Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on the matter of mind 231the body; 80 and there may be other medical influences as well, 81 especiallyof dietetics, for it was certainly one of the claims of dietetics in Aristotle’stime to provide a physiologically founded doctrine of ‘the good life’. 82 ThePeripatetic school was very receptive to these medical views, as is shown,for example, by the Problemata physica, and Aristotle was almost certainlyaware of them. Now it is certainly true that Aristotle’s psychology is muchricher and much more sophisticated than that of the medical literature, butit should not be overlooked that there is also a ‘technical’ side to Aristotle’spsychology, an interest in the ‘mechanics’ of cognition and in modalitiesof thinking such as concentration, analytical powers, creativity, quickness() of thinking and intuition ( ), 83 habituationand repetition, and degrees in capacities to all these activities. It very rarelycomes to the surface in On the Soul, but it figures more prominently inthe Parva naturalia and in the zoological works, mostly when one speciesof animals is compared with another or when different members of onespecies are compared with one another, and mostly in contexts in whichsome sort of disturbance or aberration in cognitive behaviour is discussed.It is in these contexts that bodily factors are made responsible for these disturbancesor aberrations; Aristotle does not explain what the normal bodilyconditions for a normal functioning of thinking are, and they can only bededuced indirectly. However, it is very likely that the concept of ‘the mean’plays an important part here. 84This situation provides a parallel (though not a solution) to anotherproblem in Aristotle’s theory of thinking – which has recently receivedmuch attention and which has already been alluded to above – namely thequestion of animal intelligence. 85 In many (although admittedly not all)of the passages in which Aristotle seems to credit animals with intellectualcapacities he compares one species with another, and in this comparativeperspective man is simply seen as the most intelligent (the use of comparativessuch as or superlatives such as inthese contexts is striking). Here, too, there seems to be a tension betweena ‘relativistic’, biological view of man as a at the end of a scale which80 For a discussion of these chapters see the commentary by Joly and Byl (1984). See also Jouanna (1966)and Hankinson (1991b) 200–6.81 The cognitive role of the blood reminds us, of course, of Empedocles (see Kullmann (1982) 230).The doctrine of pneuma may be inspired by Diocles of Carystus (see Longrigg (1995) 441).82 See Tracy (1969), passim. On the claims of dietetics, and its relation to philosophy in the fourthcentury see also G. Wöhrle (1990), chs. 4 and 5.83 Cf. An. post. 89 b 10ff.; Eth. Nic. 1142 b 3–6; Rh. 1362 b 24; 1412 a 13; Top. 151 b 19; Div. somn. 464 a 33.84 On this see the excellent discussion by Tracy (1969).85 For a survey of the recent discussion see Coles (1997).