~ They were all Înatural philosophers,â for they sought to get to the bottom of things, especially natural processes. The question, ÎWhy is the world the way it is?â can be answered by myth, by science, or by philosophy. But most people feel, at gut-level, that there is a difference between the answer given by Hesiod etc. and by the Presocratics, the first natural philosophers.
~ The aim of todayâs class, and the next one, is to identify and articulate the most important differences between myths and the Presocratic writings, as well as the most important similarities between them. These texts are a mixture of myth and science, and we want to locate the mythic elements and the scientific elements. (We can also try to figure out if the scientific elements somehow sprung directly out of earlier myths.) Weâre looking not just for the generalities, but specific applications of generalities.
~ Reminder: G.E.R. Lloyd claims that natural philosophy was distinctive in 3 ways:
(a) The explanatory role of the supernatural is significantly diminished or eliminated.
(b) Natural philosophy focuses on more general or abstract questions, instead of specific or concrete ones.
(c) The practice of criticism÷objecting to a view, and suggesting an alternative÷is the path to truth in natural philosophy, but not in myth.
~ Is Lloyd right? In order to decide this question of separating the mythic from the proto-scientific in the Presocratic thinkers, we need to actually examine, in detail, their writings, doctrines and lives.
~ Lived in the polis of Miletus, in the area of Ionia (the coast of Asia Minor). We think he probably lived from ~ 625-548 BC. He predicted an eclipse in 585. We do not have anything written by him. And Aristotle, our source for most of the philosophical/ cosmological information about Thales, did not have anything written by Thales (Aristotle was writing more than 200 years after Thales). People around Aristotleâs time did not know if Thales even wrote anything at all.
~ He was practical, applying himself to politics, military engineering, and agriculture. He gave political advice to the Ionians (to set up a single central assembly in the middle of Ionia to make ultimate decisions) (Herodotus I, 170). He was apparently also an engineer, as shown by the story of diverting the river for King Croesusâ army (which Herodotus recounts in I, 75, but views as apocryphal). Aristotle tells us that, by using his Îastrologia,â he cornered the market on olive presses and made a fortune when the next yearâs olive crop was huge. He figured out an easy way to measure very tall things (including the Egyptian pyramids) using shadow lengths: find out what time of the day you and your shadow are the same height, and then measure the length of the pyramidâs shadow at that time.
~ He studied the heavenly bodies. Egyptians and especially Babylonians had studied the celestial bodies before him, and had made extensive and detailed observations about the course of the stars and planets over the year. Priests did most of this work, in order to create and set the annual calendar, for religious and agricultural purposes. We know that Babylonians correctly predicted an eclipse as early as 721 BC. And we think they made these predictions not by discovering the cause of eclipses, but by noticing empirical regularities in their recorded tables and charts. Scholars believe that Thales probably predicted the 585 eclipse by having access to Babylonian tables of astronomical observations. We know that there was commerce between the Babylonians and the Ionians, especially in the polis of Sardis. Also, Thalesâ prediction, like the Babyloniansâ, is only approximate: his prediction is for an eclipse within a year, not within a week or day. We think that Thales does not know the true cause of the eclipse either, for his immediate successors, his students, do not know the true cause of the eclipse. Thales had other Îastronomicalâ activities (besides Aristotleâs story of the olive-presses): he is said to have studied and recorded times of summer and winter solstices, and also to have mapped the star-group called the Îlittle bear,â probably as an aid to sea navigation.
1. The earth floats on water.
2. The Îprincipleâ of all things is water.
Question: Where would Thales get such ideas?
Re: (1), The earth floating on water seems to come out of near eastern myth: Apsu and Tiamat are the primeval waters, upon which earth is constructed. In ancient Egypt, too, the Earth is thought of as a flat disk floating on water. And in the old testament, Yahweh ãstretched out the Earth above the watersä (Psalms 136:6) and ãestablished earth upon the seasä (Psalms 24:2). There is nothing in the Greek tradition as we have it that is similar to Thalesâ suggestion (Okeanos encircles the Earth).
Question: What does 2 mean?
Re: (2), Aristotle can be a biased reporter, since he sees statements through the lens of his own particular philosophical views. Perhaps Thales thinks all things somehow are, at bottom, composed of water. But this sounds an awful lot like Aristotleâs views (of material cause); perhaps Thales meant instead that all things come/ originate from water, but are not a disguised form of water now. That is, the relationship between the current diverse order and water might be one of a person to her great-great-grandparents, not of a person to atoms (or whatever). But we cannot decisively conclude between these two interpretations.
(1) Seemingly inanimate items can be alive (like a magnet, since it can move iron, and the soul is a mover), and
(2) Îall things are full of gods.â
Question: can we give these a less mythic/ religious interpretation? Is there a non-literal meaning that perhaps Thales was grasping at with his limited vocabulary?
~ Re: (2), the chief attributes of Greek gods are immortality and power. So perhaps Thales sees that the non-human world has a permanence which humans lack, and is capable of universal, powerful change, and concludes that the natural world must be divine.
Re: (1 PLUS 2), I see 2 ways to interpret this. (A -stronger) Each thing in the world is in some way alive; (B -weaker) All things taken together are interpenetrated by some sort of life-principle/ ãkinetic powerä so that certain parts which appear inanimate are animate. This is one way in which all things can be full of gods. The world as a whole can be treated like a single organism: each part of my body right now is full of life, but if you chop off my finger, my finger will no longer be full of life. Was the divine force water? We do not know.
[[My own personal hypothesis: "All things are full of gods" has its roots in the world view described in the Theogony, where sky, earth, night, wisdom, etc. are all depicted as members of a divine family of gods -- Contrast this with the many other creation stories in which the products of the creator god are not themselves divine (Genesis is a familiar example; so are several other examples in the Eliade collection). In short, my point is that anyone who read the Theogony "literally" would agree with that claim -- though someone who read Genesis literally probably would not.]]
~ Born about 15 years after Thales, also lived in Miletus. Definitely wrote a book (perhaps titled On Nature), of which we have a fragment quotation.
~ Practical science: introduced the Îgnomonâ (a vertical rod that measures the sunâs current direction and height) from the Babylonians. He also drew the first comprehensive map of the world known to his culture. He also (T4) suggests that the earth is located in the center of the universe; and it has a cylindrical shape.
~ The key term, Îapeiron,â means Îwithout boundary or limit.â Why does Anaximander claim that everything comes into and out of existence via the indefinite? One argument: suppose everything in the beginning was water, as Thales holds. Then how could the opposite of cool, wet water, namely hot dry fire, possibly come into existence? Wouldnât water constantly oppose fire? Thus, Anaximander could conclude, both of these polar opposites must have come out of something else, basically different from both of them.
~ Basic meaning of the fragment: each opposite has to pay retribution for its time in existence, and thus a constant shifting balance is maintained between the contraries. Opposites take turns being the aggressor and the victim. This is a legalistic metaphor, and hence is very anthropomorphic. (Recall Levi-Straussâ claim that the Îlogic of mythâ tries to reconcile or mediate between irreconcilable contraries.)
~ Anaximander was the first Presocratic to focus on the importance of opposing natural substances, and of explaining the phenomenon of change (=how opposites come out of one another); Thales did not, but basically everyone after Anaximander does.
~ Also, Aristotle tells us the unlimited is divine, since it is deathless and indestructible (T2), and these are, as mentioned before, chief attributes of Greek gods. In Homer, the short formula Îimmortal and free from old ageâ is often used to describe the gods; perhaps Anaximander used exactly this Homeric formula, and Aristotle is paraphrasing (KRS, 117).
~ ãaccording to the order [assessment, taxis] of timeä: The injustice of summer has to be made good during the time of winter; the injustice of night has to be paid off during the time of day. It is a basic belief in many human societies that every injustice must, sooner or later, be punished.
~ Last of the Milesian philosophers. We know nothing of his particular activities.
~ He thought air, instead of water or the indefinite, is the basic reality.
~ One problem Thales had was: if everything is water, how could fire (its opposite) possibly exist? Anaximander partially solved this problem by positing something above and beyond water, fire, light, dark, and all the other particular oppositions. So that explains how change is possible. But he did not really give a satisfactory account of how exactly light actually gives way to dark and heat to cold etc. (Îaccording to the order of timeâ does not provide a specific mechanism for transformation from one to the other). Anaximenes does provide such a mechanism: condensation and rarefaction. That explains how everything can be air, without the world appearing completely homogenous (or even completely un-air-like). Condensation and rarefaction are observable means of change in everyday life, and Anaximenes applies it to all change, makes a universal idea of it.
~ He holds there are Îlevels of realityâ (see T7). Hot and cold are not fundamental realities, they are simply properties that the basic, really-real things have. They are the products of rarefaction (heat) and condensation (cold).
~ The quotation. 2 interpretive possibilities among many:
(1) Since soul holds together and controls us, there must be something soul-like to hold together and control the whole universe, since the universe is orderly and regular.
(2) The traditional life-force (psyche) for organisms is air in the form of breath (pneuma), therefore the analogue of life-force in the whole world is also air/ wind.
~ From the city-state Ephesus, which is also in Ionia, 30 miles north of Miletus. Lived from about 550 to 490 BC. He was an aristocrat renowned, even in antiquity, for being obscure and cryptic.
~ His most famous maxim is Îpanta rhei,â all is in flux. Stresses the universality of change (though basically all the Presocratics were impressed by the dominance of change; Heraclitus just expressed this idea more centrally and strongly than others). Aristotle and Plato interpret this doctrine as saying that even an immobile stone in front of us is undergoing some invisible change; but the extant fragments do not explicitly say this.
~ However, he does say that there is some stable arrangement in the flux of change, expressed in the logos (though almost no human understands this logos). The Îlogos is common to all,â that is, the whole world is governed by a rational order. But the logos is not apparent or obvious (ãnature loves to hideä (17))÷just like modern scientific findings are won only after hard work and ingenuity.
~ It looks like fire is the basic constituent of the universe (28-29); other times it looks like it is the basic force or activity in the universe (31). Though elsewhere (26) he says that everything comes into being through the force of Îstrife.â
~ How does Heraclitus think we acquire knowledge? He shows faith in our perceptual apparatus (11) as being valuable. But this Îempiricistâ stance seems to contradict fragments 1 and 17, which say that the truth/ logos is unknown to most humans. Perhaps these two ideas are reconciled in (13): we have to be able to properly interpret our sense impressions. (So, for example, even though many of our sense impressions seem to indicate that the earth is at rest, that is not the proper interpretation of those sensations.)
~ Lived in Elea, in south Italy, which was part of Greek civilization at the time. He lived from ~ 515-440 BC. He wrote his one work in poetic verse.
~The beginning of the poem seems quite mythical; he travels to the gates of Night and Day, and the goddess imparts his knowledge to him. Merely mortal opinions are worthless; the divine reveals true wisdom.
~ Put his faith in reason (logos), strongly against sense-impressions: ãlet reason be your judgeä (2). ÎRationalistâ as opposed to Îempiricist.â
~Basic idea: you cannot say or think a sentence containing Îis not.â
~ ãNever shall it be proven that not-being isä (2). Not-being is not (i.e., does not exist) and being is (i.e., does exist). Not-being is literally nothing at all.
~ What does this mean? Well, consider the tooth fairy as an example. We would all agree that the tooth fairy does not exist. Since there is no tooth fairy, no one can be acquainted with the tooth fairy, or point it out to someone else. Thus the sentence ÎThe tooth fairy has wingsâ fails to express a genuine thought, because youâre talking about nothing÷but if youâre talking about nothing, youâre not saying anything at all. This sentence, since itâs about nothing, is like saying Îla la blah da,â or some other meaningless nonsense phrase. And Parmenides thinks that Îis-notâ is by its very definition like the tooth fairy: for Îis-notâ is necessarily about something that does not exist. He probably means that no clear thought can be expressed by a sentence that includes Îis not.â Parmenides is not asserting that a sentence containing Îis-notâ is false, rather, he is asserting that such a sentence is gobbledygook.
~ This radical conclusion, that you cannot say or think what is not, has a number of consequences. What is is unchangeable, since it would have to come out of what is not, or change into what is not. What is is one (Îmonismâ): because if something Îis blue,â then necessarily it also Îis not red.â
~ What about ãMy shirt is not green?ä Well, once again you are discussing something that is not (namely, a green shirt), i.e., doesnât exist, and hence for Parmenides it is literally nothing. And you cannot think of nothing or express nothing, since if you did, then you are literally saying or expressing absolutely nothing at all.
~ A follower of Parmenides, Zeno (~490-440BC) was about 25 years younger than Parmenides. He wanted to argue for Parmenidesâ radical view that change is impossible. Zeno accomplished this, in part, by his so-called Îparadoxes of motion.â So, although Parmenidesâ assertions seem absurd initially, if we follow out the consequences of the opposite view, namely that there are many things, we find absurd consequences too.
~ ãStadium paradox.ä
Premise 1: In order to reach her goal, a runner must traverse infinitely many segments (1/2, 3/4, 7/8, 15/16·). But
Premise 2: It is impossible to touch infinitely many lengths in a finite time.
Therefore, the runner cannot reach her goal.
~ ãArrow paradox.ä (Hinted at in the packet, under 3.)
Premise 1: Anything occupying a space exactly its own size is at rest.
Premise 2: In the present moment, a moving object occupies a space its own size.
Thus 3: In the present moment, a moving object is at rest. But
Premise 4: Any movement must take place in the present, not the past or future.
Therefore, Any moving object is, throughout its movement, at rest.
~ The Eleatics, even more than previous Presocratic philosophers, separate truth from immediate sensation. Even though we perceive change, this perception is illusory. This is certainly, in one way, very much like modern natural science: the Earth does not appear to be moving at 19 miles per second, the table does not appear to be mostly empty space, and heat does not appear to be the motion of tiny little molecules. (Galileo admires Copernicus because his Reason conquers his immediate sensation.) So we may not want to criticize Parmenides and Zeno on the grounds that their claims disagree with sensation.
But this also sounds very much like any myth, which explains events by appealing to unseen deities who act in our world, causing the sun to rise and fall, volcanoes to erupt, and plagues occur.
~ Lived ~484-424 BC. Wrote two works that we have fragments from, On Nature and Purifications. Was a physician, and wrote in poetic form. Also deeply impressed and influenced by Parmenidesâ thought.
~ Introduces the ãfour roots of all thingsä: air, water, fire, earth. Identifies the four elements with four Olympian gods, but we are not completely sure which god corresponds to which root. These four roots are eternal, indestructible and changeless (packet: 21). Each thing in the world is made up of these four things; we have a concrete example of such a mixture making up bone in (packet: #30).
~ However, the universe as a whole undergoes cycles of change. The four roots are brought together and driven apart at different times. As Empedocles puts it, Love drives the plurality into a unity, and Strife forces the unity into a plurality. But the roots themselves remain always maintain their identity, though they ãbecome different things at different timesä since they can Îintermingleâ with each other (packet: 8). This solves the Parmenidean problem of something coming into existence out of the non-existent, since the four roots never come into or out of existence. So according to Empedocles, for example, when a person is created and born, it is not that something came into being out of nothing; rather, a bunch of already-existing stuff rearranged itself into human form.
~ Possible objection: how could all the manifold diversity we see be formed out of only 4 types of stuff? Empedoclesâ answer: Painters can create all sorts of pictures with only 3 or 4 colors of paint.
~ The world began under the reign of Love, when all things were combined. Then Strife began to take hold of the universe, and began to whirl everything around, creating a vortex that separated the roots from one another. But after Strife takes total control, Love mounts a comeback and starts uniting the roots again, and the cycles continue ad infinitum, without any end.
~ Using (packet:29), we get the following chart of associations:
Strife Love
Unmixed Mixed
Immortal Mortal (creatures)
Disunity Unified whole
~ Proto-Darwinian? ãIsolated limbs were wandering aboutä (47).
~ 500-428 BC, about the same time as Empedocles. Wrote a single book. Was charged by Athens with impiety/ atheism for teaching that the sun is a mass of red-hot rock.
~ Instead of Love and Strife ordering the universe, Anaxagoras thinks there is only one force, Mind. Mind controls everything, and initiates an ever-growing rotation that creates the present world. The rotation started by Mind separates all entities into their current arrangement. That is, once Mind gives material stuff (which was initially completely homogeneous) the initial kick, the material rotation is responsible for subsequent developments. BUT, Mind is completely ãseparateä from all the other material stuffs in the world, insofar as it does not mix in with them.
~ Mind (nous) is the finest (in the sense of smallest, not best) and most pure thing in the cosmos (packet: #15). It is NOT incorporeal, a spirit or a force. KRS say: ãAnaxagoras is in fact striving, as many of his predecessors, to imagine and describe a truly incorporeal entity. But as with them, so still with him, the only ultimate criterion of reality is extension in spaceä (KRS 364). Mind can control everything because it is the smallest stuff and because it does not mix with all the other qualities/ materials.
~ The crazy theory of material body: ãIn everything there is a portion of everything.ä That is, in any glob of matter, there is bone-matter, grass-matter, water-matter, ruby-matter, and so on. Obvious question: What determines what a particular mass of stuff is? Whatever there is the most of in that mass. So, for example, bone will be more bone than anything else.
~ He argues for this on quasi- Parmenidean grounds: ãHow could hair come from not-hair or flesh from not-flesh?ä (packet: 4). Also, Anaxagoras sees that opposites come into being from one another (the cold comes from the hot, and so forth), so that lends plausibility to his idea that there is a little bit of everything in everything. Also, foodâs ability to nourish may be good evidence: we take in bread, but it grows hair, skin, organs, bone, etc.
~ Anaxagoras seems to be more troubled by Parmenides than Empedocles: Empedocles still has (e.g.) bone come into existence from not-bone (maybe a certain proportion of earth and water); Anaxagoras does not allow this.
~ Question: What is the difference between the way modern science views a cup of coffee (water, milk, sugar, coffee-bean extract) and the way Anaxagoras would?
~ We know almost nothing about them personally, and we donât have many fragments. Leucippus founded his school after studying Parmenides (according to Simplicius) and Zeno (the packetâs claim on p. 177 of 540-530 must be wrong; he probably wasnât born until about 500 BC).
~ ÎAtomâ is from the Greek, meaning Îuncuttable.â
~ Atoms are indestructible bits of matter, whose only characteristic is extension, i.e., physical dimension or shape. The atomists regarded all substance as absolutely homogeneous, and explained the immense variety of observed phenomena by differences of shape (A vs. B), position (N vs. Z) and arrangement (NA vs. AN).
~ Atoms are indivisible, because they have no void inside them: thus they cannot be split, since thereâs no way to chop through something completely full. Only so-called Îcompound bodies,â formed by atoms getting entangled with each other, can be divided. Atoms have weight in proportion to their size. Atoms are constantly in motion, moved about by collisions with each other (we have no account of the original motion imparted to the atoms). There are an infinite number of atoms, but the size of the void is infinite too.
~ Democritus is skeptical of the reliability of the senses. He claims (packet: #7) that ãsweet and bitter, hot and cold, and colorsä are all just human ãconventionsä [nomoi]; an arbitrary decision on our part. In reality, all that exists is ãatoms and the void.ä And our senses certainly donât perceive those.
~ But, even though the senses may not directly tell us many truths about the true nature of each thing, they nonetheless probably play a confirmatory role. (KRS p.413): ãFor example, my theory holds that combinations of atoms must be merely temporary because of the constant collisions of atoms: [the senses] falsely report births and deaths, but in so reporting you confirm the actual existence of the events which the theory says must occur.ä Also, consider two observers next to each other, one who says Îthis wind is hot,â the other says Îthis wind is cold.â Each of these statements is literally false, but it confirms the atomic account of perception, which claims that the perception is dependent on the observerâs atoms, which differ from person to person.
~ How does Democritus explain mind and soul? As a kind of fire, created by the smallest, spherical bodies that impart motion to the surrounding body parts.
~ Many past students have said to me something like: ÎThe difference between modern science and Presocratic thinking is that science is based on observation and experience, whereas Greek philosophy is just opinion, just a guess that old so-and-so believed.â The reason I asked you to read Popper is to counteract this (somewhat natural) sentiment. How does Popper show similarities between Presocratics and modern, accepted science? (He has to give us a picture of science, and of the Presocratics, and then compare the two pictures.)
1. Scientific theories do not arise by safely collecting lots of data, and then generalizing over that data. Or truly great theories do not: Newton claimed that every single bit of matter in the universe attracted every other according to the same rule, the law of gravitation. But Newton had no way of knowing that through observation; astronomers told him what they saw through their telescopes, and he observed medium-sized bodiesâ behavior very near the surface of the earth, and claimed that the law applied everywhere in the universe, no matter how far away, or how small the body was. Popper claims scientific hypotheses are better if they are more adventurous, the more they Îgo out on a limb.â The best scientific theories are, for Popper, guesses that no one has been able to disprove yet. Viewed in this way, modern science is Îbrought downâ to the level of the Presocratic theories.
2. The Presocratics engaged in, and even invented, the practice of Îrational criticism.â For example, the way Popper tells the story, Anaximander disagrees with Thalesâ picture of how the world is supported, perhaps gives a reason why Thales cannot be right, and offers an alternative theory that avoids Thalesâ problem. Disagreement is encouraged in this enterprise to understand what the world is really like at bottom. And encouraging disagreement is, according to Popper, is exactly the scientific method÷you do your best to disprove the current theory and find a better replacement.