Galen's Epistemology

Experience, Reason, and Method in Ancient Medicine

R. J. Hankinson, Matyáš Havrda

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316513484
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009075695
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Determining what has gone wrong in a malfunctioning body and proposing an effective treatment requires expertise. Since antiquity, philosophers and doctors have wondered what sort of knowledge this expertise involves, and whether and how it can warrant its conclusions. Few people were as qualified to deal with these questions as Galen of Pergamum (129–ca. 216). A practising doctor with a keen interest in logic and natural science, he devoted much of his enormous literary output to the task of putting medicine on firm methodological grounds. At the same time he reflected on philosophical issues entailed by this project, such as the nature of experience, its relation to reason, the criteria of truth, and the methods of justification. This volume explores Galen's contributions to (mainly scientific) epistemology, as they arise in the specific inquiries and polemics of his works, as well as their legacy in the Islamic world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 'Do I Wake or Sleep?': Galen, Scepticism, and Dreams
• Chapter 2 Galen's Empiricist Background: A Study of the Argument in On Medical Experience
• Chapter 3 Discovery, Method, and Justification: Galen and the Determination of Therapy
• Chapter 4 From Problems to Demonstrations: Two Case Studies of Galen's Method
• Chapter 5 Galen's Notion of Dialectic
• Chapter 6 The Relationship between Perceptual Experience and Logos: Galen's Clinical Perspective
• Chapter 7 Galen against Archigenes on the Pulse and What It Teaches Us about Galen's Method of Diairesis
• Chapter 8 On Sense-Perception: Galen in Dialogue with Plato and the Stoics
• Chapter 9 Reason and Experience in Galen's Moral Epistemology
• Chapter 10 The Arabic Alexandrians' Summary of Galen's On the Therapeutic Method
• Chapter 11 What Level of Certainty Can Medical Sign-Inference Reach?: A Discussion of Galen's Demonstrative Method in the Islamic World
• Bibliography
• Index of Passages
• General Subject Index