Chapter 2 The Ancient World Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is Active Reason according to Aristotle?
The faculty of the soul that searches for the essences or abstract concepts that manifest themselves in the empirical world. Aristotle thought that the active reason part of the soul was immortal.
Who was Alcmaeon?
One of the first Greek physicians to move away from the magic and superstition of temple medicine and toward a naturalistic understanding and treatment of illness.
What is the Allegory of the Cave?
Plato’s description of individuals who live their lives in accordance with the shadows of reality provided by sensory experience instead of in accordance with the true reality beyond sensory experience.
What does the Analogy of the Divided Line illustrate?
Plato’s contention that there is a hierarchy of understanding, from images of empirical objects to the understanding of the form of the good.
Who was Anaxagoras?
Postulated an infinite number of elements (seeds) from which everything is made, believing that everything contains all elements, except the mind.
What did Anaximander suggest as the physis?
The infinite or boundless, and he formulated a rudimentary theory of evolution.
What did Anaximenes posit as the most primary element?
Air, based on simple observations and inferences.
What is Animism?
The belief that everything in nature is alive.
What is anthropomorphism?
The projection of human attributes onto nonhuman things.
Who was Aristotle?
A philosopher (384–322 b.c.) who believed sensory experience to be the basis of all knowledge and that everything in nature had an entelechy (purpose).
He postulated an unmoved mover that caused everything in the world but was not itself caused.
What is associationism?
The philosophical belief that mental phenomena can be explained in terms of the laws of association.
What does becoming refer to according to Heraclitus?
The state of everything in the universe, indicating that nothing is static and unchanging.
What is common sense according to Aristotle?
The faculty located in the heart that synthesizes the information provided by the five senses.
What is cosmology?
The study of the origin, structure, and processes governing the universe.
Who was Democritus?
A philosopher (ca. 460–370 b.c.) who offered atoms as the physis, explaining everything in nature in terms of atoms and their activities.
He presented the first completely materialistic view of the world and of humans.
Dionysiac-Orphic religion
Religion whose major belief was that the soul becomes a prisoner of the body because of some transgression committed by the soul. The soul continues on a circle of transmigrations until it has been purged of sin, at which time it can escape its earthly existence and return to its pure, divine existence among the gods. A number of magical practices were thought useful in releasing the soul from its bodily tomb.
EFFICIENT CAUSE
According to Aristotle, the force that transforms a thing.
ELEMENTISM
The belief that complex processes can be understood by studying the elements of which they consist.
EMPEDOCLES
Postulated earth, fire, air, and water as the four basic elements from which everything is made and two forces, love and strife, that alternately synthesize and separate those elements. He was also the first philosopher to suggest a theory of perception, and he offered a theory of evolution that emphasized a rudimentary form of natural selection.
ENTELECHY
According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists, which remains a potential until actualized. Active reason, for example, is the human entelechy, but it exists only as a potential in many humans.
FINAL CAUSE
According to Aristotle, the purpose for which a thing exists.
FORMAL CAUSE
According to Aristotle, the form of a thing.
GALEN (ca. a.d. 130–200)
Associated each of Hippocrates’s four humors with a temperament, thus creating a rudimentary theory of personality.
GOLDEN MEAN -
The rule Aristotle suggested people follow to avoid excesses and to live a life of moderation.
