished, however. Did he believe in reincarnation as the Pythagoreans did?

No ancient source associates Alcmaeon with reincarnation and his sharp distinction between animals and human beings may suggest that he did not believe in it Guthrie He might have thought that the soul joined other divine beings in the heavens. The point of Fragment 2 may be that, whereas the heavenly alcmaeon and empedocles biographies do join their beginnings to their ends in circular motion, humans are not able to join their end in old age to their beginning in childhood, i.

We might even suppose that the soul tries to impose such a structure on the body from its own circular motion but ultimately fails Guthrie It has been rather speculatively suggested that, since Alcmaeon explains alcmaeon and empedocles biography and waking by the blood retreating into the inner vessels and then expanding again into the outer vessels see 3.

This is, in fact, not a fragment but a testimonium and much of the language comes from the doxographical tradition rather than Alcmaeon. The report goes on to say that Alcmaeon thought that disease arose because of an excess of heat or cold, which in turn arose because of an excess or deficiency in nutrition. Disease is said to arise in the blood, the marrow, or the brain.

It can also be caused by external factors such as the water, the locality, toil, or violence. The idea that health depends on a balance of opposed factors in the body is a commonplace in Greek medical writers. Although Alcmaeon is the earliest figure to whom such a conception of health is attributed, it may well be that he is not presenting an original thesis but rather drawing on the earlier medical tradition in Croton.

Perhaps what is distinctive to Alcmaeon is the use of the specific political metaphor and most scholars e. Moreover, we should take into account external factors as water quality, soil, environment and other factors causing disease. Thus, health depends on the equal distribution of proportion. Alcmeon in his medical studies also dealt with what is now called embryology.

He disagreed with the prevailing view in Greek science next centuries preserved by Aristotle that the offspring were born solely from the seed of a father, without maternal material. In his opinion, the sex of a child was the same as the sex of the parent from which the greater number of semen; moreover, he believed that semen is included in the brain.

Alcmaeon considered that equilibrium is a condition of health, what then Empedocles repeated. This equilibrium will be called homeostasis, but it will only be in the twentieth century i. As we know, Alcmaeon was the first scientist who thought that the brain plays a guiding role in the body gr. Exactly in the body, he invested the source of intelligence.

Alcmaeon claimed directly that the chief power in the human body is the brain, what Robert Doty compared to the Copernican or Darwinian breakthrough. It should be underlined, that Alcmaeon certainly had a lot of courage and curiosity in conducting such studies. Therefore, he is similar to Copernicus or Darwin not only thanks to his discoveries but also because of his inner determination and huge obstinately.

Alcmaeon initiated the right path, which was finally confirmed in modern times. Therefore, Alcmaeon seems to be the precursor of the organic equilibrium theory, which has survived until modern times. As he pointed out, the moderation called substantial balance is the guarantee of human health. Alcmeon also wrote about the threat posed by the ongoing processes in the organs.

It is all about the brain, which, like other organs, it can become a place where the various diseases are generated. PMID S2CID Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Diogenes Laertius states that he was a disciple of Pythagoras, [viii. In William Smith ed. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Archived from the original on In Hornblower, Simon ed. Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A History of Greek Philosophy. London: Cambridge University Press. PMC Lyons, M. Joseph Petrucelli, II, M. Medicinae Cultor. PertinentiaNorimb. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. ISSN X. The Mathematical Gazette.

JSTOR References [ edit ]. Attribution [ edit ]. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Ancient Greek schools of philosophy. Epimenides Pherecydes. Thales Anaximander Anaximenes. Heraclitus Cratylus.