12/05/2024
When I was made Head of my Discipline of Oral Pathology, and moved into the respective office, I decided to decorate the walls with images that I could point students towards by way of explanation and hopefully also inspiration.
One for example, was of great Australian scientists pictured on the ‘old Australian dollar notes’. Another was of a camera lucida drawing published in 1928 by a long forgotten scientist, Sandison. It clearly illustrated endothelial apoptosis contributing to wound maturation, a process I and other laboratories had been working for years to find, but that had just been published by a colleague. I only stumbled on Sandison’s image by accident, and had to laugh that we had all been unaware of Sandison’s much earlier work, done at a time before the term ‘apoptosis’ had been coined.
I also had a photo of the Acropolis I’d taken during a conference, because I saw that the roots of science were buried in Ancient Greek soil.
It’s nice to see that Bertrand Russel, for whom I have the greatest respect, had similar but of course far better thought out sentiments.
Why study Ancient Greek philosophy? Bertrand Russell explains the value and legacy.
“It is of course always invidious to make comparisons between different cultures, but if one were to characterise Western civilisation in a single short phrase, one may well say that it is built on an ethic of mental enterprise which is essentially found in Ancient Greece. In looking back over the philosophic endeavours of the Ancient world, one is struck by the extraordinary power of the Greek mind in discerning general problems. Plato has said that the beginning of philosophy lies in puzzlement, and this capacity to be struck with wonder and amazement the Greeks of early times possessed to an unusual degree. The general notion of enquiry and research is one of the great Greek inventions that has shaped the Western world.
The vital feature of Greek philosophy is that it basically aims at publicity. Its truths, such as they are, do not claim an aura of ineffability. From the beginning, great emphasis attaches to language and communication. There are, it is true, some mystical elements as well, and from quite early on. The Pythagorean mystical strain runs through the entire course of Ancient philosophy. But in a way this mysticism is really external to the enquiry Itself. It tends much rather to govern the ethic of the enquirer. Only when decay sets in does mysticism assume a more important role. As we suggested in discussing Plotinus, mysticism is opposed to the spirit of Greek philosophy.
If the failure of the Greeks had been due to a certain arrogance born of superior intellectual powers, the Romans failed from sheer lack of imagination. This heaviness of mind reveals itself in various ways, not least in the monumental architecture of Imperial times. The difference between the Greek and Roman spirit might well be symbolised by contrasting a Greck temple with a late Roman basilica. In Roman hands, the intellectual heritage of Greece becomes something rather less subtle and elegant. The philosophic tradition of Greece is essentially a movement of enlightenment and liberation. For it aims at freeing the mind from the bonds of ignorance. It removes the fear of the unknown by presenting the world as something accessible to reason. Its vehicle is the logos and its aspiration the pursuit of knowledge under the form of the Good. Disinterested enquiry is itself regarded as ethically good; through it, rather than through religious mysteries, do men achieve the good life. Along with the tradition of enquiry we find a certain cheerful outlook devoid of false sentiment.
For Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. Aristotle holds that what is important is not to live long but to live well. Some of this freshness, it is true, is lost in hellenistic and Roman times, when a somewhat more selfconscious stoicism gains ground. It remains nonetheless that all that is best in the intellectual framework of Western civilisation goes back to the traditions of the thinkers of Greece.“
— Bertrand Russell, Wisdom of the West: a historical survey of Western Philosophy in its social and political setting (1959), Ch. III: Hellenism, pp. 120-21
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Image (detail): An elder Plato walks alongside a younger Aristotle in
The School of Athens (1509 - 1511) by Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.
The School of Athens was part of a commission by Pope Julius II to decorate the rooms now called the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. The fresco depicts a congregation of ancient philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, with Plato and Aristotle featured in the center. The identities of most figures are ambiguous or discernable only through subtle details or allusions. Italian artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo are believed to be portrayed through Plato and Heraclitus, respectively. Raphael included a self-portrait beside Ptolemy. The School of Athens is regarded as one of Raphael's best-known works and has been described as his “masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance“.
