PHILOSOPHY

THE PRE-SOCRATICS

Geoffrey Catchpole, Member, on 2 October 2001.

The speaker began with some warnings on the limitations imposed on appreciation of the nature and significance of the contribution of pre-Socratic thinkers to Western philosophy, stemming mainly from their remoteness in time. Their writings are lost or fragmentary or interpreted through hearsay by partisans or critics. Usage and meanings derived in translation vary in interpretation over time. Greek presuppositions, such as identification of animate and inanimate entities limited their achievements. The crafts and technologies of earlier civilisations influenced the concerns, politics and developing philosophies of the preSocratics.

A brief sketch was given of their sites in Turkey and South Italy and of their turbulent war-wracked history over their period, from around 600 to 400 BC Individual thinkers were then considered.

Thales of Miletus (624/543) was celebrated as a practical geometer, but was praised by Aristotle for his suggestion of a substrate for the universe, as then conceived. His claim that water in its varying states was that substrate was based partly on Egyptian and Babylonian recognition of its significance, partly on the discoveries of inland fossils and partly on a traditional identification of self-movement and change with life itself.

A pupil, Anaximander (610/545), also a geometer, substituted `apeiron' (`unlimited') as substrate, initiating separation of contrasting qualities (such as hot/cold, wet/dry) then return by evaporation to apeiron, thus emphasizing a natural balancing of substance and forces in both the cosmos and human society. While Thales thought Earth a disc floating on water, Anaximander argued that it could not rest on unsupported water and that it is poised in space because it is equidistant from everything else and has no reason to move.

A third Milesian, Anaximenes (c.545), observed that rainbows result from sunlight shining through condensed moisture and not from a goddess. His deduction that air condenses into entities provided another substrate view, but Heraclitus of Ephesus (540/480) substituted constant change as a unity behind diversity. He saw the `strife' of opposites (life/death, day/night, light/dark, etc.) as basic, necessary and just. Thus, every object and quality is for him a dynamic resultant of conflicting forces.

That group of Ionians used direct experience to promote their differing cosmologies, but Pythagoras (c.525) and his followers combined mathematics and mysticism in their practices, which led them to a cosmology of a universal harmony of perfect spheres. Their belief that `soul' (reason, design, law) brings order from elements entailed a view that number is material, which led later critics to protest that they identified mathematics with physics. Also, their discovery of irrational numbers implied infinite divisibility, rendering their view of substance invalid.

Other thinkers adopted a quite different approach to a cosmology. Parmenides of Elea (c.515) argued that, since `being' is `one', space, change and motion are all illusory. What exists cannot come from nothing, since that does not exist, and motion from or into being is equally illogical. All that exists must be an indivisible material sphere. One of his followers, Xenophanes, added a cosmic God "who always remains in the same place", unmoving. Another, Zeno, argued against plurality through illustrations purportedly showing that separability implies both the infinitely small and the infinitely large, which in their terms are logically impossible.

Although the Eleatics demonstrated the difficulties involved in a concept of plurality in their time, others attempted to account for it. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500/428) argued that "there is a portion of everything in every `thing', although identities differ according to ratios of components. Such mixtures are initiated and controlled by `nous' (mind or reason). Empedocles of Agrigentum (c.440) went further, providing proportions of the
(by then) commonly accepted basic four elements earth, air, fire and water. To Heraclitus' `strife' he added `love' as a motive force today, perhaps, `attraction' as well as `repulsion'? Moreover, through various demonstrations, he showed that air is corporeal i.e. is a physical substance.

Thus, the stage was set for the contributions of the atomists, principally Democritus of Abdera (born 460) and Leucippus, who were said to have considered motes dancing in sunbeams, then developed their cosmology. "By necessity were foreordained all things that were and are to be" indicates recognition of universal laws. For example, "Nothing is created out of nothing" may now be called a law of conservation of matter. In their view the universe consists of eternal atoms in constant motion, their interactions in space accounting for change. While human perceptions are motions within `souls', they arise from experienced sensations. Thus, by their time, the atomists were providing cosmological accounts which embraced substance, space, divisibility, motion and change, etc., but still on a purely materialistic basis.

By the time of Plato (born 427) the Sophists (exemplified by Protagoras) were offering practical skills to debating Greeks and being criticised by Plato for subjectivity and scepticism. Knowledge was not on offer

"There is no truth; if there were it could not be known; if known it could not be communicated". To people at war neither Parmenides' static concept nor a dynamic but remote atomic reality offered an accessible stability and unity. If our sensations simply reflect feelings, morality becomes subjective and `truth' merely relative. Plato and Socrates, however, argued that knowledge is possible, but only if appropriate techniques are adopted.

The speaker concluded by reviewing the significance of the preSocratics for Western thought. In troubled times people seek order behind chaos, stability behind change, unity behind diversity, some form of reality behind appearances. The preSocratics considered appearances and provided differing cosmologies to account for them. In so doing they laid the foundations for Western philosophy and science.

In discussion, it was suggested to the speaker that their cosmologies resulted from a Greek acceptance of `Fate' and their susceptibility to myths. He replied that their uncertainties and practical commitments accompanied their materialist proposals, but such limitations did not inhibit the birth of mathematics, logic and science, nor social philosophies and metaphysics. They entered virtually into dialogues in a process of development of thought, questioning beliefs in a search for certainties. The group was reminded that later thinkers Nietzche in particular believed philosophy to be rooted in concern for human existence and that pre-Socratic attempts to seek a reliable cosmic order reflected that.

Geoffrey Catchpole