FMAG Rewrite Idea

When dealing with the liquefied souls and the atoms use the terms, "condensed" and "rarefied" to allude to ancient philosophical texts.

Philebus Notes 3

(Originally written July 19, 2018 in book 17)

Philebus
Plato

(continued)

"Bad men, then, delight for the most part in false pleasures, good men in true ones" (Plato, 77).

False pleasures are a 'ridiculous imitation' of true pleasures.

There are three types of life:
1) The pleasant
2) The painful
3) The painless, joyless life.

To be without pain is not the same as to feel pleasure.

The greatest pleasures and pains occur not when the body or soul is healthy, but when they are sick.

Ignorance is always an evil.

Pleasure belongs to the class of becoming, i.e. the pleasure one has involves the process of being thirsty. Thus, pleasure is not pure Being. The Good in pure Being and does not involve process and is thus, not becoming. Being is higher than becoming. Thus, pleasure cannot be the Good because as the Good it must be the highest.

Socrates claims that dialectic has the greatest claim to discovering pure truth. He concedes that while Gorgias' act of persuasion may acheive more utility, it does not have a strong claim as does dialectic to understanding the truth of a thing.

"We find fixity, purity, truth and what we have called perfect clarity, either in those things that are always unchanged, unaltered and free of all admixture, or in what is most akin to them; everythign else must be called inferior and of secondary iporantce" (Plato, 122).

There is a Greek proverb about the need for repeating a good thing 'once and twice and once again' - use this in Future Modern Ancient Greeks for comedic effect

Philebus claims that pleasure and the pursuit of it is the Supreme Good of all living Creatures. Socrates claims they are different and intelligence has more claim to be ranked as good than pleasure.

Knowledge of things unchanged is greater than knowledge of changing things. Knowledge of pure Being is greather than knowledge of becoming.

THe mixture that comes to the threshold of the Good is all knowledge, the knowledge of both unchanging and changing things and those pleasures that do not have folly attached to them. The pleasures of a temperate existence are allowed in, but those that cause ruin or disturbance are not.

Beauty, proportion and Truth are synonymous. The mixture will be good if these three things are in it. These things make the mixture good.

Socrates' heiarchy of what is closest to the Good:

1) Whatever is measured or appropriate
2) Whatever is proportional and beautiful
3) Reason and intelligence
4) That which belongs to the soul itself (Science, Art, Right Opinions
5) Pure pleasures of the soul, some attached to knowledge, some to sensation

Quick idea FMAG & Leibniz

In reading some old notes on Leibniz I think that I would like to make the alien that picks up the protagonist in the story a Leibniz-like figure. Or at least use some of Leibniz's metaphysical principles to power his space ship.

How time travel was invented

With no rhyme or reason an idea of how time travel was invented popped into my head in church. I haven't written or edited anything on this work in months. To be honest, I haven't even thought about it. But, I was inspired in church today nonetheless.


Spacetime is curved.

The "GPS" Guidance system was mistakenly installed upside down. (Obviously will have to come up with a term other than global positioning system)

Captain ____ was quite surprised to arrive at his correct destination a million or so light years before he left.

Happy accidents like this tend to move evolution through paradigm shifts.

How the aliens got so greekish.

So why in the world would our main character come to find a planet (or a system of planets) where everything about it is so very much like the ancient Greeks? He is baffled about it. But, come to find out, they had some kind of access to the Oracle at Delphi and learned that the wisest human on earth at the time when they first discovered was a guy named Socrates. Now these aliens had always been incredibly mechanically inclined, building some of the finest spacecraft in the universe. But, as for all other aspects of life they were rather dull. When they heard the Oracle's pronouncement that Socrates was the wisest man in Greece by some odd and crazy coincidence they got down to the business of extracting this man from earth and bringing him to their home planet to impart his wisdom.

Not wanting to interfere with this species they really didn't know much about they did some reconnaissance and found the perfect time to extract him. They swapped out the hemlock with some kind of liquid that would trap the soul of the man into a box they had built for the very purpose of extending the life of someone who was about to die. It was a way of saving knowledge for future generations. They did this to Socrates and took him (or his soul rather) back to their home planet where Socrates did actually get to do what he wanted to do after death. He got to debate and teach and discuss in some blessed other world after his death on earth.

The Epicurus Jostler

I think at some point in the Future Modern Ancient Greeks the main character is going to have to acquire a spaceship. At the shop he's going to encounter all different types of craft that move on different principles.

One of the principles is going to be the 'jostling' motion. There will be a couple of different types of jostlers.

1) Epicurus' jostler - falling through space is the simplest motion so this craft will simple fall through space. very energy efficient. falling is eternal so it just goes and goes, very low maintenance. navigation is a bit, well, let's just say it is the perfect craft for the adventurer. It does have the swerve feature though...

I need to study the pre-socratics and their ideas on motion. Explore their ideas - create machines based on the paradoxes they create and then voice them out in the main character's interaction with the sellers of the crafts, which need to be based on used car dealers.

Book notes on Plato

(Originally written July 18, 2016 in Book 26)

History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter 17: Plato's Cosmogony

What can be known by the intellect and reason is unchanging. What is sensed is changing.

The world was created by God who made it patterned after the eternal.

The world is harmonized by proportion (each element is proportional to the others).

"The soul is compounded of the individisble - unchangeable and the divisible-changeable; it is a third and intermediate kind of essence" (Russell, 144).

There are four kinds of animals: gods, birds, fish and land animals

"Souls have sensation, love, fear and anger; if they overcome these, they live righteously, but if not, not. If a man lives well, he goes, after death, to live happily forever in his star. But, if he lives badly, he will, in the next life, be a woman; if he (she) persists in evil-doing, he (or she) will become a brute, and go on through transmigrations until at last reason conquers" (Russell, 145) [God created one star for every soul he created]

Future Modern Ancient Greeks - Use this, but souls got lonely and moved to planets. Through their traveling the soul picked up bits of stuff until they found themselves trapped in bodies

Man contains two souls, one mortal and created by the gods (the first creation of God) and one immortal (created by God). The gods mingled the two into one to form man.

Chapter 18 - Knowledge and perception in Plato

The dialogue, Theaetetus, is concerned with finding a suitable definition for knowledge.

Perception cannot be knowledge because everything including the perception possessor is constantly changing. Thus perceiving is constantly becoming not-perceiving and knowing becomes not-knowing. Thus, knowledge becomes and is not-knowledge.

Also knowlege cannot be perception because we can know things like sounds and different than colors even though we can't sense a color with our ears or a sound with out eyes.

"Only the mind can reach existence, and we cannot reach truth if we do not reach existence" (Russell, 152-53). Only the mind can know.

Knowlege consists of reflecting, not sensing.

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones

Chapter 4 - Plato: The theory of forms

Plato was a product of his environment. Born in Athens circa 427 BC, he was a veteran of the Peloponnesian War and experienced the dissatisfaction associated with losing the war. He was also a nobleman by birth, descended from both Solon and the god Poseidon

The biggest impact on Plato though was Socrates

Socrates "combined an intensely realistic and down-to-earth common sense with a passionate mysticism, a cool and dispassionate scepticism about ordinary beliefs and opinions with a deep religious sense" (Jones, 110).

Socrates lived by and taught his own morals in opposition to tradition and the mores of his day.

Socrates on death: "To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing else than to think one is wise when one is not; for it is thinking one knows what one does not know. For no none knows whether death be not the greatest of all blessings to man, but they find it is the greatest of evils" (Jones, 113).

Chris - "Then we ought neither to requite wrong with wron, nor to do evil to anyone, no matter what he may have done us" (Jones, 116).

Plato believed, "The discovery of truth is always, he thought, a joint word in which friends discouss together" (Jones, 118)

The History of Western Philosophy Ch. 11 - 14

(Originally written June 7, 2016 in Book 26)

What a fantastic day. Bill fixed our Volvo two days ago and then today, boom! The same thing happens. This time though the car died right in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour. Other than that today was grand. No, I'm actually not too annoyed (and obviously don't blame Bill; though, that first sentence might've seemed to indicate it). The only truly frustrating thing was the car died. C'est la vie?

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell

Chapter 11 - Socrates

Socrates is a man we may know much or little about because two of his pupils, Xenophon and Plato wrote volumes about him. Those voluemes however don't always sync up to provide a precise picture.

 Xenophon defends Socrates too well. If Xenophon's analysis was wholly correct Socrates would never have been put on trial. But one of the few undisputed facts we know about Socrates is his trial and death in 399 B.C.

Xenophon and Plato both agree that Socrates was concerned with putting the right people into powerful positions.

The problem with taking Xenophon's Socrates as the historical one is the fact that Xenophon makes Socrates so pure he wouldn't have been accused of corrupting the youth. The problem with taking Plato's Socrates as the historical model is Plato's ability as a writer.

Plato's Apology is widely considred as historical. This is Socrates' defense at his trial (which Plato was present at).

The grounds for Socrates' trial seems pretty lear: Socrates was evil, curious and constanly making the right seem wrong and the wrong seem right. The real grounds for the trial also seem clear: he was aristocratic and many of his pupils wre of that class and had acted perniciously while in power.

According to Athenian law, when Socrates was found guilty and stenced to death he was to offer a suitable, lesser punishment for the jury to choose between. Instead he annoyed the court by offering to pay a tiny fine so he would not be mistaken as accepting cupability.

The prosecutors held that Socrates did not follow the religion, introduced noew gods and taught (corrupted) the youth with such ideas.

In his defense Socrates states that he is on trial because the Oracle at Delphi had claimed him to be the wisest man. In pursuit of disproving this he has made many enemeies by exposing those who thought they were wise as being unwise.

In attacking one of his prosecutors he points out that he is on trial for introducting new gods but this prosecutor is accusing him of atheism.

In his defense he states, "fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good" (Russell, 87).

After convicted of death, Socrates shames the court, "If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves" (Russell, 89).

On death he contends, either death is a good, dreamless sleep or a migration to another world.

Plato describes him as the Orphic saint: "in the dualism of heavenly soul and earthly body, he had achieved the complete mastery of the soul over the body" (Russell, 91).

Socrates was more concerned with ethical questions than scientific knowledge. He believed however knowledge was important because no one sinned on purpose. Thus, by acquiring knowledge one could abstain from sin.

"The close connection between virtue and knowledge is characteristic of Socrates and Plato. To some degree, it exists in all Greek thought, as opposed to that of Christianity. In Christian ethics, a pure heart is essential, and at least as likely to be found among the ignorant as among the learned. The difference between Greek and Christian ethics has persisted down to the present day" (Russell, 92).

The dialectic, seeking knowledge via question and answer wasn't invented by Socrates; but, he definitely used it and developed it.

Chapter 12 - The Influence of Sparta

To understand philosophers from Plato onward it is necessary to know about Sparta. Sparta had a double impact on Greek thought; first, through reality and second, through myth.

The reality of Sparta was the Spartan defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.

The myth is the impact of Lycurgus, immortalized by Plutarch, and its impact on later philosophies including Rousseau, Nietzsche and National Socialism.

Sparta arose out of some Dorian conquerors in Laconia. They reduced the indigenous population to serfdom. The citizens of Sparta owned the land but were forbidden to cultivate it because of the demeaning nature of the work and its interference with their time as soldiers.

The Helots worked the land. The Helots were Greek and resented the order of things. They rebelled often. The Spartans maintained a Police State apparatus to control the Helots and once a year declared war on them to weed out agitators.

"The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he was trained from birth" (Russell, 95).

Children who passed their inspection after birth were educated solely to become good and loyal soldiers. Those who did not pass this intial inspection were killed.

Boys became men at 20 (serving in the military). They became citizens at 30.

No Spartan was to be poor or rich. Their currency was made of iron.

Women received the same physical training as the men. They were forbidden to show any emotion that didn't coincide to the state's favor.

Sparta was ruled by two kings from two different hereditary lines. The two kings belonged to the thirty-man Council of Elders. The Council tried criminal cases and prepared matters for the Assembly. The Assembly was a body of all citizens who could only vote yes or no on matters.

In addition to these three bodies there were the Ephors. There were five Ephors who acted as the Supreme civil court and had criminal jurisdiction over the two kings.

Tradition held that Lycurgus laid down the Spartan law in 885 BC.

Most other Greek city-states admired SParta. Paritally as an ideal from a bygone era. Partially as a model of stability. Partially for their near invincible status in battle on land.

Aristotle was intensely critical of the Spartan way of governance. Aristotle probably was writing of the real Sparta whereas Plato and Plutarch wrote of the mythical Sparta. Pultarch's praise of Sparta and Lycurgus was of great importance to post-Renaissance thinkers.

Sparta was isolationist, often foiling pan-Greek alliances and forbade its citizens from travel and allowed very few foreigners into the city for fear of corrupting the values of the state.

Chapter 13 - The Source of Plato's Opinions

Plato and Aristotle are the two most influential philosophers in history, and Plato is more important than Aristotle.

Plato's top ideas: 1) Utopia, 2) Theory of ideas, 3) arguments in favor of immortality, 4) his cosmogony, 5) knowledge as reminiscence rather than reception

Plato was born in 428/7 BC during the early years of the Peloponnesian War into an aristocratic family. He was a young man when Athens was defeated by Sparta and coupled with his aristocratic background was staunchly anti-democratic, blaming it for the Athenian defeat.

He was a pupil of Socrates.

He was an admirere of Spartan government (primarily because of his anti-democratic bent)

He was influenced by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Socrates, each leading him to a pro-Spartan outlook. From Pythagoras came the other-worldliness, religious and mystical bent. From Parmenides came the beleif that reality is eternal and change illusionary. From Heraclitus came the belief that nothing is permanent in the sensible world. From Socrates he took the obsession with ethics and a teleological view of the universe.

Chapter 14 - Plato's Utopia

Plato's most important dialogue is The Republic. In it is contained the earliest of Utopias.

One conclusion of Plato is that rulers must be philosophers.

The purpose of The Republic is to define justice.

Plato works to define justice by defining an ideally just state.

In this state he divides citizens into three classes:
1) Common people
2) Soldiers
3) Guardians

The guardians are the sole holders of political power, initially selected by a legislator but then passed through hereditary means. (Plato does allow for exceptional men to rise from the other two classes and for an ill-fated guardian to drop).

The guardians, as politcal agents, are Plato's main concern and that main concern begins with the proper education to rule.

Education was divided into Music and Gymnastics. Music covered everything considered today as culture. Gymnastics concerrned physical training. Musical education was about educating the ruling elite to become 'gentlemen'.

The training up of gentlemen began young. Stories were told to children only if they were approved. Homer & Hesiod were not allowed because:
1) They show the gods misbehaving
2) They cause the fear of death

Sidenote (Future Modern Ancient Greeks)

When discussing political systems with some Alien, the hero gets offended when America is not mentioned. The Alien responds, "Oh yes... the great petry dish, the grand experiment politik, the new Rome, a system built on complete contradictions, an aristocracy so perfect it fooled the lower classes into believeing it was egalitarian in nature. It was perfect until you side-tracked into a primitive hero worship of completely unimportant entitites. There's nothing wrong with admiring or even elevating your artists to godlike status but when you elevate your inartistic to artistic and then what you call the artistic to the status of demigods you get a rather sad and debased populace. A pity really becaue everything was going so well. You survived your Punic war with the Soviets but will you survive long enough to allow the rise of a new Parthia to give you the impetus to survive a millenia? Or have you sped up your timeline and already become decadent and too self-obssessed and self-assured to recognize the imminent but slow rot that overtakes all empires? Not of course you, per se, because you are now a child of the stars and without the wherewithal to return home to the decaying America. But even if your America could cut out the corrosion and you found an astronomically improbable way home, would you be satisfied with life back on a primitive planet now that you have seen just a portion of what other worlds have to offer?" The alien continued with his political treatise in soliliqy as (our hero) ost all sense of national pride and pondered a suddenly existential question, if he ever could make it home, would he want to?

Sidenote complete

3) The homeric poems approve of uncontrollable laughter
4) Homer praises lavishness

Homer and Hesiod cannot be taught in the ideal State because the ideal gaurdians of that State must respect religion (misbehaving gods of Homer are unworthy of respect), must be willing to die for the State and thus, cannot fear or mourn death, be in control of their emotion (no great mirth() and be temperate and praise temperance and simplicity.

Education of the gaurdians also forbids any stories where the wicked are happy or where the good are unhappy.

Plato also banned drama because authors and actors would have to portrait either villains or those beneath their status; thus, debasing themselves.

Music, diet and exercise were also strictly monitored for ideal outcomes.

The young gaurdians must also see no ugliness until they are fully trained and then be exposed to temptations that must be found untempting and terrors which must not terrify.

Economically, Plato insisted on a communist approach where the gaurdians have little private property but are not lacking or unhappy. Poverty and wealth both produce ills so both will be banished.

Wives and children will be common to all men who are gaurdians.

Women gaurdians will be equal to all men gaurdians and recieve the same education.

Interestingly, marriage ceremonies where bride and groom will be chosen (they think) by lot will actually be arranged by legislators to produce the best offspring.

Children will not know who their parents are and parents will not know their children. Thus, children are common to all parents.

Women are to bear children between 20-40. Men to father children should be 25-55. ALl sex outside of these ages is fair and free.

All this reorientation of familial structures is to create a loyalty to the State as the primary focus.

The government is to be built on one great lie, "one royal lie", to get the whole thing in motion.

This lie is that God made men of three kinds - gold, silver and brass/iron. The men made of gold are to be the gaurdians. The men made of silver are to be the soldiers. The men made of brass and iron are to do the manual labor.

The lie was well thought out. Plato assumed that the first generation of Utopia wouldn't buy it, but subsequent generations through indoctrination would.

Plato reaches his definition of justice in the three types of men God created living in harmony. The city becomes just when each is doing the job he ought to do without interfering with anyone from another class.

Like philosophers before him, and the poets who lived before the dawn of philosophy, Plato embodies the Greek notion of fate - everything having its place and function. Justice was the harmony of living within the boundaries of this fate.

Plato's definition of justice allows for inequality without injustice. The gaurdians, even though the smallest class, rule because they are the wisest and fated to do so. Injustice would only occur if someone from the lower two classes was wiser than a gaurdian. That is why Plato allowed exceptions for promotion or demotion.

Plato, unlike many later Utopians, saw his Utopia as viably feasible and wished to implement it. Unfortunately he chose to try with Syracuse and it failed. Soon thereafter the rise of Macedonia made the polis antiquated and the notion of establishing a Utopian city-state impossible in the face of empires.

Flatland

I must admit after struggling a month to finish the 252 pages of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and falling behind schedule to hit my self-appointed target of 50 books this year I chose Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot because of it's small size. I found the book in a 25 cent pile and read the jacket without knowing what it was and it seemed worth a read and it was surprisingly interesting. It tells the story of a two-dimensional being that has the opportunity to see a world with three-dimensions, one-dimension and no dimensions at all. Given my recent drive to create something concerning space and time travel, I thought and was affirmed that it might give me some ideas. Besides that, it was pretty good in spite of my lack of interest in geometry or mathematics in general.

The narrator is a square and is attempting to tell his readers in the three-dimensional world about his world and his trips to the others. He talks about his world and the light in it and because there is no sun the question arises then, where does the light come from. He explains that though it has been pondered and sometimes answered it doesn't quite turn out right. "What is the origin of light? and the solution of it has been repeatedly attempted, with no other result than to crown our lunatic asylums with the would-be solvers" (Abbot, 5). It's an interesting notion that to ponder the great mysteries of the universe could and in fact, should render the would be answers worthy of the asylum.

In the flatland of the two dimensional world the highly pointed triangles are either criminals or soldiers, but the deadliest of all the inhabitants are the woman who are merely lines. "If our highly pointed Triangles of the soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle: being, so to speak all point" (Abbot, 10). That's just funny.

Future Modern Ancient Greeks - The square in enquiring of his teacher the sphere (of a third dimension) what of the fourth dimension world, finds himself wondering that if a square (2-D) has four end points and a cube (3-D) has eight points then the next shape up like a square must have sixteen end points. "And consequently does it not of necessity follow that the more divine offspring of the divine Cube in the Land of Four Dimensions, must have 8 bounding Cubes: and is not this also, as my Lord has taught me to believe, 'strictly according to analogy'" (Abbot, 73). In the story when the protagonist of Future Modern Ancient Greeks goes to other dimensions he should travel in a space ship surrounded by 8 bounding cubes. Play with the word bounding and it'll be a nod to this book in mine.

"Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy" (Abbot, 75). Again, I seem to have latched on to something that describes my restlessness in something I've read. This time though I don't find anything profound in it. I find it sad to say. Self-contentment is vile and ignorant. To be happy, even impotently so, ought to be better than to be aspirational. Aspiring and not reaching that aspiration cannot, surely, be preferable to happiness of any kind.

Future Modern Ancient Greeks - I find the whole passage of the non-dimensional being fascinating. He has no conception outside of himself. Everything that exists exists in him. He is his own world. I think that could be used somewhere in Future Modern Ancient Greeks.

I heard only the hum of silence

A Night of Serious Drinking by René Daumal was fantastic. It was a very enjoyable read; and, for those of you following this blog it should come to no surprise to you that I enjoyed it as it is yet another surrealist work of literature. The book is basically satirical in nature and like Voltaire, it's satire is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. And like Voltaire, Daumal's pace is incredibly rapid and absurd. There is a whole host of good satire on philosophy, theology and the human condition throughout the book and it is slam bang full of fantastic one-liners. One such example concerns a simile about suicide (which isn't really a laughing matter but is darkly humorous nonetheless). "There are aerial battles where sound waves bounce back on themselves, start spinning and whirl between heaven and earth, like the indestructible regret of the suicide, who halfway down from the sixth floor all of a sudden no longer wants to die any more" (Daumal, 19).

Again, my obsession with writing a good space/time travel piece saw me take some inspiration from what I was reading. In Daumal I found this passage which I might make use of somehow. "'It's the same here as anywhere else, but here it's made quite clear: space is generated by need. Let's say you'd like to take a walk. You simply project in front of you the necessary space which you walk across and when. The same with time. Just a s spider secretes the thread down which she climbs, so you secrete the time you need to do whatever you have to, and you proceed along this thread which is visible only behind you but usable only had of you. The key its in working it out properly. If the thread is too long, it goes into loops and if it's too short, it snaps'" (Daumal, 38). Future Modern Ancient Greeks stuff.

The builders of a fantastic house were describing it to the protagonist of the story and I had an audible chuckle when they told him about the climate controls. "The temperature is kept exactly at the ideal level for the ideal human organism as defined by our experts. It is the only temperature at which nobody feels comfortable: some shine and others sweat" (Daumal, 45). That's funny!

The definition of reason given in this book is another funny passage. "Reason, n., an imaginary process onto which the responsibility for thinking is off-loaded" (Daumal, 55). It's funny because those who are slavishly devoted to reason are often more dogmatic that those slavishly devoted to a certain comprehension of a religion. It's good sarcasm.

In describing a certain group of people in the asylum, the guide tells the protagonist these people are called The Nibblists. Upon reading the guide's description I realized I might be exactly who the guide was describing. "They spend their time retailing imaginary lives in writing. Some relate what they themselves have experienced and attribute it to characters of their invention so that they might avoid their obligations and indulge all manner of impertinence. The others, through their characters, live out everything they would like to have experienced themselves, in order to have the illusion of having really experienced it" (Daumal, 57). Guilty as charged.

Chapter 20 in part 2 as a whole is hysterical. But, the best line in the chapter is "philosophy teaches how man thinks he thinks; but drinking shows how he really thinks" (Daumal, 59). The humor in this statement is dark and finds its relevance in its truthfulness.

Lastly, Daumal makes reference to Homer and his hero Ulysses. Upon listening to intellectual conversations so tantalizing the protagonist of this story remembers the warnings of his guide. Suddenly, he takes action. "But, remembering the companions of Ulysses, I stuffed those ears with thick plugs of common sense, and, listening with another ear - my trust ear, my only good ear - I heard only the hum of silence" (Daumal, 77). What a good line.

While I still think that I enjoy Queneau more than any other surrealist authors, A Night of Serious Drinking is up at the top of my list. I look forward to reading other books by René Daumal.

Parmenides and Zeno

(Originally written August 12, 2015)

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

The first physicists and cosmologists to use the new geometric method of deductive reasoning from self-evident starts found their logical conclusions clashed with real world experience and the problem of perception was born.

Parmenides was consumed with the problem of change.

Parmenides started with monism and added two tautologies:
1. What is, is
2. What is not, is not.

What is not, is not means that there is no nothing. 'Nothing' is essentially a meaningless word. His reasoning for this is that it is impossible to think of nothing. [FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - "Nothingness Bar, where it's truly possible to think of nothing" side effects may include, write an exceptionally long list]

From his two self-evident tautologies he declare that what is, is uncreated, indestructible, eternal and unchangeable.

1. It is uncreated because it was either created out of nothing or something. It can't be created out of nothing because nothing does not exist. It can't be created out of something because as a monist there is only one something.

2. It is indestructible because to destroy it would make it become nothing. There is no nothing.

3. It is eternal because 1+2

4. It is unchangeable because a) monism and b) if it changed into something new the old thing would be nothing. There is no nothing.

Zeno's Paradoxes

1. Motion is impossible. Before you go some place you must go half-way there. These half-ways there are infinite in number. It's impossible to go distances of an infinite number. Therefore, motion is impossible.

2. Achilles and the Tortoise

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974

Heraclitus - Everything Changes
Parmenides - Nothing Changes

Parmenides
-from Elea, Southern Italy
-circa 5th century B.C.
-met with Socrates circa 450 B.C.
-invented metaphysics based on logic
-senses are deceptive
-the multitude of things is an illusion
-had two strands of thought 1) way of truth 2) way of opinion

Way of truth - can't think about nothing, there is no nothing. No becoming, no passing away

Thought and language require objects outside themselves

"Parmenides maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in the past, but in some sense he must still exist since we can use his name significantly" (Russell, 49).

Parmenides argument: if a word can be used significantly it must mean something, not nothing. Therefore, the meaning of the word must have some existence.

Parmenides' argument relies on unchanging meaning of words.

Because of the continual 'existence' that words guarantee, there is really no past. Since there is no past, there is no change.

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot" (Barnes, 81).

He warned against the senses and extolled man not to let habit and experience force you to trust the senses.

What is, is un-generated and indestructible. No past, no future, always is.

"Thinking and a thought that it is are the same thing" (Barnes, 83). [FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - the concept behind the Parmenidean Engine]
"Parmenides was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and lies in the middle of the universe - Diogenes Laertius" (Barnes, 89).

The Peloponnesian War

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

Chapter 2 - Education through violence

In order to understand Plato one must understand both the pre-Socratic philosophers and the state of affairs in Athens and greater Greece at the time of Plato's life. Plato grew up in the Peloponnesian War.

Thucydides - "War is a teacher who educates through violence; and he makes men's characters fit their condition" (Jones, 41).

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - Our traveler must enter in a classroom being conducted by Mr. War, who I envision looks an awful lot like the WWF wrestler The Ultimate Warrior

The Peloponnesian war was brought about by both economic and ideological rivalry between Sparta and Athens.  

Sparta:

- Marriage was a contract to produce the healthiest of children
- It was forbidden for any Spartan to engage in money-making professions
- They were soldiers, the best in Greece but had a small population that ruled over a large population of serfs who had zero political rights
- oligarchical rule

Athens

- Direct Democracy: In Athens the 40,000 native males made up the Assembly that ruled the 400,000 inhabitants of the city. The Assembly was the legislative, judicial and executive branch of the government
- Athens acquired an empire of city-states, mostly on the Aegean islands that paid tribute money for the protection of the Athenian navy

The clash between Athens and Sparta was inevitable. Athens was, in the 5th century BC able to challenge Sparta militarily and crush other commercial centers financially. Eventually, Corinth and Sparta teamed up to stamp out the growing Athenian menace.

The war lasted 27 years and began with Pericles' policy to allow the Spartans and their allies to ravage the countryside, pulling all the population into the city's walls. Pericles thought that with the financial advantages and the naval advantages he could win a war of attrition. He might have been correct had not an overpopulated Athens been ravaged by the plague and rich families bemoan his policies leading to infighting.

Athens still might have won a defensive war had not direct democracy gotten in the way. A young general named Alcibiades convinced the Assembly to attack Syracuse in Sicily that resulted in the decimation of Athens' forces. Still, the war limped on another 10 years before some of the wealthiest families in Athens looked to make peace with Sparta and reclaim some normalcy. They figured that they could be granted political preference by Sparta and restore the old oligarchy. Likewise, they figured that good governance was preferable to the freedom and disorganized and chaotic government that the Assembly provided.

The Atomists: Leucippus & Democritus

History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

Chapter IX - The Atomists

Leucippus
-circa 440 BC
-influenced by Parmenides & Zeno
-questionable/shadowy historical figure

Democritus
-circa 420 BC
-much more concrete of an historical figure than Democritus
-from Thrace
-Contemporary of Socrates

Atomism was an attempted solution and synthesis of monism and pluralism

Everything is composed of indestructible atoms. The atoms are in constant motion, with the first motion seeming to have been a random motion. The collisions of the atoms formed vortices and then created the physical-visible world.

Atomists were strict determinists - everything happened in accordance with natural laws. There was no chance in their system, despite that being the most common argument leveled against them in the ancient world.

"The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause" (Russell 66-67).

As an aside, Russell makes an interesting point about causation on page 67. He points out that both teleology and pure mechanical causation systems can only be applied within reality and not to reality as a whole. If either are applied to reality as a whole they end with an infinite regress or at some arbitrary beginning of reality. While, he is his normal harsh self to those who might have a bent toward teleology his words make me think. "But if a man is so obstinately teleological as to continue to ask what purpose is served by the Creator, it becomes obvious that his question is impious. It is, moreover, unmeaning, since, to make it significant, we  should have to suppose the Creator created by some super-Creator whose purposes He served" (Russell, 67). That made me think of two things: first, the religions of the ancient world who believed in a dualism that had a benevolent and a malevolent creator. But, also the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son in authoring and completing creation. Allow me a moment to slip into some thought without taking this as my definitive belief as to regards the nature of creation.

Genesis 1:26 always made me pause when I read it and thought about the radical notion of monotheism often associated with the ancient Hebrews. Why would a radically monotheistic religion write of God saying "Let us make man in our image"? Of course, it could be like the 'royal we', but then when paired with John 1 it makes sense in a trinitarian understanding. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made" (John 1:1-4). When reading that little paragraph from Russell I suddenly saw that even Russell's logic is binding and correct we have creator and Super-Creator whose purposes He served. What does Christ teach throughout His ministry on earth? That He is doing the will of the Father. If the Father created all things through Christ (the Word) and nothing was made without Christ (the Word) then it stands that the teleological underpinnings are at least internally consistent. But, I digress and return to the pre-Socratic matter at hand, the Atomists.

Leucippus was a thinker of his time - he was concerned with the seemingly irrefutable arguments of Parmenides and the obvious fact that motion occurred. To the Greek thought one had to accept that Parmenides was right and no motion occurred or there had to be a void for motion to occur in. To combine Monism and Pluralism he added the void in which motion could occur. Aristotle sums his theory up nicely "The many move in the void (for there is a void): and by coming together they produce coming-to-be, while by separating they produce passing-away" (Russell, 68-69).

Even the Atomists had to admit though that Parmenides' arguments against the void were logically inscrutable. Parmenides would say that if there is a void than there is a void and that void is not nothing because even in nothing there is air; thus there is no void and motion is impossible. This mixture of logic and empirical observation caused a lot of problems in Greek thought and the Atomists simply chose to ignore the argument and state basically that there is motion and thus, a void, even if we can't quite put our fingers on it.

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS

In essence, Democritus claimed each atom was a Parmenidean One, indivisible and indestructible, never changing. Atoms collide to create everything. "There are many worlds, some growing, some decaying; some may have no sun or moon, some several. Every world has a beginning and an end. A world may be destroyed by collision with a larger world" (Russell, 71-71).\

-Life came from the primeval slime
-there is some fire in every living thing, but most in the brain or the breast
-thought is a kind of motion (and thus can cause motion elsewhere)

"Like Locke, Democritus held that such qualities as warmth, taste, and colour are not really in the object, but are due to our sense-organs, while such qualities as weight, density and hardness are really in the object" (Russell, 72)

-Democritus denied an immaterial soul (it was made of atoms), denied purpose in the universe, and didn't believe in the popular religion of the time.

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

Chapter 20 - Leucippus

-It is nearly impossible to separate the teachings of Leucippus from his pupil, Democritus
-possibly from Elea or Miletus

The one quote that is readily attributed to him is "No thing happens in vain, but all things for a reason and by necessity" (Barnes, 202). This shows the determinist nature of his thought.

Chapter 21 - Democritus

"He was the most prolific, and ultimately the most influential, of the Presocratic philosophers" (Barnes, 203). This is impressive because not a single of his writings have survived intact and much of his work is fragmented.

Future Modern Ancient Greeks

"Some suppose that the strange things which happen in the world gave us the conception of the gods. Democritus seems to be of this opinion; for he says that men in the distant past, remarking the events of the upper air- thunder and lightning, thunderbotls and conjunctions of stars, and eclipses of sun and moon - were frightened, thinking gods to be their cause - Sextus Empiricus" (Barnes, 220).

Life after death: "Many of the old thinkers, among them the natural scientist Democritus in his writings about Hades, have collected stories of those who are thought to have died and then come to life again - Proclus (Barnes, 222).
"
Really, I tend to ask,,, Is joy and absence of joy "the boundary advantage and disadvantage" (Barnes. 227).

Porphyry makes him out to be a vegetarian, not eating flesh by necessity but being pious. Those that are living badly, unwisely and un-piously aren't actually living, but dying slowly.

A quote: " Do not be eager to know everything lest you become ignorant of everything" (Barnes, 230) - probably good advice from Democritus to me...

In his ethical work he points out that "from the same sources from which good things come to us we may also draw bad" and that "for men, bad things spring from good when they do not know how to manage the good or to preserve them resourcefully".

His ethics had its end in contentment and joy - "It is best for a man to live his life with as much contentment and as little grief as possible; this will come about if he does not take his pleasure in mortal things" (Barnes, 233).

His ethics have an ascetic tone - "Desire for money, if it is not limited by satiety, is far heavier than extreme poverty; for greater desires create greater needs" (Barnes, 237). "It is fitting for men to take account of their souls rather than of their bodies; for a perfect soul corrects wickedness of body, but strength of body without reasoning makes the soul no better at all" (Barnes, 249). But, he isn't totally ascetic - "A life without a feast is a long road without an inn" (Barnes, 238). He seems to be of the mind, moderation is the best way to happiness and that happiness is a state of mind you can choose. "Fortunate is he who is content with moderate goods, unfortunate he who is discontent with many" (Barnes, 247).

In a funny quote that sums up every man from every generation he says, "More men are good by practice than by nature" (Barnes, 240).

"When bad men gain office, the more unworthy they are the more heedless they become and the more they are filled with folly and rashness" (Barnes, 242). Is Democritus anticipating Trump????? Of course he is, because he states, ""anyone who kills any highwayman or pirate is not punishable, whether he does it by his own hand, by issuing an order or by casting a vote" (Barnes, 243). Anticipation is key, homies! Hence he says, "It is hard to be ruled by an inferior"! Amen brother,

Democritus' ethic was ruled by personal shame - feel shame before others and do wrong no more before others than before yourself, your shame should keep you from doing wrong.

His social ethics are interesting and strangely corresponding to Christ's view of wealth. He doesn't rail against acquiring wealth or condemn being wealthy, much like Christ's view. They both simply claim that the love of wealth interferes with the life you ought to live. While Democritus and Christ differ on what that life is, they both agree money ain't everything. "A man enslaved to money will never be just" (Barnes, 249).

Fifth Century Pythagoreanism

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

Chapter 13 - Fifth-Century Pythagoreanism

The followers of Pythagoras organized themselves as a communal living group. It was also a political group centered around the cult of Pythagoras.

FMAG - Pythagoras' cult

At some point Magna Graecia erupted in political turmoil and many of the Pythagoreans dispersed and went into exile in Mainland Greece. They were divided into two groups the acusmatici (aphorists) and the mathematici (scientists). The Acusmatici did not consider the Mathematici to be true followers of Pythagoras. The Acusmatici treated Pythagoras as a god and that everything he said was a divine decree.

The Acusmatici had three types of Aphorisms:
1) What a thing is
2) What is the best thing
-What is the most wise thing in the world? Medicine
-What is most noble? Harmony
-What is most good? Happiness
-What is most truly said? That men are wretched
3) What you should and shouldn't do
-Have children (one must leave servants of God for later)
-Always put the right shoe on first
-"Do not help anyone to put down a burden (for one must not become a cause of idleness)" (Barnes, 163).
-Do not speak in the dark
-Labor is good, pleasure is bad
-"Human souls enter all animals except those which it is right to sacrifice; that is why one must eat only sacrificial animals" (Barnes, 164).

Cicero, on commenting about the Pythagorean notion of not eating beans, mentions that it was probably abstained from because of the flatulence it produces and flatulence does not let a mind be at ease during sleep. But, some took the Pythagorean notion, especially from Empedocles' line 'Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hand from beans' as allegorical. In this understanding of the Pythagoreans staying away from beans, the commentaries equate beans with testicles and say that abstaining from beans was abstaining from sexual indulgence. It is possible that it was meant allegorical, but contemporaries mocked the Pythagorean notion of abstaining from beans.

Antiphanes, an comic poet mocked their dietary patterns numerous times: "First, like a Pythagorizer, he eats no meat but takes and chews a blackened piece of cheap bread". Alexis, another poet says, "The Pythagorizers, as we hear, eat no fish nor anything else alive; and they're the only ones who don't drink wine. - But Epicharides eats dogs, and he's a Pythagorean. - Ah, but he kills them first and then they're no longer alive." Alexis also calls the Pythagorean diet a prison diet. These satirical lines are especially for the Acusmatici, not the Mathematici.

The Mathematici were obsessed with numbers. They assigned numbers and ratios to everything. "Everything in numbers and harmonies which cohered with the properties and parts of the heaven and with the universe as a whole, they collected and fitted together; and if there was anything missing anywhere they eargerly made additions so that the whole of their theory should hang together" (Barnes, 169).

Ten was the perfect number for them and since there were only 9 observable celestial bodies they theorized that there was a 10th, a sort of counter-earth.

They believed the heavenly bodies created sounds and that the sounds created a sort of musical quality of immense proportions.

They believed the universe to be infinite.

They believed the soul to be a harmony of blended contraries.

Empedocles

Empedocles

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - Empedocles is a wealth of subject matter.

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

Empedocles

-Empedocles is the first pluralist we know anything about.
-accepted the Parmenidean notion that nothing is created or destroyed
-denied the Parmenidean notion that motion is impossible
-argued that motion took place by things swapping places in the plenum
-The many things that exist are roots: earth, air, fire and water. Each of these roots are a Parmenidean one, eternal, uncreated, indestructible and unchanging
-Two types of motion: Love & Strife
-Love - the motion of uniting
-Strife - the motion of separation
-The world ebbs and flows between total love (absolute mixing of the four roots) and total strife (absolute segregation of the four roots)
-the objects of the perceivable world are unstable combinations of the four roots
-anticipated the survival of the fittest part of evolution in a creative way:

As love begins to come back into the ascendency and take back from strife the world will have a strange look: "At this time the various parts of animals arise in a hit-or-miss way, as Love bit by bit mixes the elements that Strife has separated: 'heads spring up without necks and arms wander bare and bereft of shoulders. Eyes stray up and down in want of foreheads'. As love continues to mix things up, these parts get united in a completely haphazard way: 'these things joined together as each might chance, and many other things besides continually arose'. Eyes might, for instance, 'mix' with hands, feet with shoulders. Such mixtures obviously cannot survive, but in the course of random combinations a successful relationship sooner or later occurs" (Jones, 27).  But the evolutionary process is completely controlled by chance. There is no god guiding it along.

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - Empedocles needs to be a sort of mad scientist letting things 'evolve' by random. Weird beasts with no eyes, six hands and a foot, sort of a Dali painting out of a nightmare. 

While Empedocles denied the existence of god in the evolutionary process of love coming into the ascendency, he did worship the overall process as a god like Xenophanes. Also like Xenophanes, the god of Empedocles was not anthropomorphic.

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

"The mixture of philosopher, prophet, man of science, and charlatan, which we found already in Pythagoras, was exemplified very completely in Empedocles" (Russell, 53).

-Flourished circa 440 BC
-from Acragas, Sicily
-a democratic politician and claimed to be a god
-stories abound of him as a miracle worker, could control the winds, brought a woman back to life after being dead for 30 days
- to prove he was a god he leapt into the crater of Etna
"Great Empedocles, that ardent soul
Leapt into Etna, and was roasted whole"
-Like his contemporary Parmenides, Empedocles wrote in verse
-his science and religion were inconsistent with one another
-discovered a crude version of centrifugal force
-wild evolutionary theory
-knew that the moon shined by reflected life (but, thought the sun did too)
-four elements (six in function): fire, earth, water, air (love & strife)
-love and strife are processes that are cyclical. there was a time when love fully wiped out stripe and men only worshiped the Cyprian Aphrodite then. But strife came back and things began to separate again.
-The cycle of life was not teleological. It was only governed by chance.
-His religious leanings were Pythagorean and Orphic
-He also considered himself a god, even if sometimes he felt like one in exile for some sin

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

-Came from Acragas, Sicily
-Came from a rich and distinguished family
-lived circa 495-435 BC
-claimed to be no longer mortal, an immortal god, compassionate for strangers and inexperienced in evil
-was a little conceited, "But why do I attack them as though I were achieving something great if I prove superior to much-perishing mortal men?" (Barnes, 112). This is how Empedocles described being smarter than the average man, eh Boo-Boo. Sextus Empiricus however says that no one even moderately versed in philosophy would have thought him boastful.

Plutarch describes some of his words (the bold are Empedocles, the regular Pultarch):

There is an oracle of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods, that whenever anyone errs and defiles in fear his dear limbs - one of the spirits who have been allotted long-lasting life - he shall wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed ones. Such is the road I now follow, an exile from the gods and a wanderer. He proves from his own case that not just he himself but all of us are immigrants here and strangers and exiles. For it is not blood, my friends, nor blended breath (he says) which provides the substance and principle of our souls: from these the body has been fashioned, earth-born and mortal; but the soul has come here from elsewhere and he calls birth by the gentlest of terms, a journey abroad. And what is most true, the soul flees and wanders, driven by divine decrees and laws...when it is tied to the body, it cannot recall or remember from what honour and from what breadth of bliss it has come, having exchanged not Sardis for Athens, nor Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but the heavens and the moon for earth and an earthly life (Barnes, 113).

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - This is why the Greeks live on another planet. They were sent to earth to live abroad by the gods. Some of them are still stuck in a cycle of birth-death in exile on earth, but some have returned to their home planet, where our traveler is being taken. They were sent to earth because of sin they committed, decreed to wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed ones. But, the gods got bored waiting and followed them to earth, forgot how to get home and have since traveled elsewhere. Only Prometheus, because of his punishment was sent back home to wait. 

-Souls were 'long-lasting spirits' in his poetry because the soul is immortal
-Strife, the process by which things are coming apart in his cosmology punish the souls by forcing them to go from body to body
-the bodies of the animals men eat are the dwelling places of punished souls
-sex is bad because it makes men and women co-workers with strife
-He called those who gain the wealth of divine thoughts happy and those whose beliefs about the gods are dark are wretched
-believed that no part of the universe is empty

His biological evolution theory had four generations:

1st Generation of animals was just body parts
2nd Generation of animals were monstrous
3rd generation of animals are what we see today (properly joined limbs and such)
4th generation of animals is when Love is totally in dominance and all is One

"In the time of Love where many neckless heads sprang up" (Barnes, 142)

FUTUTRE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - A field of 'Love' where neckless heads are being grown like cabbages. There is a scarecrow in the field to scare away the strifebirds.

"Many were born double-headed and double-chested - man-faced oxen arose and again ox-headed men" (Barnes, 143).

For Empedocles blood contained the capacity to understand. Thought is located in the blood.

Empedocles was a vegetarian because he found that the souls migrated from one body to another. Eating an animal was a grave sin because you devour another when you eat meat.

Like Pythagoras, Empedocles said it was a sin to eat beans.

Empedocles had a Utopian ideal. In his Utopian age, the beasts and animals were friendly to man and man friendly to them.

Parmenides

Parmenides

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

The first physicists and cosmologists to use the new geometric method of deductive reasoning from self-evident starting positions found that their logical conclusions clashed with the real world experience they had. The problem of perception was born.

Parmenides was consumed with the problem of change.

Parmenides started with monism and added two tautologies:
1) What is, is
2) What is not, is not

What is not, is not means that there is no nothing. 'Nothing' is essentially a meaningless word. His reasoning for claiming that there is no nothing is that it is impossible to think of nothing.

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - The Parmenides - An Oxygen Like Bar where the users imbibe on a vapor that allows them to conceptualize nothing. It often drives its users to depression, madness and suicide. But, occasionally genius is borne out of using. Not recommended for persons on their first few cycles of birth and death.

From his two self-evident tautologies he deemed that what is, is uncreated, indestructible, eternal and unchangeable.
- It is uncreated because it was either created out of nothing or something. It can't be created out of nothing because nothing does not exist. It can't be created out of something because as a monist he assumed that there is only that one something.
-It is indestructible because to destroy it would make it become nothing. There is no nothing. Therefore it is indestructible.
-It is eternal because it is uncreated and indestructible.
-It is unchangeable because there is nothing it can change into in a monist system. Also, if it did change the old thing it was would become nothing. There is no nothing, so change is impossible.

History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974

Heraclitus: everything changes
Parmenides: nothing changes

-From Elea, Southern Italy
-flourished circa 5th century BC
-Met with Socrates circa 450 BC
-Invented metaphysics based on logic
-believed the senses to be deceptive
-believed that the multitude of things was illusionary
-had two strands of thought: the way of truth and the way of opinion

Way of Truth: can't think about nothing, there is no nothing. there is no becoming and no passing away.

"Parmenides maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in the past, but in some sense he must still exist, since we can use his name significantly" (Russell, 49).

Parmenides' argument: if a word can be used significantly it must mean something and not nothing. Therefore, the meaning of the word must have some existence. This argument relies on the notion that the meaning of words is unchanging.

Because of the continual 'existence' that words guarantee, there really is no past. Since there is no past, there is no change.

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot" (Barnes, 81).

He warned against the senses and extolled man not to let habit and experience force you to trust the deceptive senses.

What is, is un-generated and indestructible. No past, no future, always is.

"Thinking and a thought that it is are the same thing" (Barnes, 83).

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - This is the basis for the Parmenides Engine. Think of the place that you are going and you are there. This allows for the space explorer to travel the vastness of space in short periods of time without massive amounts of fuel. The problem is that it can only be piloted by someone able to focus their mind completely on a single object. Distracted pilots have had disastrous results with this type of engine. Sometimes they end up half in one place and half in another. Sometimes they end up somewhere as something else. Sometimes they end up nowhere, if they have recently imbibed on the Parmenides vapor. This is actually the origin of black holes.

"[Parmenides] was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and lies in the middle [of the universe] - Diogenes Laertius" (Barnes, 89).

Pythagoras

Pythagoras

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

"About the life of Pythagoras we know almost nothing; we know even less about his views, as distinguished from those of his followers" (Jones, 31).

-Probably born in Samos off the coast of Asia Minor and emigrated to Southern Italy around 530 BC
-Founded a society, primarily a religious society in Croton. The society conducted some scientific research and dominated the politics of Croton for a time. The science they practiced seemed to be a part of their worship of god.
-Pythagoras was both scientific and religious
-The religious temperament of Greece was changing around the time of Pythagoras. The Olympic gods were being given lip service and the old Greek notion of religion with it. The quest for immortality was gaining sway as a new worship of Dionysus began to sweep through Greece.
-The worship of Dionysus was scandalous to the conservative Greeks. "The ceremonies took place, often at night, in remote places, and women - the scandal of conservative males - took a prominent part in them. In a frenzy of intoxication the worshipers tore living animals apart, drank their blood, and danced to the point of exhaustion. They felt the spirit of the god pass into their bodies; the union so passionately desired was consummated, and the worshipers exulted in a supreme happiness and utter freedom from any sort of restraint" (Jones, 32). This was a far cry between the business like transactions made between the earlier Greeks and the gods of Olympus.

The Pythagoreans took the Bacchic rites of worship and elevated it to an intellectual level. Rather than using wine to achieve intoxication, the Pythagoreans used music to purify their soul.

-The Pythagoreans believed in an immortal soul that passed through a cycle of births, coming back as different things determined by the kind of life led by the soul in the preceding existence.

-The goal of the Pythagoreans was to be released from the cycle of birth and death. It was accomplished through attaining wisdom.

There were three types of men in the Pythagorean system (stated in allegorical form based on the Olympic games)
1) The lovers of gain - those who sold souvenirs
2) The lovers of honor - the competitors
3) The lovers of knowledge - the spectators

The idea was that the Pythagoreans, by contemplating on the eternal truths to which their science afforded them access to would eventually lead to their escape from the cycle of birth and death.

For the Milesian three the use of science was to satisfy human curiosity and had some practical application. For the Pythagoreans the use of science was the method to spiritual redemption.

Mathematics was the principle science of the religion of the Pythagoreans. The tetraktys played an important part in their cosmology. (Tetraktys are triangle numbers in sequence, 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, 1+2+3+4, etc.)

They also developed the arithmetic mean and the harmonic mean. They used this in their metaphysics and cosmology to show that the conflict of opposites, a key component in early Greek philosophy, could be solved by means of harmonizing. They also used the idea of the mean in medicine and ethics. In medicine, health was the mean of a harmony of opposites, neither too hot nor too cold. The use of the mean in ethics led to the idea of moderation that persists in later Greek thought.

Unlike the Milesian three and their disciples, the Pythagoreans were not monists. They were dualists. Their two principles were the Limit and the Unlimited. The Unlimited was a mass of indeterminacy and indefinities. The Limit was fire.

The Pythagoreans saw the cosmic order as having a unity that is in nature mathematical. "The Pythagoreans' most notable achievement, certainly, was the concept of the 'cosmos' - the notion that the universe is not a chaotic hodgepodge but a thoroughly ordered system in which every element is harmoniously related to every other" (Jones, 38). While this was already nascent in Greek thought, but the Pythagoreans made it explicit. This meant that the universe was completely knowable.



The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

-Pythagoras was one of the most intellectually important men of all time
-Demonstrative deductive mathematics began with Pythagoras
-Native of Samos, flourishing around 532 B.C.
-"Some say he was the son of a substantial citizen named Mnesarchos, others that he was the son of the god Apollo; I leave the reader to take his choice between these alternatives" (Russell, 29). This particular sentence might have been the one that truly made me enjoy reading Russell initially ten years ago.

-Samos, like Miletus, was a commercial city
-Samos was ruled by Polycrates, a tyrant not known for his moral scruples. He killed his two brothers and used his considerable navy as a nationalized piracy ring
-Samos grew in stature after Miletus was subdued by Persia
-Polycrates tried to play both sides against the middle in the Persian and Egyptian wars, and used his political enemies to do so. Eventually, this caught up with him and led to his crucifixion by the Persians.
-Despite being treacherous, Polycrates was a patron of the arts. Pythagoras however, did not like Polycrates and left Samos on account of him.
-After leaving Pythagoras may have visited Egypt and learned from that visit. Regardless if this is true or not, he ended up settling down at Croton, in Southern Italy.
- Like Miletus and Samos, the cities of southern Italy were commercial hubs.
- At Croton, Pythagoras founded a society with various disciples and school for mathematics
- Unfortunately Pythagoras wore out his welcome at Croton and left for another southern Italian city, Metapontion

-Pythagoras was both a mathematical thinker and a mystic. He founded a religion based on transmigration of souls. His religion was a sort of reformation of Orphism, which itself was a reformation of the religion of Bacchus or Dionysus
-Much of Pythagoras' religion was otherworldly, placed value in the unity of God and condemned the visible world as illusionary and bemoaned that it obscured the view of the real things.

Religious beliefs:
-believed the soul to be immortal
-the soul is transformed into other kinds of living things
-everything in existence is born again and so nothing is absolutely new
-everything that has life should be treated as family
-the rebirth cycle is the wheel of birth, to escape most effectively is to be a philosopher

"In the society that he founded, men and women were admitted on equal terms; property was held in common, and there was a common way of life. Even scientific and mathematical discoveries were deemed collective, and in a mystical sense due to Pythagoras even after his death" (Russell, 33).

Believed there to be three types of men:
1) lowest - those who buy and sell
2) middle - those who act and do things (the competitors)
3) highest - those who observe (the philosopher)

For Pythagoras the chief good was the contemplative life. Hence, the spectators/philosophers who contemplate are better than those that do/competitors. This is somewhat backwards to today's thoughts where those that do are considered more valuable than those that watch.

Pythagoras was a religious philosopher and a mathematical one. The contemplation that he achieved brought about mathematics for the sake of mathematics, it didn't need utility.

"Personal religion derived from ecstasy, theology from mathematics; and both are to be found in Pythagoras" (Russell, 37).

The combination of mathematics and theology began with Pythagoras.

Pythagoras is influential in numerous fields. What he began found its way into numerous thoughts/worldviews. "But for him, Christians would not have thought of Christ as the Word; but for him, theologians would not have sought logical proofs of God and immortality" (Russell, 37).

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

-"We hear more about Pythagoras than about any other Presocratic philosopher. For the school of thought to which he gave his name lasted for a millennium, and several works by later Pythagoreans have survived. Yet in many ways Pythagoras is the most obscure and perplexing of all the early thinkers" (Barnes, 28).

-The legend of Pythagoras rapidly built up around him.

-Isocrates mentions an interesting thing about Pythagoras: "He was the first to bring philosophy to Greece, and in particular he was concerned, more conspicuously than anyone else, with matters to do with sacrifices and temple purifications, thinking that even if this would gain him no advantage from the gods it would at least bring him high repute among men" (Barnes, 31).

Aristotle, in a lost work, attributes many miracles to Pythagoras. First, Pythagoras bit a poisonous snake that bit him and it killed the snake. Second, Pythagoras showed his thigh was made of gold. Third, he appeared in two cities simultaneously.

The teachings of Pythagoras can be divided into two categories: mathematico-metaphysical and moral.

Porphyry wrote that Pythagoras said that the soul was immortal, that it changed into other kinds of animals. He also stated that Pythagoras taught the history repeated itself from time to time and thus, nothing was ever truly new.

Diodorus wrote that Pythagoras was vegetarian because eating meat was horrible on account of the soul of the animal. He also wrote that Pythagoras claimed to remember his past life as Euphorbus who was killed by Menelaus in the Trojan war.

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - Have Pythagoras be a charlatan. He sets up a community to do 'communal work for the good of the community' but it really just puffs up his own image.

Anaximenes

Anaximenes

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

-third of the Milesian philosophers
-monist, his one stuff is air
-Rejected Anaximander's boundless because the boundless is easy to talk about but impossible to define. Every 'thing' has characteristics that make it a 'thing'. The boundless has no characteristics by definition and therefore, can't be a thing at all, let alone the one thing. He showed that Anaximander's theory, rather than solving the problem of how one thing becomes many things, it simply masks the problem.
-Air, being the one stuff for Anaximenes changes quantitatively (becoming more or less dense) that effects the qualitative change in the many things that air becomes through this process.
-"Anaximenes laid the basis for a  quantitative description of the world" (Jones, 14).

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

-The fundamental substance for Anaximenes was air. "The soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed, air becomes first water, then if further condensed, earth, and finally stone" (Russell, 28).
-Anaximenes advance was to make the difference between substances quantitative.
-The earth is shaped like a round table and air encompasses it. The air holds up the earth like the soul (also made of air) holds man together
-Influenced Pythagoras

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

-Unlike his earlier contemporary Anaximander who wrote in 'somewhat poetical words', Anaximenes wrote in a simple and economical style
-Principle substance is limitless air, from which what is coming, is and what was is composed of.
-The air is always in motion
-Air becomes other substances either by becoming rarefied or by condensing.
-Earth is flat. The sun and the moon and other heavenly bodies are flat and ride in the air because of their flatness
-"The heavenly bodies have come into being from earth, because mist rises from the earth and is rarefied and produces fire, and the heavenly bodies are composed of this fire when it is aloft" (Barnes, 24).
-our souls are air and hold us together, breath and air encompass the whole world
-Air, the first principle is necessarily limitless because it never gives out

Anaximander

Anaximander:

The Classical Mind 2nd Edition
W.T. Jones
1980

- A younger contemporary of Thales
- One remaining sentence from his book: "From what source things arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of the time" (Jones, 11).
             - There is one stuff (monism)
             - There is a process by which the one becomes many stuffs
             - The process is necessary
- For Anaximander, the one stuff was not an element, but something called the 'boundless'
- Anaximander argued that the one stuff couldn't be an element from a logical standpoint. Water can't really become fire because that would be the thing becoming the opposite of itself. Since all the elements would have this problem, his one stuff had to be something entirely different in essence.
- For Anaximander the process was important. The boundless would become something, would return to the boundless and then become the opposite thing. It was cyclical.
-For Anaximander, "The world was still basically disorderly, and that what required explanation was its orderliness" (Jones, 12).
-Anaximander had an interesting theory of evolution that anticipated some basic Darwinian features.

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

-Born around 610 B.C.
- Second of the third Milesian philosophers
- His first substance was infinite, eternal and ageless. It encompasses all the world
- Thought our world was one of many
- His process of the boundless becoming other things and then back to being the boundless has an underpinning of cosmic justice.
- He believed "there should be a certain proportion of fire, of earth, and of water in the world, but each element (conceived as a god) is perpetually attempting to enlarge its empire. But there is a kind of necessity or natural law which perpetually redresses the balance; where there has been fire, for example, there are ashes, which are earth" (Russell, 27).
-The worlds that existed evolved, and were not created
-Believed that man descended from fish
-First man to make a map
-Earth is shaped like a cylinder

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

-Produced a star map and a map of the world
-The boundless contains all the world
-The boundless is also time
-Eternal motion exists and that brings the heavens into existence
-Earth is rounded like a stone pillar
-The number of worlds is limitless in number
-All things are constantly renewed after destruction (return to the boundless and then processed again)
-At the generation of earth something broke off from the eternal and formed a flame around the earth, like bark on a tree. Then the ball burst and the sun, moon and stars came into being.
- Censorinus - "Anaximander of Miletus says he thinks that from water and earth when they were heated, there arose fish, or animals very like fish, that humans grew in them, and that the embryos were retained inside up to puberty, whereupon the fish-like animals burst and men and women emerged already able to look after themselves" (Barnes, 20). That could be an interesting invasion story for Future Modern Ancient Greeks.
-The boundless is divine, because it is immortal and indestructible

Anaximander might be the best one to model the Future Modern Greek's new planet

God and Nature in Homer

A History of Western Philosophy - The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

Chapter 1 - Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Philosophy has murky beginnings, not because of lost records, but because by the very nature of philosophy as process and gradual change. There is a continuum; thus, no definitive beginning to western philosophy.

God & Nature in Homer

In Homer, Zeus is not an all-powerful god. He is beseeched by his children, prayed to by both other gods and men. The gods of Homer were a reflection of the Homeric state. "The Greek state, as Homer described it, was monarchial in principle, but the king was by no means an absolute monarch. Public opinion, as represented by the warriors and nobles - not the 'people', of course - clearly played a part in limiting the royal prerogative" (Jones, 4). But, this limited royal prerogative could be overridden by the ruler as there was no law checking the king/chieftain. [Side note, make this the government of the Future Modern Ancient Greeks].

Homer did not believe in a regularly ordered cosmos. The irregularities of nature like thunderstorms, severe winters, unexpected winds, accidents that flew in the face of ordered cosmos were attributed to the whims of the gods. Simply put, there were regular occurrences and an ordered cosmos to an extent, but "the gods can never be counted on not to interrupt this order" (Jones, 4). Plus, Zeus, the supreme authority was impulsive in nature and likely to throw a monkey wrench in the plans of other gods and men.

Key to Homeric beliefs is the virtue of moderation and the vice of hübris. In Greek society, even when the king overrides the majority opinion, the men do not protest for they know that punishment will come down from above. While some of the irregularities in the natural order are caused by the gods' whims, mean-spirited nature and infighting, some are attributed to the gods' punishment of man's hübris.

The worship of the gods comes about not because the gods are inherently good and deserving of worship, but because the gods have power over men. Prayers and offerings are lifted up to the gods because it is expedient to do so. It's good to have a god on your side when you're out and about.

When the gods punish men it isn't because they've done something immoral or wrong. They punish because the man has annoyed the gods in some manner by violating the regulations of those gods. In Homer, the regulations that gods hand down to men are not to ensure good for man, but good for the gods.

In this way, the prayers and petitions of men to the gods functions like a tit-for-tat kind of thing. Prayers  and sacrifices are offered to get a desired outcome. The gods accept it and should reward the man. If the gods fail to reward the man, then the man is justified in expressing his outrage.

Homer's gods are causal agents. They cause the regularly ordered cosmos and the interruptions of those ordered events. But, above the gods is fate, which even Zeus must yield to.