Gregory, Andrew (Author)
Bloomsbury Academic
Physical Details: 256
Language: English
This book examines the philosophies of nature of the early Greek thinkers and argues that a significant and thoroughgoing shift is required in our understanding of them. In contrast with the natural world of the earliest Greek literature, often the result of arbitrary divine causation, in the work of early Ionian philosophers we see the idea of a cosmos: ordered worlds where there is complete regularity. How was this order generated and maintained and what underpinned those regularities? What analogies or models were used for the order of the cosmos? What did they think about causation and explanatory structure? How did they frame natural laws?Andrew Gregory draws on recent work on mechanistic philosophy and its history, on the historiography of the relation of science to art, religion and magic, and on the fragments and doxography of the early Greek thinkers to argue that there has been a tendency to overestimate the extent to which these early Greek philosophies of nature can be described as 'mechanistic'. We have underestimated how far they were committed to other modes of explanation and ontologies, and we have underestimated, underappreciated and indeed underexplored how plausible and good these philosophies would have been in context.
...MoreReview Clifford Cunningham (2021) Review of "Early Greek Philosophies of Nature". Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (pp. 237-239).
Similar Citations
Book
Gregory, Andrew;
(2007)
Ancient Greek Cosmogony
(/isis/citation/CBB001036036/)
Book
Kullmann, Wolfgang;
(2010)
Naturgesetz in der Vorstellung der Antike, besonders der Stoa: Eine Begriffsuntersuchung
(/isis/citation/CBB001220039/)
Article
Michele Alessandrelli;
(2020)
Ita relinqui nihil praeter ignem. Gli Stoici antichi tra cosmogonia e conflagrazione
(/isis/citation/CBB466933097/)
Article
Ian Hensley;
(2021)
The Physics of Stoic Cosmogony
(/isis/citation/CBB349696930/)
Article
Andrew, Gregory;
(2014)
Parmenides, Cosmology and Sufficient Reason
(/isis/citation/CBB001321033/)
Article
Jelinek, Elizabeth;
(2011)
Pre-Cosmic Necessity in Plato's Timaeus
(/isis/citation/CBB001250015/)
Chapter
Runia, David T.;
(2003)
Plato's Timaeus, First Principle(s), and Creation in Philo and Early Christian Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB000410980/)
Chapter
Jaulin, Annick;
(2011)
Straton et la question du temps comme nombre du mouvement
(/isis/citation/CBB001210240/)
Chapter
Keyser, Paul T.;
(2011)
Elemental Qualities in Flux: A Reconstruction of Strato's Theory of Elements
(/isis/citation/CBB001210238/)
Article
Anders, John;
(2013)
Problēmata Mēchanika, the Analytics, and Projectile Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB001200188/)
Article
Anders, John;
(2013)
Problĕmata Mĕchanika, the Analytics, and Projectile Motion
(/isis/citation/CBB001212323/)
Book
Liba Taub;
(2020)
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science
(/isis/citation/CBB804529002/)
Article
Lennox, James G.;
(2010)
Aristotle's Natural Science: The Many and the One
(/isis/citation/CBB001221300/)
Book
Burns, Tony;
(2011)
Aristotle and Natural Law
(/isis/citation/CBB001033685/)
Book
Thanassas, Panagiotis;
(2007)
Parmenides, Cosmos, and Being: A Philosophical Interpretation
(/isis/citation/CBB001036033/)
Book
Fortenbaugh, William W.;
Pender, E. E.;
(2009)
Heraclides of Pontus: Discussion
(/isis/citation/CBB001036064/)
Book
Vamvacas, Constantine J.;
(2009)
The Founders of Western Thought: The Presocratics: A Diachronic Parallelism between Presocratic Thought and Philosophy and the Natural Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB001033008/)
Essay Review
De Groot, Jean;
(2012)
Rethinking the Meaning of Mechanism in Antiquity
(/isis/citation/CBB001500160/)
Chapter
Pellegrin, Pierre;
(2011)
La physique de Straton de Lampsaque: Dans la lignée de Georges Rodier
(/isis/citation/CBB001210235/)
Book
Stephanie Holton;
(2022)
Sleep and Dreams in Early Greek Thought: Presocratic and Hippocratic Approaches
(/isis/citation/CBB475224240/)
Be the first to comment!