Anaximander and the Architects: The Contributions of Egyptian and Greek Architectural Technologies to the Origins of Greek Philosophy (Suny Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Paper))

Rating:
Summary: A Groundbreaking Study
Review: Anaximander and the Architects is clearly the most important work on the origins of Greek philosophy in recent years. The traditional study of the Ionian philosophers has become stagnant. The limited information available from sources such as Aristotle and the surviving fragments has been largely exhausted. Professor Hahn taps a new source of information: archeology. In chapter one, Hahn outlines the competing theories, championed over the last century, and proposes a completely new approach. While he is not claiming to offer a new sufficient condition to explain why Greek philosophy began in eastern Greece, he shows how two of the much discussed hypotheses overlap in an original way: the development of the polis, whose democratic and legal practices nurtured a community open for rational debate, and the development of technologies associated with monumental temple building that opened a new vista for understanding nature's laws. Anaximander opened for his Greek community a rational debate over nature's laws. In chapter five, the last chapter, Hahn offers what professional philosophers refer to as a "Science Studies" approach to this historical episode: the social and political context in which western philosophy and science began. Along the way, Hahn explores the community of architects and early philosophers (chapter two) and the technological processes and products that consumed the temple architects (chapter three). In chapter four, Hahn shows how these technologies were adopted and adapted by Anaximander as he imagined "cosmic architecture." Hahn encourages the philosopher to leave his armchair, go outside, and get his hands dirty. He states his position clearly and supports it convincingly: philosophy did not originate in a vacuum, it had a mother and her name was Architecture. This book will change the course of this very old field of study.

Rating:
Summary: Speculations unlimited
Review: Robert Hahn starts out this intermittently interesting book with an outline of all the points that he's going to make, and then proceeds to repeat them so often over the rest of the book that one wonders if maybe the book would not have made a much more enjoyable magazine article, especially if he had stuck to his most interesting and compelling theme, which is that we should think of the earliest Ionian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander) as well rounded individuals who probably had a great deal of meaningful interaction with the earliest Ionian architects. That's all very well until we get to page 87, where Hahn introduces as plausible some truly whimsical hypotheses about the symbolism of the temple column to the ancient Greeks. Imagine, if you will, that "the columns had a nautical significance...like a double row of oars propelling a ship" or that "the columns...represent the upright loom; the temple like the loom is that central device by which the city weaves its socially consolidated fabric". There are no literary citations of any such metaphors offered (since I suspect none exist) to support the notion that the ancient Greeks actually thought this way. To propose such notions, while ignoring more commonly plausible theories (such as the evolution of the temple, which is a sacred place where rituals are performed, from the sacred groves of trees which are mentioned many times in ancient literature) suggests that the author is not taking the religious practices of the ancient Greeks seriously enough, seeing them only as political and social ceremonies.

On the other hand, the book has some delightful illustrations that reconstruct such interesting concepts as the early cosmogonies of Homer, Hesiod, and Anaximander, which earns it at least 2 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Anaximander
Review: Stand on the seashore and look around and you will notice two things. The first is that the ocean looks awfully flat. The other is that the earth looks, if not round, then circular: you appear to be in the middle of what can only be a circle, or you are equidistant from the horizon in each direction as you spin around. The natural conclusion to reach is that the earth is round and flat. At night when you look in the sky the two things you notice is that the planets move but the stars do not. It is Hahn's argument (although he does not put it this way) that Anixamander, beginning from these facts or facts like these, devised the first cosmology, and a cosmology that very much resembled the column of a Greek temple. The column consists of stacked segments, and each segment is joined to the next by a smooth surface that encircles a rough center. If one anologizes this to the universe, the smooth part is the ocean circling the earth and the rough middle is the earth. The universe is in that case not spherical but shaftlike, like a temple column. The stars would serve as the first circular layer, and then each of the planets. In this schema the stars are actually closer than the moon. Like a person at the bottom of a well looking up, he cannot see that the outer rings are empty of stars (and occupied by the planets) because its stars all the way up and all around. If you imagine a tree cut in the middle, in which the center ring is stars and the outer rings planets, and then imagine someone looking up and surrounded by stars in that central ring: all he can see is stars, interspersed by planets. In any case, Hahn makes much of the apocryphal tradition that makes Thales, and by extension other Milesians like Anaximander, architects or friends of the architects. He appears to have a kind of Heideggerian ax to grind: philosophy was born from the brain, not of Zeus, but techne. (Consider, for instance, all the plays on "joint" (Fug) in Heideggers reading of the one existing fragment of Anaximander, which Hahn, it does not appear, ever mentions). Hahn comes up with a clever theory, and he solves the mystery, at least to his own satisfaction. The last chapter on the "politics" of the temple is perfectly unconvincing and not an essential part of the book or his argument.

Rating:
Summary: A Groundbreaking Study
Review: While I am no expert in ancient philosophy, I confess to having read over the years several survey books on the subject. Never before had I seen so many diagrams and illustrations in a book on this topic. What Anaximander and the Architects does is to present a case about the origins of Greek philosophy by walking the reader through the powerful images that shaped Anaximander's world and his philosophizing. The more one thinks about, the more original is Hahn's argument: while early Greek philosophy is almost always marked by the literary evidence for "rationalizing the cosmos," explaining the origins of the universe without recourse to myth, Hahn offers us an argument to understand "rationalizing" by evidence from "images" and "pictures." By this approach, Hahn exposes the philosophical imagination of the early Greek philosophers. This approach is really new, and it asks us to think again -- as do some studies in cognitive science --about the role that the imagination plays in the development of rationality.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: While I am no expert in ancient philosophy, I confess to having read over the years several survey books on the subject. Never before had I seen so many diagrams and illustrations in a book on this topic. What Anaximander and the Architects does is to present a case about the origins of Greek philosophy by walking the reader through the powerful images that shaped Anaximander's world and his philosophizing. The more one thinks about, the more original is Hahn's argument: while early Greek philosophy is almost always marked by the literary evidence for "rationalizing the cosmos," explaining the origins of the universe without recourse to myth, Hahn offers us an argument to understand "rationalizing" by evidence from "images" and "pictures." By this approach, Hahn exposes the philosophical imagination of the early Greek philosophers. This approach is really new, and it asks us to think again -- as do some studies in cognitive science --about the role that the imagination plays in the development of rationality.