Materia Philosophiae. Material Dimensions of Ancient Philosophy - (Euhormos: Greco-Roman Studies in Anchoring Innovation) (Hardcover)

About the Book

Materia Philosophiae anchors ideas of early Greek philosophers in the material world they inhabited by asking how circumstances of that world (difficulties of travel, bulky scrolls, innovations in architecture and technology, familiar household objects) shaped what became philosophy and science.

Book Synopsis

Ever since Thales fell into the well, popular imagination has pictured philosophers as abstracted from everyday reality. Materia Philosophiae: The Material Dimensions of Ancient Philosophy counters that view. Philosophy in ancient Greece grew out of and remained closely connected to the material realities around it--difficulties of travel, reliance on cumbersome scrolls, learning acquired literally at the foot of a master; but also the spread of coinage, contemporaneous achievements in technology and engineering, and contact with everyday household objects. By resituating philosophers in their material contexts, Materia Philosophiae opens research avenues that have not previously been explored in a single volume.

About the Author

William Wians (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Merrimack College) teaches at Boston College. Edited collections include Logos and Muthos: Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature; Logoi and Muthoi: Further Essays in Greek Literature; and Reading Aristotle: Argument and Exposition, with Ronald Polansky.

Robert Hahn is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Publications include Anaximander and the Architects; Archaeology and the Origins of Philosophy; and The Metaphysics of the Pythagorean Theorem. He was recently honored as Outstanding Researcher by his university.

Contributors are: Robert Hahn, Andrei Lebedev, Andrew Gregory, Sylvia Berryman, Nathasja Roggo-van Luijn, Richard Seaford, Dirk L. Couprie, Ellen Harlizius-Klück and Giovanni Fanfani, Harold Tarrant, Gastón Javier Basile, Geoffrey Lloyd, Philip Thibodeau, Bella Vivante, William Wians.