Herophilus and Erasistratus on the hēgemonikon

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via the DOI in this record.In Alexandria at some point in the early third century bc, Herophilus of Chalcedon identified the nerves as a distinct system within the body, traced their origins to the brain, and recognised their role in transmitting sensation and voluntary motion. His discovery was based on dissection and vivisection, not only of animals, but also of human beings. Herophilus’ younger contemporary Erasistratus also integrated these findings into his rather bolder physiology. The implications of this discovery were of course wide-ranging. From a modern perspective, it is now widely celebrated as having established, for the first time on something like a scientific basis, that the brain has more or less the functions that we now ascribe to it. Likewise, in antiquity, Galen relied heavily on Herophilus’ discovery in his proof that the rational soul is located in the brain. As we shall see, it also had an impact on Stoic psychology. What exactly Herophilus and Erasistratus saw as its implications, however, is a different question, and the difficulties in answering it are considerable given the state of the evidence

Philosophy According to Tacitus: Francis Bacon and the Inquiry into the Limits of Human Self-Delusion

Bacon belonged to a cultural milieu that, between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, proved to be especially receptive to infuences coming from such continental authors as Machiavelli, Bodin, Duplessis-Mornay, Hotman, and, through Lipsius, a particular brand of Stoicism tinged with Tacitean motifs. Within the broader question of Tacitus’ infuence on Tudor and Stuart culture, this article focuses on the issue of how Bacon’s characteristic insistence on the powers of the imagination (fingere) and of belief (credere) in shaping human history may have infuenced his view that human beings suffer from an innate tendency to self-delusion