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Darrera modificació: 2025-10-14
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Rocca, Julius, "Pneuma as a Holistic Concept in Galen", dins: Thumiger, Chiara (ed.), Holism in Ancient Medicine and Its Reception, Leiden, Brill (Studies in Ancient Medicine, 53), 2021, pp. 268-291.
- Resum
- Galenic physiology is an interconnected system of capacities (dunameis) made possible by the coordinated activities of individual structures and organ systems which ensure function (chreia). The two principal modalities operating within this milieu are the four humours and pneuma in its elaborated vital and psychic forms. Our potential as a rational agent depends on the proper exercise of intellection, of the sense organs, and of voluntary motion. As is well known, Galen incorporates the Platonic conception of the tripartite division of the soul, the Stoic notion of the governing principle (hēgemonikon), as well as a syncretic adaption of the Aristotelian and Stoic concept of pneuma. For Galen, the brain is the controlling organ of the body, containing the rational soul. This soul is somatised to an appreciable extent, in that it operates through the actions of a first instrument (prōton organon), which for Galen is psychic pneuma. This form of pneuma is elaborated by key organs of the body in a series of stepwise qualitative changes involving air, vital heat and blood. This series of elaborative changes imparts to pneuma, in its psychic manifestation, the function of an overall holistic property. Since it is formed as a physiologic whole which is more than the sum of its individual constituents, it enables the potential rational flourishing of gens humana. Psychic pneuma may also be considered as approaching the definition of an emergent property, although aspects of its function seem to depend on the physical characteristics of some of its parts. As far as pathological conditions are concerned, a completely holistic classification for pneuma is less clear. However, there is evidence that certain disease processes, whilst caused by humoural imbalance, are nevertheless symptomatically interpreted by Galen as being due primarily to blockage of pneumatic flow.
- Matèries
- Galè
Medicina
- URL
- https://brill.com/display/book/edcoll/9789004443143 ...
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