Divination and Human Nature casts a new perspective on the rich tradition of ancient divination— the reading of divine signs in oracles, omens, and dreams.
Popular attitudes during classical antiquity saw these readings as divine signs while modern scholars have treated such beliefs as primitive superstitions.
In this book, Peter Struck reveals instead that such phenomena provoked an entirely different accounting from the ancient philosophers.
These philosophers produced subtle studies into what was an odd but observable fact — that humans could sometimes have uncanny insights — and their work signifies an early chapter in the cognitive history of intuition.
Examining the writings of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists, Struck demonstrates that they all observed how, setting aside the charlatans and swindlers, some people had premonitions defying the typical bounds of rationality.
