Proefschrift (doctoral)--Universiteit te Nijmegen, 1941. / "Stellingen" ([2] p.) laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-207) and index.

Proefschrift (doctoral)--Universiteit te Nijmegen, 1941. / "Stellingen" ([2] p.) laid in. Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-207) and index.

Habilitationsschrift--Universität Bern, 1982. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [201]-215) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Religion)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2007. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

The meaning of democracy was contested theoretical and political terrain in classical Athens. In this dissertation I examine three contending theoretical views of democracy found in the works of three Greek thinkers--Thucydides, Aeschylus and Plato--present at the height of Athenian democracy. I show that each view draws upon competing conceptions of nature, language, truth, and power in order to claim the contested terrain. I argue that the heroic view of democracy, portrayed in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, saw politics as the means by which states achieve immortal glory through feats of war which simultaneously destroy them. In this view political power was delivered by the unified voice--the single identity--of the Athenian assembly produced by the power of persuasion. I interpret the tragic view, represented by Aeschylus' Oresteia, to criticize the heroic tradition of politics as dangerously unbalanced. The Oresteia offers an alternative view of democracy in which multiple voices divided against themselves produce not weakness but balance as a shield against the loss of limits implied in the heroic view. I argue that the ambiguity of language, and the ambiguous identity it produces, is affirmed by tragedy to be a source of political strength and not a sign of political disintegration. The Platonic view articulated in the Republic opposes both the heroic view of politics and its tragic revision. I contend that the Republic, while appearing to oppose democracy, actually seeks to place it on a more secure foundation grounded in the logical concept of identity and rational thought applied to the soul. I argue that the Platonic attempt to found political order on the twin concepts of logical and psychological identity maintained by rational thought and language actually recapitulates on a grand scale the same dangers it identifies in its heroic opponents. And I suggest in conclusion that our Platonic legacy may effectively blind us to the dangerously heroic trajectory of the modern political state.

This thesis is an investigation into the simplest material entities recognised by Aristotle's theory of nature. In general, the position I defend is that the four 'so-called elements' fire, air, water, and earth are, for Aristotle, genuine elements, i.e., the simplest material constituents, of bodies. In particular, I deal with two problems, the first concerning the relationship between the four 'so-called elements' and the primary contraries, hot-cold, dry-wet; and the second concerning the nature of the matter from which the latter come to be. Responses to these problems in the secondary literature tend to conclude that the contraries (usually together with 'prime matter'), are constitutive of the so-called elements. I reject this conclusion. In the first part of this thesis I consider, and dismiss, the alleged evidence that Aristotle denies to fire, air, water, and earth the status of genuine elements, and I argue that the status of the contraries as the differentiae of the elements effectively rules out the possibility that they could be the constituents of the latter. In the second part of this thesis I attempt to unpack Aristotle's assertion at De Gen. et Cor. II. 1 that the matter of the perceptible bodies is that from which the so-called elements come to be. I argue that the matter of the perceptible bodies, although it is that from which the elements come to be, is not the 'matter of the elements', in the sense of a matter that composes the elements. On the contrary, the 'matter of the perceptible bodies', i.e., the constitutive matter of composite bodies, is itself composed of the elements: it is a mixture of the four elements. Thus the latter can be said to come to be 'from' the 'matter of the perceptible bodies', but this must be understood in a non-constitutive sense of 'from'.

This dissertation investigates the appropriation of material from one scientific field into another in the early Hellenistic period, 300-150 BCE. Appropriation from one science into another led to the emergence of new concepts in a community of scientists. Herophilus of Chalcedon’s appropriation of musical rhythms led to the emergence of the pulse as a materio-semiotic object for Rationalist physicians. Archimedes of Syracuse’s appropriation of mechanical concepts of weighing led to the emergence of the mechanical method as a scientific way of seeing for practicing mathematicians. But objects and concepts emerging from cross-scientific appropriation had ideological consequences for scientific methodology within individual scientific communities. Archimedes prioritized a formal Euclidean proof over that offered by the mechanical method because of the standards of proof demanded by the community of practicing mathematicians. The sect of Empiricist physicians rejected Rationalist medicine and promoted the individual doctor’s role and authority as a medical caregiver. The dissertation’s sum tells a story of increasing but limited strategies of naturalization within the sciences of the early Hellenistic period. / text

This thesis concerns the relationship between research in experimental archaeology and the intangible of the past. Only a quarter of technological experiments in a sample of 100 studies addresses the intangible of technological practice, and this project sets out to explore if there are conceptual or practical obstacles for this low rate. The thesis begins with an in-depth examination of experimental archaeology and the criteria, paradigms and theories that determine its practice. Through this study, elements of the dichotomy positivism/postmodernism are uncovered and discussed. To resolve this dualism, a third paradigm – philosophical pragmatism – is introduced as an alternative. This conceptual debate represents Part I, and is subsequently collated into a methodological framework for the creation of a typified experiment. Part II consists of the experimental segment of this study, in search for practical obstacles for the exploration of the intangible. Through experimenting with Iron Age Bucket-shaped pots, Mesolithic faceted pebbles and Middle Palaeolithic birch bark tar production, different components of an experiment are highlighted for investigation. An element that comes forward as problematic is the relationship between experimental archaeologists and science ideals that is underscored by experimental tradition. Conclusively, the final discussion leaves the conceptual and practical barriers that may prevent archaeologists from studying the intangible aspects of technology overturned. In sum, this may enable experimental archaeologists to take a fuller view of their own practice and that of the people of the past.

This thesis offers a new contextualisation of weather signs, naturally occurring terrestrial indicators of weather change (from, for example, animals, plants and atmospheric phenomena), in antiquity. It asks how the utility of this method of prediction was perceived and presented in ancient sources and studies the range of answers given across almost eight hundred years of Greek and Roman civilisation. The presentation of weather signs is compared throughout to that of another predictive method, astrometeorology, which uses the movement of the stars as markers of approaching weather. The first chapter deals with the presentation and discussion of weather signs in a range of Greek texts. It sees hesitant trust being placed in weather signs, lists of which were constructed so as to be underpinned by astronomical knowledge. The second chapter assesses how these Greek lists were received and assimilated into Roman intellectual discourse by looking to the strikingly similar practice of divining by portents. This lays the foundations for the final chapter, which describes and explains the Roman treatment of weather signs. Here, the perceived utility of weather signs can be seen to reduce rapidly as the cultural significance of astronomy reaches new heights. This thesis provides new readings and interpretations of a range of weather-based passages and texts, from the Pseudo-Theophrastan De Signis, to Lucan's Pharsalia, to Pliny's Natural History, many of which have previously been greatly understudied or oversimplified. It allows us to understand the social and scientific place of weather prediction in the ancient world and therefore how abstract and elaborate ideas and theories filtered in to the seemingly commonplace and everyday. I argue that between the 7th century BC and the end of the 1st century AD, the treatment of weather signs changes from being framed in fundamentally practical terms to one in which practical considerations were negligible or absent. As this occurred, astrometeorology comes to be seen as the only predictive method worthy of detailed attention. These two processes, I suggest, were linked.