Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on sleep and dreams 203an argumentative, ‘dialectic’ or perhaps even didactic strategy (we shouldnot forget that Aristotle’s extant works derive from the teaching practice,and that they are very likely to have been supplemented by additionaloral elucidation). Alternatively, it may be a matter of intellectual temperamentor style. However this may be, it is undeniable that Aristotle in hisworks on sleep and dreams, as in his biological works at large, sometimesshows himself an improviser of ad hoc explanations, constantly prepared toadapt his theories to what the phenomena suggest. This inevitably meansa lower degree of systematicity than we would perhaps regard as desirable;on the other hand, the elasticity of his explanations, and his readiness toaccommodate new empirical observations, are things for which he is to becommended.Lack of systematicity is, to a varying extent, characteristic of many Aristotelianworks and can also be observed in other parts of the Parva naturalia,both within and between the individual treatises that make up the series.But it seems to obtain particularly to On Divination in Sleep, 55 which isin general a less technical treatise whose degree of accuracy, both in scientificterminology 56 and in the description of psycho-physiological details,is rather low in comparison with the other two works. Instead, it showswhat could be called a more ‘dialectical’ character. Aristotle approaches theproblem of divination in sleep from different perspectives, but he offersneither a definition nor a comprehensive explanatory account. The texthas a strongly polemical tone and is for a substantial part devoted to anassessment of current views on the subject, such as the view (referred to andcriticised three times) that dreams are sent by the gods, or the view held bythe ‘distinguished doctors’, or the theory of Democritus.55 As for systematicity, it is of course true that a discussion of the topic of prophecy in sleep is announced,as we have seen above, in the preface to On Sleep and Waking (453 b 22–4), and that On Divinationin Sleep refers, at one point (464 b 9–10), back to On Dreams (461 a 14ff.). Yet not too much weightshould be attached to these cross-references, as they may easily have been added at a later, editorialstage; besides, the preface to On Sleep and Waking presents a programme of questions that is somewhatdifferent from what is actually being offered in what follows, and this also applies to On Dreams.Thus the beginning of On Sleep and Waking announces a discussion of the question ‘why people whosleep sometimes dream and sometimes do not dream, or, alternatively, if they always dream, whythey cannot always remember their dreams’ (453 b 18–20); but these questions can hardly be regardedas central to On Dreams, where they are addressed only in passing (in 461 a 13) and incompletely (in462 a 31–b 11, a passage that itself, too, shows signs of a hastily added appendix). Such discrepanciesbetween programme and execution need not, however, be due to later editorial additions, for it is,again, not uncharacteristic of Aristotle’s works for there to be discrepancies between programme andexecution.56 E.g. the use of aisthanesthai in the wide sense of ‘notice’, ‘be aware of’ (464 a 10, 15, 17), or thereference to ‘perception arriving at the dreaming souls’ ( ) in464 a 10.