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The Science of Man in Ancient Greece. Maria Michela Sassi. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001, 254 pp., $34.00, hardcover. ISBN 0-226-73530-3.

Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1X5 Canada

Maria Michela Sassi wrote this remarkable book as an attempt to describe the origins of science and philosophy in ancient Greece. It is clear that the author carefully studied hundreds of texts written by Giants like Aristotle, Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides, Hesiod, Hippocrates, Xenophon, and others and extracted material that could be put together as a logical unit, her book. But, what does this book address? Guided by the title, I expected something different, at least at the beginning. However, here "science" is used as a broad term, covering anything from philosophy to cultural behavior.

The Greeks had an interest in studying differences among individuals, such as gender, age, social class, and ethnic group, as well as studying biologic phenomena, e.g., menstruation, conception, embryology, zoology, and so forth. Using primitive observational tools, they then tried to explain such phenomena. Needless to say, most of . . . [Full Text of this Article]