Table of Contents

Introduction
1: The Presocratics
2: Science and Sophistry
3: Plato
4: Aristotle: Explanation and Nature
5: Aristotle: Explanation and the World
6: The Atomists
7: The Stoics
8: The Sceptics
9: Explanation in the Medical Schools
10: The Age of Synthesis
11: Science and Explanation
12: The Neoplatonists
Appendix; Bibliography; Index

About the Author

R. J. Hankinson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.

Reviews

A fascinating book. It contains a sweeping survey of approaches to causation and explanation from the Presocratic philosophers (sixth century BC) to the Neo-platonist philosophers (third century AD). Hankinson pays a visit to every major figure and movement in between: the sophists, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Sceptics, the Epicureans and a variety of medical writers, early and late ... impressive ... Hankinson's observations are regularly intriguing, at times refreshingly trenchant, and in some cases straightforwardly arresting ... the history itself is excellent: clear, intelligently conceived and executed, and broadly accessible. Those in search of a philosophically astute history of clasical philosophy given in terms of one of its own central unifying obsessions will delight in reading R. J. Hankinson's work. Christopher Sheilds, Times Literary Supplement