Straton de Lampsaque

Biography

According to Diogène Laërce, he was the tutor at the court of Alexandria of the future king Ptolémée Philadelphe of the dynasty of the Ptolémées in Egypt. Function which it occupied of -300 with - 294 av J.C. To thank it for its srvices, this one offered to the philosopher 80 talents.

In Egypt, Straton made knowledge towards 287 av. J. - C. of Aristarque de Samos, celebrates it astronomer and mathematician, who will become his pupil. Towards 288 av. J. - C., it regained Athens to assume the direction of the school peripatetician founded by Aristote, and located at the College close to Athens, charges that it assumed during 18 years until its death around 269 av. J. - C.

Its physical and philosophical theories

As of its time it was called the physicist because of his many research on Nature (see, XII, 25C, 3).

Plutarque, Strabon and especially Simplicius left us some testimonys of its discoveries on the matter.

Its design of the Heart

The heart is only the whole of the thoughts rising from the feelings. For him, without thought, no feeling can be perceived. The reverse is also true. Straton narrowly connected the heart, receptacle of the psychic life with the capacity to be felt. It placed the seat of the thought in space between the eyebrows. Its theory did not admit any possibility of immortality, or survival of the heart. It évertua thus to put in parts the advanced arguments by Plato in his Phédon to accredit the thesis of the immortality of the heart.

Olympiodore, in a Scholie on the work of Plato preserved us the objections which it had raised on this topic:

if the Réminiscence exists, the heart would have been informed of the things from time immemorial, and yet the facts do not show it. One needs a beginning first for the knowledge.

If the heart is immortal, then any animal is immortal, because its heart being its vital principle does not disappear. However death is a fact, and makes the animal inanimate until dissolution.

If the heart is immortal, then for example the heart of a plant - which is in conformity with its own nature - cannot disappear. Thus any natural being generated by Nature would be indestructible. The facts do not show it.

There exists a linear movement of transformation of the beings: a man is initially young person then out-of-date unrelentingly until his end. The reverse on the other hand does not occur. There is a movement towards the degradation of the things. In the same way a body flesh can become food, but not the reverse…

Its design of the world

The creation of the World, was not has its eyes the work of the Gods, but well rather the work of Nature via the forces of the chance, and the movement. The evolution of the world and its complexity came from the permanent play of the natural elements. If Straton rejected the theory nuclear physicist of Démocrite, by describing it as phantasmagoria , he admitted the existence of microscopic corpuscles however interacting between the discontinuous vacuum. The movement of these natural elements through the vacuum would explain in its eyes of the phenomena like the light diffraction in water

Its research of the forces acting on the world

He sought with better defining the concepts of time, gravity and the vacuum by various technical experiments. Some were enough famous to be quoted by Héron of Alexandria in its Pneumatiques delivers I.

Strabon refers also to its geological research concerning erosion, the dynamics of the movement of water and the Earths.

its influence on the debates of its time

Straton had published a work on the examination of discovered the , directed against Ephore, which reported the important inventions of its predecessors, as well as the remarks of wise old (such the 9 wise ones)

According to Marcel Dubois in his work on Strabon, it influenced the geographical searchs for Ératosthène, like Poseidonios. Aristarque, its friend and raises, seems to have followed the ideas of its Master on the theory of the colors. Nevertheless certain scientists think that Épicure started a polemic with him. It could also take its distances with the scientific model of Aristote.

Its writings

Author of many lost works from now on. Quotations of old authors refer to some its treaties:

Of the vacuum ;
Of former and posterior the (which discussed the problems raised by Aristote in its Catégories according to Simplicius);
Examination of discovered (work directed against the historian Éphore de Cumes according to, VII);
Of the sky (a work on the creation of the world).

the catalog as of its works preserved by Diogène Laërce mentions also medical writings, on animal biology, and others on ethics.

Bibliographical sources

.
G. Rodier, the Physics of Straton de Lampsaque , ED. Alcan, 1891.
A.E Chaignet Psychology of the Greeks volume 1 ED Hatchet 1887. (site of the BNF)

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