(5th c. BC) A younger contemporary of Pythagoras, and known as a physician. He is supposed to have recognized the brain as the seat of consciousness, a view accepted by Plato on the grounds that the highest faculty should be seated in the highest part of the body, i.e. the head, but rejected by Aristotle, who thought that the brain functioned as a refrigerator.

The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.