Imagining Nature among the Greeks
This will be the special Ephron Course of the Classics Department this coming academic year.
Course description:
When we use the word nature, we participate in a vast tradition that stretches back to the Greeks (and in some ways beyond them), and more particularly to the Greek word physis, which the Romans translated as natura. Although we can trace a real continuity by following the word and its translations through time, so that it isn’t entirely inaccurate to speak of a singular tradition, there are many discontinuities in its precise meanings and applications—even at the outset. The goal of this course is to gain an understanding of the historical roots of the concept of nature, while being attentive to the diversity of ancient Greek thought about physis even in its early developments—as well as some of the recent responses to it. Our primary readings will consist of a wide variety of texts, ranging from the poetry of Homer, in which the concept of physis is barely visible, through the early natural philosophers and medical authors who developed theories to explain human and other natures, to the tragedians with their awesome natural world and troubled human nature, and finally to Hellenistic texts which curiously avoid the word physis while presenting a rich and celebrated vision of the natural environment. We will consider not only the explicit conceptualization of nature, but also a number of related images—especially in the form of metaphors, analogies and personifications—that ultimately fed into the literary and philosophical depiction of nature. For instance, is nature more like a plant, or like clockwork? Does nature really “love to hide,” as Heraclitus seems to say? These further aspects of the concept of nature do much to express and determine one’s attitude to both one’s own “nature” and to “Nature” as a whole. So, in addition to asking about the concepts of nature in these various texts and traditions, we will also ask: How were these natures imagined?
