Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on the matter of mind 213‘irritable’ people, ‘quick’ and ‘slow’ people, very young, youthful and veryold people, people with prominent veins, people with soft flesh vs. peoplewith hard flesh, etc., all of which are invoked to account for variationsin cognitive capacities and performances). 22 Some of the variations of thislatter category are on the structural level of an animal’s ‘disposition’ or natural constitution , in that they are, for example, determinedby heritage, natural constitution, or dependent on age and gender, butothers are incidental (i.e. dependent on particular transitory states of thebody or particular transitory circumstances). And whilst, depending ontheir effects, these variable factors are mostly to be regarded as disturbingagents impeding the actualisation of the animal’s capacities (or even, on thelevel of the ‘first actuality’, affecting the basic vital apparatus of the animal,in which case it counts as a ‘deformation’, , they can alsobe conducive to a better and fuller development of these capacities.Some of these variations are explained by Aristotle in an entirely ‘mechanistic’way without reference to a higher purpose they are said to serve,because they merely represent residual phenomena to be accounted for(material which is typically suitable for works like the Problemata). However,there are also variations which are, or can be, explained teleologically.Thus also in the seemingly mechanical account of the various forms and degreesof sharpness of sight in Gen. an. 5.1 an underlying teleological motivecan be discerned: Aristotle distinguishes two types of sharpness of sight–seeing over a great distance and sensitivity to differences ; 23 and the fact that the latter manifests itselfin humans 24 (whereas many other animals are better at seeing sharply overa great distance) can be related to the cognitive and epistemological importanceof the discrimination of differences, which is (like its counterpart, the22 Little attention has been paid to this aspect of Aristotle’s biology, and to its medical background. Onconstitution types in the Hippocratic Corpus see Dittmer (1940). On dwarfs ( ) see below,p. 223; for the ‘ecstatics’ ( ) see Div. somn. 464 a 24–5; Eth. Nic. 1145 b 8–14; 1146 a 16ff.;1151 a 1; 1151 a 20ff.; Mem. 451 a 9, and the discussion in Croissant (1932) 41ff., and in van der Eijk(1994) 321ff. The ‘irritable’ ( ) are mentioned in Eth. Nic. 1150 b 25; for the quick and the slow( ) see Mem. 450 b 8, Physiognomonica (Phgn.) 813 b 7ff. and below, p. 228; forthe ‘very young’ ( ), the young and the old see Hist. an. 581 b 2; 537 b 14ff.; Mem.450 b 2; 453 b 4; Insomn. 461 a 12; 462 a 12; Gen. an. 779 a 12f.; 778 a 23ff.; Somn. vig. 457 a 3ff.; Rh.2.12–14 and below p. 225; for people with prominent veins (said to influence their sleep behaviour)see Somn. vig. 457 a 26 (cf. Hist. an. 582 a 15; Pr. 863 a 23); for ‘people with soft’ or ‘hard flesh’ ( ) see De an. 421 a 25, and below, pp. 226–7.23 Gen. an. 780 b 15ff.24 Gen. an. 781 b 20: ‘the reason is that the sense organ is pure and least earthy or corporeal, and man bynature has for his size the most delicate skin of all animals’ ( ).