Alcmaeon of Croton

One of the most eminent natural philosophers and medical theorists of antiquity. He is said by some to
have been a pupil of Pythagoras, and he may have been born around 510 BC. Although he wrote mostly
on medical topics there is some suggestion that he was not a physician but a philosopher of science; he
also indulged in astrology and meteorology. Nothing more is known of the events of his life.
Alcmaeon: Life
Alcmaeon of Croton, another disciple of Pythagoras, wrote chiefly on medicine, but now and again he
touches on natural philosophy, as when he says, Most human affairs go in pairs. He is thought to have
been the first to compile a physical treatise, so we learn from Favorinus in his Miscellaneous History; and
he said that the moon [and] generally [the heavenly bodies] are in their nature eternal.
He was the son of Pirithous, as he himself tells us at the beginning of his treatise:[80] These are the
words of Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Pirithous, which he spake to Brontinus, Leon and Bathyllus: 'Of
things invisible, as of mortal things, only the gods have certain knowledge; but to us, as men, only
inference from evidence is possible,' and so on. He held also that the soul is immortal and that it is
continuously in motion like the sun.
80 Fr. 1 Diels
Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (1925) by Diogenes Lartius, translated by Robert Drew Hicks. A
Loeb Classical Library edition; volume 1 published 1925; volume 2 published 1925
Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker by Kathleen Freeman. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press [1948]
This text is in the public domain in the US because its copyright was not renewed in a timely fashion as
required by law at the time. The chapters are numbered as in the Fifth Edition of Diels, Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker. The numbers in brackets are those of the Fourth Edition.
Alcmaeon of Croton: Fragments
Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers
Alcmaen of Crotn was in his prime at the beginning of the fifth century B.C.
He wrote a book on Natural Science.
1. Alcmaeon of Croton, son of Peirithous, said the following to Brotinus and Leon and Bathyllus:
concerning things unseen, (as) concerning things mortal, the gods have certainty, whereas to us as men
conjecture (only is possible).
Ia. Man differs from the other (creatures) in that he alone understands; the others perceive, but do not
understand.
2. Men perish because they cannot join the beginning to the end.
3. (In mules, the males are sterile because of the fineness and coldness of the seed, and the females
because their wombs do not open).
4. Health is the equality of rights of the functions, wet-dry, cold-hot, bitter-sweet and the rest; but single
rule among them causes disease; the single rule of either pair is deleterious. Disease occurs sometimes
from an internal cause such as excess of heat or cold, sometimes from an external cause such as
excess or deficiency of food, sometimes in a certain part, such as blood, marrow or brain; but these parts
also are sometimes affected by external causes, such as certain waters or a particular site or fatigue or
constraint or similar reasons. But health is the harmonious mixture of the qualities.
5. It is easier to guard against an enemy than against a friend.

Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920). London: A & C Black Ltd.
Early Greek Philosophy
Alcmaeon of Croton
Aristotle tells us that Alkmaion of Kroton was a young man in the old age of Pythagoras. He does not
actually say, as later writers do, that he was a Pythagorean, though he points out that he seems either to
have derived his theory of opposites from the Pythagoreans or they theirs from him . In any case, he was
intimately connected with the society, as is proved by one of the scanty fragments of his book. It began
as follows: Alkmaion of Kroton, son of Peirithous, spoke these words to Brotinos and Leon and Bathyllos.
As to things invisible and things mortal, the gods have certainty; but, so far as men may infer . . . The
quotation unfortunately ends in this abrupt way, but we learn two things from it. In the first place,
Alkmaion possessed that reserve which marks all the best Greek medical writers; and in the second
place, he dedicated his work to the heads of the Pythagorean Society.
Alkmaion's importance really lies in the fact that he is the founder of empirical psychology. He regarded
the brain as the common sensorium, a view which Hippokrates and Plato adopted from him, though
Empedokles, Aristotle, and the Stoics reverted to the more primitive view that the heart is the central
organ of sense. There is no reason to doubt that he made this discovery by anatomical means. We have
authority for saying that he practised dissection, and, though the nerves were not yet recognised as such,
it was known that there were certain passages () which might be prevented from communicating
sensations to the brain by lesions. He also distinguished between sensation and understanding, though
we have no means of knowing where he drew the line between them. His theories of the special senses
are of great interest. We find in him already, what is characteristic of Greek theories of vision as a whole,
the attempt to combine the view of vision as a radiation proceeding from the eye with that which
attributes it to an image reflected in the eye. He knew the importance of air for the sense of hearing,
though he called it the void, a thoroughly Pythagorean touch. With regard to the other senses, our
information is more [/195] scanty, but sufficient to show that he treated the subject systematically.
His astronomy seems very crude for one who stood in close relations with the Pythagoreans. We are told
that he adopted Anaximenes' theory of the sun and Herakleitos's explanation of eclipses. If, however, we
were right in holding that the Second Part of the poem of Parmenides represents the view of Pythagoras,
we see that he had not gone very far beyond the Milesians in such matters. His theory of the heavenly
bodies was still meteorological. It is all the more remarkable that Alkmaion is credited with the view that
the planets have an orbital motion in the opposite direction to the diurnal revolution of the heavens. This
view, which he may have learnt from Pythagoras, would naturally be suggested by the difficulties we
noted in the system of Anaximander. It doubtless stood in close connexion with his saying that soul was
immortal because it resembled immortal things, and was always in motion like the heavenly bodies. He
seems, in fact, to be the author of the curious view Plato put into the mouth of the Pythagorean Timaios,
that the soul has circles in it revolving just as the heavens and the planets do. This too seems to be the
explanation of his further statement that man dies because he cannot join the beginning to the end. The
orbits of the heavenly bodies always come full circle, but the circles in the human head may fail to
complete themselves.
Alkmaion's theory of health as isonomy is at once that which most clearly connects him with earlier
inquirers like Anaximander, and also that which had the greatest influence on the subsequent
development of philosophy. He observed, to begin with, that most things human were two, and by this
he meant that man was made up of the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, and the rest of the
opposites. Disease was just the monarchy of any one of thesethe same thing that Anaximander had
called injusticewhile health was the establishment in the body of a free government with equal laws.
This was the leading doctrine or the Sicilian school of medicine, and we shall have to consider in the
sequel its influence on the development of Pythagoreanism. Taken along with the theory of pores, it is
of the greatest importance for later science.