(Originally Written August 31, 2006 in History I)
The Classical Mind Ch. 1 "Pre-Socratic Philosophy"
Parmenides:
-Saw that Thales' philosophy suffered from the problem of change
-Concerned himself with analyzing the concept of change, not just particular changes
-He was a monist, believing that reality is fundamentally one
-He added two self evident principles:
1. What is, is
2. What is not, is not
-Viewed change as illusionary
-The notion of change is self-contradictory
-His two self-evident premises are true as tautologies, but do not remain true when he adds his whole theory to them
-What is not, is not means that there is no nothing. There can be no object existing as nothing
-Nothing exists is self-contradictory
-Through his monism and his two premises, Parmenides deduced that:
1. Whatever is, is uncreated
2. Whatever is, is indestructible
3. Whatever is, is eternal
4. Whatever is, is unchangeable
-If things were created they were either created from nothing or out of something. There is no nothing, thus if things were created they were created out of something. Monism denies that something else can exist and thus, everything is uncreated
-Things cannot be destroyed because destruction leads to nothing and nothing cannot exist
-Things tat are uncreated and indestructible are obviously eternal
-Things that change produce nothing out of the old thing, thus everything is unchangeable.
Zeno's Paradoxes:
-Zeno was a pupil of Parmenides
-He developed a paradox that showed motion was impossible
-Aristotle's version of the paradox: "Before any distance can be traversed, half the distance must be traversed. These half distances are infinite in number. It is impossible to traverse distances infinite in number"
- Zeno illustrated the paradox with Achilles and a Tortoise. Achilles can begin to pursue the Tortoise but he will never overtake it. Achilles may catch up to where the Tortoise has been but the Tortoise has moved. Achilles gets closer to the Tortoise, but still has not taken him over. The distance becomes shorter and shorter but no matter how close Achilles gets, there is always some distance.
-"These contentions still worry philosophers and mathematicians" (Jones, 23).
-Despite the logical reasoning of Zeno, it is at odds with common sense
-The belief and trust in reason over sense perception by some Greek philosophers led to a profound skepticism
Rationalism and Empiricism
-Logical consistency vs. sensory perception
-Logical consistency has a number of advantages over sense perception, it is indubitable and it is universal
-Rationalists follow logical consistency; empiricists use sense perception to guide them
-Neither pure rationalism nor pure empiricism is satisfactory
The Pluralists:
-Parmenides argument was hypothetical: if the Milesians' monism is correct then change is impossible, therefore change is impossible.
-Parmenides did not question the monism and that is where he got off course
-Monism, at least the materialistic form the Milesians pursued gave way as their premise was questioned and in this questioning of the monism premise, Greek philosophy was born
Empedocles:
-Empedocles was the first known pluralist
-He accepted Parmenides' notion that nothing is created or destroyed
-He denied Parmenides' notion that motion is impossible
-He believed that reality was a plenum, a completely full world
-Pluralism replaced monism and motion occurred when two objects exchanged places
-Motion is possible in a plenum if plurality exists
-He believed that the many were combinations of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water
-Each of the elements was eternal, uncreated, indestructible and unchanging
-There are two types of motions:
1. Love - a motion of uniting different things
2. Strife - a motion of separating two things back to their elemental form
-The world process was a constant cycle of mixing the four elements. Love is the dominant motion here. Then, gradually strife replaces love and the four elements begin to be separated. This ebb and flow process continues on and on.
-The four elements were eternal, the things they created, the things we see were however, unstable and finite
-His process anticipated the survival of the fittest evolutionary theory
-Empedocles called the process 'god' and worshipped it. He denied his god any anthropomorphic qualities
Anaxagoras:
-Aanaxagoras was an Ionian and the first critic of Empedocles
-He was troubled by the thought of four substances miraculously coming together in some mixture to form things like cabbage or a lion
-He believed Parmenides had it right when he said that change was illusionary
-He believed that the stuff of the world was eternal
-He believed that there is a many and that each one of the many is a Parmenidean one
-He believed that there is motion within the plenum
-He denied that change resulting in transformation was possible and maintained that everything existent was a combination of all the stuffs in this world. The stuff that is dominant in each particular thing denotes what that thing is.
-Anaxagoras denied Empedocles' two motions of love and strife and replaced it with a single type of motion, mind
-Mind is material and it sets all thing in order
-By setting mind to set all things right he implied purpose, but he contradictorily contended that mind was purely mechanical in essence
-Mind (the motion of the world) sets up a vortex which separates the various stuffs from the elements
-Eventually the vortex will rotate wide enough so that every stuff will be separated from every other stuff
Estimation of Anaxagoras' Theory:
-The theory of Anaxagoras amounted to the denial of the Milesians' scientific spirit
-Empedocles and Anaxagoras did not solve the basic problems the Milesian school faced, but they did articulate them better
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans:
-The life of Pythagoras is virtually unknown and his views are nearly indistinguishable from that of his followers
-Pythagoras was reported by Heraclitus to be one of the most scientific men of his age and a religious philosopher
-Pythagoras was born in Samos and then emigrated to Southern Italy circa 530 B.C. He founded a society at Croton
-Croton was a religious fraternity that was very scientific. They believed their science was a part of their worship
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