Review
"Gregory Vlastos' influence on the study of Greek philosophy, notably of the Presocratics and Plato, has been great and admirable. His papers on Plato were collected in 1973, but this is his first book. It is a fine short study, written with the familiar rhetorical elegance that marks his forensic style but designed for delivery to an audience composed not wholly or mainly of specialists. Where controversies threaten they are generally relegated to footnotes or appendixes. Professor Vlastos' master-question is: "did the Greek really discover what we now mean by 'science'?" His answer is: No, but they discovered "the conception of the cosmos that is presupposed by natural science and by its practice". There are three chapters to the book. The first finds new patterns of rationality common to all the earliest physiologoi, natural philosophers, from Thales near the beginning of the sixth century BC to Heraclitus near the beginning of the fifth. The other chapters are chiefly analyses of Plato's Timaeus, the first tackling the astronomy and the other the analysis of matter. G. E. L. Owen Times Literary Supplement, 1977"
Product Description
A distinguished Platonic scholar discusses the impact of the Greek discovery of the "cosmos" on man's perception of his place in the universe, describes the problems this posed, and interprets Plato's response to this discovery.
Starting with the Presocratics, Vlastos describes the intellectual revolution that began with the cosmogonies of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in the sixth century B.C. and culminated a century later in the atomist system of Leucippus and Democritus. What united these men was that for all of them nature remained the inviolate, all-inclusive principle of explanation, precluding any appeal to a supernatural cause or ordering agency.
In a detailed analysis of the astronomical and physical theories of the Timaeus, Vlastos demonstrates Plato's role in the reception and transmission of the discovery of the new conception of the universe. Plato gives us the chance to see that movement from a unique perspective: that of a fierce opponent of the revolution who was determined to wrest from its brilliant discovery, annex its cosmos, and redesign it on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics.
This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1975 by the University of Washington Press. It includes a new Introduction by Luc Brisson.
Starting with the Presocratics, Vlastos describes the intellectual revolution that began with the cosmogonies of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in the sixth century B.C. and culminated a century later in the atomist system of Leucippus and Democritus. What united these men was that for all of them nature remained the inviolate, all-inclusive principle of explanation, precluding any appeal to a supernatural cause or ordering agency.
In a detailed analysis of the astronomical and physical theories of the Timaeus, Vlastos demonstrates Plato's role in the reception and transmission of the discovery of the new conception of the universe. Plato gives us the chance to see that movement from a unique perspective: that of a fierce opponent of the revolution who was determined to wrest from its brilliant discovery, annex its cosmos, and redesign it on the pattern of his own idealistic and theistic metaphysics.
This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1975 by the University of Washington Press. It includes a new Introduction by Luc Brisson.
