Head and hand in ancient Greece: Four studies in the social relations of thought

by Benjamin Farrington

Four groundbreaking essays in the sociology of knowledge constitute this important book. The first discusses the character of the great early period of Greek science and shows that, while it was not yet experimental, neither was it purely speculative. It was, in fact, closely related to practice. The second traces the effect on the art and science of medicine of social changes affecting the attitude to manual work and the manual worker. Stoicism as a living and developing movement in a changing environment forms the subject of the third essay. The fourth and last of Farrington's essays shows how the mild religion and bold science of Epicurus rapidly throughout Italy and threatened to rob superstition of its police function.

Reprint of the 1947 edition. Includes a new foreword by Barry Baldwin.

119 pages, Unknown Binding

First published March 15, 2007

About the author

Scholar and professor of Classics, teaching in Ireland (1916–1920), South Africa (1920–1935), and Great Britain (1935–1956). Although his academic career spanned several disciplines, he is most well known for his contributions to the history of Greek science. Moreover, within the development of the discipline his books were some of the first written in the English language that focused specifically on Greek science. In addition to his professional academic career he was also active in socialist politics, using his intellectual capabilities to speak and write on it. While beginning his academic career in South Africa in 1920 he became heavily involved in the Irish Republican Association of South Africa. In the process he wrote several articles for local South African newspapers about the need for Ireland to separate from England. In addition he was instrumental in forming the Irish Peace Conference in Paris in 1922. Such political commitments inevitably influenced his teaching style, giving him the reputation in South Africa of being an intellectual Marxist. However, from the perspective of some critics, his Marxist commitments overshadowed his scholarly work, heavily tainting his work. One of his better known pamphlets on socialism, written in 1940, is The Challenge of Socialism.