Diairesis is Plato's later method of definition based on division, developed in the Platonic dialogues Phaedrus, Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus.
Also an adoption from the fields of mathematics has been considered,[3] like one from musicology,[4] one from pre-scientific and everyday divisions[5] and one from medicine.
[12] The platonic method of division is found to be applied at the first steps of classifying biology, namely in the zoology of Aristotle[13] and in the botany of Theophrastus.
[14] Diairesis is central to Galen's therapeutics; see for example 'Therapeutics to Glaucon' 1 (XI, 4 K), where Galen, attributing the method to Plato, asserts that 'the errors of the [medical] sects and whatever mistakes the majority of physicians make in the care of the sick have incompetent division as their principal and major cause' (tr.
)[15] Philosophically relevant methodical divisions or statements about the method of diairesis can be found in members of the Platonic Academy (especially Speusippus[16] and Xenocrates), of the Peripatetic school (especially Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Theophrastus), of Stoicism (especially Chrysippus), of Middle Platonism (especially Alcinous, Maximus of Tyre, Philo) and of Neoplatonism (especially Plotinus, Porphyry).