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Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took
refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the
Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan
Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest
examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the
commentators to other cultures. Tantalisingly, Priscian fully
recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers
to the king's questions on philosophy and science. But these
answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood
both the Greek and the subject matter very poorly. Our translators
have often had to reconstruct from the Latin what the Greek would
have been, in order to recover the original sense. The answers
start with subjects close to the Athenians' hearts: the human soul,
on which Priscian was an expert, and sleep and visions. But their
interest may have diminished when the king sought their expertise
on matters of physical science: the seasons, celestial zones,
medical effects of heat and cold, the tides, displacement of the
four elements, the effect of regions on living things, why only
reptiles are poisonous, and winds. At any rate, in 532 AD, they
moved on from the palace, but still under Khosroes' protection.
This is the first translation of the record they left into English
or any modern language. This English translation is accompanied by
an introduction and comprehensive commentary notes, which clarify
and discuss the meaning and implications of the original
philosophy. Part of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series,
the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern
readership and includes additional scholarly apparatus such as a
bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.
Priscian of Lydia was one of the Athenian philosophers who took
refuge in 531 AD with King Khosroes I of Persia, after the
Christian Emperor Justinian stopped the teaching of the pagan
Neoplatonist school in Athens. This was one of the earliest
examples of the sixth-century diffusion of the philosophy of the
commentators to other cultures. Tantalisingly, Priscian fully
recorded in Greek the answers provided by the Athenian philosophers
to the king's questions on philosophy and science. But these
answers survive only in a later Latin translation which understood
both the Greek and the subject matter very poorly. Our translators
have often had to reconstruct from the Latin what the Greek would
have been, in order to recover the original sense. The answers
start with subjects close to the Athenians' hearts: the human soul,
on which Priscian was an expert, and sleep and visions. But their
interest may have diminished when the king sought their expertise
on matters of physical science: the seasons, celestial zones,
medical effects of heat and cold, the tides, displacement of the
four elements, the effect of regions on living things, why only
reptiles are poisonous, and winds. At any rate, in 532 AD, they
moved on from the palace, but still under Khosroes' protection.
This is the first translation of the record they left into English
or any modern language. This English translation is accompanied by
an introduction and comprehensive commentary notes, which clarify
and discuss the meaning and implications of the original
philosophy. Part of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series,
the edition makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern
readership and includes additional scholarly apparatus such as a
bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index.
In the first full-length study in any modern language dedicated to
the Meteorologica, Malcolm Wilson presents a groundbreaking
interpretation of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Divided into two
parts, the book first addresses general philosophical and
scientific issues by placing the treatise in a diachronic frame
comprising Aristotle's predecessors and in a synchronic frame
comprising his other physical works. It argues that Aristotle
thought of meteorological phenomena as intermediary or 'dualizing'
between the cosmos as a whole and the manifold world of terrestrial
animals. Engaging with the best current literature on Aristotle's
theories of science and metaphysics, Wilson focuses on issues of
aetiology, teleology and the structure and unity of science. The
second half of the book illustrates Aristotle's principal concerns
in a section-by-section treatment of the meteorological phenomena
and provides solutions to many of the problems that have been
raised since the time of the ancient commentators.
W. B. Grove's British Rust Funghi, first published by Cambridge
University Press in 1913, had long been the standard work on the
subject. But it had grown increasingly obsolete in the light of the
intensive research devoted to the group. As early as 1938, Dr
Wilson, who was reader in Mycology at Edinburg University, was
encouraged to prepare a new edition. Since then it became clear
that what was needed was not a revision but an entirely new book.
This was three-quarters complete in 1960, when Dr Wilson's illness
and death again brought it to a halt. His colleague Dr Douglas
Henderson then undertook full responsibility, completing the text
and redrawing all the figures. This book was published in 1966 and
is now being reissued. It covers all the species of Uredinales or
Rust Fungi known in Britain at the time of publication and takes
into account extensive research.
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