Psychological knowledge in antiquity
Psychological knowledge has ancient history. Their accumulation took place in various sciences and spheres of human activity - wherever knowledge about the spiritual world and people's behavior was needed. It is difficult to establish exactly when psychological knowledge began to be applied in practice. Since ancient times, knowledge about the soul has been associated with religious and cult rites. The practical experience of knowing the human soul became a kind of source of psychological "services". Thus, psychological labor functions (and their carriers) have always existed in society.
The first systems of knowledge about the soul appeared in the countries of the Ancient East (in China, India, Egypt), in Ancient Greece and in Ancient Rome. The ancient philosophers expressed the concept of "soul" the cause of life, breathing, knowledge. Chinese and Indian medical sources contained whole line interesting psychological observations and conclusions; in the Indian philosophical schools one could find many deep psychological reflections.
In ancient Greece, the most famous descriptions mental phenomena were given by the philosophers Heraclitus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
According to the teaching Heraclitus(530-470 BC), all things are the essence of the modification of fire. Everything that exists, including the physical and mental, is constantly changing. The fiery principle in the body is the soul - the psyche. She is born from a watery state and returns to it. The soul, according to Heraclitus, evaporates from moisture. Again returning to a wet state, she dies
Democritus(460-370 BC) thought that the soul is a material substance that consists of atoms of fire, spherical, light and mobile. Democritus tried to explain all the phenomena of mental life by physical and even mechanical causes.
Anaxagoras(500-428 BC) considered the world to be composed of countless qualitatively different particles. Their movement is ordered due to the mind. The term “mind” (“nous”) was one of the main categories of ancient Greek philosophy, which characterized the orderliness and regularity of the processes of nature and human behavior.
With name Hippocrates(c. 460-377 BC) are usually associated with the doctrine of temperament and its types. It found an explanation in the idea of the ratio in the body of four fluids ("juices") - blood, mucus, yellow bile and black bile. This point of view is usually called humoral (from Greek - liquid). On this basis, four types of temperament were distinguished: choleric (with a predominance of yellow bile), phlegmatic (with a predominance of mucus), melancholic (with a predominance of black bile), sanguine (with a predominance of blood).
One of the most remarkable thinkers of ancient Greece was Socrates(470-399 BC). This philosopher, who for many centuries became the ideal of selflessness, honesty and independence of thought, is known only from the words of his students. He himself never wrote anything, but only conducted dialogues with students and citizens, encouraging them to search for true knowledge. The meaning of Socrates' activity was to help the interlocutor find the true answer with the help of a certain way selected questions and lead him from indefinite ideas to a logically clear knowledge of objects. A wide range of "everyday concepts" about justice and injustice, goodness and beauty, courage, etc. were discussed. Socrates' motto was: "Know thyself." He had in mind the analysis of actions, moral assessments and norms of human behavior in various life situations. This led to a new understanding of the essence of the soul, to a new attitude of man towards himself as the bearer of intellectual and moral qualities.
Two great ancient Greek thinkers of the 4th century BC - Plato and Aristotle created systems that for many centuries had a profound impact on the philosophical and psychological thought of mankind.
ancient greek philosopher Plato(428-348 BC) paid much attention to the study of the soul in his writings. In them, he gave a classification of mental phenomena. He believed that the soul consists of three parts - lustful, passionate and rational. The predominance of one or another part of the soul in a person explained his individuality. The process of thinking by Plato was understood as a recollection of what the soul knew in its cosmic life, but forgot when moving into the body. Exploring cognitive processes, Plato spoke about sensation, memory and thinking. Moreover, he was the first scientist who began to talk about memory as an independent mental process. He discovered the role of inner speech and the activity of thinking in the process of cognition. Plato's main ideas about the nature of the soul and its relationship with the body are set forth in his work "Phaedo", which in ancient times was called "On the Soul". Plato is credited with the doctrine of general concepts as some kind of perfect absolute ideas, as well as the doctrine of an immortal soul undergoing successive reincarnations.
Another outstanding thinker who made a great contribution to the development of psychological knowledge was the ancient Greek philosopher-encyclopedist Aristotle(384-322 BC), a student of Plato, but who rejected the theory of ideas. He believed that the real world is the way we perceive it. According to his teachings, the world consists of many tiny indivisible particles - atoms, which have different sizes and mobility. The smallest and most mobile of them are the atoms of the soul. Aristotle's treatise "On the Soul" became the first special psychological work in which the first systematized doctrine of the psyche was created. For many centuries it remained the main manual of psychology. Aristotle himself is rightfully considered the founder of psychology, as well as a number of other sciences. The soul, according to Aristotle, is a way of organizing a living body. The soul was considered inherent in all living organisms (including plants). Aristotle offered a scientific explanation for the five basic senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and also for the first time gave a systematic description of mental phenomena.
Lesson #2 Topic:
FORMATION OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES
Developed and conducted in 8 classes
teacher of biology, secondary school №29, Georgievsk Ignatieva E.S.
Tasks: to introduce the history of the formation of human sciences; to master the concepts of the main stages of development of human anatomy, physiology and hygiene
Equipment: Presentation for the lesson (portraits of Heraclitus, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Louis Pasteur, I.I. Mechnikov, I.M. Sechenov, I.P. Pavlov).
During the classes
I. Check of knowledge. Individual survey.
What is the object of study of anatomy?
Fill in the table.
2. The study of man in the Renaissance . Independent work with the textbook (§ 2, p. 10-11). Assignment: read the article “Studying Man in the Renaissance” § 2 and answer the question: What is the difference between the work of Renaissance scientists and the work of scientists of the previous stage?
Listening to messages.
Fill in the table
3. The development of anatomy, physiology, psychology and hygiene since the beginning of the 19th century. to the present day.
|
Scientist |
Years of life |
Key Ideas Contribution to science |
|
Heraclitus |
End of the 6th - beginning of the century BC. e. |
Organisms develop according to the laws of nature. He believed that the world is constantly changing |
|
Aristotle |
384-322 BC |
Comparison of animal and human organs. Introduced the term "organism" The psychic activity of man exists as long as the body lives. |
|
Hippocrates (symbol of medical art) |
460-377 BC |
-Description of the bones of the body Description of organs by analogy with animals Essay on traumatology (about dressings, treatment of wounds, fractures) treatises on hygiene healthy way life, about the influence of water, air and terrain on health) Rejected the divine origin of man) |
|
Claudius Galen |
130-200 AD |
- Conducted experiments on animals Experienced the action of lek. Substances He proved that during life in animals blood flows through the arteries (before that it was believed that air) He studied in detail the structure of the organs of the monkey and made erroneous conclusions that a person is arranged in a similar way For 14 centuries, his work was the basis of honey. knowledge in Europe and Wed. East. |
|
medieval stagnation |
5th-16th centuries |
Church brutally suppressed attempts to study the development of science Burnt at the stake by Giordano Bruno, Servetus |
|
Abu Ali Ibn Sin (Avicenna) |
980-1037 AD |
Overcoming stagnation The Canon of Medicine |
|
Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci |
1452-1519 |
- on their pics. For the first time depicted various organs Describe the structure of the human skeleton Classified muscles |
|
Rafael Santi |
1483-1520 |
Studied, described and sketched the structure of the human body |
|
Andreas Vesalius |
1515-1564 |
Founder of modern anatomy At lectures, he dissected corpses Accurately described and depicted the internal organs of the human body and the skeleton Describe the valves of the heart For the first time brought all knowledge into the system |
|
William Harvey |
1587-1657 |
Founder of the birth and development of modern physiology Opening 2 circles of blood circulation The study of physiological functions using experimental methods |
|
Rene Descartes |
1596-1650 |
- Opening reflex The reflex principle of interaction between the body and the environment |
|
Since the 19th century Founder of Russian Sciences |
Law of conservation of matter and energy Theory of color vision Classification of taste sensations |
|
|
C. Darwin |
1809-1882 |
Evolution theory |
|
N.I. Pirogov Russian anatomist, surgeon |
1810-1881 |
- Sawing thawed corpses (for exact definition arrangement of internal organs and tissues) For the first time applied ether anesthesia, plaster bandages Fundamentals of military field surgery |
|
I.M. Sechenov |
1829-1905 |
"Father of Russian physiology" Reflexes of the brain. Explanations of human mental activity |
|
I.P. Pavlov |
1849-1936 |
Confirmation of Sechenov's theory experimentally |
|
I.I. Mechnikov E. Jenner Louis Pasteur |
|
Founders of immunology Discovery of phagocytosis Invented the first vaccine Vaccination procedures |
111. Consolidation of knowledge.
Frontal conversation.
Why in ancient times, knowledge about a person accumulated slowly, and starting from the 19th century. - much faster?
Name some of the scientists (foreign and domestic) who have made a great contribution to the development of the sciences of anatomy, physiology and hygiene
1. For the first time applied experimental methods to solve physiological problems, discovered two circles of blood circulation: small and large.
2. The founder of plastic anatomy, classified muscles by size, shape, depicted in volume.
3. He expressed the idea that organisms develop according to the laws of nature and, having learned them, these laws can be used for the benefit of people.
4. Wrote the first manual on human anatomy, based on a direct study of the human body, and is rightfully considered the founder of modern anatomy. 5. I judged the structure of the human body on the basis of data obtained from animals. b. Introduced the concept of reflex.
7. Domestic scientist who made a great contribution to the development of the science of immunity. 8. One of the first to study the impact of natural factors on human health.
9. Introduced the term organism.
10. Founder of Russian physiology, author of the book "Reflexes of the Brain".
11. Proposed a fistula method for studying the functions of the digestive glands, discovered conditioned reflexes.
12. Developed a method of preventive vaccinations, which were effective tool combat various infectious diseases.
Homework: § 2, reply
Once upon a time, students joked, advising at exams in any subject to the question about his ancestor boldly answer: "Aristotle." This ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist, who lived in the 4th century BC. e., laid the first stones in the foundation of many disciplines. Aristotle should also rightfully be considered the founder of psychology as a science: his treatise On the Soul became a kind of first course in general psychology. By the way, regarding the subject of psychology, we follow the approach adopted by Aristotle, who first outlined the history of the issue, the opinions of his predecessors, explained the attitude towards them, and only then, using their achievements and miscalculations, proposed his solutions.
No matter how high the thought of Aristotle rose, immortalizing his name, generations of ancient Greek sages, philosophers, theorists, naturalists, naturalists, and physicians stood behind it. Their works led to revolutionary changes in ideas about the surrounding world, the beginning of which was associated with overcoming the ancient animism.
Animism(from Latin "anima" - soul, spirit) - belief in a host of spirits (souls) hidden behind visible things as special "agents" or "ghosts" that leave the human body with their last breath or (for example, according to the famous philosopher and mathematics of Pythagoras), being immortal, forever wandering through the bodies of animals and plants. The ancient Greeks called the soul the word "psyche", which gave the name to our science. It preserved traces of the original understanding of the connection between life and its physical and organic basis (cf. Russian words: "soul, spirit" and "breathe", "air").
It is interesting that already in that ancient era, people, speaking of the soul ("psyche"), linked phenomena inherent in external nature (air), the body (breath) and the psyche (in its subsequent understanding), although, of course, in everyday practice they distinguished these concepts perfectly. Getting acquainted with the ideas of human psychology according to ancient myths, one cannot help but admire the subtlety of people's understanding of gods endowed with cunning or wisdom, revenge or generosity, envy or nobility - all those qualities that the creators of myths learned in the earthly practice of their communication with their neighbors. This mythological picture of the world, where bodies are inhabited by souls (their twins or ghosts), and life depends on the mood of the gods, reigned in the public consciousness for centuries.
A real revolution in the development of thought was transition from animism to hylozoism(from the Greek words meaning "matter" and "life"), according to which the whole world, the cosmos was considered originally alive; no boundaries were drawn between the living, the inanimate and the psychic - they were all considered as creations of a single living matter. Nevertheless, this philosophical doctrine was a great step towards understanding the nature of the psychic. Hylozoism put an end to animism (although the latter has continued over the centuries, up to the present day, to find many adherents who considered the soul to be an entity external to the body) and for the first time subordinated the soul (psyche) to the general laws of nature, nature, affirming an immutable and for modern science the postulate of the initial involvement of mental phenomena in the cycle of nature.
The hylozoist Heraclitus (end of the 6th - beginning of the 5th century BC) imagined the cosmos in the form of an "eternally living fire", and the soul ("psyche") in the form of its spark. Everything that exists is subject to eternal change: "Our bodies and souls flow like streams." Another aphorism of Heraclitus was: "Know thyself." But in the lips of the philosopher, this did not mean at all that to know oneself means to go deep into one's own thoughts and experiences, to be distracted from everything external. "No matter what roads you go, you will not find the boundaries of the soul, so deep is its Logos," Heraclitus taught. The term Logos, introduced by Heraclitus, acquired a great variety of meanings over time, but for him it meant law, by through which "everything flows," through which phenomena pass into each other. The small world (microcosm) of an individual soul is identical to the macrocosm of the entire world order; Consequently comprehend yourself
(one's "psyche") means to delve into the law (Logos), which gives the continuously flowing course of things a dynamic harmony woven from contradictions and cataclysms. After Heraclitus (he was called "dark" because of the difficulty of understanding and "weeping", since he considered the future of mankind even more terrible than the present), the idea of the law that governs all things entered into the reserve of means that allow reading the "book of nature" with meaning, including the non-stop flow of bodies and souls, when "you cannot enter the same river twice."
The idea of Heraclitus that the course of things depends on the law (and not on the arbitrariness of the gods-rulers of heaven and earth) was developed by Democritus (second half of the 5th-early 4th century BC). The gods themselves in his image are nothing more than spherical clusters of fiery atoms. Man is also made up of different kinds of atoms; the most mobile of them are the atoms of fire, which form the soul.
Democritus recognized the law as one for both the soul and the cosmos, not in itself, but the law according to which there are no causeless phenomena: they are all the inevitable result of the collision of atoms. Random people call those events, the causes of which they do not know.
Democritus was friends with Hippocrates (second half of the 5th-early 4th century BC), a famous physician who studied the structure of the human body and investigated the causes of diseases. Hippocrates considered the main reason for the differences between a healthy and a sick person to be the proportions in which various "juices" (blood, bile, mucus) are found in the body; these proportions he called temperaments. The names of four temperaments that have survived to this day are associated with the name of Hippocrates: sanguine (blood predominates), choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile), phlegmatic (mucus).
For the future scientific psychology, this explanatory principle, for all its naivete, was of great importance (it is not for nothing that the terminology of Hippocrates has been preserved to this day). First, the hypothesis has been put forward that the myriad differences between people can be grouped under a few common features of behavior; thereby laid the foundation scientific typology, underlying modern teachings about individual differences between people. Secondly, Hippocrates looked for the source and cause of the differences inside the body; spiritual qualities were made dependent on bodily ones. The role of the nervous system in that era was not yet known, therefore, the typology was, in the current language, humoral (from the Latin "humor" - liquid).
It should be noted, however, that in the 20th century, scientists turned to studies of both nervous processes and body fluids, its hormones (the Greek word for what excites). Now both doctors and psychologists are talking about a single neurohumoral regulation of behavior. If you look at Hippocratic temperaments from a general theoretical standpoint, you can see their weak side (however, it is also inherent in modern typologies of characters): the body was considered as a mixture - in certain proportions - various elements, but how this mixture turned into a harmonious whole remained a mystery.
The philosopher Anaxagoras (V century BC) tried to unravel it. He did not accept either the Heraclidean view of the world as a fiery stream, or the Democritus picture of atomic whirlwinds. Considering nature to be composed of many tiny particles, he looked for the beginning in it, thanks to which an organized cosmos arises from chaos, from the random accumulation and movement of these particles. Anaxagoras recognized as such a beginning "the finest thing", to which he gave the name "nus" (mind); he believed that their perfection depends on how fully the mind is represented in various bodies. "Man," said Anaxagoras, "is the most intelligent of animals because he has hands." It turned out that it is not the mind that determines the advantages of a person, but his bodily organization determines the highest mental quality - rationality.
The principles formulated by Heraclitus, Democritus and Anaxagoras created the main vital nerve of the future system of scientific understanding of the world, including the knowledge of mental phenomena. No matter how tortuous paths this knowledge took in subsequent centuries, it obeyed the ideas law, causality and organization. Explanatory reasons, discovered two and a half thousand years ago in ancient Greece, have become the basis for explaining mental phenomena for all time.
A completely new side of the knowledge of these phenomena was opened by the activity sophist philosophers(from the Greek words "Sophia" - "wisdom"). They were not interested in nature, with its laws independent of man, but in man himself, who, as the aphorism of the first sophist Protagoras said, "is the measure of all things." Subsequently, the nickname "sophist" began to be applied to false sages who, with the help of various tricks, give out imaginary evidence as true. But in the history of psychological knowledge, the activity of the sophists discovered a new object: relations between people, studied using means designed to prove and inspire any position, regardless of its reliability.
In this regard, the methods of logical reasoning, the structure of speech, the nature of the relationship between the word, thought and perceived objects were subjected to a detailed discussion. How can anything be conveyed through language, asked the sophist Gorgias, if its sounds have nothing in common with the things they denote. And this was not just a logical contrivance, but raised a real problem. She, like other issues discussed by the sophists, prepared the development of a new direction in the understanding of the soul.
The search for the natural "matter" of the soul was abandoned. The study of speech and mental activity came to the fore from the point of view of its use to manipulate people. Their behavior was made dependent not on material causes, as it seemed to the former philosophers, who involved the soul and the cosmic cycle. Now she fell into a network of arbitrarily created logical-linguistic intricacies. Signs of its subordination to strict laws and inevitable causes that operate in physical nature disappeared from the ideas about the soul. Language and thought are devoid of such inevitability; they are full of conventions and depend on human interests and passions. Thus, the actions of the soul acquired unsteadiness and uncertainty. To restore their strength and reliability, but rooted not in the eternal laws of the macrocosm, but in the inner structure of the soul itself, Socrates sought (5th century BC).
On the Ionian coast in the city of Miletus, a philosophical school was formed, to which belonged Thales (c. 625-547 BC), Anaximander (c. 610-547 BC), Anaximenes (c. 585 - c. 525 BC). They should also include Heraclitus from the city of Ephesus (c. 520-460 BC). The early Greek philosophers are called "physiologists", since the main subject of their reflections is nature (in Greek "fusis"), and philosophy is conceived as the doctrine of the causes and principles of all things. For ancient philosophy initially characteristic features is objectivism and ontologism (the concept ontology means the doctrine of being).
The search for and substantiation of the first principle (in Greek "arche"), which is the single basis of the entire diversity of the world, the bearer of all changes and transformations, especially occupied the first philosophers. So, Thales expressed the idea that everything comes from water and turns into water. Anaximenes believed that air was the beginning of everything, by condensation and rarefaction of which specific things are formed. The "boundless" air of Anaximenes is the source of breath and all life. The successor of Thales, Anaximander, saw the beginning of all things not in any particular substance, but in the first substance - apeirone(which means infinite). Like ancient Eastern thinkers, ancient philosophers took earth, water, fire, air as the main elements that make up the fundamental principle of the world. The combination of these elements by the driving forces of attraction and repulsion gives rise to the development and state of specific things, phenomena and processes.
For example, Empedocles(c. 490-430 BC) believed that these natural elements form the "roots" of things, they fill all space, are in constant motion, moving, mixing and separating. They are immutable and eternal. The source of development in nature, the connection and separation of elements are not the "roots" themselves, but the driving forces of the universe, which are represented by the opposing sides: love and enmity. If love dominates in cyclic renewal, then the forces of attraction, unity, and likeness prevail. Enmity leads to repulsion, separation of elements and the manifestation of their qualitative originality. The predominance of the forces of love or the forces of enmity determines the various cyclical stages of the world process. In the world there is not a simultaneous, but a consistently repeating unity and a multitude of different elements and their states. Similar ideas have been put forward before. Anaxagoras from the city of Clazomena in Asia Minor (c. 500-428 BC). He recognized the infinite qualitative diversity of the infinitely divisible primary elements of matter. These are, as it were, “seeds of things”, from various combinations of which all existing things are formed. The driving force of the connection and separation of these "seeds", elementary particles, he considered nous (mind) as the lightest and subtlest substance. But the mind should also be interpreted as a spiritual force that determines the basis of world order.
An outstanding philosopher of the ancient world is Heraclitus (c. 544-460). He was famous for his thoughtfulness and mysteriousness of presentation, for which he received the nickname "Dark". Heraclitus considered the origin of all things, the primary substance of nature, the ever-living fire, from which the world as a whole, individual things and even souls originated. According to Heraclitus, truth or wisdom coincides with the "logos" as a kind of universal order and necessity, in accordance with which the cyclical world process is carried out. In his essay “On Nature”, which has come down to us only in fragments, one can read: “This cosmos, the same for everything that exists, was not created by any God and no man, but it always was, is and will be an eternally living fire, measures that light up and measures that go out.” His name is associated with the introduction into philosophical circulation of such fundamental concepts as measure, serving as the actual internal boundary of any thing or process. His understanding of the most complex philosophical category "becoming", which expresses the spontaneous variability of things and phenomena, their continuous transition and transformation into something else, is minted with such well-known words: “Everything flows, everything changes”, “you cannot enter the same river twice”. However, Heraclitus understands that the current river "changes, rests." He does not allow a gap and absolutization of the states of rest and variability, but considers them in unity and the process of transition from one state to another through the struggle of opposites.
In the life of nature, and even more so in human life, this struggle is the eternal law of the “universal logos”. It is universal, “the father of everything, the king of everything.” Thus, the development of many meaningful aspects goes back to Heraclitus. dialectics as a doctrine of universal connection, change and development. The process of knowledge according to Heraclitus goes through sensations. However, only thinking leads to wisdom, since the light of reason penetrates into the recesses hidden from perception by the senses.
Atomistic interpretation of being. The pinnacle of ancient Greek natural philosophy was atomism Democritus (c. 460-370 BC). According to Marx, he was "the first encyclopedic mind among the Greeks". Diogenes Laertius (first half of the 3rd century AD) names 70 of his works. They covered questions of philosophy, logic, mathematics, cosmology, physics, biology, social life, psychology, ethics, pedagogy, art, technology, etc. Aristotle wrote about him: “In general, apart from superficial research, no one has established anything, except for Democritus. As for him, one gets the impression that he foresaw everything, and in the method of calculations he compares favorably with others. ”Democritus proceeds from the ability to clarify the causes of phenomena. He owns the statement that he prefers one causal explanation to the possession of the Persian throne. He was nicknamed the “laughing philosopher,” because, according to the Roman philosopher Seneca, this laughter was caused by the frivolity of everything that people do quite seriously. The introductory part of the philosophical system of Democritus was the "Canonica". It formulates and substantiates the principles atomism(Atom in Greek - indivisible). Then followed physics (nature), as the science of various manifestations of being. Ethics followed from them, which was built as a product of physics. Democritus distinguishes between "truly existing" and that which exists only in "general opinion". Such a watershed is the distinction between “knowledge by opinion”, which is the lot of many people, and “knowledge by truth”, obtained by the method of causal explanation and inherited only by serious people. Democritus considers only atoms and emptiness to be truly existent. Atoms are indivisible particles. They connect with each other and form things. Atoms differ in form, order and position, they are one, indivisible, immutable and indestructible. As truly existing, emptiness (non-being) is the same reality as atoms (being). The "Great Void" is boundless and contains everything that exists. “Without it, there would be no possibility of movement, compaction and condensation.” Atoms themselves are characterized by incessant movement. Its variety is determined by the infinite variety of forms and the multitude of atoms. Democritus recognizes the eternity of the world in time and its infinity in space.
Following his great predecessors, Democritus believed that nothing comes from nothing. At the same time, he asserts that nothing arises without a cause. For him, there is no coincidence. Everything is necessary for certain reasons. Democritus can be considered the first successive determinist. According to determinism(from Latin it is translated “determine”) everything that happens in the world is determined by some reasons. In the theory of knowledge, Democritus gives priority to feelings. He explains spiritual phenomena on the basis of his atomistic position. The soul consists of the most mobile, spherical atoms, of which, by the way, fire also consists. He put forward the theory of "outflow" to explain the perception of the objects around us in the external world. So-called images “flow” from the objects themselves, as if the likeness of these objects. The true form of knowledge is only reason, reasoning, with their help you can comprehend what is on the material, to the sensual level of being. Ethics Democritus is based on the principle of individualism, the achievement of good thought. “A person of virtuous (pious) thought strives for just and lawful actions, in vigil and in sleep he is cheerful, healthy and calm.” He considered persuasion to be the main means of ethical education. The ideas of Democritus were developed by philosophers of later antiquity - Epicurus (341 - 270 BC), Lucretius Kar (c. 99-55 BC) - Roman poet and materialist philosopher. The atomistic theory does not lose its relevance even on the threshold of the 21st century.
When Hippocrates died, Aristotle was about seven years old. His name deserves to be mentioned immediately after the name of Hippocrates, for Aristotle and his doctrine of ideas, based on the exact observation of nature, big influence for the development of medicine. Of the many works left by him - and there are at least 400 of them - only a small part concerns medicine, but they are also of great importance. Already his statement that it is natural for a person to eat, multiply, perceive the world, move and think, shows that Hippocrates proceeded from observational data, from the activity of organs and, of course, from their structure. Anatomy (the study of the structure of the body) and physiology (the study of the activity of the organs of the body) were for Aristotle - the first compiler of systematic zoology and botany - the starting points for his descriptions and classification.
The most important thing, he says in his writings, is the heart. That is why it arises first and ends last. Birth is a transition from non-existence to being, while death is a transition from being to non-existence. Therefore, in a nascent man, just like in an animal, the heart is first formed as the center of everything, then the upper part of the body with a large head and large eyes, and then everything else. The thoracic barrier, he says, is something like a protective wall that traps the heat flowing from below. In view of the fulfillment of such an important task, it was considered the center of thinking, but Aristotle opposes this view and asks the question, what does the abdominal obstruction have to do with thinking. Very often in the works of ancient writers we meet the opinion that the center of thinking is the heart. So, for example, Homer says in the Iliad about Achilles that "the heart in his shaggy chest was discussing decisions."
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle attributes to man his own "thinking soul", which distinguishes him from all other living beings, but does not indicate a specific place in the body where it is located. .Aristotle had a correct idea about the functions of the shells: in his opinion, their purpose is to protect the insides from external damage. Therefore, the most important organs - the heart and the brain - are surrounded by the most dense shell, because they need especially reliable protection, since they must support life. Externally visible organs, he says, are known, but internal organs are unknown. It can, however, be assumed that they are similar to the organs of animals. The heart brews blood from nutrients. The pulse, he thinks, is the trembling of the heart; when food is supplied to the heart through large blood vessels, this food boils in the heart, and it shudders sharply because of this. Undoubtedly, Aristotle also saw the human brain, since he says that this brain is larger than that of animals, and more moist. However, he argues that the human brain is devoid of blood, cold and does not have sensitivity. He compares the kidneys of a man with the kidneys of a bull, and finds that they look as if they were made up of many small kidneys, a true observation about the kidneys of newborns. Both this and some of his other findings suggest that in ancient Greece, where autopsies were generally forbidden, anatomical knowledge could still be gleaned from the autopsy of infants, apparently children with birth defects.
Life, says Aristotle, is characterized by moisture and warmth, while old age, on the contrary, is cold and dry. Man lives longer than many large animals because his body contains more moisture and warmth. All excretions come from unwholesome or good food. “Unfit I call such food, which in no way contributes to growth and life and, when introduced in large quantities, causes harm to the body; fit I call food that has the opposite properties. Further, he claims that all organs consist of the same substance, the same initial substance, but each part of the body has its own special matter, for example, the special matter of mucus is sweetness, of bile - bitterness; however, these matters were also formed from the same primordial substance. The organism grows, feeds, and then decreases again - this is what we call life.
Aristotle says the following about sleep. Sleep is related to nutrition, as the effect of nutrition on growth occurs more in the sleep state than in the waking state. Food comes from the outside into the premises intended for it - the stomach and intestines. This is the first correct indication of the path that food takes. Changes take place there - the good enters the blood, the bad is expelled, but also a certain kind of substance passes into the blood by evaporation. These substances come to the center of the body - to the heart, the primary source of life. According to Aristotle, sleep arises from the vapors coming from food. The evaporating substance is heat, so it tends to rise, just as warm air always rises, then turns and falls down. Therefore, eating and drinking, especially the use of wine, which contains a lot of warm substances, has a soporific effect. Aristotle admits that there is still a lot of obscurity in this area, and raises the question of whether sleep comes from the fact that the spaces and passages inside the head are cooled due to movement when vapors enter there; he maintains that motion causes cooling, that the stomach and intestines, if empty, are in a warm state, while filling with food sets them in motion and therefore cools.
Aristotle, probably rightly, attaches much more importance to nutrition than we do now. At the same time, of course, he does not understand much. So, for example, he says that malnutrition causes children to have light, sparse and short hair at first, which later darkens because more food comes in, from where they get their color.
Children are in a good mood, while the elders are in a bad mood, because some are hot, while others are cold. Old age is a kind of cooling. Further, Aristotle says that man, as well as the horse and the mule, live long because they have little bile. This, of course, is not true, since all these creatures produce bile in very large quantities. It is only true that the horse does not have a gallbladder, there is no reservoir for bile, but the horse's liver also produces this substance, which is so important for digestion. Aristotle established that man, in the development of his senses, remains behind many animals, but man, he adds, has a finer sensitivity and therefore is the most intelligent of all living beings. For this reason, and for this reason alone, there are people of good ability and people of bad ability; Obviously, he means physically strong and physically weak people, but this is not true.
Man is made up of matter and form. Matter is produced by the elements - fire and earth. The form is determined by the father and, in addition, by all external causes, for example, the sun passing through the sky in an oblique line. So thought Aristotle, who was intensely interested in the emergence and development of the human embryo. "The seed is the beginning," he said. This is correct to some extent, but there is a lot of inaccuracy in his other remarks about human reproduction. And only those of his messages are valuable, in which he cites data from direct observation. A person becomes mature after two seven years. Babies born before the seventh month of pregnancy cannot survive. In most cases, a woman gives birth to only one child at a time; in some countries, for example, in Egypt, twins are born, and there are places where three and four children will be born; at most five children will be born at the same time. This is probably the earliest evidence that we have of the birth of five babies by one mother. Of course, such cases in those days produced no less a sensation, as well as two millennia later. In the human embryo, Aristotle believed, the heart is first formed, since, as already indicated, it was considered the rudiment of the organism and therefore the first-forming part in the development of the living organism. Aristotle also held the erroneous opinion that the heart has three chambers (in fact, it consists of two chambers and two prechambers).
Of what Aristotle stated in the field of medicine, much, of course, is only a product of his imagination or is borrowed from others. The fact is that there were not enough direct observations, statements on the corpse. This changed later in the period of the new rise of Greek science, especially when Alexandria - the port city founded by Alexander the Great in Egypt - turned into science Center, unparalleled. There, in the famous library, researchers could use hundreds of thousands of books, the greatest scientists of all branches gathered there, autopsies of human corpses were also allowed there, which, at least for a while, finally opened the way to the study of the human body. The best doctors of that time focused their attention on the study of anatomy and, of course, physiology, which until the 19th century was a field of medicine that was common with anatomy.
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