Ionic:

Spengler’s term for the Summer period of the Apollonian Culture/Civilization, from 650-350 BC

 

Thales:

 (624-548) Greek mathematician, astronomer & pre-Socratic philosopher, from Miletus (Ionia); the first Greek philosopher, founder of the Ionian School.  He used naturalistic theories & hypotheses to explain natural events not mythology. Most pre-Socratic philosophers followed his lead in explaining nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance: water.  A pioneer in mathematics, he is the first known individual to use deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving 4 corollaries to Thales' theorem.  He used geometry to calculate the heights of pyramids & distance of ships from the shore.

and see Chapter X, page 365

 

Baroque:

Spengler’s term for the Summer period of the Faustian Culture/Civilization, from 1400-1800 AD

 

Bacon:

see Chapter III page 99, Chapter X pages 362, 365

 

battles of Cannae & Actium:

the battle of Cannae (Second Punic War) was between the Roman Republic & Carthage, 216 BC; the naval battle between Augustus & Anthony at Actium occurred in 31 BC

 

second religiousness:

Spengler’s term, referring to religious revivals occurring in the Winter period of a Culture/Civilization.

 

anthropomorphic:

ascribing human form or attributes to a being or thing not human, especially to a deity; resembling or made to resemble a human form

 

"man created God in his own image":

quote from Feuerbach; the full quote is: “God did not, as the Bible says, make man in His image; on the contrary man, as I have shown in The Essence of Christianity, made God in his image.” from Lecture XX, Lectures on the Essence of Religion. 1848

 

Classical scientists (concept of vision):

Classical philosophers did not have a unified theory of vision; they were split between the extramission & the intromission theories.  Extramission initially dominated thinking until Aristotle; it posited that visual perception was accomplished by beams emitted by the eyes.  The Pythagoreans (established in about 530 BC.) began this theory claiming the eyes emit a substance, which touches objects and combines with sunlight to produce vision.  Plato backed this idea & wrote in the 4th century BC that light emanated from the eye, seized objects with its rays.  However Aristotle rejected this: "In general, it is unreasonable to suppose that seeing occurs by something issuing from the eye,"; he advocated intromission by which the eye received rays rather than directed them outward.  A theory similar to this had been posited initially by Democritus (460-370 BC) who claimed that objects stream out images that reach the eye.   

 

Jewish Persian academies of Edessa:

see Chapter II, page 63, Chapter VI page 209 and Chapter VII page 228

 

Resaïna: * see EndNote <A>

aka Ras al-Ayn, Raʾs al-ʿAyn,: Serê Kaniyê‎, Rēš Aynā, Ras al-Ain; city in NE Syria, one of the oldest cities in Upper Mesopotamia, first recorded as an Aramean city called Sikkan, then the Roman city of Rhesaina, & still later the Byzantine city of Theodosiopolis; it was destroyed and rebuilt several times, and in medieval times was the site of fierce battles between several Muslim dynasties.  The Sasanians destroyed the city twice (578 & 580 AD) before rebuilding it and constructing 1 of 3 Sassanian academies in it (the others being Gundishapur and Ctesiphon).

 

Pombaditha:* see EndNote <B>

aka Pumbedita, Pumbeditha, Pumpedita, or Pumbedisa; in Aramaic: "The Mouth of the River’ a city in the area known to the ancient Jews as Babylonia (today Anbar Province, Iraq); it had a large Jewish population & was famed for its Talmudic academy scholarship that, together with the city of Sura, gave rise to the Babylonian Talmud.  The academy was founded by Judah ben Ezekiel in the late 3rd century, following the destruction of the academy of Nehardea (destroyed during the Persian-Palmyrian war).  It was 1 of the 2 Geonic academies, centres of Jewish scholarship & the development of Halakha from roughly 589 to 1038 AD.  The key work of these academies was the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud, started by Rav Ashi and Ravina, 2 leaders of the Babylonian Jewish community, around the year 550.

 

Porphyry:

(234-305 AD) Phoenician Neoplatonist born in Tyre, Roman Syria; edited & published The Enneads, the only collection of the work of Plotinus, his teacher. His commentary on Euclid's Elements was used as a source by Pappus of Alexandria.  He wrote original works on a wide variety of topics, from music to Homer to vegetarianism. His Isagoge is an introduction to logic and philosophy & was the standard textbook on logic throughout the Middle Ages .  He was involved in controversy with early Christians through works such as Philosophy from Oracles and Against the Christians .

[Spengler considers him part of Magian culture rather than Apollonian]

 

Ibn-al-Haitan:

(965-1040 AD) aka Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham, Arab mathematician, astronomer & physicist of the Islamic Golden Age; born in Basra, he worked in the Fatimid capital of Cairo & earned his living authoring various treatises & tutoring; he wrote works on philosophy, theology & medicine; he made significant contributions to the principles of optics & visual perception in particular.  In his most influential work, the Book of Optics (written 1011–1021), he noted that the eye was injured by strong light & concluded that the light affected the eye and not vice-versa.  He was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object & passes to the eyes & was also the first to demonstrate that vision occurs in the brain, rather than in the eyes.  He used a naturalistic, empirical method pioneered by Aristotle & was an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be supported by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence.  

 

Avicenna:

(980-1037) Persian polymath, physician, astronomer, thinker & writer of the Islamic Golden Age, a Muslim Peripatetic philosopher influenced by Aristotle.  Half his written works survived (including works on philosophy & medicine).  His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical & scientific encyclopaedia, & The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopaedia which became a standard medical text until the mid-17th century.  He also wrote on astronomy, alchemy, geography, geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics & works of poetry.  He was a contemporary of Ibn-al-Haitan & like him wrote on vision.  He was influenced by Galen’s account of the eye but overall adhered to Aristotle.  [Galen (129- 200 AD) was a Greco-Roman, Spengler would have identified him with the nascent Magina Culture, he was born in Pergamon, a physician famous for anatomy; he developed a theory of vision based on extramission in which sight was a function of an optical pneuma, flowing forth from the brain to the eyes through hollow optic nerves.]  Avicenna retained many features of Galen's anatomy (the hollow nerves and crystalline lens), but nonetheless argued for intromission.

 

Brothers of Sincerity:

aka The Brethren of Purity, secret society of Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq, in the 8th or 10th century AD; neither the date, structure or identities of its members is known.  Its esoteric teaching & philosophy were expounded in an epistolary style in the Encyclopaedia of the Brethren of Purity, a giant compendium of 52 epistles that would greatly influence later encyclopaedias.  It divides into 52 epistles subdivided into 4 sections; 14 on the Mathematical Sciences, 17 on the Natural Sciences, 10 on the Psychological and Rational Sciences, 11 on Theological Sciences.  The 2nd part (on natural sciences) has 17 epistles on matter and form, generation and corruption, metallurgy, meteorology, a study of the essence of nature, the classes of plants and animals, & includes a fable

 

Paris Occamists (Paris):

(aka Ockhamism) philosophical & theological teachings of Ockham (1285–1347) & his disciples, influential between the 14th & 17th centuries, contributed to the progressive dissolution of Scholastic Aristotelianism.  They broke with Scholastics in 2 areas: first, only individuals exist  & not supra-individual metaphysical universals, essences, or forms; secondly metaphysical universals were not real.  The argued the more one moved away from experience & towards generalizations, the more one imagines the constitution of the universal expressed by names.  It is therefore necessary to revise the logical structures of discourse & language, the name of a thing is not the same thing as the thing.  Their logic reduced confidence in the power of reason to demonstrate either the existence of God or of the Soul.  Occamism reduced the sciences to an immediate and intuitive way of knowing.

 

Albert of Saxony: * see EndNote<C>

(1320-1390) German philosopher known for his contributions to logic and physics; born near Helmstedt, a peasant but very bright, studied at the Universities of Prague & Paris, where he became a professor (1351-62) & was made rector in 1353; studied theology at the Sorbonne; negotiated with Pope Urban V in Avignon on the founding of the University of Vienna & became that universities’ first rector in 1365, going on to become bishop of Halberstadt.  A pupil of Buridan he was influenced by him in physics and logic.  He contributed to the spread of Parisian natural philosophy throughout Italy and central Europe.  

 

Buridan: * see EndNote<D>

(1301-1359) French philosopher (not a theologian), teacher at the University of Paris, focusing on logic & the works of Aristotle.  He sowed the seeds of the Copernican revolution, playing an important role in the demise of Aristotelian cosmology.  He developed the concept of impetus, the first step toward the modern concept of inertia and an important development in the history of medieval science.  He taught the bishop Albert of Saxony.  In 1473, Louis XI prohibited the reading of his works, an act of censorship aimed at the nominalists.

 

Oresme:

and see Chapter I page 67, Chapter VIII page 279