Philosophy, Science, and Psychology

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the importance of philosophy to Galen’s work as a scientist and doctor in general and his views on the nature of the mind, or soul, in particular—a topic of underlying importance, in various ways, throughout his work. The first part of the chapter gives an overview of Galen’s engagement with philosophy as a discipline and of the specific significance of particular philosophers, texts, and discussions for distinct areas of Galen’s thought and writing—from logic, through causal and physical theory, to ethics and to the area of philosophy of mind and (in modern terms) psychology and neurology. The second part gives a focused discussion of the latter area, offering an analysis of Galen’s physiologically based theory of the “soul,” and in particular of the way in which it combines previous philosophical models with an anatomically based account in terms of brain function and the various capacities of the body