Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T10:55:25.837Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 9 - The Beauty That Lies Within

Anatomy, Mechanics and Thauma in Hellenistic Medicine

from Part III - Towards the Mechanization of the Human Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

By
George Kazantzidis
Edited by
Maria Gerolemou  and
George Kazantzidis
Maria Gerolemou
Affiliation:
Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington
George Kazantzidis
Affiliation:
University of Patras, Greece
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores two scripts of thauma (marvel/wonder) regarding the interior of the human body: the first derives from the Aristotelian idea that a purpose can be assigned to virtually everything in the world, our interior organs included; as soon as the design within our bodies has been figured out, our interior instantly enters the realm of the beautiful. The second script of marvel pertains to the idea that there are little ‘machines’ and ‘sub-machines’ inside of us, with their own complex structures and their own distinctive power to make us marvel at their artistry and efficiency. Considerable attention has been paid recently on the reevaluation of the presumed polarity between teleology and mechanics in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine. Rather than assume a mutually exclusive relationship between the two, scholars argue that the two models can be seen as converging and combining with each other in a number of significant ways. An organ which looks like a machine is still working with a specific purpose; in fact, its machine-like design can be adduced as a confirmation of the fact that nature did everything in wisdom. Differences, however, persist, and one of them relates to the important issue that teleology ascribes the purpose of things to an invisible force, whereas a mēchanē has a human constructor. To argue that the body can be figurally understood in analogy with a machine can thus be seen as opening, among other things, new avenues concerning the question of how we look at and appreciate the body’s marvellous properties: kallos in this case, while still being thought to ultimately derive from a superhuman designer, is simultaneously more concretely understood and appreciated in practice with direct reference to the inventiveness of the human mind.

Keywords

thaumateleologymechanicsAristotleErasistratusHellenistic anatomybeauty.
Type
Chapter
Information
Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity , pp. 218 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asper, M. 2017. ‘Machines on Paper: From Words to Acts in Ancient Mechanics’, in Formisano, M. and van der Eijk, P. J., eds., Knowledge, Text and Practice in Ancient Technical Writing (Cambridge), 27–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrey, M. 2017. Hellenistic Science at Court (Berlin).Google Scholar
Berryman, S. 2009. The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berryman, S. 2020. ‘Ancient Greek Mechanics and the Mechanical Hypothesis’, in Taub, L., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science (Cambridge), 229–47.Google Scholar
Brain, P. 1986. Galen on Bloodletting: A Study of the Origins, Development and Validity of His Opinions, with a Translation of the Three Works (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Brock, A. J. 1916. Galen: On the Natural Faculties (Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
Craik, E. 2006. Two Hippocratic Treatises, On Sight and On Anatomy (Leiden).Google Scholar
Craik, E. 2015. The ‘Hippocratic’ Corpus: Content and Context (New York).Google Scholar
Craik, E. 2017. ‘Teleology in Hippocratic Texts: Clues to the Future?’, in Rocca, J., ed., Teleology in the Ancient World: Philosophical and Medical Approaches (Cambridge), 203–16.Google Scholar
Cuomo, S. 2007. Technology and Culture in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Cuomo, S. 2008. ‘Technology’, in Oleson, J. P., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (Oxford), 15–34.Google Scholar
Cuomo, S. 2018. ‘Greek Mechanics’, in Jones, A. and Taub, L., eds., The Cambridge History of Science: Volume i: Ancient Science (Cambridge), 449–67.Google Scholar
Cuypers, M. 2010. ‘Historiography, Rhetoric, and Science: Rethinking a Few Assumptions on Hellenistic Prose’ in Clauss, J. J. and Cuypers, M., eds., A Companion to Hellenistic Literature (Chichester), 317–36.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. 2000. Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (Boston).Google Scholar
Erginel, M. M. 2019. ‘Plato on Pleasures Mixed with Pains: An Asymetrical Account’, OSAP, 56: 73–122.Google Scholar
Fisher, N. 2017. ‘Demosthenes and the Use of Disgust’, in Lateiner, D. and Spatharas, D., eds., The Ancient Emotion of Disgust (Oxford), 103–24.Google Scholar
Flemming, R. 2005. ‘Empires of Knowledge: Medicine and Health in the Hellenistic World’, in Erskine, A., ed., A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford), 449–63.Google Scholar
Flemming, R. 2009. ‘Demiurge and Emperor in Galen’s World of Knowledge’, in Gill, C., Whitmarsh, T. and Wilkins, J., eds., Galen and the World of Knowledge (Cambridge), 59–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frede, M. 1988. ‘The Empiricist Attitude Towards Reason and Theory’ in Hankinson, R. J., ed., Method, Medicine and Metaphysics: Studies in the Philosophy of Ancient Science. Apeiron, 21: 70–97.Google Scholar
Furley, D. 1989. Cosmic Problems: Essays on Greek and Roman Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Garofalo, I. 1988. Erasistrati Fragmenta (Pisa).Google Scholar
Gelber, J. 2021. ‘Teleological Perspectives in Aristotle’s Biology’, in Connell, S. M., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge), 97–113.Google Scholar
Gleason, M. 2009. ‘Shock and Awe: The Performance Dimension of Galen’s Anatomy Demonstrations’, in Gill, C., Whitmarsh, T. and Wilkins, J., eds., Galen and the World of Knowledge (Cambridge), 85–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glucklich, A. 2001. Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul (Oxford).Google Scholar
Grant, R. M. 2011. Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Eugene, OR).Google Scholar
Gundert, B. 1992. ‘Parts and Their Roles in Hippocratic Medicine’, Isis, 83: 453–65.Google Scholar
Hankinson, R. J. 1995. ‘The Growth of Medical Empiricism’, in Bates, D., ed., Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions (Cambridge), 60–83.Google Scholar
Hankinson, R. J. 1997. ‘Hellenistic Biological Sciences’, in Furley, D., ed., From Aristotle to Augustine: Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. 2 (London), 320–55.Google Scholar
Hankinson, R. J. 1998a. Galen: On Antecedent Causes, Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Hankinson, R. J. 1998b. Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought (Oxford).Google Scholar
Hett, W. S., ed. 1936. Aristotle: Minor Works (Cambridge, MA).Google Scholar
Hegele, A. 2022. Romantic Autopsy: Literary Form and Medical Reading (Oxford).Google Scholar
Holmes, B. 2010. The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece (Princeton, NJ).Google Scholar
Holmes, B. 2014. ‘Proto-Sympathy in the Hippocratic Corpus’, in Jouanna, J. and Zink, M., eds., Hippocrate et les hippocratismes: médécine, religion, société (Paris), 123–38.Google Scholar
Holmes, B. 2018. ‘Body’, in Pormann, P. E., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates (Cambridge), 63–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansen, T. K. 2020. ‘From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology’, in Taub, L., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science (Cambridge), 102–20.Google Scholar
Johnson, M. R. 2017. ‘Aristotelian Mechanistic Explanation’, in Rocca, J., ed., Teleology in the Ancient World: Philosophical and Medical Approaches (Cambridge), 125–50.Google Scholar
Kazantzidis, G. 2017. ‘Empathy and the Limits of Disgust in the Hippocratic Corpus’, in Lateiner, D. and Spatharas, D., eds., The Ancient Emotion of Disgust (Oxford), 45–68.Google Scholar
Kazantzidis, G. 2018. ‘Medicine and the Paradox in the Hippocratic Corpus and beyond’, in Gerolemou, M., ed., Recognizing Miracles in Antiquity and Beyond (Berlin), 31–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kazantzidis, G., ed. 2019. Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World (Berlin).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, D. 2007. ‘Making a Text of the Universe: Perspectives on Discursive Order in the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius’, in Gale, M., ed., Oxford Readings in Lucretius (Oxford), 376–96.Google Scholar
Krafft, F. 1967. ‘Die Anfänge einer theoretischen Mechanik und die Wandlung ihrer Stellung zur Wissenschaft von Natur’, in Baron, W., ed., Beiträge zur Methodik der Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Wiesbaden), 12–33.Google Scholar
Krafft, F. 1973. ‘Kunst und Natur: Die Heronische Frage und die Technik in der klassischen Antike’, Antike und Abendland, 19: 1–19.Google Scholar
Lennox, J. G. 1985. ‘Theophrastus on the Limits of Teleology’, in Fortenbaugh, W. W., Huby, P. M. and Long, A. A., eds., Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work (New Brunswick), 146–63.Google Scholar
Lennox, J. G. 2001. Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals i–iv (Oxford).Google Scholar
Lennox, J. G. 2018. ‘Aristotle, Dissection, and Generation: Experience, Expertise, and the Practices of Knowing’, in Falcon, A. and Lefebvre, D., eds., Aristotle’s Generation of Animals: A Critical Guide (Cambridge), 249–72.Google Scholar
Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leunissen, M. 2021. ‘Empiricism and Hearsay in Aristotle’s Zoological Collection of Facts’, in Connell, S. M., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge), 64–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, G. E. R. 1973. Greek Science after Aristotle (London).Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. E. R. 1975. ‘Alcmaeon and the Early History of Dissection’, Sudhoffs Archiv, 59: 113–47.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. E. R. 1978. Hippocratic Writings (Harmondsworth).Google Scholar
Longrigg, J. 1993. Greek Rational Medicine: Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians (London).Google Scholar
Lonie, I. M. 1973. ‘The Paradoxical Text ‘On the Heart”’, Medical History, 17: 1–15 and 136–53.Google Scholar
MacDonald, H. 2005, Human Remains: Dissection and Its Histories (New Haven).Google Scholar
Malland, L. R. 2022, ‘Her Body, His Evidence: Female Subjugation in the Early Modern Anatomy Theaters’, in Malland, L. R., ed., The Spaces of Renaissance Anatomy Theater (Wilmington, DE), 89–108.Google Scholar
Mayor, A. 2018. Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (Princeton, NJ).Google Scholar
Neer, R. 2010. The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (Chicago).Google Scholar
Netz, R. 2020. Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture (Cambridge).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nightingale, A. 2004. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Nussbaum, M. 1986. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Nutton, V. 2004. Ancient Medicine (London).Google Scholar
Oleson, J. P. 1984. Greek and Roman Mechanical Water-Lifting Devices: The History of a Technology (Toronto).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, K. 2006, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York).Google Scholar
Polito, R. 2006. ‘Matter, Medicine, and the Mind: Asclepiades vs. Epicurus’, OSAP, 30: 285–335.Google Scholar
Rihl, T. E. 2018. ‘Mechanics and Pneumatics in the Classical World’, in Keyser, P. T. and Scarborough, J., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World (Oxford), 337–59Google Scholar
Rocca, J. 2003. Galen on the Brain: Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation in the Second Century ad (Leiden).Google Scholar
Roby, C. 2016. Technical Ekphrasis in Greek and Roman Science and Literature (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Russo, L. 2004. The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 bc and Why It Had to Be Reborn (transl. S. Levy) (Berlin).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharle, M. 2015. ‘“And These Things Follow”: Teleology, Necessity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Meteorologica’, in Ebrey, D., ed., Theory and Practice in Aristotle’s Natural Science (Cambridge), 79–99.Google Scholar
Schiefsky, M. J. 2007. ‘Art and Nature in Ancient Mechanics’, in Bensaude-Vincent, B. and Newman, W. R., eds., The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity (Cambridge, MA), 67–108.Google Scholar
Schironi, F. 2018. The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad (Ann Arbor, MI).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sedley, D. 2017. ‘Socrates, Darwin, and Teleology’, in Rocca, J., ed., Teleology in the Ancient World: Philosophical and Medical Approaches (Cambridge), 25–42.Google Scholar
Steiner, D. 2001. Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought (Princeton, NJ).Google Scholar
Thomas, J. J. 2021. Art, Science, and the Natural World in the Ancient Mediterranean, 300 bc to ad 100 (Oxford).Google Scholar
Thumiger, C. 2017. A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Tieleman, T. 2013. ‘Miracle and Natural Cause in Galen’, in Alkier, S. and Weissenrieder, A., eds., Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracles Stories and their Concepts of Reality (Berlin), 102–14.Google Scholar
Tybjerg, K. 2003. ‘Wonder-Making and Philosophical Wonder in Hero of Alexandriaʼ, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34: 443–66.Google Scholar
Van der Eijk, P. J. 2000. ‘Aristotle’s Psycho-physiological Account of the Body–Soul Relationship’, in Potter, P. and Wright, J. P., eds., Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind–Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (Oxford), 57–78.Google Scholar
Van der Eijk, P. J. 2005. Medicine and Philosophy in Classical Antiquity: Doctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Vegetti, M. 1993. ‘I nervi dell’ anima’, in Kollesch, J. and Nickel, D., eds., Galen und das Hellenistische Erbe: Verhandlungen des IV. Internationalen Galen-Symposiums (Stuttgart), 63–77.Google Scholar
Vegetti, M. 1998. ‘Between Knowledge and Practice: Hellenistic Medicine’, in Grmek, M. D., ed., Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (transl. A. Shugaar) (Cambridge, MA), 72–103.Google Scholar
Vegetti, M. 1999. ‘Historiographical Strategies in Galen’s Physiology’, in van der Eijk, P. J., ed., Ancient Histories of Medicine: Essays in Medical Doxography and Historiography in Classical Antiquity (Leiden), 383–95.Google Scholar
Vernant, J.-P. 1983. ‘Some Remarks on the Forms and Limitations of Technological Thought among the Greeks’, in Vernant, J.-P., Myth and Thought among the Greeks (transl. J. Lloyd) (London), 279–301.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1975. ‘Experiment and Experience in Hellenistic Medicine’, BICS, 22: 178–99.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1989. Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria. Edition, Translation and Essays (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1992. ‘The Discovery of the Body: Human Dissection and Its Cultural Contexts in Ancient Greece’, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 65: 223–41.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1996. ‘Body and Machine: Interactions Between Medicine, Mechanics, and Philosophy in Early Alexandria’, in Walsh, J. and Reese, T. F., eds., Alexandria and Alexandrianism (Malibu, CA), 85–106.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1997. ‘Teleology and Mechanism: Aristotelian Biology and Early Hellenistic Anatomy’, in Kullmann, W. and Föllinger, S., eds., Aristotelische Biologie: Intentionen, Methoden, Ergebnisse (Stuttgart), 183–208.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 1998. ‘Andréas de Caryste et Philon de Byzance: médecine et mécanique à Alexandrie’, in Argoud, G. and Guillaumin, J.-Y., eds., Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie (Saint-Étienne), 147–72.Google Scholar
Von Staden, H. 2007. ‘Physis and Technē in Greek Medicine’, in Bensaude-Vincent, B. and Newman, W. R., eds., The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity (Cambridge, MA), 21–49.Google Scholar
Walker, J. 2000. ‘Pathos and Katharsis in “Aristotelian” Rhetoric: Some Implications’, in Gross, A. G. and Walzer, A. E., eds., Rereading Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Carbondale, IL), 74–92.Google Scholar
Whitmarsh, T. 2011. Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Wilson, A. I. 2008. ‘Machines in Greek and Roman Technology’, in Oleson, J. P., ed., The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (Oxford), 337–66.Google Scholar
Witt, C. 2015. ‘In Defense of the Craft Analogy: Artifacts and Natural Teleology’, in Leunissen, M., ed., Aristotle’s Physics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge), 107–20.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×