plato and primitive austrians, gene scientists

Pythagoras, through both his legend and his doctrine, had great influence on Platonism, but Plato himself says little about magical practices. That he believed in astrology and other forms of divination is strongly suggested by the Timaeus, and it is reasonable to assume he believed in daemons from what we know of the Platonic School tradition. In his Laws (933a-e) he takes healers, prophets and sorcerers for granted. These practitioners existed in Athens and no doubt all other Greek cities, and they had to be reckoned with and controlled by laws. Plato does add that one should not be afraid of them, their powers are real, but they themselves represent a rather low order of humanity.

Aristotle is convinced that the planets and the fixed stars influence life on earth and that the fixed stars influence life on earth and he too believed in the existence of daemons. In his History of Animals (it should be noted here that historia originally meant something closer to "research," not history in its modern sense, thus a better title is Biological Researches) he suggests the magical theory of sympathies and antipathies in the animal world, under the influence of the stars. Some of these theories are found in Books 7-10 of the History, but because they do not fit our modern conception of Aristotle, there are serious doubts to their authenticity. Book 10, for instance, is missing in the oldest extant manuscript. Though even if Aristotle himself may not have written it in this form, it would seem to reflect some of the teachings of his school. Books seven and nine have also been rejected by modern editors, but it seems that Book seven uses materials from respectable Hippocratic writings and that Book nine relies on Theophrastus; hence these portions should not be lightly discarded as later fabrications.[12]