WERSINGER, A.G.,
La sphère et l'intervalle. Le schème de l'Harmonie dans la pensée des anciens Grecs d'Homère à Platon.
Jéroôme Millon, Grenoble, 2008. 379p. Paperback. ‘A.-G. Wersinger (…) is a philosopher (…), and the concept of ‘harmonia’ is, for her, not limited to music. Second, she aims at understanding how the notion of ‘harmonia’ was born in Greece and developed from its beginnings until classical times, though mainly in archaic times. In my view, both books (also Andrew Barker’s’The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece’ - ND) are complementary and very important for modern scholars who study philosophy and musicology as well as mathematics, because all of these sciences were studied together in antiquity. (…) Wersinger considers the evolution of the notion of ‘harmonia’ in Greek thought. (…) In sum, I would say that Wersinger’s work consists in trying to isolate Presocratic philosophy from all the Pythagorean, Platonic, or Aristotelian elements. These schools have studies the Presocratic philosophers but have interpreted them in their own way. I personally think that Wersinger succeeds in understanding how the ancient Greeks elaborated this very difficult notion of ‘harmonia’ (not represented as circle any more, but as an interval’ - ND). Her method is meticulous, her knowledge of Greek philology and philosophy indisputable. For other sciences like musicology, she has consulted great specialists, which validates her results: te bibliography is complete and the historiography well digested. Of course, this book is sometimes difficult to understand because of the complexity of the subject, but the author tries to help her reader: each chapter concludes with a clear recapitulation of the most important points of the argument. For all these reasons, I warmly recommend Wersinger’s remarkable essay.’ (SYLVAN PERROT, Institute for Research in Classical Philosophy and Science).
€ 50.00
(Antiquarian)