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Article

French

ID: <

10670/1.uzc7u9

>

Where these data come from
“Matter, qualities, mixtures. Elementary Aristotelian physics in the writings of Galen and Alexander of Aphrodisias”

Abstract

International audience This article was the result of research conducted in preparation for a doctoral thesis which I had first contemplated writing on ancient philosophy – on Alexander of Aphrodisias and Galen – before changing direction and undertaking a thesis on mediaeval philosophy. Scholars have long been aware of the doctrinal affinity between Alexander and Galen, but the significance of this affinity remains the subject of debate. This article focuses on the “elementary physics” of the two authors, i.e. their understanding of the four elements (fire, earth, air and water), the way in which each one interacts with the other three, and, in short, the processes at work in the lower zones of the sensible world. In the first section (1), I compare their texts with one another and against the passages in Aristotle’s writings to which they refer, in order to highlight a shared anti-Platonism in their work but which, in Alexander’s texts, led to an exhaustive system of natural forms not found in those of his medical colleague. In the two subsequent sections, I point to the similarities and differences in the manner in which the two authors represent the interactions between the fundamental elements: whereas Galen believed that it was alteration (alloiôsis) that triggered all real change – in contrast to the pseudo-changes postulated by the atomists – (2), Alexander held that this role was played by mixture (mixis or krasis), a concept to which, like Galen’s alteration, he attributed much broader and more fundamental functions than Aristotle (3).

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