ABSTRACT
Galen’s logic and scientific method have attracted a number of important studies, although the loss of his fifteen-book magnum opus On Demonstration inevitably means that conclusions on several aspects of his work in this area must remain tentative. This chapter focuses on the texts in the extant works that throw light on Galen’s understanding of mathematics as a model of method. Eclipse prediction, for instance, requires the application of numerical parameters as much as the appeal to geometrical models. Geometrical proof seemed to Galen to be a sovereign remedy to resolve many of the kinds of conflicts that he observed to arise among philosophers. Galen indeed proceeds to give several impeccable examples of indemonstrable propositions, ‘which they call axiomata’–evidently in the special sense of ‘axioms’ rather than the general one of ‘propositions’. Galen’s admiration for ‘mathematical method’ is evident in one text after another.
