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Such ideas originated early in the views of Greek medical research and are
important in
providing the beginnings of a naturalistic account of mental
phenomena. However, they lost ground in late antiquity as increasingly the dualistic
theory of Plato gained favor not only among religiously oriented thinkers but even
among physicians.
29
Finally, at about the same time, other schools of philosophy, especially the
Cyreniacs (c. 400-
c. 200 b.c.e.) and the Skeptics (c. 360-c. 225 b.c.e.) raised ques-
tions about the limits of human knowledge of the external world and of other
minds.
30
In the seventeenth century, this sort of skeptical thinking would
j oin
forces with a materialist conception of an external world composed of corpuscu-
lar mechanisms and become the vehicle for the rise of modern science. It would
also, through Descartes’s influence, become the vehicle for the development of a
new form of mind/body dualism.
31