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in MM X.182-184 K.). Experience, however, allows for exceptions.
he Empiricist distinguished four levels of frequency in the connec-
tion between phenomena: always, for the most part, half the time and
rarely (see Subf. Emp. 45, 25-30; 58,15 f. Deichgräber; Exp. Med. 95,
112 Walzer; [Gal.], Def. Med. XIX.354 K.). Accordingly medical theo-
rems will include an explicit speciication of the frequency of the con-
nections they report. As noted by J. Allen, this view on generalization
may well be linked to the idea that the theorems that comprise medical
knowledge are themselves stochastic and thus cannot attain true uni-
versality and stability (see [Gal.] Opt.Sect. I.114 K.)26. Alexander of
Aphrodisias also held this view while arguing that medicine falls short
of the criteria that qualify true sciences, whose theorems are universal
and necessary (more on this below).
As we shall see, generality is no unqualiied good according to Galen.
Many of his polemical remarks in the treatise On the Method of Heal-
ing (De methodo medendi) are addressed against a view of medicine
that allows for indiscriminate generalization, i.e. the Methodist theory
of generalities or common conditions (koinotêtes) as probably de-
veloped by the Methodist doctor hessalus of Tralles, who was active
in the age of Nero and is Galen s favourite polemical target in MM.
Here I will only recall the fact that the Methodist school was tradition-
ally taken to be inspired by the corpuscular theory held by the Ration-
alist doctor (and strenuous opponent of the Empiricist school) Ascle-
piades of Bythinia (irst century BCE) another of Galen s pet hates27.
While probably not endorsing Asclepiades Rationalist physiology,
according to which the body is formed by atoms and invisible pores
(with illnesses depending on either the constriction of these invisible
pores or an excessive low through them), the Methodists developed
his general ideas in a distinctive way. hey assumed (i) that all diseases
are just a matter of constriction, relaxation (stegnôsis; rhusis) or a com-
bination of both; and (ii) that constriction and relaxation are not hid-
den states, but manifest phenomena and common conditions. It is by
grasping these manifest general conditions, then, that the Methodists
claimed they could ind indications as to the appropriate treatment to
26
See Allen J. 1994, p. 100.
27
See Allen J. 2001, pp. 92-4 and p. 143.
398 Riccardo Chiaradonna
be adopted in each case. All training, in their view, was simply geared
to make common medical conditions evident to physicians with sui-
cient clarity; hence the Methodist claim that six months were suicient
to apprehend medicine (see Sect. Int. I.83 K.; MM X.5 K.). here was
actually some debate in antiquity as to whether the Methodist believed
that koinotêtes could be perceived or not; their attitude to reason is also
a matter of debate28. Certainly, their generalities were not meant to be
made the object of inferential reasoning like the non-manifest states
whose knowledge, according to the Rationalist doctors, accounted for
the choice of the correct treatment (see Sect. Int. I.81-82 K.). However,
neither were koinotêtês meant to be grasped through repeated experi-
ence, nor, according to the Methodists views, was the indication of
the appropriate treatment to be grasped through observation and ex-
perience. As M. Frede has put it, that a state of constriction requires
relaxation and a state of relaxation requires replenishment is seen by
the Methodists as «truths of reason». Unlike the Empiricists, they thus
grant that reason has a constitutive position in medical knowledge;
however, their conception of reason is a non-committal one and as
such is radically diferent from that of the Rationalists. It is worth
quoting M. Frede s account of the Methodist position in full:
hey refuse to attribute to reason any obscure powers which we would have not
dreamed of in ordinary life. hey are just noting, in this and in other contexts,
[& ] that there certain things that are obvious to rational creatures, though
it does not seem to be by observation or experience that they are obvious29.
Accordingly, the Methodist notion of indication difers consider-
ably from that of the Rationalist doctors. Methodist indication does
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