The great William Harvey referred to conception as a "dark business," and even leading researchers tended to advance only so far before lapsing into old habits of airy speculation and reliance on classical authorities.
It argues that these concerns were not simply an unquestioning repetition of earlier medical knowledge, citing classical authorities such as Aristotle, Galen and Hippocrates, but were shaped by the contemporary importance that was placed upon fertility and the stability (social, economic, political and religious) that flowed from undisrupted lines of inheritance.
By strategically adapting classic texts from the Greek world, and incorporating into his adaptations the interpretations of the Hellenistic philosophers, poets, rhetoricians, and scientists who had helped enshrine those works as classics, he could envision and create texts with classical authority for a parallel Roman canon.
His intellectual exercise reflected an inward turning momentum in search of an immanent formal order, one that was estranged from the classical authority of the humanist subject.
The door is almost an abstraction of the style, drawing on some elements, stripping away others, emphasizing a commanding, classical authority.
Zhu Xi's philosophy emphasized logic, consistency, and the conscientious observance of classical authority, especially that of Confucius and his follower Mencius.
The building, designed by Josef Maria Olbrich, with its golden half-dome, half-garland roof, expresses Klimt's aesthetic, and yet the classical authority of the building insists that this is serious.
But you don't have direct classical authority over anybody except yourself.
It was the single greatest classical authority on the subject and the most influential herbal ever written, serving as a model for herbals and pharmacopoeias, both oriental and occidental, for the next 1000 years up to the Renaissance.
His readiness to discard received authority, even that of Classical authors such as Aristotle and Pliny, is impressive.
Chapelain's approach was a challenge to others of his day who appealed in doctrinaire fashion to classical Greek authorities.
