The Legacy of Plato's Timaeus

Cosmology, Music, Medicine, and Architecture from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-90-04-43108-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 353, 446 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 798 g

Reihe: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History

Plato’s Timaeus inspired a uniquely enduring interest across disciplines. In the centuries between its composition and the seventeenth century, scholars looked to this dialogue for answers to questions about the structure of the universe and how to live a healthy and happy life. They saw cosmology as vital to medicine and ethics; and, for them, harmony in music and architecture facilitated balance in the human soul. This interdisciplinary collection explores how the dialogue transformed the disciplines of cosmology, music, medicine, and architecture, and how new intellectual and cultural developments in turn shaped and re-contextualized interpretations of Plato’s ideas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Prins, Jacomien

Thomas, Edmund

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Architektur Architektur: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Note on Translations, Editions, and Abbreviations

Notes on Contributors

1 Introduction: from Plato’s Text to the Beginnings of Modern Science – towards a New Understanding of the Disciplinary Inheritance of Plato’s Timaeus

Jacomien Prins and Edmund Thomas

PART 1: The Timaeus and its Reception in Late Antiquity

2 Mathematization in Plato’s Timaeus

Barbara M. Sattler

3 Towards the Quadrivium: the Role of the Timaeus in the Constitution of a Corpus of Mathematical Sciences

Federico M. Petrucci

4 Galen’s Timaeus

Robert Vinkesteijn

5 From Text to Building: the Impact of the Timaeus on the Discipline of Architecture in Later Antiquity

Edmund Thomas

PART 2: The Medieval Timaeus

6 The Reception of the Timaeus in Medieval Music Theory and Practice

Barbara Haggh-Huglo

7 Signum, Ordo, Machina: Nature in Twelfth-century Chartres, Paris and Bologna between Biblical Exegesis and Philosophical Heritage

Riccardo Saccenti

8 Curing Body and Soul with Plato’s Timaeus in the Eastern Roman Empire (284–1453)

Frederick Lauritzen

9 The Timaeus and Durham Cathedral

John Shannon Hendrix

PART 3: The Timaeus in the Renaissance

10 ‘Not for Irrational Pleasure’: Music in Marsilio Ficino’s Timaeus Commentary

Jacomien Prins

11 Saving the Phenomena: Geometric Atomism and the Timaeus in the Renaissance

Guy Claessens

12 Johannes Kepler and the Pythagoreans

Jonathan Regier

13 Vesalius and the Timaeus. The Anatomist’s Answer to the Philosopher

Jacqueline Vons

14 The Timaeus, Perspective, and Early Renaissance Concepts of Architectural Space

Nicholas Temple

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Jacomien Prins is a research fellow at Utrecht University. She has worked extensively on the interaction between music and philosophy in the Renaissance. Her work includes Echoes of an Invisible World: Marsilio Ficino and Francesco Patrizi on Cosmic Order and Music Theory (Brill, 2014), Sing Aloud Harmonious Spheres: Renaissance Conceptions of Cosmic Harmony (Routledge, 2017), and The Routledge Companion to Music, Mind, and Well-being (Routledge, 2018).

Edmund Thomas is Associate Professor in Ancient Visual and Material Culture at Durham University and a former director of the Durham Centre for Classical Reception. He has published many works on the intellectual and cultural background of Greek and Roman architecture and the classical architectural tradition up to the present day, including Monumentality and the Roman Empire: Architecture in the Antonine Age (Oxford University Press, 2007).