THE  PRESOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHERS

 

·         “Philosophy begins in wonder. First wonder about the obvious perplexities, such as eclipses and the origin of the universe and the mystery of death, then about less obvious things.” –Aristotle

·         “For the ancients have thought, since the time of Socrates, that philosophy was a guide, a companion, and a blessing in the journey.” –Roman philosopher

 

Milesians

Thales (600 BC)

·         All things are water (hydor).

·         The earth rests on water.

·         All things are full of gods.

·         The magnet has a soul.

Anaximander (570 BC)

·         The first principle and origin of being is neither water nor any of the other things called elements, but some other nature which is unlimited (a-peiron), out of which come to be all the heavens and the things in them.

·         What arose from the eternal [the apeiron] and is productive of hot and cold was separated off at the coming-into-being of this cosmos, and a kind of sphere of flame from this grew around the dark mist about the earth like a bark about a tree. When it was broken off and enclosed in circles, the sun, moon, and stars came to be.

·         The first animals were produced in moisture. When these water-creatures came out onto the land, their protective covers broke off, and they lived a different sort of life. The first humans arose from fish or fish-like creatures.

·         The earth is round and cylindrical, three times as long as in diameter. The circle of the sun is 27 times that of the earth, the moon 18 times that of the sun.

·         The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be, according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance to the ordering of time.

Anaximenes (540 BC)

·         “The form of air is the following: when dissolved into what is finer, it becomes fire, winds when then condensed. Cloud results from air when it becomes denser, and water when this happens to a greater degree. Condensed still more, it becomes earth; at the densest stage, stones.”

 

Pythagoreans:

·       Pythagorean mathematics

•                      Pythagorean theorem: “The square constructed on the hypoteneuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares constructed on its two sides.” (Or A2 = B2 + C2, where A = hypoteneuse, B and C sides of a right-angled triangle. For the proof, see Euclid, Elements I.47.)

•                     “The Pythagoreans looked to mathematics, as the basis of rational order in the universe, and sought the principles of being in mathematics.” (Hence the saying attributed to Pythagoras, “Being is number.”)

·       Pythagorean psychology and eschatology

•                     “Pythagoras declares that the soul is immortal; and that it changes into other kinds of animals; in addition, that things that happen recur at certain intervals, and nothing is absolutely new; and that all things that come to be alive must be thought akin. He [Pythagoras] seems to have been the first to introduce these opinions into Greece.”

•                     “They believe that it is possible to gain release from the cycle of rebirth/embodiment and ascend to the Isle of the Blessed (heaven) –if one follows the Pythagorean Way or Path of Life (hodos tou biou).”            

·       Pythagorean ethical akousmata (“hearkenings” or spiritual sayings) and politics

•                    First and hardest: to listen.

•                    The soul is the guardian of the vessel (or: of the prison).

•                    [Contemplate] the white rooster.

•                    [Friends] do not divide bread.

•                    It is unholy to live in spotted garments.

•                    Straighten the bed when rising from it.

•                    Don't poke fire with a knife.

•                    Don't step over a broom or a yoke.

•                    Don't eat heart.

•                    Do not look into a mirror by night.

•                    Do not speak without light.

•                    Y. [symbol of a divided road, also first letter of Greek for health, Ygeia]

•                     “In Croton, a communal form of life arose of men and women bound together by the strict rules of the Pythagorean existence. Whoever entered such a group had to renounce private possessions; he underwent a five year period of silence; if he turned apostate, he was treated as dead, and a gravestone was erected for him.”

 

Heraclitus

·         Listening not to me, but to the Logos, it is wise to agree: all things are one.

·         Fire lives the death of earth, air lives the death of fire, water the death of air, earth that of water. The same is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old.

·         Asses would choose rubbish rather than gold. The sun’s breadth is the length of a human foot.

·         This cosmos, the same for all, none of the gods or humans made, but it was always and is and ever shall be: an ever-living fire being kindled in measures and going out in measures.

·         At variance with itself, it agrees with itself—a backwards-turning attunement (harmonia), like that of bow and lyre.

·         War is the father and king of all.

·         I searched for [sought to find] myself.

·         You would not discover the limits of the soul though you traveled every road: it has so deep a logos.

·         Character is fate [or divinity].

·         To God all things are beautiful and good and just, but humans have supposed some just and some unjust.

·         Of those who step in the same rivers, different—again different—rivers flow. It is not possible to step twice into the same river. We step and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.

·         All things flow.

The Ship of Theseus

(from Marc Cohen)

       This puzzle tells of a voyage by Theseus’ ship to Crete, which was followed by a scavenger ship that periodically picked up planks falling from Theseus' ship, Theseus replacing these with other planks they found in the water. When Theseus sailed back to Athens from Crete—still followed by the other—every part of his ship had been replaced (including sails, rudder, etc.) and the scavenger ship was now constructed of what had previously made up Theseus' ship. 

       The puzzle: was Theseus still in the same ship or a different one? If different, when had it changed? If it did change, did it change into the scavenger ship, so that now the scavenger ship was identical with Theseus' old ship, or were these different, too?

       Let Theseus' original ship = A, the ship he returns to Athens with = B, and the scavenger ship on its return to Athens = C. Is A = B? or is A = C? The Presocratics were familiar with two theories of identity.

       On the component parts theory (CPT), the identity of an object depends on the identity of its component parts. Since this view asserts that sameness of parts is a necessary condition of identity, A cannot = B, and Theseus must have been on (at least!) two different ships. Moreover, since their parts are the same, A = C, i.e. Theseus' original ship is now the scavenger ship. Obviously this is problematic. If things cease to be themselves with any change of its parts, their ‘existence’ is very fleeting, since physical things are constantly losing some of their material components.

       On the spatio-temporal continuity theory (STC), a persisting object must trace a continuous path through space-time. This is compatible with a change of parts, so long as the change is gradual. But how much can it change? what determines which part of the thing must be preserved, and which can be lost, for it still to be the same entity? For example, let us suppose that ship A is gradually reconstructed but that as that occurs, it changes slightly—it gets wider, there are slightly fewer oars, the steering mechanism is looser, the sails are smaller, it moves more slowly through the water. At some point we might say, “It just isn’t the same ship anymore.” But when would that be?

       Consider too that an object can be disassembled, then reassembled, e.g. a bicycle's parts are placed in separate boxes and shipped across country, the boxes then unpacked and the bike reassembled. How do we account for its identity? There is no continuously existing bicycle-shaped object tracing a path through space-time. CPT, however, says it is the same bicycle, since it is made of the same parts as the first one.

•             How would you answer Heraclitus' puzzle concerning the identity of objects?

•             Which theory do you think is correct and why?

•             How might we re-conceive this puzzle in relation to the identity of the self or the person as they age and change? What makes someone the same person?

•             How might we think about identity in relation to evolution, e.g. the identity of species, or of individuals as the carriers of genes?

 

Parmenides and the Eleatics

Parmenides’ “Truth”

·         “They are carried along by experience, deaf as they are blind, amazed, uncritical herds, for whom to be and not to be are judged the same and not the same, and for whom there are in all things opposites.”

·         “That it is and cannot not be is the path of truth.”

·         “In no way may this prevail, that things that are not, are.”

·         “Nothing (no X) can both be and not be nor can any X both have and not have the same property Y (at the same time and in the same respect).”

·          “That which is … must be. For it is possible for it to be; and it is not possible for nothing to be.”

·         “Remaining self-same in itself, being is what it is, and does not change; for it is contained by Necessity within the bonds of Limit; nor is it fitting for what is to be incomplete, for being cannot be lacking—or it would not be, nor does it have a coming-into-being or a going-out-of-being but is now and always, evident to reason if not to the senses.”

Zeno’s Paradoxes

·         If a given number of grains of sand n make a heap, it will not cease to be a heap, if one is taken away, n-1. But from this one can conclude that if any given number of grains make a heap, so do all lower numbers, down to zero. Conversely, if n grains are not a heap, neither are n+1, up to infinitely. Thus every collection of grains is and is not a heap.

·         If the arrow flies toward the target, it must pass through ½ the distance, then ½ of the remaining distance, and so on. It will always never reach the target. Likewise, Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise.

·         If the world or any part of it were composed of infinitely many atoms, it would be unlimited in size, which he thought impossible. (Suppose it is infinitely large; how could it be made bigger? But it seems anything can be made bigger by addition.) Likewise, if the world or any part of it were composed of infinitely small atoms, it would not be of any size, i.e. it would not exist.

·         If there were a point in the infinite past, t-I, with time going infinitely backwards as it were. How would you ever traverse from t-I to t-0, now? Go as far back as you wish, you will never get to t-I. So the universe must be finitely old, i.e. must have come into being. (Aristotle would resolve some of these puzzles by distinguishing the potential from the actual infinite, and denying the reality of the latter.)

Xenophanes and Philosophical Theology

·         If oxen and horses and lions had hands, they would draw gods in the shape of oxen, horses, and lions. The Celts give the gods red hair, the Nubians make them black.

·         God is one, greatest among gods and men, not at all like mortals in thought or body. Without effort he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.

·         No man has seen nor will anyone know the truth about the gods and the things I speak of, for even if what the man said was true, he would not know, but only shapes a belief about it.

 

Pluralists

 

Empedocles (492-432 BC)

·         “I will tell you the beginning, from which all that we gaze upon came to be clear, earth  and the sea with many waves and the moist air and the Titan aither, squeezing all things round in a circle. I will tell a double story. For at one time they grow to be only one out of many, but at another time they grow apart to be many out of one at one time all coming together into one by Love, and at another being borne apart by the hatred of Strife.”

·         “On his view, it was of necessity that, for example, the front teeth grew sharp and well adapted at biting, and the back ones broad and useful for chewing food; this result was coincidental, not what they were for. On this view, whenever such parts came about coincidentally as though they were for that purpose, the animals survived, since their form, though coming about by chance, made them fit for survival. Other animals, differently constituted, perished, as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves.” (Physics II.7; compare Curd #54-55.)

Anaxagoras, God and the Universe

·         “All things were together, unlimited in both amount and smallness. These things being so, it is necessary to suppose that in all things that are being mixed together there are many things of all kinds, and seeds of all things. Rotation caused the separating off, and the dense is separated from the rare, and the hot from the cold, and the bright from the dark, and the dry from the wet. The dense and the wet and the cold and the dark came together here, where the earth is now, but the rare and the hot and the dry went out into the far reaches of the aither.”

·         “For mind (nous) is the finest of all things and the purest, and has all judgment about everything and the greatest power. Mind rules all things that possess life—both the larger and the smaller. Mind ruled the entire rotation, and started the rotation. Mind knew all things that are mixed together and separated apart. And Mind set in order all things, whatever kind of things were to be—whatever were and all that now are and whatever will be.”

·         Anaxagoras was the first to think that all things existed for a purpose (telos), and strove toward that telos. This was the origin of the idea of teleology.

·         Socrates’ criticism of Anaxagoras: “One day I heard someone reading from a book of Anaxagoras, that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with this, and thought that Mind would arrange each thing in the way that was best. I thought he would tell me, whether the earth was flat or round, and would then explain, why it was better so; if it was in the middle of the cosmos, he would show that it was better to be in the  middle. I was prepared to find out the same way about the sun and the moon and the stars. Once he had given this kind of explanation in regard to each thing, I thought he would go on to explain the good in things as a whole. This wonderful hope was dashed as I went on reading and found that the man made no use of Mind, nor gave it any responsibility in the management of things, but mentioned as causes only such things as air and aither and water and other things like that.” (Phaedo 97b-98d.)

·         Nature is, in all of its phenomena, a movement, arising from within the thing itself, toward an end. This is so of the elemental bodies, of plants and animals and their parts and actions, of human beings, and of the stars in the heavens.--Aristotle

 

Atomists:  Science vs. Common Sense

·         Democritus] holds that the substances are so small they escape our senses. They have all kinds of forms and shapes and differences in size.

·         Out of these elements he says, all visible and perceptible bodies are generated. As they move they strike against one another and become entangled in a way that makes them be in contact with and close to one another. When they become entangled, the compounds appear as water or fire or as a plant or a human.

·         All things are atoms; there is nothing else.

·         Then some stronger necessity comes along from the environment and shakes them and scatters them about.

·         He makes sweet what is round and good-sized, astringent what is large, rough, polygonal, sharp tasting what is sharp, salty what is angular and good-sized.

·         Boiling water is a process whereby each twenty-sided water atom was being reassembled as three four-sided fire atoms plus one eight-sided air atom, i.e. the formula: 1W (20)  3F (4) + 1A (8).

·         “Nothing happens by random but all things because of a reason and by necessity.”

·         “By convention (nomos), sweet; by convention, bitter; by convention, hot; by convention, color; in reality (physis), atoms and the void.”

·         “There are two kinds of judgment, one legitimate, one bastard. The following are bastard: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.”

·         “Do you overthrow us, wretched reason? Then you overthrow yourself.

·         Socrates vs. causal explanations of human conduct:  “It was as if someone said that the cause of my being here is that my body consists of bones and sinews, and that the relaxation and contraction of the sinews allows me to bend my limbs and not mention the true cause, namely, that the Athenians decided to condemn me, and that I decided that it was better and more right to endure their punishment than try to escape.” (Phaedo 99bc)