Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on translations
- Note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- I HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS AND DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS
- II ARISTOTLE AND HIS SCHOOL
- III LATE ANTIQUITY
- 10 Galen's use of the concept of ‘qualified experience’ in his dietetic and pharmacological works
- 11 The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus: some epistemological issues
- Bibliography
- Index of passages cited
- General index
10 - Galen's use of the concept of ‘qualified experience’ in his dietetic and pharmacological works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on translations
- Note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- I HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS AND DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS
- II ARISTOTLE AND HIS SCHOOL
- III LATE ANTIQUITY
- 10 Galen's use of the concept of ‘qualified experience’ in his dietetic and pharmacological works
- 11 The Methodism of Caelius Aurelianus: some epistemological issues
- Bibliography
- Index of passages cited
- General index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
It is well known that Galen, in the epistemological debate (as he saw it) between the so-called Dogmatists and the Empiricists, adopted a position which might be defined both as an attempt at maintaining his cherished ideal of intellectual independence and as an endeavour to preserve the valuable insights that the different strands of tradition provided. The latter resulted in his conviction that medical knowledge is arrived at by means of rather special conjunction of, on the one hand, reason (logos), that is, a set of theoretical and logical concepts, definitions, axioms, arguments, and ideas referring both to observable and unobservable entities, and, on the other hand, experience (peira), that is, a more or less systematic collection of data derived from sense-perception. What makes his position more complicated is that according to Galen both reason and experience should be used or applied in a correct way, in a correct order, interrelation and/or proportion. This requirement may have different consequences for different areas within medical science. Moreover, it is precisely in this respect that Galen explicitly distances himself from the other medical schools, who, as he believes, either failed to take into account empirical data which would seem to him to be inconsistent with their theoretical assumptions, deductions, inferences or analogies, or who formulated unqualified generalising claims on the exclusive basis of empirical data.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Medicine and Philosophy in Classical AntiquityDoctors and Philosophers on Nature, Soul, Health and Disease, pp. 279 - 298Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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