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Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology
In Miletus, about 550 B.C., together with our world-picture cosmology was born. This book tells the story. In Part One the reader is introduced in the archaic world-picture of a flat earth with the cupola of the celestial vault onto which the celestial bodies are attached. One of the subjects treated in that context is the riddle of the tilted celestial axis. This part also contains an extensive chapter on archaic astronomical instruments. Part Two shows how Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) blew up this archaic world-picture and replaced it by a new one that is essentially still ours. He taught that the celestial bodies orbit at different distances and that the earth floats unsupported in space. This makes him the founding father of cosmology. Part Three discusses topics that completed the new picture described by Anaximander. Special attention is paid to the confrontation between Anaxagoras and Aristotle on the question whether the earth is flat or spherical, and on the battle between Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus on the question whether the universe is finite or infinite.
Anaximander in Context
Promoting a new, broadly interdisciplinary horizon for future studies in early Greek philosophy, Dirk L. Couprie, Robert Hahn, and Gerard Naddaf establish the cultural context in which Anaximander's thought developed and in which the origins of Greek philosophy unfolded in its earliest stages. In order to better understand Anaximander's achievement, the authors call our attention to the historical, social, political, technological, cosmological, astronomical, and observational contexts of his thought. Anaximander in Context brings to the forefront of modern debates the importance of cultural context, and the indispensability of images to clarify ancient ideologies.
Apeiron
This book offers an innovative analysis of the Greek philosopher Anaximander’s work. In particular, it presents a completely new interpretation of the key word Apeiron, or boundless, offering readers a deeper understanding of his seminal cosmology and, with it, his unique conception of the origin of the universe. Anaximander traditionally applied Apeiron to designate the origin of everything. The authors’ investigation of the extant sources shows, however, that this common view misses the mark. They argue that instead of reading Apeiron as a noun, it should be considered an adjective, with reference to the term phusis (nature), and that the phrase phusis apeiros may express the boundless...
The Ordered Day
Traces how the day has served as a key organizing concept in Roman culture—and beyond. How did ancient Romans keep track of time? What constituted a day in ancient Rome was not the same twenty-four hours we know today. In The Ordered Day, James Ker traces how the day served as a key organizing concept, both in antiquity and in modern receptions of ancient Rome. Romans used the story of how the day emerged as a unit of sociocultural time to give order to their own civic and imperial history. Ancient literary descriptions of people's daily routines articulated distinctive forms of life within the social order. And in the imperial period and beyond, outsiders—such as early Christians in the...
When the Earth Was Flat
This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle’s proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.
The Greek Concept of Nature
In The Greek Concept of Nature, Gerard Naddaf utilizes historical, mythological, and linguistic perspectives to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis. Usually translated as nature, phusis has been decisive both for the early history of philosophy and for its subsequent development. However, there is a considerable amount of controversy on what the earliest philosophers—Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus—actually had in mind when they spoke of phusis or nature. Naddaf demonstrates that the fundamental and etymological meaning of the word refers to the whole process of birth to maturity. He argues that the use of phusis in the famous expression Peri phuseos or historia peri phuseos refers to the origin and the growth of the universe from beginning to end. Naddaf's bold and original theory for the genesis of Greek philosophy demonstrates that archaic and mythological schemes were at the origin of the philosophical representations, but also that cosmogony, anthropogony, and politogony were never totally separated in early Greek philosophy.
Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy VI
This collection of essays on early Greek philosophy focuses on the natural and moral philosophy and the intellectual developments that led up to the philosophy of Plato. Studies of the philosophies of Anaximander, Zeno of Elea, Empedocles, the Pythagoreans, Atomists, and Sophists are included. These essays explore many of the liveliest topics in the study of early Greek philosophy today; they deal with a significant range of the most important figures in the period, and represent several varying methodological approaches. Among the issues addressed include the origins of Hellenic speculative philosophy; the beginnings of "naturalistic" or "scientific" thought; the development of philosophical "schools" of thought; the reevaluation of Hegel's view of early Greek philosophy as dominated by a dialectic between the immobility of being posited by Parmenides and the absolute flux of Heraclitus; and the ways in which the work of early Greek philosophers anticipate some of the recent epistemological concerns of skeptics and postmodern philosophers.
Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was the cradle of philosophy in the Western tradition. Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece brings the thoughts and lives of the pioneers of Western philosophy down from their sometimes remote heights and introduces them to a modern audience. Comprising seventy essays, written by internationally distinguished scholars in a lively and accessible style, this book presents the values, ideas, wisdom and arguments of the most significant thinkers from the world of ancient Greece. Commencing with Thales of Miletus and continuing to the end of the Ancient Period of philosophy by way of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Epictetus this book explores the major contributions of each philosopher as well as looking at archaeological and historical sites where they lived, worked and thought. This book is an outstanding introduction to the world of the philosophers of Ancient Greece.
The Metaphysics of the Pythagorean Theorem
Bringing together geometry and philosophy, this book undertakes a strikingly original study of the origins and significance of the Pythagorean theorem. Thales, whom Aristotle called the first philosopher and who was an older contemporary of Pythagoras, posited the principle of a unity from which all things come, and back into which they return upon dissolution. He held that all appearances are only alterations of this basic unity and there can be no change in the cosmos. Such an account requires some fundamental geometric figure out of which appearances are structured. Robert Hahn argues that Thales came to the conclusion that it was the right triangle: by recombination and repackaging, all ...
Chora, Volume Six
An interdisciplinary collection of essays in the history and philosophy of architecture.
