Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Diocles of Carystus on the method of dietetics 93many resemblances to Aristotelian and Peripatetic language and style ofargument. For example, Diocles’ way of expressing himself in section 8certainly reminds us of Aristotle, who also often uses the combinationof ‘in a certain way’ ( ) and ‘look like’ () in order toqualify the similarities he sees between different entities or phenomena; thecombination (‘look like starting-points’) is also attested severaltimes in Aristotle’s works. 42 The sophisticated way in which Diocles argues ; tr.vanRaalte (1993) 57, slightly modified); Theophrastus, fr. 159 Fortenbaugh et al.: ‘For just as the personwho thinks that everything can be demonstrated does away above all with demonstration itself, inthe same way the person who looks for explanations of everything turns completely upside down all thethings there are, and their order which proceeds from a certain definite first principle’ ( , tr. Fortenbaugh et al. (1992) vol. i, 321); Aristotle, Ph. 256 a 28–9:‘if, then, something causes movement by being itself moved, this must come to a standstill and notgo on indefinitely’ ( ); Aristotle,Metaph. 1070 a 2–4: ‘it will go on to infinity, if it is not only the bronze that becomes round butalso that which is round, or that bronze comes to be; it is necessary for this to come to a halt’ ( ). On undemonstrable principles see Aristotle, Top. 158 b 1ff. On thelimits of teleological explanation see Aristotle, Part. an. 677 a 16–17: ‘for this reason, one should notseek a final cause of everything; rather, because some things are like that [i.e. having a final cause],many others occur of necessity as a result of these’ ( ). Eth. Nic. 1098 a33–b 3:‘one should not ask for the cause in all cases in a similar way; in some things it is sufficient thatthe fact is well established, as is the case with the principles; the fact is primary, and a principle’ ( ’ ).42 I performed Pandora complex searches on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae CD Rom #D for combinationsof forms of with forms of within three lines of context in the HippocraticCorpus, Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus and found the following results: Aristotle, Hist. An. 511b 10–15: ‘since the nature of the blood and that of the blood vessels resembles a starting-point ...itisdifficult to observe . . . the nature of the most principal blood vessels is invisible’ ( ... ... ). Aristotle, Metaph. 1059 b 29–39: ‘for these [i.e. the highest classes of things, i.e. being andunity] are supposed to contain everything that is and most to resemble starting-points, because they arenaturally primary . . . but inasmuch as the species are destroyed together with the genera, it is ratherthe genera that resemble starting-points; for that which also causes destruction to something else,is a starting-point’ ( ... ). [Aristotle], Mag. mor. 1190 a 24: ‘the endlooks like some sort of starting-point, and every individual thing is for the sake of that’ ( , ). [Aristotle], Mag. mor. 1206 b 28: ‘this is whyan emotion that is in a good disposition towards virtue looks more like a starting-point than reason’( ).Similar searches for combinations of and a form of yielded the followingresults: Aristotle, Gen. an. 758 a 30–b 3: ‘That some of these animals come into being throughcopulation, others spontaneously, has been said before, and in addition that some produce grubsand for what reason. For pretty much all animals in some way seem to produce grubs to start with;