Anaximander and the Architects, livre ebook

Uses textual and archaeological evidence to argue that emerging Egyptian and Greek architectural technologies were crucial to the origins and development of Greek philosophy.

Uses textual and archaeological evidence to argue that emerging Egyptian and Greek architectural technologies were crucial to the origins and development of Greek philosophy.

Anaximander and the Architects opens a previously unexplored avenue into Presocratic philosophy-the technology of monumental architecture. The evidence, coming directly from sixth century B.C.E. building sites and bypassing Aristotle, shows how the architects and their projects supplied their Ionian communities with a sprouting vision of natural order governed by structural laws. Their technological innovations and design techniques formed the core of an experimental science and promoted a rational, not mythopoetical, discourse central to our understanding of the context in which early Greek philosophy emerged. Anaximander's prose book and his rationalizing mentality are illuminated in surprising ways by appeal to the ongoing, extraordinary projects of the archaic architects and their practical techniques.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1. ANAXIMANDER AND THE ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The Problem and the Three Tiers of Explanation
The Conventional View and Its Discontents
The New Contributing Thesis:Technology as Politics
2. THE IONIAN PHILOSOPHERS AND ARCHITECTS
Fixing Anaximander's Date:The First Philosophical Book in Prose
Archaic Prose Writing: Pherecydes' Cosmogony and Legal Inscriptions
Prose in Archaic Architectural Treatises and the Community of Thales and Anaximander, Theodorus and Rhoikos, Chersiphron and Metagenes
The New Connection:The Contribution of the Egyptian Architects to the Ionian Greek Architects of the Archaic Period
An Overview of Monumental Temple Projects in Archaic Ionia
The Meaning of the Temple: Design Choices
3. THE TECHNIQUES OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTS
The Evidence for Imagining in Plan or Aerial View
The Evidence for Models
The Theory of Proportions
The Techniques of Anathyrosis and Empolion
4. ANAXIMANDER'S TECHNIQUES
Architect, Philosopher, and the New Vision Supplied by the Application of Geometrical Techniques
Homer's World Picture
Hesiod's World Picture
Anaximander's World Picture:The Plan or Aerial View
Anaximander's World Picture:Three-dimensional Views—The Side, Elevation, Oblique, and Axonometric Views
5. TECHNOLOGY AS POLITICS: THE ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN ITS SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
Re-Framing the New Narrative Account
The Aristocratic Patrons of Archaic Temples
Technology as Politics: The "Argument" for the Appropriation of Civic Authority
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX