The Philosophy of the Early Greek Naturalists
I. THE IONIANS
General Notions
As Greece is a mountainous and rather barren country, its inhabitants have been obliged from remote times to seek new lands that would offer them work and prosperity. At the beginning of the sixth century before Christ, we find one winding series of coastal colonies, extending from the coast of Asia Minor to Africa, to Spain and to southern Italy. Here the Greeks were so numerous that they outnumbered the inhabitants of Greece properly so called, and hence the name Magna Graecia was given to this far-flung territory. The colonies, favored by democratic liberties and economic well-being, and moreover having contact with a greatly advanced civilization, had an opportunity to develop their natural sense of culture.
Among the Grecian stocks which have contributed greatly to the formation of philosophy is the Ionian strain, which was spread through Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea (Ionia), and southern Italy and Sicily. It is among the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor that the story of philosophy takes its beginning, because it was in the flourishing city of Miletus that the first three Western philosophers were born and lived: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes.
The problem which claims the attention of the thinkers of Miletus is for the most part cosmological. Nature, as presented to our senses, is a continuous "becoming" -- a passage from one state to another, from birth to death. However, this transition is not arbitrary; it happens according to a fixed law: everything repeats itself or flows in cycles -- day, night, the seasons, etc.
What is that first principle whence things draw their origin at birth, and whereto are all things resolved in death? This is the problem of the Ionians: the search for this principle which is the first reason for all succession in the world of nature. It is the principle which the Ionians believed they could discover in a natural element; by means of this element they attempted to explain nature through nature. The principle which they assign becomes conceived of as divine. Thus the Ionian thinkers are pantheists in so far as they do not distinguish God from nature.
Thales
Thales (picture) was born at Miletus about the year 624 B.C., and lived until about 546. Mathematician, astronomer, businessman -- to him are attributed many voyages and many discoveries. The more probable of these is that he was the first to foretell an eclipse.
For Thales the principle of things is water, which should not be considered exclusively in a materialistic and empirical sense. Indeed it is considered that which has neither beginning nor end -- and active, living, divine force. It seems that Thales was induced to proffer water as the first principle by the observation that all living things are sustained by moisture and perish without it.
Further, Thales affirms that the world is "full of gods." It is not easy to see how this second affirmation agrees with the first. It may be that he was induced by the popular belief in polytheism to admit the multiplicity of gods.
Anaximander
Anaximander (picture) was born at Miletus about the year 611 B.C., and died about 547. Probably a disciple of Thales, he also was a mathematician and astronomer, philosopher and poet. He was the author of a poem entitled Peri physeos, of which only a fragment is extant.
For Anaximander the first principle of all things is the "indeterminate" -- apeiron. There are no historical data to enlighten us as to what Anaximander may have meant by the "indeterminate"; perhaps it was the Chaos or Space of which physicists speak today. Whatever may be the answer to the this question, it is necessary to keep in mind that the problem consists in the search for a metaphysical principle which would give an account of the entire empirical world, and hence the apeiron is not to be confused with any empirical element.
All things originate from the Unlimited, because movement causes within that mysterious element certain quakes or shocks which in turn bring about a separation of the qualities contained in the Unlimited.
The first animals were fish, which sprang from the original humidity of the earth. Fish came to shore, lost their scales, assumed another form and thus gave origin to the various species of animals. Man thus traces his origin from the animals. Because of this, Anaximander has come to be considered the first evolutionist philosopher.
Anaximenes
Anaximenes also was born at Miletus toward the end of the sixth century B.C., and died about 524 B.C. Probably a disciple of Anaximander, he composed a treatise of unknown title.
For Anaximenes, the first principle from which everything is generated is aid. Air, through the two opposite processes of condensation and rarefaction, which are due to heat and cold, has generated fire, wind, clouds, water, heaven and earth.
Thus Anaximenes, like Thales and Anaximander, reduces the multiplicity of nature to a single principle, animated (hylozoism) and divine, which would be the reason for all empirical becoming.
With Anaximenes the School of Miletus closes, for the turn of events in this city ranked as one of the principal causes of the Graeco-Persian wars and Miletus was destroyed in 494 B.C. Its inhabitants were dispersed throughout the Greek world, and one of them was to reach Elea, a city of southern Italy, and there found the school which was to be called Eleatic, after the city of its origin.
II. THE PYTHAGOREANS
Pythagoras (picture), founder of the Pythagorean School, was born at Samos about 570 B.C. His life is surrounded by legend. Many voyages -- one of them to Egypt -- are attributed to him. It is certain that at about the age of forty years he came to Italy in Magna Graecia, and in Croton, the Doric colony, founded a school with scientific, religious, and political leanings.
To this school were admitted youths of both sexes of the high aristocracy who were divided into various sections according to the grade of initiation to learning. The political aims of the school raised up much opposition, and in a popular uprising in 497 the school was given to the flames. Pythagoras seems to have removed himself to Metapontum before this uprising and died there either in the same or the following year. Pythagoras left no writings, and the doctrine which is known under his name must be attributed to him and to his disciples, especially to Philolaus, who lived until the time of Socrates.
The Pythagoreans cultivated the mathematical sciences and the study of mathematics led them to the observation that everything could be represented through a number. The number appears not as an abstraction, but as a real being, the generator of all things: they concluded that the number should be retained as the essence, the principle of reality.
This passing from the abstract order of number to the actual order of being today seems simple-minded and silly. It was not, however, so considered by the Pythagoreans, for they were the first to observe that number applied not only to the motions of the heavens and the succession of time, but also to the harmony of sounds (the height of the sound is in inverse proportion to the length of the string). It was easy for the cultivators of mathematics to bow down before the number and consider it as a divine reality.
Through a long theory on numbers the Pythagoreans attempted to explain the multiple and the notion of becoming. Numbers are divided into even and odd; the even numbers unlimited, the odd ones limited. Since everything is a number, the constitutive elements of things are the evens and the odds, the unlimited and the limited, the worse and the better. This radical opposition would give the explanation of all the world of multiplicity, even its moral aspects: justice is represented by the square (even multiplied by even); love, friendship, because they indicate perfect harmony, were identified with the number eight; health with the number seven.
Even and odd number originated from the "One." It is from the One that all the other numbers, which are the constitutives of multiplicity, proceed. Multiplicity hence is reduced to unity, and it is in unity that all differences and contrasts are annulled, and the harmony of the multiple ends in silence.
The perfect and sacred number for the Pythagoreans is ten, which results from the principal combinations: 1, 2, 3, 4 -- these are identified as the point, line, surface and volume, and when added, they result in the number ten. For the Pythagoreans there are ten heavens. To make up this number, they add to the traditional nine a tenth, which they call "antiterra." The heavens all revolve around one central point which is called "Fire."
For the Pythagoreans the soul is harmony. Descended to earth through some mysterious fault (Orphic-Dionysian doctrine), it passed through various bodies (even those of animals) by successive births (metempsychosis) to reestablish primitive harmony and to return to the place where it lived in happiness.
Pythagoreanism indicates progress over the Ionic School. It is elevated from a natural element found in the Ionic School to a conceptual one, such as number. The Pythagoreans also affirmed the sphericity of the earth and of the other heavenly bodies, and the revolution of the heavenly bodies around a central Fire. The concept of the soul and of its purification induced the Pythagoreans to ascetical practices although, of course, these were not shorn of superstitions.
III. HERACLITUS
Heraclitus (picture), called the Obscure because of his manner of expressing his thoughts in a paradoxical and enigmatic form, was born in Ephesus, an Ionic colony in Asia Minor. Of royal or noble stock, he lived alone and deprecated vulgar knowledge and vulgar methods. He lived between the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., but the exact dates of his birth and death are not known. He wrote one works, Peri physeos, in verse, of which only large fragments are extant.
The preceding thinkers of Ionia and of Italy had sought to reach a principle distinct from becoming and from multiplicity, a principle which at the same time would be the ultimate reason for that same becoming and multiplicity. For Heraclitus this search for a principle distinct from becoming is vain, for becoming is itself the first principle of reality, the essence of things. Everything that exists, including man himself, exists because it is in a continuous process of passage from one state to another. If this passage should cease, reality would be annulled. "All things flow, everything runs, as the waters of a river, which seem to be the same but in reality are never the same, as they are in a state of continuous flow." This is the central point of the doctrine of Heraclitus.
This process of becoming finds its origin in Fire, an animated and primordial element, not to be confused with empirical fire. Because of its unstable nature Fire most closely corresponds to becoming. The process which this primordial element underlies is the so-called stairway down and the stairway upward. Thus Fire is changed into water and this latter into earth (descending steps). Through the Great Year (of unknown duration) the earth will be transformed into water and the water into Fire (ascending stairway).
The laws of becoming are antitheses, the passage from one state to its contrary (the law of contraries). "Struggle is the rule of the world, and war is the common mother and mistress of all things." We would not wake up if first we did not sleep, and vice versa; the same is true of everything else that exists. Construction and destruction, destruction and construction -- this is the law which extends to every sphere of life and of nature. Just as the same universe (cosmos) arose from the primordial Fire, so must it return to it again. Thus the root of Heraclitus' teaching is found in the double process of life and death, of death and life, which forever is developed and developing.
Since for Heraclitus everything originates from Fire, the human soul is a small particle of this Fire, and in the universal palingenesis (rebirth) will return to Fire. Nature is animated because the first principle, Fire, is animated (hylozoism).
IV. THE ELEATIC SCHOOL
General Notions
The Eleatic School resumed discussion of the problem of being and becoming and attacked the opposition between sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The problem can be summed up: Reality in a logical manner appears to us under two different aspects -- accordingly as it is presented to our senses, or as it is presented to our mind.
Our senses perceive the multiplicity, the becoming, while our mind perceives the unity. Now the characteristics of unity are opposed to those of multiplicity. To which of the two must our consent be given for the ultimate reality? Heraclitus had answered that the only reality is becoming; the Eleatics say the opposite, that unity alone is being and that multiplicity is non-being, an illusion, considered both from the viewpoint of logic and metaphysics.
Xenophanes
The founder of the Eleatic School is Xenophanes, who was born at Colophon in Asia Minor about 580 B.C., and died at the age of more than ninety years. From his youth he was a soldier and had taken part in the defense of the Greek Ionian colonies against the Persian invasion. When these fell to the Persians, Xenophanes, in order not to submit to the conqueror, took up the life of a minstrel and went about singing the stories of the gods and heroes in the public squares. Finally he stopped in the Ionic colony of Elea in southern Italy, whence his school took its name.
Xenophanes, author of a poem of which only a few fragments remain, was a poet-philosopher who sought to draw the attention of men away from course anthropomorphism to the highest concept of divinity. "There is one God, sovereign alike over gods and men, unlike man either in appearance or in thought."
To represent the gods as men is to alter their nature in order to make them similar to us. These errors are due to the imaginations of men. If oxen or horses had a way of representing the gods, they would picture them as oxen or horses. Negroes represent their gods with black face and flat nose. But the "Optimus" is one, and bears resemblance to no one. "He sees all things entirely, hears all things entirely, and thinks all things entirely." Still it seems that Xenophanes confused God with space and with the universe taken it its totality.
Parmenides
The most noted thinker of the Eleatic School is Parmenides (picture), who was born at Elea about 540 B.C. He was called "the Great" by Plato. He was author of a poem about nature which he divides into two parts: Voices of Truth and Voices of Opinion. A few fragments remain.
Xenophanes' criticism of popular religion and anthropomorphism was taken up and transferred by Parmenides to cosmic nature. Here also we find ourselves face to face with Unity, which is the totality of reality.
There is an extant fragment of Parmenides which summarizes his theory of knowledge. "Nothing can be but what can be thought." This statement indicates that Parmenides is the first philosopher to affirm the identity of being and intelligibility. According to his thought, however, intelligibility seems to mean a clear representation of the imagination.
Of far greater interest were Parmenides' metaphysical speculations, which upset Greek thought and influenced the subsequent development of metaphysics. The principle of Parmenides is: "Being is. Non-being is not." Let us try to grasp what this statement involves, for it is more difficult than it may seem at first glance.
Let us consider the first part of the principle: Being is. We know that Parmenides' predecessors, such men as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Pythagoras, posed the question of what is the ultimate element or the source of the becoming and multiplicity of beings. Their answers varied and included water, fire, number, and other elements. Commenting on these solutions, Parmenides said that there can be doubt about what they meant by water, fire, and the life; but regardless of what they meant, each element they chose was being. Therefore: Being is. Whatever is not being does not exist and cannot be conceived. Thus he concludes: Being is. Non-being is not.
From this principle Parmenides drew some very interesting conclusions:
(a) Being is one. Indeed, each being should distinguish itself from every other being. Now such a distinction should proceed either from being or from non-being. But neither is possible. The distinction cannot come from being because the second being, in so far as it is being, agrees with the first and cannot be distinguished from it. Moreover, such a distinction cannot come from non-being, for non-being does not exist and cannot be conceived. From nothing comes nothing. Therefore, being is one. (b) Becoming is also impossible. Nothing can become what it already is. For example, white cannot become white, for it is already white. But every becoming is nothing other than becoming a being. Thus, being becomes being by becoming, which is utterly inconceivable. Therefore, being is one and exists in its absolute immutability. Birth and death are illusions.
The One of Parmenides is not born; it is eternal, immutable, and always itself. Moreover, it is limited, since in Greek philosophy the unlimited is a sign of imperfection, and it is conceived as a finite sphere. It is the same One as that of Xenophanes but it is divested of all divine and religious attributes and reduced to one pure metaphysical and logical principle.
If the One is being and becoming is non-being, what then is all the cosmic becoming, including the life of man? Is it all a dream, an illusion? Parmenides leaves the problem unsolved. If he had solved it in conformity with his principles, the answer would have had to be affirmative and the life of the universe would appear a complete mystery.
Zeno
Zeno (picture), chosen disciple of Parmenides, was born in Elea about the year 500 B.C. He is called by Aristotle the first dialectician because he assumed the task of proving with arguments (Sophistic) how much of paradox there was in the doctrine of his master.
Parmenides had reduced becoming to non-being and to illusion. Zeno attempted to prove just what exactly is becoming. To understand the arguments of Zeno it is necessary to remember that becoming signifies movement. If the movement were not real but illusory, it would follow that becoming also has no other consistency save that of illusion. This is the task which Zeno assumed.
His argument are four, but they follow the same pattern; for they all begin with the supposition that space (the line) is composed of infinite parts, and that it is impossible to cross these infinite parts of which space is composed. As a consequence, all that to us seems to move does not move in reality, for movement is an illusion.
Take, for example, the so-called argument of Achilles. The hero of the winged foot can never overtake the turtle -- symbol of slowness -- because the hero gives the turtle the handicap of space. Let us supposed that this interval between Achilles and the turtle is twenty feet, and while the hero runs twenty feet, the turtle advances one foot. Achilles cannot reach his running mate, because while he runs twenty feet the animal moves one foot, and while runs a foot, his rival will run one-twentieth of a foot, and successively, while Achilles run one-twentieth of a foot, the animal will have traveled one-twentieth of a twentieth of a foot, and so on, ad infinitum.
The same is to be said of the arrow which will never reach its target. Before striking the target, the arrow must traverse half the distance, and before it reaches half this space it must traverse one-half of this half, ad infinitum. Thus the arrow remains ever at the same place, no matter how much it may seem to be displaced. Such Sophistic arguments, as Aristotle noted well, are based on a false prejudgment that space is made up of an infinite number of parts.
Melissus
Among the Eleatics must be numbered Melissus, who was born at Samos and lived during the fifth century B.C. He accepts and defends Parmenides' doctrine of being, but unlike his master, he maintains that being is infinite, because it cannot be limited, neither by another being, in so far as being is one, nor by non-being, which does not exist. In agreement with Parmenides he maintains that change and motion do not exist in nature, for both imply an absurd transition from being to non-being.
The Eleatic School had the merit of calling the attention of philosophers to the concept of being and becoming, of motion, of time, of space, and of continuity. Its importance is such that all succeeding thought represented a victory over the one-sided and apparently contradictory conceptions held by Parmenides (unchanging being) and Heraclitus (successive becoming).
V. THE PLURALISTS
General Notions
The Pluralists are those philosophers who, putting to themselves the problem of being (Parmenidean) and of becoming (Heraclitean), attempt a reconciliation between the two factions by having recourse to more primordial elements. They accept on the one side the being of Parmenides, but they break it up into various parts, so that the root of things would be found in various elements. The composition and decomposition of these original elements would give the explanation of the becoming of Heraclitus.
Thus the Pluralists believe that they have overcome the opposition between being and non-being. The chief philosophers of this group are Empedocles of Agrigentum, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Democritus of Abdera.
Empedocles
Empedocles (picture) lived from approximately 490 to 430 B.C. Of Doric origin, he was a physician, naturalist, poet, philosopher, and wonder-worker. He wrote two books, Physics and Purifications, of which large fragments remain. It is said that the people revered him as a worker of wonders and that he died on a exploration of Mount Etna in Sicily.
Like Parmenides, Empedocles admits that being is not born nor does it die, because it is eternal. Unlike Parmenides, he says that being quadruple: land, water, air, and fire. These four elements are the roots of things, the latter being only different combinations of these elements. To explain the process of these combinations, Empedocles has recourse to two forces, primitive and fundamental -- love and strife.
From the beginning, since elements were regulated by love, they were an indistinct whole and formed the sphere. In the process of time, strife, which circulated about the sphere, penetrated and divided the elements. Thus they came to form the stars (zone of fire), ether (air), the oceans, and the earth; and from the earth came forth all things, including plants and men. An alternating balance of hate and of love destroys men until, by a natural reaction of love, hatred will be banished and everything will return to form once more the ancient sphere, to begin again a new period of hate and love similar to the first.
That part of Empedocles' theory dealing with the four elements endured longest, and fell into decline only with the advent of modern chemistry.
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras, who was of Ionic origin, was born about 500 B.C. Invited by Pericles, he went to Athens, where he remained about thirty years. Accused of impiety, he was obliged to leave the city in 431 B.C., and went to Lampsacus, where he founded a school. He died in 428 B.C. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to enter Athens. He wrote a work entitled Peri physeos, of which large fragments are extant.
Parmenides' being is constituted, according to Anaxagoras, of an infinite number of particles, homogeneous but qualitatively different. Aristotle called this agglomerate "homoeomeries," that is, homogeneous parts. They enter to make part of every becoming, and the prevalence of a given quality of particles over another is the reason for the qualitative difference of things. Such particles are endowed with an immanent intelligence, which Anaxagoras designated with the name "Nous." The "Nous" gathers and distinguishes the "homoeomeries" of the original Chaos; for this reason the "Nous" is the cause of their distinctions and groupings.
No matter how often Anaxagoras had admitted that to give a reason for the distinctions and groupings of an infinite number of particles it was necessary to have recourse to intelligence, every time he explains becoming he fails to make use of the "Nous" and runs to the conduct of natural laws. Hence he is reproved by Plato and Aristotle for not having known how to use his discoveries in the determination of final causes.
The Atomists: Leucippus & Democritus
Leucippus -- probably of Miletus -- and Democritus of Abdera (picture) were physicians. Leucippus was the founder of the Atomist School; but his disciple Democritus, who was born about 460 B.C., and lived about ninety years, was its greater exponent. A naturalist and an avid searcher for knowledge, he journeyed into many regions to increase his notions, and many fragments of his works remain.
In Democritus, as in those who preceded him, we assist at the breaking up of the being of Parmenides into an infinity of particles, each of them indivisible. Democritus called these particles "atoms." The atoms are material, qualitatively homogeneous, but of different form and gravity and are endowed with motion "ab aeterno," from higher to lower.
Because atoms are endowed with motion, Democritus admits a second primordial element, the void, that is, infinite space which surrounds the atoms and gives them the possibility of movement. The differences in gravity cause the atoms to whirl into motion, thus giving origin to the formation of things. Every union of atoms indicates a birth, just as every separation of atoms indicates a death. Thus from the primitive void have come the stars and the earth and all beings, including man.
The soul also is formed of light atoms similar to those of fire, and with death it is resolved into atoms.
Democritus does not deny the gods, but even they, he says, are subject to the universal mechanism: they arose from the composition of atoms, and will be reduced to their component parts by decomposition. They live in interastral space, happy and not concerned with the destiny of men. The wise man does not fear them because they are powerless to do either good or evil.
Democritus admits only sensitive cognition, a product of the motion of atoms, which in a light form separate themselves from the body, penetrate the empty spaces of our organism and set in motion the atoms of our sensitive faculties. The movement produces cognition. Indeed, not everything that comes to us through the senses is really outside the sensitive faculty.
To this end, Democritus distinguishes the objective properties which are real in bodies -- such as form, size, movement, etc.; and the subjective qualities which are due to the reactions of our faculties -- for example, odor, color, taste, etc. These are in the objects only as a point of origin; in the subject they exist as specific qualities.
The system of Democritus, the model upon which all the materialistic systems will more or less be re-formed, presents to us a world regulated by mechanics (motion) and by the natural laws which act in the picture of cosmic necessity. No rationality is possible in this world of mechanical forces and hence no finality or purpose.
Thus are formed and are broken up the heavens and earth; thus human generations succeed one another, without there being a reason for their birth or for their decomposition; they are unconscious effects of unconscious causes. Life and death have no value, and everything is swallowed up in the night of atoms, whence everything took its origin. Such a system does not solve, but aggravates the problem of life, and inclines one to despair without comfort.
