Out of Our Minds

by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

  51. Shijing, 1.9 (Odes of Wei), 112.

  52. J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), ii, p. 105.

  53. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, pp. 431–4; Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, ii: The New Kingdom, pp. 170–9.

  54. The Mahabharata, bk 3, section 148.

  55. The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, ed. B. Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 66, 71, 255–6.

  56. Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk 1, verses 89–112.

  57. R. Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), and M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), treat equality from the perspective of jurisprudence. R. Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), and F. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), adopt an approach from political philosophy.

  58. J. D. Evans, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Maltese Islands (London: Athlone Press, 1971), published the Tarxien evidence. The feminist interpretation was put forward by M. Stone, When God Was a Woman (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), M. Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), and E. W. Gaddon, The Once and Future Goddess (New York: Harper, 1989). See B. G. Walker, The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects (London: HarperCollins, 1988), for more evidence. M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), linked the Christian Mary cult to the goddess idea.

  59. F. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, ch. 48; F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. A. Ridley and J. Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 46.

  60. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, i: The Old and Middle Kingdoms, p. 83; B. G. Gunn, The Wisdom of the East, the Instruction of Ptah-Hotep and the Instruction of Ke’gemni: The Oldest Books in the World (London: Murray, 1906), ch. 19.

  61. Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, ed. G. W. Most (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 67, 80–2.

  62. Richardson, Hammurabi’s Laws, pp. 164–80.

  63. M. Ehrenberg, Women in Prehistory (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), is the best introduction to the archaeological evidence. R. Bridenthal et al., eds, Becoming Visible (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), is a pioneering collection on the rediscovery of the history of women. For the context of the Harappan figurines, B. and R. Allchin, The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), is the standard work. There is no good global study of marriage. P. Elman, ed., Jewish Marriage (London: Soncino Press, 1967), M. A. Rauf, The Islamic View of Women and the Family (New York: Speller, 1977), and M. Yalom, History of the Wife (London: Pandora, 2001), between them can provide a selective comparative conspectus.

  64. Frankfort et al., The Intellectual Adventure, p. 100.

  65. W. Churchill, The River War (London: Longman, 1899), ii, pp. 248–50.

  66. Classic works are J. H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (New York: Scribner, 1912), and W. M. Watt, Freewill and Predestination in Early Islam (London: Luzac and Co., 1948). For a general perspective on various kinds of determinist thinking, see P. van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).

  67. I. E. S. Edwards, The Great Pyramids of Egypt (London: Penguin, 1993), pp. 245–92.

  68. Pyramid text 508. The translation I quote is from R. O. Faulkner, ed., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 183.

  69. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 36.

  70. Frankfort et al., The Intellectual Adventure, p. 106.

  71. R. Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Prometheus, 1970), provides a general introduction. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, prints a fascinating array of documents. H. Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), is a richly reflective enquiry into ancient ethics. W. D. O’Flaherty, Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), is an interesting case study.

  72. M. W. Muller, The Upanishads (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879), is the classic edition in translation, but the selections in J. Mascaró, The Upanishads (New York: Penguin, 1965), are brilliantly translated and accessible; M. W. Muller, Rig-Veda-Sanhita (London: Trübnew and Co., 1869), is still the standard translation, but the work can be appreciated in the anthology of W. Doniger, The Rig Veda (London: Penguin, 2005). N. S. Subrahmanian, Encyclopedia of the Upanishads (New Delhi: Sterling, 1985), and S. Bhattacharji, Literature in the Vedic Age, vol. 2 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1986), are good modern critical surveys.

  73. W. Buck, ed., Mahabharata (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 196.

  74. On the context of the Memphite theology, see S. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion (London: British Museum Press, 1973).

  75. Pritchard, ed., The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, p. 2.

  76. Swami Nikhilānanda, The Upanishads: Katha, Iśa, Kena, and Mundaka (New York: Harper, 1949), p. 264.

  77. H. H. Price, Thinking and Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), is a good introduction to the problem of what it means to think. G. Ryle, On Thinking (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), proposed a famous solution: thought is just physical and chemical activity in the brain. Cf. pp. 4–17 above.

  Chapter 4: The Great Sages: The First Named Thinkers

  1. R. Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, and Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, are multivolume works of dazzling range that trace the relationship between styles of thinking in the civilizations concerned; G. E. R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and G. E. R. Lloyd and N. Sivin, The Way and the Word (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), compare Greek and Chinese thought and science directly.

  2. H. Coward, Sacred Word and Sacred Text (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), and F. M. Denny and R. L. Taylor, eds, The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985).

  3. E. B. Cowell, ed., The Jataka or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Birth, 7 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1895–1913), i, pp. 10, 19–20; ii, pp. 89–91; iv, pp. 10–12, 86–90.

  4. H. Hasan, A History of Persian Navigation (London: Methuen and Co., 1928), p. 1.

  5. D. T. Potts, The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  6. F. Hirth, ‘The story of Chang K’ien, China’s pioneer in Western Asia’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, xxxvii (1917), pp. 89–116; Ban Gu (Pan Ku), ‘The memoir on Chang Ch’ien and Li Kuang-Li’, in A. F. P. Hulsewe, China in Central Asia – The Early Stage: 125 B.C.–A.D. 23 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), pp. 211, 219.

  7. V. H. Mair, ‘Dunhuang as a funnel for Central Asian nomads into China’, in G. Seaman, ed., Ecology and Empire: Nomads in the Cultural Evolution of the Old World (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1989), pp. 143–63.

  8. R. Whitfield, S. Whitfield, and N. Agnew, Cave Temples of Mogao: Art and History on the Silk Road (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2000), p. 18.

  9. M. L. West, ed., The Hymns of Zoroaster (London: Tauris, 2010).

  10. D. Seyfort Ruegg, ‘A new publication on the date and historiography of the Buddha’s decease’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, lxii (1999), pp. 82–7.

  11. D. R. Bandarkar, Asoka (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1925), pp. 273–336.

  12. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 145–6.

  13. Dao De Jing, part 2, 78.1.

  14. R. M. Gale, Negation and Non-being (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976), is a philosophical introduction. J. D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing (London: Jonathon Cape, 2000), is fascinating, wide-ranging, and good on the science
and mathematics of zero. R. Kaplan, The Nothing That Is (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), is an engaging, clear, and straightforward approach to the mathematics involved.

  15. R. Mehta, The Call of the Upanishads (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1970), pp. 237–8.

  16. R. M. Dancy, Two Studies in the Early Academy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 67–70.

  17. P. Atkins, On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 17. I owe the reference to R. Shortt, God is No Thing (London: Hurst, 2016), p. 42; D. Turner, Thomas Aquinas: A Portrait (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 142.

  18. D. L. Smith, Folklore of the Winnebago Tribe (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), p. 105.

  19. D. Cupitt, Creation out of Nothing (London: SCM Press, 1990), is a revisionist work by a radical Christian theologian. K. Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), takes an arresting comparative approach. P. Atkins, Conjuring the Universe: The Origins of the Laws of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), attempts a materialist explanation.

  20. J. Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1995).

  21. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, ‘Nuer time-reckoning’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, xii (1939), pp. 189–216.

  22. S. J. Gould, Time’s Arrow (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), is a brilliant study of the concept, with special reference to modern geology and palaeontology. G. J. Whitrow, Time in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), and S. F. G. Brandon, History, Time and Deity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1965), are excellent comparative studies of different cultures’ concepts of time. Lippincott et al., The Story of Time, is a comprehensive survey of theories of time.

  23. K. Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1994), is a wide-ranging survey of the history of the concept. L. E. Goodman, God of Abraham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), and R. K. Gnuse, No Other Gods (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997), study the origins of the Jewish concept. M. S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), is a controversial revisionist version of the same subject.

  24. M. J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1986), is a study of the doctrine in the form Aquinas gave it. The Mozi, a collection ascribed to the homonymous master, is available in many editions, most recently D. Burton-Watson, ed., Mozi: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

  25. The Essential Samuel Butler, ed. G. D. H. Cole (London: Cape, 1950), p. 501.

  26. Frankfort et al., The Intellectual Adventure, p. 61.

  27. C. P. Fitzgerald, China: A Short Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), p. 98.

  28. A. Plantinga, ‘Free will defense’, in M. Black, ed., Philosophy in America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965); A. Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil (The Hague: Eerdmans, 1978).

  29. F. Fernández-Armesto, ‘How to be human: an historical approach’, in M. Jeeves, ed., Rethinking Human Nature (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 11–29.

  30. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 23.

  31. B. Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 41.

  32. See, for instance, T. Benton, Natural Relations (London: Verso, 1993); R. G. Frey, Interests and Rights: The Case Against Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); M. Midgley, Beast and Man (Hassocks: Harvester, 1980); P. Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Avon, 1990).

  33. A. Weber, The Çatapatha-Brāhmaṇa in the Mādhyandina-Çākhā, with Extracts from the Commentaries of Sāyaṇa, Harisvāmin and Dvivedānga (Berlin, 1849), i, 3.28.

  34. Plato, Republic, 514a–520a.

  35. Ibid., 479e.

  36. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 187.

  37. Fernández-Armesto, Truth: A History, sets relativism in the context of a conceptual history of truth. R. Scruton, Modern Philosophy (London: Allen Lane, 1994), is a toughly argued defence against relativism. The most sophisticated modern apologia for relativism is R. Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

  38. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 49.

  39. H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 119–20.

  40. W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Early Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), is a stimulating study; P. Benacerraf and H. Putnam, eds, Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), and J. Bigelow, The Reality of Numbers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), are clear and committed guides to the philosophical background of mathematical thinking.

  41. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 43.

  42. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 82.

  43. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 44.

  44. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 191.

  45. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, ii, is the great authority – exhaustive and highly readable; Plato, Parmenides, is the dialogue that defined the debate; Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, was a pioneering exposé of the limits of Greek rationalism.

  46. H. D. P. Lea, Zeno of Elea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936); J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1982), pp. 231–95.

  47. W. H. C. Guthrie, Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), describes brilliantly the author’s ‘encounter’ with Aristotle’s thought.

  48. I. Bochenski, A History of Formal Logic, trans. I. Thomas (Indianapolis: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), is an excellent introduction; J. Lukasiewicz, Aristotle’s Syllogistic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), is a valuable technical exposition; C. Habsmeier, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998), vii, p. 1, helps set Greek logic in its global context.

  49. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 72.

  50. The Analects of Confucius, trans. A. Waley (London: Allen and Unwin, 1938), p. 216.

  51. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 55.

  52. A. Crombie, Styles of Scientific Thinking (London: Duckworth, 1994), is an unwieldy but invaluable quarry on the Western tradition. The same author’s Science, Art and Nature (London: Hambledon Press, 1996) traces the tradition from medieval times.

  53. N. Sivin, Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in Ancient China (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), is a valuable collection of essays on the links between Tao and science. F. Capra, The Tao of Physics (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975), is a maverick but influential work arguing for a Taoist interpretation of modern quantum physics.

  54. J. Longrigg, Greek Medicine (London: Duckworth, 1998), is a useful source book. D. Cantor, ed., Reinventing Hippocrates (Farnham: Ashgate, 2001), is a stimulating collection of essays. For the history of medicine generally, R. Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), is a vast, readable, and entertainingly irreverent account.

  55. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, ii, p. 27.

  56. D. J. Rothman, S. Marcus, and S. A. Kiceluk, Medicine and Western Civilization (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 142–3.

  57. L. Giles, ed., Taoist Teachings, Translated from the Book of Lieh-Tzü (London: Murray, 1912), p. 111.

  58. For a critique of atheism, see J. Maritain, The Range of Reason (New York: Scribner, 1952). Classic apologias include L. Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), and B. Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967). J. Thrower, Western Atheism: A Short History (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1999), is a clear, concise introduction.

  59. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers from Thales to Aristotle (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 63.

  60. M. O. Goulet-Cazé, ‘Religion and the early Cynics’, in R. Bracht-Brahman and M. O. Goulet-Cazé, eds,
The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 69–74.

  61. P. P. Haillie, ed., Sextus Empiricus: Selections from His Major Writings on Scepticism, Man and God (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), p. 189.

  62. W. T. De Bary et al., eds, Sources of Indian Tradition, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), ii, p. 43.

  63. The Epicurus Reader, ed. L. Gerson (New York: Hackett, 1994), collects the main texts. H. Jones, The Epicurean Tradition (London: Routledge, 1992), traces Epicurus’s influence in modern times. D. J. Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), is the standard work on the Greek origins of atomic theory. M. Chown, The Magic Furnace (London: Vintage, 2000), is a lively popular history of atomic theory. C. Luthy et al., eds, Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories (Leiden: Brill, 2001), is a fascinating scholarly collection that fills in the gap between ancient and modern atomic theory.