In The Guide to the Perplexed III.37, Moses Maimonides attacks pagan ‘medical’ practices which give a sheen of efficacy but are ultimately dependent on magic and astrology. Nonetheless, he allows certain exceptions found in late antique rabbinic literature which have been proven through experience – even if they are not ‘prescribed by reason’. His preference for empiricism over principles or causes is noteworthy. In this, Maimonides follows others such as al-Ghazālī who prized Galen’s medical empiricism over medical theory. In this chapter I examine these exceptional cases in light of the literature of antiquity in order to discuss their efficacy. I also reveal how Maimonides’ begrudging acceptance of experience over theory also underpins his ‘proof’ of the creation of the world – which also ultimately turns to Galen. Thus, I reflect on the importance of Maimonides’ loyalty to Galen’s experimental method for both physics and metaphysics, showing methodological continuities across different domains.

This chapter examines the importance of teleology (purposiveness) in the understanding of consciousness and nature. Goal-orientation is most evident in human conscious intention. However, this establishes a disjunction between conscious mind and wider nature; the latter, according to much modern science, is not purposive. How, then, does purposive mind arise in a non-purposive universe? It is argued that modern natural science rejects a particular variety of teleological explanation. More sophisticated varieties, particularly in Aquinas’s understanding of action and intention, can be recovered which do justice to our basic intuitions concerning the purposiveness of nature. It is argued, however, that modern natural philosophy rejects a number of metaphysical concepts which make teleological explanation intelligible. Amongst those concepts is ‘habit’. This chapter examines the Aristotelian natural philosophy of habit proposed by the nineteenth-century philosopher Félix Ravaisson. For Ravaisson, habit is a mediating category between matter and conscious intention which indicates that the goal-orientation of mind is, in an analogous sense, present throughout nature, pointing to the possible recovery of a teleological understanding of nature, gleaned from a broad Aristotelian Thomism, which views creation as an expression of divine intention whilst avoiding crude accounts of teleology in modern design arguments for God’s existence.