Writing in the second book of his “Natural History” (Naturalis Historia), Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), whilst recounting the many interesting facts he has learned and collected about the Moon, suddenly breaks from his explanations to wax critical upon a “disease of the human mind” he has observed.
I first began the study of the history or religion and of theology in 1990 and have been including the subjects in my ongoing pursuit of knowledge and wisdom ever since, and in this one brief passage, Pliny, in this one aside in his “Natural History” that briefly interrupts the topic about which he was writing, has sliced straight through myriad Gordian knots tied by countless theologians down through the ages.
While there are multiple methods of organizing a reading of Plato’s works, I am planning to follow (generally, at least) the one presented in the chapter “Introduction to the Study of Plato” from “The Cambridge Companion to Plato,” 2nd Edition, a book that I shall also be reading along with my reading of Plato’s works themselves in order to deepen my understanding.
If you’re a regular reader of The Well-read Naturalist (and if so thank you very much for doing so) you’ve by now discovered that it’s as much about being well-read as it is about natural history. So when a new book is published that brings together the two of these, I most enthusiastically sit up and take notice. Such is the case with the recently published “Animals in the American Classics; How Natural History Inspired Great Fiction.”