Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought

R. J. Hankinson,Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought

Oxford University Press | ISBN 0199246564| 2001 | PDF | 1.97 MB | 373 pages

In this book, R. J. Hankinson traces the history of investigation into the nature of cause and explanation, from the beginnings of Ancient Greek philosophy in 600 bc, through the Graeco-Roman world, to the end of pagan antiquity in c.500 ad .The book consists of chapter-length studies of the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle (two chapters), Atomism, Stoicism, Scepticism, and Neoplatonism, as well as the Sophistic movement, and Ancient Medicine. Hankinson is principally concerned with the following questions: ‘What did the Greeks understand by a cause?’, and ‘How did the Greeks conceive adequacy in explanation?’. The Ancient Greeks (excepting the Sceptics) are united in their belief that the world and at least some of its process can be rendered intelligible, and that this can be rendered by an inquiry into the nature of things, with reasoned argument as the appropriate method of exhibiting the real structure of the world. Thus, the Greek thinkers set the standards for science, because they are guided by logic and observation in their analysis of causation; but one can also recognize the growth of interest among the Greeks in the nature of explanation itself.

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