The Greek Cosmologists: Volume 1, The Formation of the Atomic Theory and its Earliest Critics

by David Furley

Overview

Furley's study presents a clear picture of the opposing views of the natural world and its contents as seen by philosophers and scientists in classical antiquity. On one side were the materialists whose world was mechanistic, evolutionary, and unbounded, lacking the focus of a natural center. The other side included teleologists, whose world was purposive, non-evolutionary, finite, and centrifocal. This volume takes the reader up to the criticisms of Plato and Aristotle. The second volume will examine Plato and Aristotle's own cosmology and follow the debate to the sixth century. Professor Furley has produced a history of the early views of the physical world whose scope makes this book of major importance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521034975
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/14/2006
Series:	The Greek Cosmologists
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.55(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Two pictures of the world; 2. The judgement of Socrates; 3. The beginning in Miletus; 4. Two philosophical critics: Heraclitus and Parmenides; 5. Pythagoras, Parmenides, and later cosmology; 6. Anaxagoras; 7. Empedocles and the invention of elements; 8. Later Eleatic critics; 9. Leucippus and Democritus; 10. The cosmos of the Atomists; 11. The anthropology of the Atomists; 12. Plato's criticisms of the materialists; 13. Aristotle's criticisms of the materialists; Bibliography; Index of passages; General index.