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127-666: Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have been part of Hellas and the region where the Hellenes originated. The oracle was first under the control of the Thesprotians before it passed into the hands of the Molossians . It remained an important religious sanctuary until the rise of Christianity during the Late Roman era . During classical antiquity , according to various accounts, priestesses and priests in

254-589: A bishop of Dodona named Theodorus attended the First Council of Ephesus in 431 CE. Herodotus ( Histories 2:54–57) was told by priests at Egyptian Thebes in the 5th century BCE "that two priestesses had been carried away from Thebes by Phoenicians ; one, they said they had heard was taken away and sold in Libya , the other in Hellas; these women, they said, were the first founders of places of divination in

381-574: A gymnasium and a colonnade ( peripatos ), from which the school acquired the name Peripatetic . Aristotle conducted courses and research at the school for the next twelve years. He often lectured small groups of distinguished students and, along with some of them, such as Theophrastus , Eudemus , and Aristoxenus , Aristotle built a large library which included manuscripts, maps, and museum objects. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira. They had

508-541: A "survival of the fittest" origin of living things and their organs, and ridiculed the idea that accidents could lead to orderly results. To put his views into modern terms, he nowhere says that different species can have a common ancestor , or that one kind can change into another , or that kinds can become extinct . Aristotle did not do experiments in the modern sense. He used the ancient Greek term pepeiramenoi to mean observations, or at most investigative procedures like dissection. In Generation of Animals , he finds

635-559: A Mother Letter, and every word uttered by Him Who is the Well Spring of Divine Revelation is a Mother Word, and His Tablet a Mother Tablet." There is difference of opinion between the academic and the popular conception of the term Mother goddess . The popular view is mainly driven by the Goddess movement and reads that primitive societies initially were matriarchal , worshipping a sovereign, nurturing, motherly earth goddess . This

762-469: A Mycenaean sherd of c. 1200 B.C. was also unearthed on the site, in association with kylix stems. Archaeological evidence shows that the cult of Zeus was established around the same time. During the post-Mycenaean period (or " Greek Dark Ages "), evidence of activity at Dodona is scant, but there is a resumption of contact between Dodona and southern Greece during the Archaic period (8th century BCE) with

889-533: A complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship . The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance , and

1016-562: A daughter whom they also named Pythias. In 343/42 BC, Aristotle was invited to Pella by Philip II of Macedon in order to become the tutor to his thirteen-year-old son Alexander ; a choice perhaps influenced by the relationship of Aristotle's family with the Macedonian dynasty. Aristotle taught Alexander at the private school of Mieza , in the gardens of the Nymphs , the royal estate near Pella. Alexander's education probably included

1143-463: A distance). No buildings are mentioned, and the priests (called Selloi ) slept on the ground with unwashed feet. No priestesses are mentioned in Homer. The oracle also features in another passage involving Odysseus, giving a story of his visit to Dodona. Odysseus's words "bespeak a familiarity with Dodona, a realization of its importance, and an understanding that it was normal to consult Zeus there on

1270-408: A female-dominated one). That this form of society ever existed was supposedly supported by many figurines that were found. In academic circles, this prehistoric matriarchy is considered unlikely. Firstly, worshiping a mother goddess does not necessarily mean that women ruled society. In addition, the figurines can also portray ordinary women or goddesses, and it is unclear whether there really ever

1397-438: A fertilized hen's egg of a suitable stage and opens it to see the embryo's heart beating inside. Instead, he practiced a different style of science: systematically gathering data, discovering patterns common to whole groups of animals, and inferring possible causal explanations from these. This style is common in modern biology when large amounts of data become available in a new field, such as genomics . It does not result in

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1524-497: A fluid such as air. In this system, heavy bodies in steady fall indeed travel faster than light ones (whether friction is ignored, or not ), and they do fall more slowly in a denser medium. Newton's "forced" motion corresponds to Aristotle's "violent" motion with its external agent, but Aristotle's assumption that the agent's effect stops immediately it stops acting (e.g., the ball leaves the thrower's hand) has awkward consequences: he has to suppose that surrounding fluid helps to push

1651-483: A folk etymology applied to the archaic name of the sacred women that no longer made sense and the eventual connection with Zeus, justified by a tale told by a priestess. Was the pel- element in their name connected with "black" or "muddy" root elements in names like "Peleus" or "Pelops"? Is that why the doves were black? Herodotus adds: But my own belief about it is this. If the Phoenicians did in fact carry away

1778-455: A house is the bricks, stones, timbers, etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house, while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form. Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at

1905-597: A linear scale, and noted various exceptions, such as that sharks had a placenta like the tetrapods. To a modern biologist, the explanation, not available to Aristotle, is convergent evolution . Philosophers of science have generally concluded that Aristotle was not interested in taxonomy, but zoologists who studied this question in the early 21st century think otherwise. He believed that purposive final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological view justified his observed data as an expression of formal design. Aristotle's psychology , given in his treatise On

2032-480: A number of subjects, such as ethics and politics , as well as standard literary texts, like Euripides and Homer . It is likely that during Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, other prominent nobles, like Ptolemy and Cassander , would have occasionally attended his lectures. Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his own attitude towards Persia was strongly ethnocentric . In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to

2159-755: A parallel in calling Mary "Our Mother" and the Almighty Yahweh as "Our Father". In contrast to the Pagan notion of a fertility goddess , Mary is both the Perpetual Virgin and the Mother of God at the same time, she is not considered the "Heavenly Mother" in reference to God the Father or the "Heavenly Father" as her consort . St Mary has never been referred to as a goddess in the Gospel 's accounts of

2286-435: A part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated at some period of time, and that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. Where Plato spoke of

2413-489: A part of the collective unconscious of all humans; various adherents of Jung, most notably Erich Neumann and Ernst Whitmont , have argued that such an archetype underpins many of its own mythologies and may even precede the image of the paternal "father." Such speculations help explain the universality of such mother goddess imagery around the world. The Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines have been sometimes explained as depictions of an Earth Goddess similar to Gaia. In

2540-498: A priori principles. Aristotle's "natural philosophy" spans a wide range of natural phenomena including those now covered by physics, biology and other natural sciences. In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in

2667-542: A problem of personal conduct." The details of this story are as follows. Odysseus says to the swineherd Eumaeus (possibly giving him a fictive account) that he (Odysseus) was seen among the Thesprotians, having gone to inquire of the oracle at Dodona whether he should return to Ithaca openly or in secret (as the disguised Odysseus is doing). Odysseus later repeats the same tale to Penelope, who may not yet have seen through his disguise. According to some scholars, Dodona

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2794-418: A property or a relation to other things. When one looks at an apple, for example, one sees an apple, and one can also analyse a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, one can place an apple next to a book, so that one can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other. Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not

2921-621: A set of six books called the Organon around 40 BC by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers. The books are: The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the Categories, the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in On Interpretation , to

3048-549: A son whom Aristotle named after his father, Nicomachus . This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his philosophical works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics , Metaphysics , Nicomachean Ethics , Politics , On

3175-605: A theatre). A wall was built around the oracle itself and the holy tree, as well as temples to Dione and Heracles . In 219 BCE, the Aetolians , under the leadership of General Dorimachus, looted and set fire to the sanctuary. During the late 3rd century BCE, King Philip V of Macedon (along with the Epirotes) reconstructed all the buildings at Dodona. In 167 BCE, the Molossian cities and possibly Dodona itself were destroyed by

3302-562: A thrown stone, in the Physics (254b10), and "natural motion", such as of a falling object, in On the Heavens (300a20). In violent motion, as soon as the agent stops causing it, the motion stops also: in other words, the natural state of an object is to be at rest, since Aristotle does not address friction . With this understanding, it can be observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on

3429-544: A woman with origins from Chalcis , Euboea . Nicomachus was said to have belonged to the medical guild of Asclepiadae and was likely responsible for Aristotle's early interest in biology and medicine. Ancient tradition held that Aristotle's family descended from the legendary physician Asclepius and his son Machaon . Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was still at a young age and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he probably spent some time in

3556-405: Is Helloi . Aristotle clearly uses "Dodona" as the designation of the whole district in which the oracle was situated. Thus, according to some scholars, the origin of the words "Hellenes" and "Hellas" was from Dodona. Also, the word "Greece" may have been derived from this area. Aristotle Aristotle ( Attic Greek : Ἀριστοτέλης , romanized:  Aristotélēs ; 384–322 BC)

3683-425: Is a change where the substrate of the thing that has undergone the change has itself changed. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality ( dynamis ) and actuality ( entelecheia ) in association with the matter and the form. Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing or being acted upon if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example,

3810-454: Is a historical accident: his works on botany have been lost, but two books on plants by his pupil Theophrastus have survived. Aristotle reports on the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and the catches of fishermen. He describes the catfish , electric ray , and frogfish in detail, as well as cephalopods such as the octopus and paper nautilus . His description of the hectocotyl arm of cephalopods, used in sexual reproduction,

3937-499: Is a major goddess characterized as a mother or progenitor, either as an embodiment of motherhood and fertility or fulfilling the cosmological role of a creator- and/or destroyer-figure, typically associated the Earth, sky, and/or the life-giving bounties thereof in a maternal relation with humanity or other gods. When equated in this lattermost function with the earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as

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4064-419: Is also a final cause or end. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality. With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then

4191-458: Is highly unlikely that such a civilization ever existed. For a long time, feminist authors claimed that these peaceful, matriarchal agrarian societies were exterminated or subjugated by nomadic, patriarchal warrior tribes. An important contribution to this was that of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas . Her work in this field has been questioned. Among feminist archaeologists this vision is nowadays also considered highly controversial. Since

4318-473: Is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period . His father, Nicomachus , died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato 's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven ( c.  347 BC ). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at

4445-541: Is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. Aristotle's immanent realism means his epistemology is based on the study of things that exist or happen in the world, and rises to knowledge of the universal, whereas for Plato epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends to knowledge of particular imitations of these. Aristotle uses induction from examples alongside deduction , whereas Plato relies on deduction from

4572-560: Is sometimes called "Mother" because she bore stars and Sun god . Nut was thought to draw the dead into her star-filled sky, and refresh them with food and wine. In Kongo religion , the Sky Mother , Nzambici , was the female counterpart of the Sky Father and Solar god , Nzambi Mpungu . Originally, they were seen as one spirit with one half male and the other half female. After the introduction of Christianity to Central Africa ,

4699-473: Is the divine ground of all being, the "world soul". This masculine potential is actualized by feminine dynamism, embodied in multitudinous goddesses who are ultimately all manifestations of the one great mother. Shakti, herself, can free the individual from demons of ego, ignorance, and desire that bind the soul in maya (illusion) . Practitioners of the Tantric tradition focus on Shakti to free themselves from

4826-413: Is the fulfilment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end ( telos ) is the principle of every change, and potentiality exists for the sake of the end, actuality, accordingly, is the end. Referring then to the previous example, it can be said that an actuality is when a plant does one of the activities that plants do. For that for the sake of which ( to hou heneka ) a thing is, is its principle, and

4953-480: Is why they say that the dove uttered human speech; as long as she spoke in a foreign tongue, they thought her voice was like the voice of a bird. For how could a dove utter the speech of men? The tale that the dove was black signifies that the woman was Egyptian. Thesprotia, on the coast west of Dodona, would have been available to the seagoing Phoenicians, whom readers of Herodotus would not have expected to have penetrated as far inland as Dodona. According to Strabo ,

5080-787: The Annunciation , Wedding at Cana , or the Magnificat . Since the Apostolic age the church has believed that Mary entered heaven alive after her death and subsequent resurrection , known as the Assumption in the west and the Dormition in the east. As the foremost saint , some Christians believe she continues to supernaturally intervene in the world through Marian apparitions ( Our Lady of Velankanni ), Marian shrines ( Our Lady of Zeitoun ) and Marian devotions ( Our Lady of

5207-540: The Argonauts , Jason's ship, the " Argo ", had the gift of prophecy, because it contained an oak timber spirited from Dodona. In c. 290 BCE, King Pyrrhus made Dodona the religious capital of his domain and beautified it by implementing a series of construction projects (i.e. grandly rebuilt the Temple of Zeus, developed many other buildings, added a festival featuring athletic games, musical contests, and drama enacted in

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5334-621: The Baháʼí Faith , Baha'u'llah uses the Mother as an attribute of God: "And when He Who is well-grounded in all knowledge, He Who is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof, revealeth that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him and shamelessly deny Him.". Baha'u'llah further writes that "Every single letter proceeding out of the mouth of God is indeed

5461-652: The Early Modern period. John Philoponus (in Late antiquity ) and Galileo (in Early modern period ) are said to have shown by experiment that Aristotle's claim that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect. A contrary opinion is given by Carlo Rovelli , who argues that Aristotle's physics of motion is correct within its domain of validity, that of objects in the Earth 's gravitational field immersed in

5588-525: The Great Comet of 371 BC . Aristotle was one of the first people to record any geological observations. He stated that geological change was too slow to be observed in one person's lifetime. The geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change, including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had become watered by rivers", giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta since

5715-476: The History of Animals in a graded scale of perfection, a nonreligious version of the scala naturae , with man at the top. His system had eleven grades of animal, from highest potential to lowest, expressed in their form at birth: the highest gave live birth to hot and wet creatures, the lowest laid cold, dry mineral-like eggs. Animals came above plants , and these in turn were above minerals. He grouped what

5842-716: The Latter Day Saint denomination . Some believe in multiple Heavenly Mothers married to one Heavenly Father in a polygynous relationship. Zahng Gil-jah is a South Korean woman, by the World Mission Society Church of God believed to be “God the Mother” ( Korean :  어머니 하나님 ; RR :  Eomeoni Hananim ; Korean pronunciation: [ʌmʌɲi hanaɲim] ). Church members may also call her “ New Jerusalem Mother”, “Mother Jerusalem”, or “Heavenly Mother”. In Theosophy ,

5969-553: The Macedonian capital, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy . At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy . He became distinguished as a researcher and lecturer, earning for himself the nickname "mind of the school" by his tutor Plato . In Athens, he probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as he wrote when describing

6096-456: The Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out partly correctly that if "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then... the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them." He also wrote descriptions of comets, including

6223-595: The Mother Earth or Earth Mother , deity in various animistic or pantheistic religions. The earth goddess is archetypally the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky Father or Father Heaven , particularly in theologies derived from the Proto-Indo-European sphere (i.e. from Dheghom and Dyeus ). In some polytheistic cultures, such as the Ancient Egyptian religion which narrates

6350-508: The Physics (215a25), Aristotle effectively states a quantitative law, that the speed, v, of a falling body is proportional (say, with constant c) to its weight, W, and inversely proportional to the density, ρ, of the fluid in which it is falling:; Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not possible. Opinions have varied on whether Aristotle intended to state quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held

6477-453: The Romans (led by Aemilius Paulus). A fragment of Dio Cassius reports that Thracian soldiers instigated by King Mithridates sacked the sanctuary ca. 88 BCE. In the reign of the emperor Augustus the site was prominent enough to feature an honorary statue of Livia . The 2nd century CE traveller Pausanias noted a sacred oak tree of Zeus. In 241 CE, a priest named Poplius Memmius Leon organized

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6604-528: The Stanford Figurines Project that examined the figurines of Çatalhöyük. This team came to different conclusions than Gimbutas and Mellaart. Only a few of the figurines were identified as female and these figurines were found not so much in sacred spaces, but seemed to have been discarded randomly, sometimes in garbage heaps. This rendered a cult of the mother goddess in this location as unlikely. In Egyptian mythology , sky goddess Nut

6731-678: The cosmic egg myth, the sky is instead seen as the Heavenly Mother or Sky Mother as in Nut and Hathor , and the earth god is regarded as the male, paternal, and terrestrial partner, as in Osiris or Geb who hatched out of the maternal cosmic egg . Between 1961 and 1965 James Mellaart led a series of excavations at Çatalhöyük , north of the Taurus Mountains in a fertile agricultural region of South- Anatolia . Striking were

6858-407: The cosmos . The Shakti sect is strongly associated with Samkhya , and Tantra Hindu philosophies and ultimately, is monist . The primordial feminine creative-preservative-destructive energy, Shakti , is considered to be the motive force behind all action and existence in the phenomenal cosmos. The cosmos itself is purusha , the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality that

6985-593: The gerontes among the Laconians and the Massaliotes). And this, it is said, is the origin of the myth about the pigeons [peleiades] in the Dodonaean oak-tree. According to Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb , the epithet Neuos of Zeus at Dodona primarily designated "the god of streams, and, generally, of water". Jebb also points out that Achelous , as a water deity, received special honours at Dodona. The area of

7112-412: The universal . Aristotle's ontology places the universal ( katholou ) in particulars ( kath' hekaston ), things in the world, whereas for Plato the universal is a separately existing form which actual things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still what phenomena are based on, but is "instantiated" in a particular substance. Plato argued that all things have a universal form , which could be either

7239-519: The "extreme view" that Aristotle's concept of force was basically qualitative, but other authors reject this. Archimedes corrected Aristotle's theory that bodies move towards their natural resting places; metal boats can float if they displace enough water ; floating depends in Archimedes' scheme on the mass and volume of the object, not, as Aristotle thought, its elementary composition. Aristotle's writings on motion remained influential until

7366-409: The 1960s, especially in popular culture , the alleged worship of the mother goddess and the social position that women in prehistoric societies supposedly assumed, were linked. This made the debate a political one. According to the goddess movement, the current male-dominated society should return to the egalitarian matriarchy of earlier times (though a matriarchy is not an egalitarian society, but

7493-582: The Collyridians as heretics, holding that Mary was only to be honoured, and not to be worshipped like the God-man of Christianity . In the Latter Day Saint movement , particularly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , many adherents believe in a Heavenly Mother as the wife of God the Father. They are collectively referred to as Heavenly Parents . The theology varies, however, according to

7620-527: The Colonies , were composed by the philosopher for the young prince. After Philip II's assassination in 336 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens for the second and final time a year later. As a metic , Aristotle could not own property in Athens and thus rented a building known as the Lyceum (named after the sacred grove of Apollo Lykeios ), in which he established his own school. The building included

7747-606: The Creatress of all life. She is associated with the full moon and stars, the Earth , and the sea. In Wicca , the Earth Goddess is sometimes called Gaia . The name of the mother goddess varies depending on the Wiccan tradition. English historian Ronald Hutton, however, has forcefully stated that any use of the term "Mother-Goddess" can be accounted for, and disregarded, as the scholars and mythographers' own projection of

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7874-428: The Earth goddess is called the " Planetary Logos of Earth ". The Mother Goddess, or Great Goddess , is a composite of various feminine deities from past and present world cultures, worshiped by modern Wicca and others broadly known as Neopagans. She is considered sometimes identified as a Triple Goddess , who takes the form of Maiden, Mother, and Crone archetypes . She is described as Mother Earth, Mother Nature, or

8001-936: The Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, and disregard Protestant objections to Marian devotion . She is regarded as "Our Mother", the Blessed Mother , or the Holy Mother as she gave birth to Jesus Christ , since Christians alike refer to themselves as " Brothers and Sisters in Christ ". There is a Pater Noster but no equivalent Mater Nostra , however the Hail Mary and the Sub Tuum Praesidium have been popular forms of prayer and praise to Virgin Mary for many centuries. Some may perceive

8128-610: The Greeks and a despot to the barbarians". Alexander's education under the guardianship of Aristotle likely lasted for only a few years, as at around the age of sixteen he returned to Pella and was appointed regent of Macedon by his father Philip. During this time, Aristotle is said to have gifted Alexander an annotated copy of the Iliad , which reportedly became one of Alexander's most prized possessions. Scholars speculate that two of Aristotle's now lost works, On kingship and On behalf of

8255-543: The Libyans (they say) to make an oracle of Ammon; this also is sacred to Zeus. Such was the story told by the Dodonaean priestesses, the eldest of whom was Promeneia and the next Timarete and the youngest Nicandra; and the rest of the servants of the temple at Dodona similarly held it true. In the simplest analysis, this was a confirmation of the oracle tradition in Egypt. The element of the dove may be an attempt to account for

8382-578: The Naia festival of Dodona. In 362 CE, Emperor Julian consulted the oracle prior to his military campaigns against the Persians. Pilgrims still consulted the oracle until 391-392 CE when Emperor Theodosius closed all pagan temples, banned all pagan religious activities, and cut down the ancient oak tree at the sanctuary of Zeus. Although the surviving town was insignificant, the long-hallowed pagan site must have retained significance for Christians given that

8509-715: The Persians, and philosophical questions, like the definition of braveness. A widespread speculation in antiquity suggested that Aristotle played a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BC, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, Euboea , at which occasion he

8636-586: The Rosary ). According to Mariology and Scholasticism branches of study, though Mary is venerated as the foremost saint, she is still a creature and never viewed as an equal of the Triune God who is the Creator . In pre-Islamic Arabia , Collyridians were an unorthodox Christian denomination who reportedly worshipped Virgin Mary by making burnt offerings of dough to her. Ancient Christians viewed

8763-488: The Soul ( peri psychēs ), posits three kinds of soul ("psyches"): the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans have all three. The vegetative soul is concerned with growth and nourishment. The sensitive soul experiences sensations and movement. The unique part of the human, rational soul is its ability to receive forms of other things and to compare them using the nous (intellect) and logos (reason). Mother Goddess A mother goddess

8890-440: The Soul and Poetics . Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre." While Alexander deeply admired Aristotle, near the end of his life, the two men became estranged having diverging opinions over issues, like the optimal administration of city-states, the treatment of conquered populations, such as

9017-400: The Virgin Mary onto the evidence and source data. More recently Hutton was criticized in a review for ignoring the evidence of numerous goddesses identified as either mothers or both virgin and mother in pre-Christian antiquity, in addition to providing no evidence or secondary citations with which to substantiate his own position. Carl Gustav Jung suggested that the archetypal mother was

9144-553: The aforesaid countries." The simplest analysis of the quote is: Egypt, for Greeks as well as for Egyptians, was a spring of human culture of all but immeasurable antiquity. This mythic element says that the oracles at the oasis of Siwa in Libya and of Dodona in Epirus were equally old, but similarly transmitted by Phoenician culture, and that the seeresses – Herodotus does not say " sibyls " – were women. Herodotus follows with what he

9271-592: The appointment of Phemonoe , the prophetess at Delphi. The introduction of female attendants probably took place in the fifth century. The timing of change is clearly prior to Herodotus (5th century BCE), with his narrative about the doves and Egypt. Aristotle ( Meteorologica , 1.14) places 'Hellas' in the parts about Dodona and the Achelous and says it was inhabited by "the Selloi, who were formerly called Graikoi, but now Hellenes." The alternative reading of Selloi

9398-494: The ball along to make it continue to rise even though the hand is no longer acting on it, resulting in the Medieval theory of impetus . Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously active factors. His term aitia is traditionally translated as "cause", but it does not always refer to temporal sequence; it might be better translated as "explanation", but

9525-399: The becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see. In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which

9652-574: The broad sense coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". However, his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science ( dianoia ) is either practical, poetical or theoretical" ( Metaphysics 1025b25). His practical science includes ethics and politics; his poetical science means the study of fine arts including poetry; his theoretical science covers physics, mathematics and metaphysics. In his On Generation and Corruption , Aristotle related each of

9779-433: The cause of earthquakes was a gas or vapor ( anathymiaseis ) that was trapped inside the earth and trying to escape, following other Greek authors Anaxagoras , Empedocles and Democritus . Aristotle also made many observations about the hydrologic cycle. For example, he made some of the earliest observations about desalination: he observed early – and correctly – that when seawater is heated, freshwater evaporates and that

9906-410: The composite natural ones, the study of nature would be the primary kind of knowledge; but if there is some motionless independent thing, the knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is universal in just this way , because it is first. And it belongs to this sort of philosophy to study being as being, both what it is and what belongs to it just by virtue of being. Aristotle examines

10033-406: The concepts of substance ( ousia ) and essence ( to ti ên einai , "the what it was to be") in his Metaphysics (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form, a philosophical theory called hylomorphism . In Book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum , or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of

10160-588: The cycle of karma . The worship of the mother deity can be traced back to early Vedic culture. The Rigveda calls the divine female power Mahimata (R.V. 1.164.33) which means "great mother". Although no Mother Goddess exists in Christianity, both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church revere Virgin Mary as the Mother of God, a rendering of Theotokos and Deipara since

10287-399: The data to come to the theory of evolution . Aristotle's writings can seem to modern readers close to implying evolution, but while Aristotle was aware that new mutations or hybridizations could occur, he saw these as rare accidents. For Aristotle, accidents, like heat waves in winter, must be considered distinct from natural causes. He was thus critical of Empedocles's materialist theory of

10414-522: The description of Nzambi changed to Creator God and Nzambici to his wife, "God the essence, the god on earth, the great princess, the mother of all the animals, and the mystery of the Earth." In Hinduism , Saraswati , Lakshmi , Radha , Parvati , Durga and other goddesses represents both the feminine aspect and the shakti (power) of the supreme being known as the Brahman . The divine mother goddess, manifests herself in various forms, representing

10541-455: The details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points. Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira , Chalcidice , about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki . He was the son of Nicomachus , the personal physician of King Amyntas of Macedon , and Phaestis,

10668-491: The earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances in mathematical logic . Kant stated in the Critique of Pure Reason that with Aristotle, logic reached its completion. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into

10795-442: The first century AD editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works to create the treatise we know by the name Metaphysics . Aristotle called it "first philosophy", and distinguished it from mathematics and natural science (physics) as the contemplative ( theoretikē ) philosophy which is "theological" and studies the divine. He wrote in his Metaphysics (1026a16): If there were no other independent things besides

10922-533: The following. Brood size decreases with (adult) body mass, so that an elephant has fewer young (usually just one) per brood than a mouse. Lifespan increases with gestation period , and also with body mass, so that elephants live longer than mice, have a longer period of gestation, and are heavier. As a final example, fecundity decreases with lifespan, so long-lived kinds like elephants have fewer young in total than short-lived kinds like mice. Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of animals , arranging these in

11049-531: The forms as existing separately from the things that participate in them, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms. Concerning the nature of change ( kinesis ) and its causes, as he outlines in his Physics and On Generation and Corruption ( 319b–320a), he distinguishes coming-to-be ( genesis , also translated as 'generation') from: Coming-to-be

11176-515: The four elements proposed earlier by Empedocles , earth , water , air , and fire , to two of the four sensible qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of the four elements, in differing proportions. Aristotle's scheme added the heavenly aether , the divine substance of the heavenly spheres , stars and planets. Aristotle describes two kinds of motion: "violent" or "unnatural motion", such as that of

11303-428: The ground, say) require more force to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster. This would imply the equation incorrect in modern physics. Natural motion depends on the element concerned: the aether naturally moves in a circle around the heavens, while the 4 Empedoclean elements move vertically up (like fire, as is observed) or down (like earth) towards their natural resting places. In

11430-639: The head of the Lyceum, who in turn passed them down to Neleus of Scepsis in Asia Minor. There, the papers remained hidden for protection until they were purchased by the collector Apellicon . In the meantime, many copies of Aristotle's major works had already begun to circulate and be used in the Lyceum of Athens, Alexandria , and later in Rome . With the Prior Analytics , Aristotle is credited with

11557-440: The image. According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things, distinguishable from other types of cause such as simple necessity. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things , "from what is spontaneous". There is also more a specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that only applies to people's moral choices. In astronomy , Aristotle refuted Democritus 's claim that

11684-625: The imagination. There was also a large number of sexless figurines, which Mellaart regarded as typical for a society dominated by women: Emphasis on sex in art is invariably connected with male impulse and desire. The idea that there could have been a matriarchy and a cult of the mother goddess was supported by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas . This gave rise to a modern cult of the Mother Goddess with annual pilgrimages being organized at Çatalhöyük. Since 1993, excavations were resumed, now headed by Ian Hodder with Lynn Meskell as head of

11811-472: The land to which she had come. After this, as soon as she understood the Greek language, she taught divination; and she said that her sister had been sold in Libya by the same Phoenicians who sold her. I expect that these women were called 'doves' by the people of Dodona because they spoke a strange language, and the people thought it like the cries of birds; then the woman spoke what they could understand, and that

11938-460: The many statues found here, which Mellaart suggested represented a Great goddess, who headed the pantheon of an essentially matriarchal culture. A seated female figure, flanked by what Mellaart describes as lionesses , was found in a grain-bin; she may have intended to protect the harvest and grain. He considered the sites as shrines , with especially the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük capturing

12065-468: The modern zoologist would call vertebrates as the hotter "animals with blood", and below them the colder invertebrates as "animals without blood". Those with blood were divided into the live-bearing ( mammals ), and the egg-laying ( birds , reptiles , fish ). Those without blood were insects, crustacea (non-shelled – cephalopods, and shelled ) and the hard-shelled molluscs ( bivalves and gastropods ). He recognised that animals did not exactly fit into

12192-404: The oceans are then replenished by the cycle of rainfall and river runoff ("I have proved by experiment that salt water evaporated forms fresh and the vapor does not when it condenses condense into sea water again.") Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically, and biology forms a large part of his writings. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and

12319-577: The oracle was founded by the Pelasgi: This oracle, according to Ephorus, was founded by the Pelasgi. And the Pelasgi are called the earliest of all peoples who have held dominion in Greece. The site of the oracle was dominated by Mount Tomaros , the area being controlled by the Thesprotians and then the Molossians : In ancient times, then, Dodona was under the rule of the Thesprotians; and so

12446-545: The oracle was quite swampy, with lakes in the area and reference to the "holy spring" of Dodona may be a later addition. Jebb mostly follows Strabo in his analysis. Accordingly, he notes that the Selloi, the prophets of Zeus, were also called tomouroi , which name derived from Mount Tomares. Tomouroi was also a variant reading found in the Odyssey . According to Jebb, the Peleiades at Dodona were very early, and preceded

12573-407: The poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan . Aristotle's influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics , although always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics . In general,

12700-504: The presence of bronze votive offerings (i.e. tripods ) from southern Greek cities. Dedication to the Oracle of Dodona arrived from most of the Greek world including its colonies. Although an adjacent area there were few Illyrian dedication most probably because the Oracle preferred interaction with the Greek world. Until 650 BCE, Dodona was a religious and oracular centre mainly for northern tribes; only after 650 BCE did it become important for

12827-468: The prophets might be ranked among these), but later on three old women were designated as prophets, after Dione also had been designated as temple-associate of Zeus. Strabo also reports as uncertain the story that the predecessor of Dodona oracle was located in Thessaly : ...the temple [oracle] was transferred from Thessaly, from the part of Pelasgia which is about Scotussa (and Scotussa does belong to

12954-457: The request of Philip II of Macedon , tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls . Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived , none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided

13081-456: The sacred grove interpreted the rustling of the oak (or beech) leaves to determine the correct actions to be taken. According to a new interpretation, the oracular sound originated from bronze objects hanging from oak branches and sounded with the wind blowing, similar to a wind chime . According to Nicholas Hammond , Dodona was an oracle devoted to a Mother Goddess (identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia , but here called Dione ) who

13208-414: The sacred women and sell one in Libya and one in Hellas, then, in my opinion, the place where this woman was sold in what is now Hellas, but was formerly called Pelasgia , was Thesprotia ; and then, being a slave there, she established a shrine of Zeus under an oak that was growing there; for it was reasonable that, as she had been a handmaid of the temple of Zeus at Thebes, she would remember that temple in

13335-433: The same certainty as experimental science, but it sets out testable hypotheses and constructs a narrative explanation of what is observed. In this sense, Aristotle's biology is scientific. From the data he collected and documented, Aristotle inferred quite a number of rules relating the life-history features of the live-bearing tetrapods (terrestrial placental mammals) that he studied. Among these correct predictions are

13462-439: The seed of a plant in the soil is potentially ( dynamei ) a plant, and if it is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially, beings can either 'act' ( poiein ) or 'be acted upon' ( paschein ), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise – acting). Actuality

13589-706: The sights one viewed at the Mysteries, "to experience is to learn" ( παθεĩν μαθεĩν ). Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before leaving in 348/47 BC after Plato's death. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the Academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus , although it is possible that the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens could have also influenced his decision. Aristotle left with Xenocrates to Assos in Asia Minor , where he

13716-640: The southern tribes. Zeus was worshipped at Dodona as "Zeus Naios" or "Naos" (god of the spring below the oak in the temenos or sanctuary , cf. Naiads ) and as "Zeus Bouleus" (Counsellor). According to Plutarch , the worship of Jupiter (Zeus) at Dodona was set up by Deucalion and Pyrrha . The earliest mention of Dodona is in Homer , and only Zeus is mentioned in this account. In the Iliad (circa 750 BCE), Achilles prays to "High Zeus, Lord of Dodona, Pelasgian , living afar off, brooding over wintry Dodona" (thus demonstrating that Zeus also could be invoked from

13843-756: The study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the Analytics ) and dialectics (in the Topics and Sophistical Refutations ). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory stricto sensu : the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. The Rhetoric is not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the Topics . What is today called Aristotelian logic with its types of syllogism (methods of logical argument), Aristotle himself would have labelled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean dialectics . The word "metaphysics" appears to have been coined by

13970-558: The surrounding seas, including in particular the Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data in History of Animals , Generation of Animals , Movement of Animals , and Parts of Animals are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialized knowledge, such as beekeepers and fishermen, and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His apparent emphasis on animals rather than plants

14097-598: The territory called Thessalia Pelasgiotis ), and also that most of the women whose descendants are the prophetesses of today went along at the same time; and it is from this fact that Zeus was also called “Pelasgian.” In a fragment of Strabo we find the following: Among the Thesprotians and the Molossians old women are called "peliai" and old men "pelioi," as is also the case among the Macedonians; at any rate, those people call their dignitaries "peligones" (compare

14224-522: The texts were written in Greek, and attest to over 1200 personal names from different areas; these were almost exclusively Greek, with non-Greek names (e.g. Thracian, Illyrian) making up around 1% of the total. Though it never eclipsed the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi , Dodona gained a reputation far beyond Greece. In the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes , a retelling of an older story of Jason and

14351-475: The time of Homer , and "the upheaving of one of the Aeolian islands , previous to a volcanic eruption ."' Meteorologica lends its name to the modern study of meteorology, but its modern usage diverges from the content of Aristotle's ancient treatise on meteors . The ancient Greeks did use the term for a range of atmospheric phenomena, but also for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Aristotle proposed that

14478-478: The traditional rendering will be employed here. Aristotle describes experiments in optics using a camera obscura in Problems , book 15. The apparatus consisted of a dark chamber with a small aperture that let light in. With it, he saw that whatever shape he made the hole, the sun's image always remained circular. He also noted that increasing the distance between the aperture and the image surface magnified

14605-453: The universal creative force . She becomes Mother Nature (Mula Prakriti), who gives birth to all life forms and nourishes them through her body. Ultimately she re-absorbs all life forms back into herself, or "devours" them to sustain herself as the power of death feeding on life to produce new life. She also gives rise to Maya (the illusory world) and to prakriti , the force that galvanizes the divine ground of existence into self-projection as

14732-523: Was Mount Tomaros, or Tmaros (for it is called both ways), at the base of which the temple is situated. And both the tragic poets and Pindaros have called Dodona 'Thesprotian Dodona.' But later on it came under the rule of the Molossoi. According to Strabo, the prophecies were originally uttered by men: At the outset, it is true, those who uttered the prophecies were men (this too perhaps the poet indicates, for he calls them “hypophetae” [interpreters] and

14859-543: Was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath . His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences , philosophy , linguistics , economics , politics , psychology , and the arts . As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens , he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science . Little

14986-534: Was an ancient tradition that Dodona was founded as a colony from the city, also named Dodona , in Thessaly . Cult activity at Dodona was already established in some form during the Late Bronze Age (or Mycenaean period). Mycenaean offerings such as bronze objects of the 14th and 13th centuries were brought in Dodona. A 13th century cist tomb with squared shoulders was found at Dodona; it had no context, but

15113-460: Was based upon the nineteenth-century ideas of unilineal evolution of Johann Jakob Bachofen . According to the academic view, however, both Bachofen and the modern Goddess theories are a projection of contemporary world views on ancient myths, rather than attempting to understand the mentalité of that time. Often this is accompanied by a desire for a lost civilization from a bygone era that would have been just, peaceful, and wise. However, it

15240-413: Was invited by his former fellow student Hermias of Atarneus ; he stayed there for a few years and left around the time of Hermias' death. While at Assos, Aristotle and his colleague Theophrastus did extensive research in botany and marine biology , which they later continued at the near-by island of Lesbos . During this time, Aristotle married Pythias , Hermias's adoptive daughter and niece, and had

15367-592: Was joined and partly supplanted in historical times by the Greek deity Zeus . Although the earliest inscriptions at the site date to c. 550–500 BCE, archaeological excavations conducted for more than a century have recovered artifacts as early as the Mycenaean era , many now at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens , and some in the archaeological museum at nearby Ioannina . There

15494-734: Was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology , especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church . Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while

15621-408: Was not until the 4th century BCE that a small stone temple to Dione was added to the site. By the time Euripides mentioned Dodona (fragmentary play Melanippe ) and Herodotus wrote about the oracle, the priestesses had appeared at the site. Over 4200 oracular tablets have been found in Dodona, written in different alphabets, and dated approximately between the mid-6th and early 2nd centuries BCE. All

15748-536: Was originally an oracle of the Mother Goddess attended by priestesses. She was identified at other sites as Rhea or Gaia . The oracle also was shared by Dione . By classical times, Dione was relegated to a minor role elsewhere in classical Greece, being made into an aspect of Zeus's more usual consort, Hera — but never at Dodona. Many dedicatory inscriptions recovered from the site mention both "Dione" and "Zeus Naios". According to some archaeologists, it

15875-523: Was said to have stated "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates . He died in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife. Aristotle left his works to Theophrastus, his successor as

16002-493: Was told by the prophetesses, called peleiades ("doves") at Dodona: that two black doves had come flying from Thebes in Egypt , one to Libya and one to Dodona; the latter settled on an oak tree, and there uttered human speech, declaring that a place of divination from Zeus must be made there; the people of Dodona understood that the message was divine, and therefore established the oracular shrine. The dove which came to Libya told

16129-588: Was widely disbelieved until the 19th century. He gives accurate descriptions of the four-chambered fore-stomachs of ruminants , and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark . He notes that an animal's structure is well matched to function so birds like the heron (which live in marshes with soft mud and live by catching fish) have a long neck, long legs, and a sharp spear-like beak, whereas ducks that swim have short legs and webbed feet. Darwin , too, noted these sorts of differences between similar kinds of animal, but unlike Aristotle used

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