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E-book

Title Probabilities, hypotheticals, and counterfactuals in ancient Greek thought / edited by Victoria Wohl
Published New York : Cambridge University Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: eikos in ancient Greek thought -- Eikos arguments in Athenian forensic oratory / Michael Gagarin -- Eikos in Plato's Phaedrus / Jenny Bryan -- Aristotle on the value of "probability," persuasiveness, and verisimilitude in rhetorical argument / James Allen -- "Likely stories" and the political art in Plato's Laws / Ryan K. Balot -- Open and speak your mind: citizen agency, the likelihood of truth, and democratic knowledge in archaic and classical Greece / Vincent Farenga -- Counterfactual history and Thucydides / Robert Tordoff -- Homer's Achaean wall and the hypothetical past / Karen Bassi -- Play of the improbable: Euripides' unlikely Helen / Victoria Wohl -- Revision in Greek literary papyri / Sean Gurd -- Likeness and likelihood in classical Greek art / Verity Platt -- "Why doesn't my baby look like me?" Likeness and likelihood in ancient theories of reproduction / Daryn Lehoux -- Galen on the chances of life / Brooke Holmes -- Afterword / Catherine Gallagher
Summary This volume explores the conceptual terrain defined by the Greek word eikos: the probable, likely, or reasonable. A term of art in Greek rhetoric, a defining feature of literary fiction, a seminal mode of historical, scientific, and philosophical inquiry, eikos was a way of thinking about the probable and improbable, the factual and counterfactual, the hypothetical and the real. These thirteen original and provocative essays examine the plausible arguments of courtroom speakers and the 'likely stories' of philosophers, verisimilitude in art and literature, the likelihood of resemblance in human reproduction, the limits of human knowledge and the possibilities of ethical and political agency. The first synthetic study of probabilistic thinking in ancient Greece, the volume illuminates a fascinating chapter in the history of Western thought
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Philosophy, Ancient.
Reasoning.
Probabilities.
Logic, Ancient.
Probability
probability.
PHILOSOPHY -- History & Surveys -- Ancient & Classical.
Civilization
Logic, Ancient
Philosophy, Ancient
Probabilities
Reasoning
SUBJECT Greece -- Civilization -- To 146 B.C. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85057041
Subject Greece
Form Electronic book
Author Wohl, Victoria, 1966- editor.
ISBN 9781316004449
1316004449
9781107279551
1107279550
9781316006702
1316006700