Theophrastus’ De igne. Orthodoxy, reform and readjustment in the doctrine of elements

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Abstract (may include machine translation)

Any account of the short Theophrastean treatise On Fire needs to address sensitive issues about the heavenly sphere-whether Theophrastus upholds Aristotle's convictions about aither, a special stuff, which performs the celestial revolutions as its natural motion, the way sublunary elements perform their rectilinear descents and risings-, and then about the status of fire itself in comparison to the other three sublunary elements. Needless to say, the two questions cannot be treated in isolation: proposals about the first query as a principle have direct bearing for the solution of the second difficulty. Accordingly, in the following sections I shall first discuss what conclusions we can draw from the meagre evidence of the introductory chapters of De igne about Theophrastus' assumptions about the make up of the celestial domain, and then in the closing sections of this paper I shall turn to some larger issues about the reforms or readjustments of a Peripatetic theory of elements which this treatise appears to adumbrate or at least to presuppose.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOn the Opuscula of Theophrastus
EditorsW Fortenbaugh William, Wöhrle Georg
Place of PublicationStuttgart
PublisherFranz Steiner Verlag
Pages75-90
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)9783515078887
StatePublished - 2002

Publication series

NameDie Philosophie der Antike ; 14.

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