Aileen Das

An intellectual historian with training in classical studies, I am interested in the reception of Greco-Roman medicine and philosophy in the medieval Islamicate world. My research considers not only how medieval Arabic writers participated in medico-philosophical controversies tracing back to Greco-Roman antiquity, such as the debate about whether the brain or the heart was the source of sensation, but also how they appropriated their ancient predecessors’ self-rhetoric in articulating their place in the medico-philosophical ‘tradition’.

I am currently finishing a monograph, Galen and the Arabic Reception of Plato’s Timaeus (Cambridge University Press, under contract), which argues that Galen of Pergamum (d. c. 217) was the first to seize on the potential in Plato’s cosmological dialogue to reimagine the discipline of medicine so as to challenge philosophy’s exclusive claim to epistemic authority – the right to define and explain natural reality. My study of the medieval Arabic reception of Galen’s explanations of the Timaeus demonstrates that these writings were productive of new ways of thinking about knowledge categories, such as medicine and philosophy, and professional identities.

Current projects:

My second monograph-project (The Art in Brief: Time and Exegesis in Greco-Roman and Islamicate Medicine) looks at the role of brevity in ancient and medieval medical literature. I explore how aphorisms, summaries, and other epitomatory genres construct authority through ‘discourses of compression’ – claims to be able to condense all of medicine into a few set truths. Inspired by the ‘temporeality’ approaches of recent STS scholarship, I consider the way in which these texts justify their brevity by presenting their authors as working against different deadlines.

Teaching interests:

Medieval medicine (Galenism, especially) and philosophy (Platonic and Aristotelian receptions), the ‘Greco-Arabic’ translation movement, writing science in the medieval Islamicate world, Gender and Health, Pharmacology