Geoffrey Lloyd's pioneering new book uses a study of ancient Greek and Chinese science and culture to throw light on fundamental problems, both intellectual and moral, that we still face today. The issues range from the debate about realism and relativism in philosophy of science to doubts concerning the universal applicability of the discourse of human rights. Lloyd provides compelling evidence that ancient civilizations have much to offer contemporary debates in many fields of study.

Geoffrey Lloyd's pioneering book uses a study of ancient Greek and Chinese science and culture to throw light on fundamental problems, both intellectual and moral, that we still face today. The issues range from the debate about realism and relativism in philosophy of science to doubts concerning the universal applicability of the discourse of human rights. Lloyd provides compelling evidence that ancient civilizations have much to offer contemporary debates in many fields of study.

In The Ambitions of Curiosity, G.E.R. Lloyd explores the origins and growth of systematic inquiry in Greece, China, and Mesopotamia. It asks such questions as what factors stimulated or inhibited this development? Whose interests were served? Who set the agenda? What was the role of the state in sponsoring, supporting or blocking research, in such areas as historiography, natural philosophy, medical research, astronomy, technology in all those fields. How were each of those fields defined and developed in different ancient societies? How did truly innovative thinkers persuade their own...

This book challenges several widespread views concerning Aristotle's methods and practices of scientific and philosophical research. Taking central topics in psychology, zoology, astronomy and politics, Professor Lloyd explores generally unrecognized tensions between Aristotle's deeply held a priori convictions and his remarkable empirical honesty in the face of complexities in the data or perceived difficult or exceptional cases. The picture that emerges of Aristotle's actual engagement in scientific research and of his own reflections on that research is substantially more complex than is...

Did science and philosophy develop differently in ancient Greece and ancient China? If so, can we say why? This book consists of a series of detailed studies of cosmology, natural philosophy, mathematics and medicine that suggest the answer to the first question is yes. To answer the second, the author relates the science produced in each ancient civilization first to the values of the society in question and then to the institutions within which the scientists and philosophers worked.

This original and lively book uses texts from ancient medicine, epic, lyric, tragedy, historiography, philosophy, and religion to explore the influence of Greek ideas on health and disease on Greek thought. Fundamental issues are deeply implicated: causation and responsibility, purification and pollution, the mind-body relationship and gender differences, authority and the expert, reality and appearances, good government, and good and evil themselves.

G.E.R. Lloyd's wide-ranging and historical study of the development of Greek science is a valuable contribution to current debates in the philosophy of language, on the analysis of scientific revolutions, and the rationality of science.

A collection of the most important papers published by G. E. R. Lloyd on Greek science since 1961.

The organisation of higher education across the world is one of several factors that conspire to create the assumption that our own map of the intellectual disciplines is, broadly speaking, valid cross-culturally. Disciplines in the Making challenges this in relation to eight main areas of human endeavour, namely philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion and science. Lloyd focuses on historical and cross-cultural data that throw light on the different ways in which these disciplines were constituted and defined in different periods and civilisations, especially in ancient...

Long before science as we know it today existed, sophisticated studies of the external world were undertaken, notably in Mesopotamia, India, China, and Greece. G. E. R. Lloyd explores three interrelated issues concerning those investigations. This first issue is methods--how was it thought that they should be pursued? The second is subject-matter--what was assumed about what there is to be investigated? The third issue is aims and value--what were such investigations thought to be good for? Thus how did an ideal of demonstration that would yield incontrovertible conclusions come to arise and...