Description: The Cosmic Viewpoint examines the literary and philosophical qualities essential to Seneca's art of science in his Natural Questions. Seneca's meteorological theme raises our gaze from a terrestrial level to a higher, more intuitive plane--a conceptual climb by which Seneca promotes a change of perspective in his readership towards the cosmic viewpoint.
Review Quotes: "Williams's exemplary, learned study of Natural Questions, Seneca's rarely read treatise on meteorology complements Harry Hine's translation of this work (2010).... Although the author offers a wealth of insight into Seneca's use of sources, Williams's acumen as a close reader carefully attuned to the rhetorical and literary dimensions of Natural Questions stands out. Highly recommended."--CHOICE
"Sorting styles of reasoning, The Cosmic Viewpoint pilots through joined-up power-thinking from Rome's sharpest, pushiest, writer. Now we can read Seneca on the ecosphere: how-and-why we should try our damnedest to figure out how planet Earth works." -- J.G. Henderson, Cambridge University"In this subtle and perceptive study, Gareth Williams shows how in the Natural Questions Seneca transformed the genre of meteorological writing in a highly creative way, offering a holistic Stoic vision of the cosmos, where in wrestling to understand the physical world we must also wrestle with our human nature." --Harry Hine, University of St. Andrews
"Offers an extremely convincing articulation of [Naturales Quaestiones's] moral prefaces and interludes with the strictly technical sections of the book." --Philosophy in Review