From the Beginning to Plato

422 GLOSSARY
doxography,
doxographer:
further confirm it by deducing it from a ‘higher’
hypothesis. In the Republic the process is somehow
grounded in the Form of the Good, but this is not
clearly explained. In later dialogues ‘dialectic’ refers
to the method of collection and division (q.v.), but
also to argumentation exploring the interrelations
between the most general kinds or concepts, such as
Being and Difference.
a second-hand compilation of répons about the views
of a number of philosophers on some topic or topics.
An author of such a compilation.
dunamis: (lit. ‘power, capacity, potentiality’) as a mathematical
term, translated both ‘square’ and (with some
anachronism) ‘square root’. Euclid uses the word only
adverbially in the dative, speaking of straight lines as
being commensurable in dunamis (dttnamei, literally
‘in potentiality’) when the squares on the lines are
commensurable.
eidōlon: (lit. ‘image’) (1) a technical term of atomism (q.v.)
denoting a film of atoms emitted from the surface of,
and reproducing the appearance of, a physical object.
The impact of streams of eidōla on the sense-organs
and on the atoms constituting the mind was
responsible for perception and thought. (2) (Platonic)
an insubstantial image or ‘phantom’, especially what
is produced by inexpert, ignorant mimētai (q.v.).
Eleatic: pertaining to the fifth-century BC philosophers
Parmenides and Zeno of Elea in South Italy, and to
their followers. An adherent of Eleatic doctrine.
elenchus (elenchos): (lit. ‘refutation, test, cross-examination’) a method of
argumentation characteristic of Socrates, in which the
beliefs of an interlocutor are shown to contain an
inconsistency. It is debated whether Socrates is
represented as attempting to show by this method that
some particular belief of the interlocutor’s is false, or
merely that the set of his beliefs is inconsistent.
elenctic mission: Socrates’ mission, which he appears to have believed
to have been divinely inspired, to show by elenchus
that his contemporaries lacked the moral wisdom
which they claimed.
Epicurean: pertaining to a philosophical school founded by
Epicurus at Athens at the end of the fourth century
BC, which developed and popularized the doctrines
of atomism (q.v.). An adherent of that school.