The Journal of the History of Philosophy (JHP) has awarded its 2024 Article Prize to Douglas R. Campbell (Alma College).

Professor Campbell won the prize for his article, “Irrigating Blood: Plato on the Circulatory System, the Cosmos, and Elemental Motion,” which was published in the October 2024 issue of JHP.

Here’s its abstract:

This article concerns the so-called irrigation system in the Timaeus’s biology (77a–81e), which replenishes our body’s tissues with resources from food delivered as blood. I argue that this system functions mainly by the natural like-to-like motion of the elements and that the circulation of blood is an important case study of Plato’s physics. We are forced to revise the view that the elements attract their like. Instead, similar elements merely tend to coalesce with each other in virtue of their tactile features as the atomists describe. The notion of attraction is replaced with this notion of mere coalescence. I begin by outlining how blood is made from food. I then argue that an understanding of health and disease compels us to read Plato as if he were an atomist and to abandon the popular scholarly interpretations according to which the elements attract each other.

Honorable mention for the prize went to Cheryl Misak (Toronto) for her article, “Ryle’s Debt to Pragmatism and Margaret MacDonald,” which appeared in the same issue.

A list of previous winners of the JHP Article Prize is here.

(via Deborah Boyle)