Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

80 Hippocratic Corpus and Diocles of CarystusDiocles does not deny that in all cases where a certain power B is present,quality A is present as well (his argument allows the possibility that, forinstance, all things that are laxative are sweet as well). But he points out thatnot all foodstuffs with quality A have power B, and the consequence of thisis that even in those cases in which power B and quality A are both present,we cannot say that quality A is the cause of power B. Such an explanationis not ‘sufficient’ (not , to use a word which Diocles mentions lateron in the fragment in section 9), because it does not account for situationsin which quality A is present but not power B. Nor does Diocles deny thatqualities may play a part in the production of a certain effect; but he insiststhat they do not necessarily produce the effect in question, and that, ifthey incidentally do so, they need not be the only factors involved in thisproduction. He thereby shows that claim one, apart from being sometimescounterfactual, is also misleadingly formulated – or to put it in Aristotelianterms: it is not qua being sweet that a foodstuff is laxative, and the statement‘sweet foodstuffs are laxative’ is not true universally.Instead, in section 7 Diocles alleges that ‘what normally results fromeach of them’ (i.e. the substances we are talking about) is caused by ‘thewhole nature’. The very fact that Diocles gives an explanation of this kindalready indicates that any attempt to associate him with Empiricism orScepticism is not very likely to be correct. 14 But what do these words ‘thewhole nature’ ( ) refer to? Most likely, I believe, is thatthe nature of the substance is meant, the sum or total configuration ofelements, constituents or qualities the foodstuff consists of and the waythey are structured or interrelated – for instance, the proportion betweenqualities such as warm and cold, dry and wet by which it is characterised. 1514 As will become clear below, this ‘nature’ is not something which can be perceived empirically: it isprobably made up both from imperceptible entities such as humours, primary qualities, etc., andfrom perceptible qualities such as flavours, tastes, etc. Cf. the disjunction in Galen, On the NaturalFaculties (De naturalibus facultatibus) 2.8 (p. 191,10–11 Helmreich): ‘Some have discovered the powerof the substance by indication from the very nature of it, while others have done so on the basisof experience only’ .15 See Torraca (1965) 108: ‘la composizione generale della sostanza . . . non essendo possibile schematizzaree ridurre la causa ad una sola proprietà’, and Kullmann (1974) 351, followed by Wöhrle (1990)174. This interpretation is in accordance with Galen’s use of the concept of ‘the whole nature’ ( ) or ‘the whole essence’ ( ) to denote the cause of the power a foodstuff or drughas, for instance in On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs (De simplicium medicamentorumtemperamentis ac facultatibus, De simpl. med. fac.) 5.1 (11.705 K.); On the Composition of Drugs accordingto Kinds (De compositione medicamentorum secundum genera, De comp. med. sec. gen.) 1.16(13.435–6 K.); On Mixtures (De temperamentis, De temper.) 3.2 (1.655 K.). For other references seeHarig (1974) 108–10; Röhr (1923) 118–20. Smith’s translation is ambiguous on this point: ‘Rather,one must consider that the whole nature (physis) is responsible (aitios) [for what usually occurs foreach].’