Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-255) and indexes.

Acknowledgments -- Preface -- [ch]. 1. Anaxagoras -- 1. The presocratic agenda -- 2. Anaxagoras's cosmology -- 3. The power of nous -- 4. Sun and Moon -- 5. Worlds and seeds -- 6. Nous as creator -- 7. Scientific creationism -- Appendix : Anazagoras's theory of matter -- [ch]. 2. Empedocles -- 1. The cosmic cycle -- 2. The double zoogony -- 3. Creationist discourse -- 4. Design and accident -- Appendix 1 : The double zoogony revisited -- Appendix 2 : The chronology of the cycle -- Appendix 3 : Where in the cycle are we? -- Appendix 4 : Lucretian testimony for Empedocles' zoogony -- [ch]. 3. Socrates -- 1. 1. Diogenes of Apollonia -- 2. Socrates in Xenophon -- 3. Socrates in Plato's Phaedo -- 4. A historical synthesis -- [ch]. 4. Plato -- 1. The Phaedo myth -- 2. Introducing the Timaeus -- 3. An act of creation? -- 4. Divine craftsmanship -- 5. Is the world perfect? -- 6. The origin of species -- [ch]. 5. The atomists -- 1. Democritus -- 2. The Epicurean critique of creationism -- 3. The Epicurean alternative to creationism -- 4. Epicurean infinity -- [ch]. 6. Aristotle -- 1. God as paradigm -- 2. The craft analogy -- 3. Necessity -- 4. Fortuitous outcomes -- 5. Cosmic teleology -- 6. Aristotle's Platonism -- [ch]. 7. The stoics -- 1. Stoicism -- 2. A window on stoic theology -- 3. Appropriating Socrates -- 4. Appropriating Plato -- 5. Whose benefit? -- Epilogue : A Galenic perspective -- Bibliography -- Index locorum -- General index.

The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of design or accident. In this book, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the "creationist" option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the ground for Aristotle's celebrated teleology. But Aristotle aligned himself with the anti-creationist lobby, whose most militant members--the atomists--sought to show how a world just like ours would form inevitably by sheer accident, given only the infinity of space and matter. This stimulating study explores seven major thinkers and philosophical movements enmeshed in the debate: Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, the atomists, Aristotle, and the Stoics.