Reflecting on the subjects from Plato's Timaeus at the centre of the disciplinary rivalry explored in the preceding chapters, I conclude that mind-body problems -- questions treating the extent to which psychic and 'mental' processes are separable from the corporeal realm -- provoked the most debate. My contention is that Galen's interpretation of a close link between the body and soul in the dialogue allowed himself and his sympathizers to give doctors a stake in psychological knowledge and trouble the distribution of value based on the corporeal-incorporeal dichotomy, which privileged philosophers. Therefore, the restrictive disciplinary laws imposed on doctors by Avicenna and Maimonides are a strategy to reclaim philosophy's hegemony on the soul and superior epistemic standing. While my study had divided Galen's successors into supporters and opponents of his project, I maintain that each Arabic actor tries to overwrite Galen's expertise with their own. Finally, I consider how my examination of the discursive reimagining of medicine can provide a longue durée perspective on modern reconceptualizations of the field, such as disputes about the relevance of the Medical Humanities.

Introduction to the book, including a literature review, an outline of the aims and an overview of the individual book chapters.

The third chapter focuses on the Iranian doctor Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (sometimes called the 'Arab Galen'), who was attacked by later Islamicate thinkers for his disciplinary overreach, and his bid to replace Galenism with his more theologically informed system of medicine and philosophy. In particular, it argues that al-Rāzī seeks to weaken the epistemic authority of Galenism through his critiques of Galen’s explanations of certain ideas from Plato’s Timaeus. I first consider the Middle Platonic and Neoplatonic sources on which al-Rāzī may have drawn to elaborate his 'anti-Platonism' – his Platonism in response to Galen's Platonism. Turning finally to the Doubts about Galen, I demonstrate that al-Rāzī attacks Galen on the subjects of creation, pleasure, and the soul for neglecting God's role in the cosmos in his interpretations of the Timaeus. In reformulating the boundaries of medicine to include theological knowledge, which belonged in ancient epistemological schemes to metaphysics, al-Rāzī, I conclude, promotes the doctor-metaphysician in opposition to Galen’s more limited philosopher-doctor as the most reliable investigator of the cosmos.

Building directly on the linguistic elements and the language theory discussed in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 deals with the second level of lexis by focusing on the ἀρχὴ τῆς λέξεως (the foundation of lexis), i.e. Aristotle’s remarks regarding individuals’ use of linguistic elements as determined by sociolinguistic factors. The chapter has three sections, each of which examines Aristotle’s claims within lexis in a different social context.

The introduction asserts that the different causal, spatial, and comparative relations in Plato's Timaeus generated a model of knowledge that denies a strict separation between the disciplines. I contrast the dialogue's epistemic vision with the prevailing hierarchies of knowledge developed by ancient thinkers, including Plato himself, which ranks medicine below philosophy because it is a technē ('art'), deals with the body, and its practitioners were often enslaved or freedpersons. I argue that Galen's expansive refiguring of medicine's boundaries -- his 'boundary work' -- is part of a tactic to improve his profession's credibility and his own authority. After outlining my approach to science as a discursive practice, I consider how Galen's philosophical training enabled him to exploit the epistemic possibilities of the Timaeus, which seems to recognize that knowledge can be divided and bounded differently by each knower. I conclude by proposing that Galen’s own role in interfacing Arabic readers with the dialogue called for Arabic doctors and philosophers to reevaluate their own categories and taxonomies of knowledge, which had been shaped by late-antique epistemologies.

The first chapter of this book delineates the intellectual context in which Aristotle’s ideas on the concept of lexis developed, before focusing on his own definitions of the concept. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first threedeal with lexis in the works first of Plato,Isocrates and Aristotle respectively. The final section introduces the three levels into which lexis has been divided in this book.

Chapter 4, together with Chapter 5, focuses on the third level of lexis and the ἀρετὴ τῆς λέξεως (the excellence of lexis). Since Aristotle devotes much attention to this characteristic of lexis, the discussion of this third level of lexis has been divided into two chapters: Chapter 4 deals with the intra-textual aspect of Aristotle’s remarks on lexis as a means for the creation of different kinds of poetry and rhetoric, i.e. lexis as technē; in Chapter 5 extra-textual factors are considered and are followed by a discussion of the purpose and function of lexis on its third level.

Chapter 6 concludes the discussion of lexis by focusing on metaphor, the linguistic and stylistic element par excellence treated under the notion of lexis. Unlike other linguistic phenomena, metaphor is not tied to a single form or genre but is listed in every enumeration of linguistic means available to the author of a poetic or rhetorical composition. This final chapter highlights the reason for the special place Aristotle assigns to metaphor by looking at it from the point of view of lexis and by examining it in the light of the excellence of lexis, as well as of mimēsis and energeia. Not only does this allow for a new approach to metaphor, but it also highlights the benefits of a three-level approach to Aristotle’s concept of lexis.