This chapter offers the evidence for the practice of dissection from the fifth through first centuries BC. The chapter begins with dissection among the pre-Socratic philosophers and then moves on to the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus. A discussion of the opportunities for public display in medical contexts of the fifth and early fourth centuries follows, in order to evaluate the range of public contexts within which the practice of dissection would have fallen. Aristotle’s zoological research program and the parallel developments among fourth-century doctors, including Diocles and Praxagoras, then receive sustained attention before a consideration of the advancements of Herophilus and Erasistratus. The chapter next turns to the dearth of evidence for dissection in the centuries after these figures, touching on various sects, both medical and philosophical, including the Herophileans, Erasistrateans, Empiricists, and Peripatetics. Finally, it considers the opportunities for public medical display in the Hellenistic period, as revealed via both texts and inscriptions.

This chapter turns to anatomical texts of the Classical and Hellenistic periods, encompassing all texts that handle anatomy in a sustained way, even if not exclusively. It begins by laying out three different categories of anatomical texts that will be operative across the second half of the volume: general books that include anatomy, anatomical handbooks, and anatomical procedures. It then turns to examples from the periods under study, in each case describing the texts, querying the extent to which they are reliant on dissection, and addressing their fortunes, with particular attention to the ways they were received by Galen and other anatomical authorities of the Roman period. Authors covered include Alcmaeon, Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Democritus, Empedocles, the authors of the Hippocratic Corpus, Plato, Diocles, Mnesitheus, Dieuches, Aristotle, the early Peripatetics, Praxagoras, Pleistonikus, Phylotimus, Herophilus, Erasistratus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, Celsus, and Pliny the Elder. It also briefly addresses anatomical passages in more literarily and philosophically focussed authors, including Callimachus, Philo Judaeus, the early Stoics, Cicero, Horace, and Seneca.

I argue that the concept of scientific explanation constitutes one of McCarthy’s central concerns in the Border Trilogy and that classical thought can be utilized to show that his position is remarkably similar to the Pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus. I show that both McCarthy and Heraclitus share a desire to reject the ontological reductionism of naturalism, yet at the same time avoid the ontological dualism of thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. The case for McCarthy’s Heracliteanism is made by analyzing his 2017 piece on the origin of language, “The Kekule Problem: Where Did Language Come From?” I conclude that the position put forth in the first non-fiction piece of McCarthy’s career offers a framework for interpreting the central concerns of the Border Trilogy that is decidedly Heraclitean.