Theophrastus And The Greek Physiological Psychology Before Aristotle

The following book was written by Theophrastus, the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. A treatise On Sense Perception and its objects is important for a knowledge of the doctrines of the more ancient Greek philosophers regarding the subject. A paraphrase and commentary on this work was written by Priscian of Lydia in the sixth century. With this type of work we may connect the fragments on Smells, on Fatigue, on Dizziness, on Sweat, on Swooning, on Palsy, and on Honey.

Excerpt from Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology Before Aristotle The Greek text of the De Sensions used and here repro duced is substantially that of Diels in his Doxogmpfzi Graeei, with such changes as he himself has made in those portions of it included in his Fragmente der Vorsokmtiker. Departures from the readings of Diels I have tried faithfully to indicate; but to a very few minor changes in punctua tion I have thought it unnecessary to draw attention. Nor in the translation have I carried through in stubborn consistency my general purpose to indicate by angular brackets, those English expressions that have no cor responding words in the Greek. I have omitted these marks when I felt that the occasion was very slight for troubling in this way the reader's eye. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Our contact with the world is through perception, and therefore the study of the process is of obvious importance and signi?cance. For much of its long history, the study of perception has been con?ned to natural- tic observation. Nonetheless, the phenomena considered worthy of note have not been those that nurture our survival—the veridical features of perception—but the oddities or departures from the common and c- monplace accuracies of perception. With the move from the natural world to the laboratory the oddities of perception multiplied, and they received ever more detailed scrutiny. My general intention is to examine the interpretations of the perc- tual process and its errors throughout history. The emphasis on errors of perception might appear to be a narrow approach, but in fact it enc- passes virtually all perceptual research from the ancients until the present. The constancies of perception have been taken for granted whereas - partures from constancies (errors or illusions) have fostered fascination.

This second volume opens with Aristotle's immense influence on philosophy from the beginnings of Christian philosophy in the fifth century AD.