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Creationism and its critics in antiquity [electronic resource] / David Sedley.

Sedley, D. N.
2007
BD581 .S377 2007eb
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Title
Creationism and its critics in antiquity [electronic resource] / David Sedley.
Author
Sedley, D. N.
ISBN
9780520253643 (cloth : alk. paper)
0520253647 (cloth : alk. paper)
9780520260061 (pbk.)
0520260066 (pbk.)
9780520934368 (e-book)
Publication Details
Berkeley : University of California Press, 2007.
Language
English
Description
xvii, 269 p. : ill.
Call Number
BD581 .S377 2007eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
213
Summary
The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of design or accident. In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the "creationist" option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the ground for Aristotle's celebrated teleology. But Aristotle aligned himself with the anti-creationist lobby, whose most militant members--the atomists--sought to show how a world just like ours would form inevitably by sheer accident, given only the infinity of space and matter. This stimulating study explores seven major thinkers and philosophical movements enmeshed in the debate: Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, the atomists, Aristotle, and the Stoics.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Series
Sather classical lectures ; v. 66.
Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature.
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Acknowledgments
Preface
[ch]. 1. Anaxagoras
1. The presocratic agenda
2. Anaxagoras's cosmology
3. The power of nous
4. Sun and Moon
5. Worlds and seeds
6. Nous as creator
7. Scientific creationism
Appendix : Anazagoras's theory of matter
[ch]. 2. Empedocles
1. The cosmic cycle
2. The double zoogony
3. Creationist discourse
4. Design and accident
Appendix 1 : The double zoogony revisited
Appendix 2 : The chronology of the cycle
Appendix 3 : Where in the cycle are we?
Appendix 4 : Lucretian testimony for Empedocles' zoogony
[ch]. 3. Socrates
1. 1. Diogenes of Apollonia
2. Socrates in Xenophon
3. Socrates in Plato's Phaedo
4. A historical synthesis
[ch]. 4. Plato
1. The Phaedo myth
2. Introducing the Timaeus
3. An act of creation?
4. Divine craftsmanship
5. Is the world perfect?
6. The origin of species
[ch]. 5. The atomists
1. Democritus
2. The Epicurean critique of creationism
3. The Epicurean alternative to creationism
4. Epicurean infinity
[ch]. 6. Aristotle
1. God as paradigm
2. The craft analogy
3. Necessity
4. Fortuitous outcomes
5. Cosmic teleology
6. Aristotle's Platonism
[ch]. 7. The stoics
1. Stoicism
2. A window on stoic theology
3. Appropriating Socrates
4. Appropriating Plato
5. Whose benefit?
Epilogue : A Galenic perspective
Bibliography
Index locorum
General index.

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