05 the Milesian Naturalists

► 5.1 The Presocratics é 5-1 ►

é Rene Mario Micallef, 11-Mar-03 12:10 AM

5. THE MILESIAN NATURALISTS

5.1 The Presocratics

5.1.1 WHO WERE THEY? Sap. The ’Presocratics… is a term which designates the first group of Philosophers. What in-

formation do we get from the term itself? Whiz Pre-socratics– These people must have lived before Socrates. Sap. O.K., you are more or less right. However Democritus is considered a Presocratic Phi-

losopher even though he was younger than Socrates. So how can we understand that ’before Socrates… to include such Philosophers?

Men…s How about taking it to refer to a sort of ’trend… or ’fashion…? Some people keep producing a certain style of clothes or music or accessories even if the main trend has changed. So Presocratic Philosophy could be considered as the trend in Philosophy before Socrates invented his style of Philoso-phy– and guys like Democritus were contemporaries of Socrates who did not accept and follow his style of making Philosophy.

Sap. That was a great insight, Men…s Clara. Using more Philosophical terms, we would say that the distinction is more CONCEPTUAL than CHRONOLOGICAL. Socrates and Democritus, though contemporaries, had a very different idea (concept) of how to do Philosophy, of what Philosophy was all about.

Tank If they had a very different idea of what Philosophy was about, why do we call them both Philosophers? If Socrates were right (or if we were to decide that Socrates… research is to be called ’Philosophy… by convention), the Presocratics would not be true Philoso-phers, would they?

Men…s Wait a minute Think Tank. You could have different style of clothes and they would all be clothes– Same thing in Philosophy–

Tank OK, Men…s, but if I…m not mistaken, here we are speaking about a DEFINITION of what Phi-losophy is about, not simply about the characteristics of a particular style of Philosophy. For Socrates, the Presocratics were not really Philosophers because they did not satisfy his criteria of what constituted ’real… Philosophical thinking.

Sap. You are both right, in a way. We consider the Presocratics and the Socratics (i.e. the followers of Socrates, people like Plato– ) both Philosophers because we adopt an un-derstanding of Philosophy that includes them both, namely that of Aristotle. If we were to adopt Plato…s definition of Philosophy (the ’Socratic definition…), the presocratics would not be considered true Philosophers. This is the approach followed in some revolution-ary textbooks, such as the one by Pierre Hadot, who calls Presocratic thought ’Philoso-phy before Philosophy…. Traditional textbooks follow Aristotle by convention, and include the Presocratics as the first group of Philosophers, while noting that some of their re-



search would today be more considered as ’rudimentary science… than Philosophy. We…ll come back to this. Now, let…s see– how can we classify the Presocratics? Were they a uniform body of thinkers?

Whiz These Philosophers lived in different places in different times, but I think we can risk a very rough classification in two big groups. On one hand we have certain thinkers and philosophical communities interested in what constituted nature. We refer to them as the ’naturalists…; their ideas were developed mainly in the GREEK POLEIS OF ASIA MINOR in the VIth century BCE. On the other hand we find a heterogeneous group of thinkers spread over the GREEK POLEIS IN ITALY, who developed their own Philosophical ideas between the VIth and the Vth century BCE. From these two groups, we get a third group forming in ATHENS in the Vth century.

• In Asia Minor, we have the Milesian School (Thales, Anaximander and Anaximene from the city of Miles in Ionia), Heraclitus (from Ephesus), Xenophanes (from Colophon), and Anaxagoras (from Clazomenae). Pythagoras, legendary founder of the Pythagorean sect also came from this part of the world (from the island of Samos).

• In Italy (or MAGNA GRAECIA, ’Greater Greece…, as it came to be called), we have the Eleatic school (Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus from Elea), Empedocles (from Agri-gento in Sicily) and Gorgias (from Leontini in Sicily). To complicate the picture a bit, we must add a number of people (and Philosophical communities) that emigrated from Asia Minor to Italy, like Pythagoras and Xenophanes. Note that more significantly, it was the ideas that emigrated: the ’Pythagoreans… were communities spread all over Italy and which discussed certain ideas attributed to a legendry fellow called ’Pythagoras….1

• In the Vth century, Athens becomes a great centre of intellectual activity. It attracts Par-menides, Empedocles and Gorgias from Italy; Anaxagoras from Asia Minor; Democritus and Protagoras from Abdera (near the Bosphorus). With them, these thinkers bring along new trends in philosophy: Eleatism (Parmenides), Atomism (Democritus), Soph-ism (Gorgias, Protagoras).

5.1.2 PHILOSOPHY AND PHILOMYTHY Tank I would like to go back to the question whether the Presocratics were philosophers or

not. Friggieri (2000:2ff.), for instance, follows Aristotle and considers the Milesian natu-ralists to be the first Philosophers. He cites an authority, Jonathan Barnes, who in turn seeks to defend Aristotle's distinction between guys like Thales and the Pythagoreans (whom Aristotle considers ’Philosophers… and mentions in Metaphysics Aé) and guys like Homer and Hesiod (whom Aristotle considers irrelevant to the ’history of the theory of the 4 causes…, i.e. the subject-matter of Metaphysics Aé, and whom he calls philomythoi (lovers/followers of myths). Hadot (2002:10) adopts a Platonic definition of Philosophy, and claims that there is no radical distinction in structure and purpose between the cos-mogonies (narratives relating the origin of the cosmos, e.g. Hesiod…s cosmogony; first chapters of the book of Genesis– ) of the philomythoi and the studies ’regarding nature… (peri physeos) of the naturalists (physiologoi, physikoi). Hadot cites G. Naddaf…s studies on the subject which show that the naturalists… investigations on ’Nature… (Physis) do substitute a ’rational… theory of nature for the mythical narratives “ but ’rational… dis-course here merely means positing a battle between ’physical… realities which seek to predominate one over the other, instead of positing a battle between personified natural forces (the gods) found in the mythical cosmogonies2. Hence the radical distinction, for

1 Later on, even Plato (a Socratic) spent a good number of years active in Italy. 2 A cosmogony is an account of how the universe came to be. One of the oldest Greek mythical writings is the ’Cos-mogony… of Hesiod.



Hadot, is the one between what came before Socrates and what came after Socrates and this distinction separates what is Philosophy from what is not. Who is right, there-fore, Friggieri or Hadot?

Sap. O.K. That…s a nice question– Let us state it more clearly. For Friggieri (and Barnes), the distinction ’Philosophy/non-Philosophy… corresponds to the distinction ’rational explana-tion/mythical narrative…, hence the Milesian naturalists are the first Philosophers since they substitute a rational explanation of nature for the mythical narratives of the ’poets…, the ’philomythoi…. For Hadot (and Naddaf), the distinction ’rational explanation/mythical narrative…, while remaining a valid distinction, is not radical enough to distinguish be-tween ’Philosophy/non-Philosophy…. I tend to agree with Hadot on this point, but I would not hastily conclude (as he does) that we should write history of Philosophy starting from Socrates and not before. There are some elements of Philosophy in Hesiod and Homer as there are in the Milesian Naturalists– we simply have to interpret the myths3 philosophically and not ’mythologi-cally…. Parmenides too writes using the style of a myth, and we still call him a philoso-pher, not a mythologist (mythologos, philomythos). Other cultures (non-western) have their own philosophical notions that we have to filter from myths, proverbs, etc. Myths are not irrational or a-rational. So the distinction ’rational explanation/mythical narrative… cannot be used to demarcate the frontier between ’Philosophy/non-Philosophy… “ but this does not entail that Philosophy started after the Presocratics– in some form, it could also have preceded them4. This said, I find that there are pedagogic reasons to start History of Philosophy from the Presocratics. Their ideas are interesting, accessible to the beginner, and most of the stuff is fundamental to what comes afterwards. I would give more importance to the questions raised by Parmenides than to those raised Thales and Anaximander, but the discussion of the Milesian naturalists is very readable, and it makes more sense to split the Milesians and the Eleatics from the poets than to split the Eleatics from the Mile-sians. In the end, we start writing Philosophy from the Milesian Naturalists mainly because tra-dition has done so since time immemorial and we like it that way. Tradition follows Meta-physics Aé, as though it were the first History of Philosophy textbook (which it is not, since Aristotle, in this book, is mainly concerned with a History of Aristotelian Physics (the theory of the 4 causes)). I feel that tradition gives too much importance to Aristotle…s distinction between philosophoi (philosophers) and philomythoi, which distinction be-comes particularly relevant only in the effort to provide an ’Apology of Socrates… and eventually becomes crucial in the effort to provide an ’Apology of Christianity… by pitting Greek philosophy in bulk against Greek religion in bulk (as if they were two separate worlds). Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what Barnes has to say... maybe you could give us a summary, Whiz.

Whiz According to Barnes, the Milesian naturalists are philosophers because: 1. They invented a NEW DISCIPLINE (Cosmology? Metaphysics? Physics? Philosophy?) with

its own method and ends. This assumed the existence of an ORDERED UNIVERSE, in which one event follows another because there is an intelligible reason for such a change. Such an ordered universe is one which we can make sense of and understand;

2. The invented a new terminology, the main notions of which where: kosmos, physis, arche , logos. This reflected a new vision of the universe;

3. They used arguments that sought to confirm their hypothesis using evidence. 3 Paul Ricoeur insists on this in ’La Symbolique du Mal…. 4 Aristotle himself is careful about this. He does not say that ’Thales is the founder of philosophy… but ’of this type of philosophy… (i.e. that concerned with the causes of nature), see Metaphysics A… 983b.



What do you think of such a characterization? Do these characteristics constitute a radi-cal distinction between these authors and the ’poets…, between their works ’On Nature… (Peri Physeos)5 and the ancient cosmogonies?

Men…s I am not an expert in Philology but as far as I know, we have no fragments of the Mile-sian Naturalists containing arguments– it was Aristotle and the later authors who, when mentioning the theories of the Naturalists, tried to imagine what arguments Thales may have had to claim that the arche is water. We have to wait for Parmenides to get proof that some of the later Presocratics sought to consolidate their statements with argu-ments. Curiously enough, Parmenides… arguments are presented within the context of a poetic narrative– so the suggestion that poetic narrative and argumentation using evi-dence are mutually exclusive literary genres which can be used to distinguish Poets from Presocratic Philosophers is flawed. Hence, I don…t think we have enough grounds to attribute (3) to the Milesians. I don…t know about (2): I don…t think they invented these words, and I don…t think we have enough samples of Greek literature from the different poleis in this period to be able to make the claim that they gave such terms a radically new meaning. There is little evidence that Homer and Hesiod's use of, say, "kosmos" was radically different from that of Anaximander... if we do not try to read Aristotle's 'Physics' and 'De Caelo' into Anaximander's words, that is. As regards (1), the idea of an ordered universe is present already in the myths; as Irwin (1996:16ff) argues, Homer presents the will of Zeus as something which is, on the whole, intelligible, something whose rationality reflects a belief in the existence of an ordered universe.

Tank Men…s, you make Barnes… characterization seem quite awkward. I would like to ask you, Master Sapiens, if you admit at least a clear (if not radical) distinction between the Mile-sian naturalists and the poets. If yes, what would that be?

Sap. If there is a distinction between philosophy and philomythy, it is the radically critical atti-tude that the Philosophers, starting from the Milesians, have to the world around them. It is the unquenched, un-stifled inquisitiveness of the intelligent child in each one of us that makes us philosophers. The little child asks a question: 'why is the sky blue?'; 'why is stealing bad?'. A philosophical answer will sprout dozens of new questions. A mytho-logical answer is one that stifles this inquisitiveness by providing solutions that do not stimulate further questions simply because they refer to some mysterious notions that cannot be put to question. Imagine you are told that that a thunderbolt strikes a person because an invisible god throws it like a spear to punish that mere mortal. For what? For trying to be like the gods, or as the Greeks would say, for that chief injustice: trespass-ing, going beyond the limit fixed for humans. Such an answer would hardly stimulate you to ask further questions; you would moreover shut your mouth lest your inquisitiveness constitute a similar offence (knowing more than humans are allowed to know). If one is told that thunderbolts result from static electricity, one may start asking what static elec-tricity is, and end up asking what a Higgs boson is (– and if it really exists)6. Now here…s a question that scientists today still cannot answer. And if they ever do, there will be more questions down the line. Knowledge is more a matter of asking good questions than of providing good answers. Truth (aletheia) is something that becomes manifest when the veil of falsehood is lifted7. Good, radical questions unveil falsehoods. I do not believe we can make a clear-cut distinction in History of Philosophy between ancient Philosophy and Philomythy since the very history of Philosophy is the history of such an ever-deeper radical questioning. In every generation we find people who want to cling to the security of the given and people who want to risk digging deeper. The Mi-letan naturalists were the latter sort of persons; in this sense they were philosophers.

5 We are told that such was the typical title of the works of the early ’Philosophers…. 6 This is one of the big questions in contemporary Physics. 7 The Greek word ’Aletheia… (truth) literally means ’unveiling…, ’uncovering….

► Physis and the search for an Arche é 5-5 ►


Were they radical enough? Were they really the first such people? Was this attitude born only in the culture of VIth century Ionia? I do not think there are clear-cut positive answers to these questions. Aristotle and Plato had an interest to kick Homer and He-siod out of their picture of what is Philosophy– after all, these ’poets… are the authorities on those very gods in whose name Socrates was killed. Those days it was a question of ’us philosophers… or ’them mythologists, killers of Socrates…. Nowadays, we are more careful when we come to wipe myths off the picture, since we risk dumping too many claims of non-Western cultures to some Philosophical history. And that is not so politi-cally correct! In any case, it…s good philosophy to question radically even what consti-tutes philosophy!

5.2 Physis and the search for an Arche

5.2.1 NATURALIST VERSUS POST-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS Sap. Please welcome a new disciple: Lee Sin. She has prepared some questions about the

Milesian Naturalists, for us to answer. Lee– Lee Thanks, Master Sapiens. To start, I must admit that I found the above discussion some-

what confusing. You seemed to be making a distinction between philosophers and lov-ers of myths (philomythoi). But in the beginning you were talking about the naturalists ’physiologoi…. And sometimes you speak about the Presocratics. Are these simply other terms for ’philosophers…?

Sap. Claire “ maybe you could clarify– Men…s The Presocratics were the Philosophers who…s style of philosophising predates Socra-

tes. Many of these are called Naturalists, either because they were interested in re-search regarding nature (’physis…, hence they were called ’physiologoi…) or else because Aristotle (a later philosopher) fitted them within his scheme of the development of Phys-ics (or rather the ’Study of Nature…).

Lee If I understood well what Master Sapiens was saying, however, it is a point of contention whether the Naturalists were Philosophers or not.

Men…s Well according to Hadot– Sap. – Leave that alone for a sec. Start from Aristotle– Men…s Aristotle calls the Naturalists, ’Naturalists… (Physiologoi), rather than Philosophers. So for

Aristotle, they are not Philosophers in the strong sense of the world (real Philosophy for Aristotle is that starting with Socrates). The complication that we will bracket is that Aris-totle wrote a history of the development of the study of nature (Naturalism– ’Physics… in the Arisotelian sense), and this history has been read through the ages as a History of Philosophy, hence making of the Naturalists the first Philosophers.

Sap. O.K.: Aristotle– Naturalists– not Philosophers. Here comes the tough question underlying Lee…s question (– remember Philosophy is all about radical questioning– ): What is the difference between Naturalism and Post-Socratic Philosophy?

Whiz Hey– you yourself didn…t answer that one! It…s the same as the difference between Philomythy and Philosophy– the latter entails more radical questioning!

Sap. Good one, Whiz. But here comes the punch. What is the precise nature of the radicalism in question? What jump is there between Naturalism and Post-Socratic Philosophy? All right, I…ll help you here. The jump is from the concept of Physis (Nature) to that of Being. Naturalism studies all of nature, and this, on the first reading, means the whole material universe, in Greek ’kosmos…. Naturalism is hence a study of the cosmos, a Cosmology. Post-Socratic Philosophy studies all that is, all reality, all of ’being…. Note that some



Presocratic philosophers (the ones who do not fit the title ’Naturalists… very well) started to realise that Being is something more than the material (or ’physical…) universe (or, in other words, there was more to the cosmos that its material components: trees, stones, stars, chairs– i.e. ’bodies… in a general sense, as used in modern Physics). The transi-tion from Naturalism to Philosophy was hence not as abrupt as it may seem above– The words Physis and Cosmos was expanded to include the newly discovered non-material reality. So, tell me now, were the Naturalists Philosophers or not?

Men…s In a sense they were! Because they studied the whole of reality as they knew it: Material reality. They were not Philosophers in the strong sense because the study of the imma-terial reality constitutes an essential part of anything we would call ’Philosophy…. In their studies they came across non-material reality, and they widened the scope of their re-search to include it. They also widened the terms ’kosmos… and ’physis….

Lee What do you mean by non-material reality? Sap. That includes a lot of things. To seek a solution to the problem, Aristotle appealed to our

use of language (b.t.w., that…s typical in Philosophy, do not be put off!). When we say something ’is…, it ’exists…, we usually mean that it exists as a body in space, it has mate-rial reality: The table is. There is a star over there. Pebbles exist. A philosopher would further link this to our way of knowing it this something (another typical Philosophical operation). How do we usually know bodies? We meet them around, they are present to our senses, to our perception (in Greek ’aesthesis…). So we have linked a kind of things (material bodies) with one type of linguistic expression (the use of the verb ’to be… in the form: ’x is…, ’x exists…), with one type of knowledge (perception, sense data, ’aesthesis…). We…re playing a game on three levels: being, knowledge of that being, expression of that knowledge. We call these levels the ONTOLOGICAL/METAPHYSICAL level, the EPISTEMO-LOGICAL level and the LINGUISTIC level.

Now, note that there are different uses of the verb ’to be…. Consider: ’I think, therefore there must be something somewhere that is doing the thinking, that we may call ’I…. Hence I am…. That…s different from saying ’I am because I can feel my body…– why?

Tank Well, you know it in a different manner (using your thinking rather than your senses). Sap. Fine. How about the ’I…– can we simply assume from the above reasoning that it is just

another ’body… in space? Men…s It…s not obviously so– I don…t feel my thoughts. I don…t see them– at least not while I…m

doing this reasoning. You need some substantial assumptions to link that ’something somewhere that is doing the thinking… with the ’body I can feel… or with some part of it, say the brain. Hence, the ’I… is not obviously some part of my biological self. In this sense it is not ’material….

Sap. The ’I… as the centre of my thinking self is not something we come to know using percep-tion, and hence it is not a ’body…. It ’is…, but intuitively, its existence seems different from that of bodies in space. Hence when we say ’I am…, we are using the verb ’to be… in a secondary sense, not in the primary sense noted above. O.K. Now consider: ’grass IS GREEN…, ’x IS TRUE…, ’murder IS BAD…, ’shower IS ”DOUCHEó (in French)…, ’Alfa Romeo IS A CAR…, ’3 times 2 IS SIX…, ’red IS FOR ’STOP…, ’no smoking IS THE RULE…, ’GOD IS…. Physical properties, logical values, moral qualities, synonyms, kinds, mathematical entities, signs, regulations, supernatural beings– all of these ’beings… are not obviously bodies in space. They ’are…, they ’exist…– but not simply as things we meet around. Now, some of these are clearly linked to material objects, and are known by perception– say physical properties such as length or smoothness or bluishness8. Others are less so– say moral qualities– they are usually attributed to a subject having a body (say a person: ’John is

8 Colours do tend to cause further complications, though.



good…) but they are not really properties (such as rotundity or dark skin colour) stuck to that physical entity. Hardly anybody would admit that we have some queer ’moral sense… to detect moral qualities such as we have sight to detect visible properties. Numbers are even less ’material…– when counting apples or coins they seem linked to material ob-jects, in geometry they somehow link to distances in space between objects– but then, in arithmetic and algebra, they seem to attain a life of their own. Human ’minds… and su-pernatural beings seem the most immaterial of all beings. In these cases, any knowl-edge we may have of such entities must be coming from the use of the mind independ-ent of aesthesis. Greeks call the mind ’nous…; its use independent of the senses is ’noe-sis…. We may also call it ’thinking…, ’intellect…, ’intelligence…, ’reasoning… (from the Latin ’ra-tio…) and even ’logic… (from ’logos…, a Greek word indicating the way our speech is or-dered so as to MAKE SENSE, an ordering assumed to be very similar or identical to our way of thinking)– So we have: mind versus senses, logic versus aesthesis, immaterial versus material, physical bodies versus non-physical entities, primary use of the verb ’to be… versus a variety of secondary uses. Now what is the link to Lee…s question?

Tank Is this distinction precisely the gain in depth and radicalness that characterises the tran-sition from Naturalism to Post-Socratic Philosophy?

Sap. Exactly. The Naturalist search for an understanding of ’the totality of being… is widened by the discovery of such a distinction: from seeking to UNDERSTAND what the material universe is to seeking to UNDERSTAND physical bodies PLUS their properties PLUS the natural laws governing their transformations PLUS moral qualities, human (and other?) rational minds (or souls, selves, egos, spirits– ), linguistics, social practices– etc. etc. etc. In time, so many disciplines bud out of ’Philosophy… so to study the different types of ’entities… (Biology and Medicine study living bodies, Maths studies numerical entities, Ethics studies moral qualities, Sociology/Politics/Jurisprudence study social entities– ). Philosophy unites all these as it studies things as ’entities…, qua Beings. And furthermore it asks the radical questions that the different disciplines that study different beings can-not ask– such as– ’does such-and-such entity really exist?…, ’is there any real differ-ence between this entity studied by this discipline and that entity studied by that disci-pline?…, ’are the methods used by that discipline adequate to study that entity?…– Now, maybe it…s time Lee asked another question–

5.2.2 THE NATURE OF NATURE Lee O.K. I was reading about the Milesian Naturalists and I met the following Greek terms:

Ko smos, Arche , Phy sis, Stoiche ion, Aitıa– and furthermore there was written that their studies were ’cosmological…. Now ’Cosmology… is no modern science, as far as I know–

Tank Master Sapiens mentioned the disciplines that budded out of Philosophy. But tradition has often distinguished, WITHIN PHILOSOPHY, between discourse about the entities in the universe (Cosmology), discourse about persons, their minds/spirits and their behaviour (Anthropology-Psychology-Ethics), and discourse about super-natural entities (Theol-ogy). The fragments from the Milesian naturalists indicate that these philosophers were mainly concerned with Cosmology. Cosmology is rational discourse (logos) concerning the kosmos (often translated as ’world… or ’universe…), which is taken to refer to the TOTALITY OF REALITY, the WHOLE OF NATURE (physis). • Now, when we use the word ’nature… in English we often think of ALL THE THINGS

AROUND US TAKEN TOGETHER– e.g. ’Mother Nature… or ’These substances are found in nature…: this meaning associates physis very closely with kosmos, such that they are almost interchangeable.



• Nevertheless, we also use ’nature… in another sense. Consider the following phrases in ordinary language: What is the nature of this sauce? (What is it made of/where did you get it from?). What the nature of that dog? (How will it behave– will it bite me or not?) Biological evolution, by its very nature, tends to produce be-ings that are most adapted to their environment9 (Where will it go? What is its pur-pose?). To understand something, we ask ’what is it?… or more specifically ’what is its nature…, and we seek to know what it is made of, what is its origin, how will it be-have, what is its purpose. We usually answer the ’what-is-it?… question by giving a common name (’it…s a DOG…), but that name tags the NATURE of the thing: if it…s a dog then it must behave in such and such a way, it will hurt if trodden on because it’s made of such and such material, etc. Knowing the nature of dogs, or of fires, per-sons, etc. we understand the world we live in. The world becomes liveable because things can be recognised by their nature and grouped according to their nature, and we can learn how to deal with dogs and fires and persons etc. THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE (AND ULTIMATELY THE UNIVERSE AS A WHOLE) SEEMS TO BEHAVE ACCORD-ING TO AN INTELLIGIBLE ORDER. This is the essence of Naturalism: finding the NA-TURE of things so as to understand the whole universe. Here the meaning of ’na-ture… is practically identical to that of ’arche …, which is usually translated as ’princi-ple….

Arche is big word in Greek. Its meaning became richer as Philosophical thought regard-ing the cosmos evolved. It came to mean several things, which Aristotle eventually came to distinguish when describing his theory of the 4 causes (aitiai, sing. aitia). As we said, this is what the first Philosophers were after: the arche of things, and ultimately the arche of the whole kosmos (the first principle/s of nature; the ’nature of nature…10.) The word ’arche … is probably Aristotle…s, the Presocratics would most probably have used ’physis… in the second sense to mean the same thing. Arche , like all big words, tends to widen its meaning with time– As we said above, the first philosophers were looking for a ’MATERIAL PRINCIPLE…, i.e. they were asking the ’WHAT-IS-IT… question as we do when we look at some strange foodstuff. They were asking, in other words, something in the whereabouts of: ’what is the stuff from which all things are made?… (compositional sub-strate) and ’what is the stuff from which all things came to be?… (originating substrate). They probably did not distinguish properly between these two ways in which we can un-derstand the material principle (the stuff from which the universe IS COMPOSED, and the stuff from which it ORIGINATED) which, for us, are clearly distinct. Sea Salt, for instance, originates from sea water, but is not composed of sea water. A rusty nail may be com-posed almost entirely of rust, but did not originate from rust (they did not use rust to manufacture the nail). But we too, at times, confuse origin and composition, like the Milesians11. Later Philosophers realised that the material principle was not enough to explain the ’na-ture… of things. Think of a city built from Legoê blocks. It came to be from, and is made up of a number of different coloured blocks (say 20 different types). But a list of the dif-ferent types of blocks including the quantities of each used in the city is not enough to reconstruct the city from scratch. You also need the design, the form of the city, the ’laws… according to which each Lego block should be laid. When people realized that a

9 Many biologists would doubt that evolution has a ’nature… of such a teleological kind (i.e. a nature that specifically makes it move towards a set purpose). Gene mutations (that are the fundamental basis of such an ’adaptability… to the environment) are random, and not directed towards a bettering of the species in any particular way. 10 The first ’nature… understood according to the 2nd meaning above, the second ’nature… understood according to the 1st meaning above. 11 However, it could be that the later Milesians (e.g. Anaximenes) were aware of the difference, as we shall see.



’principle… can also be something of this sort, ’formal…, non-material, they widened the sphere of meaning of ’arche … to include this meaning.

Sap. O.K., but before going into this, let us focus on the principle as MATERIAL SUBSTRATE, i.e. as understood by the Milesian Naturalists– before things got more complicated. Before we proceed, keep this in mind: the Greeks had TWO traditions regarding the origin of things. One is the doctrine of the FOUR ELEMENTS: all things are composed of a combi-nation of 4 elements (stoicheia, sing. stoicheion): Earth, Air, Fire and Water12. The other is that of the OPPOSITES: things in nature occur due to the interaction of opposites: good and bad, straight and curved, light and dark, true and false, limited and limitless– This means that already in Greek culture we have the idea that things originate from/are composed of other things which are more basic. They do not originate form ’nothing-ness…. They are not ultimately composed of ’nothingness…. This means that things come to being by the transformation of something else. As Aristotle says in his famous text Metaphysics Aé (the place where he gives the history of the concept of Arche , and hence fits the Philosophers who preceded him within his theory regarding Nature and Being): Of the first philosophers, then, most thought the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things. That <stuff> of which all things that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved (the substance remaining, but changing in its modifications), this they say is the element and this the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved, as we say Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor ceases to be when he loses these characteristics, because the substratum (subject), i.e. Socrates himself, remains. Similarly they say that nothing else comes to be or ceases to be; for there must be some entity É either one or more than one É from which all other things come to be, it being conserved. Metaphys. 983b 6-17

So what do we have here? Pale-skinned Socrates going to Bronze-skinned Socrates– with Socrates not being created or destroyed. Marble block to marble statue– the mar-ble is not created or destroyed. Take that a step higher. Earth as rock on a cliff and earth as marble. Same earth, different appearance– How about a substance x that presents itself as water in certain conditions and as earth in others. If such a thing exists, the sea and the marble block as different forms of x, just as Pale-skinned Socrates and Bronze-skinned Socrates are different forms of Socrates. How about finding ’x… for all the things that exists (for our intents and purposes, material ’stuffs…). That would be the ’arche … of everything. Now, have you kept in mind the two traditions? How do they come in?

Men…s Well, they provide hints regarding what that ’x… may be. Could be one of the elements or more than one– Could be one of the opposites, or a set of opposites, or a number of sets.

Sap. Must we have one principle or more than one? What do you think, Whiz?

12 The doctrine that nature was composed of/derived from THESE 4 elements (earth, air, fire, water) is first clearly stated by Empedocles (a later Philosopher), but we find rudiments of a 4-element basis of nature in mythology, e.g. in Hesiod.



Whiz Well, Aristotle says that there may be one or more than one. We have to find out. Theo-retically, reducing everything to one would be the nicest option because if you had two things, say ’x1… and ’x2…, you would still be tempted to ask if they were simply transforma-tions of some further principle, ’x…. But at this stage we can only try to take this reduction as far as it goes.

Sap. Good. Reducing everything in existence to one principle is called MONISM. The Milesian Naturalists (Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes) were monists– they tried to get everything down to one original basic stuff. Later authors find monism hard to sustain on a material level. Some however tried to defend it at all costs. Later on, the discovery of non-material entities makes Philosophers search for non-material principle for such enti-ties, and some seek some sort of ’superprinciple… beyond the material / non-material di-vide. Material and non-material entities would then simply be different forms of this same principle. This ’absolute being… or ’super-entity… eventually becomes a Philosophical ’God…. That…s where things get out of hand– but maybe things have already gone out of hand with our ’simple… clarifications of the Naturalists… terminology. Have you got any other queries, Lee?

5.2.3 THE ARCHE AND CHANGE Lee Friggieri (2000:12) argues that the first Philosphers were after the STABLE BASIS OF

THINGS, since the things around us, as perceived by our senses, seem perpetually changing. ’Waves come and go, but the sea remains the same.… What does this mean? What does this have to do with what we are saying?

Sap. O.K. This gives us a good occasion to revise and extend what we…ve already said– Men…s?–

Men…s Well, Lee, it…s just what we were saying about Socrates… skin colour. Socrates, as per-ceived by our senses is always changing, but we believe it…s the same Socrates when-ever we meet him. Socrates is that ’x… beyond the different manifestations we meet around “ pale or bronze skinned, young and handsome or old and sickly, beginner mu-sician or virtuoso. Recall what Tank said earlier about being dogs. We reduce the differ-ent appearance of our pet to ’Scruffy… and all the Scruffys to the kind ’Dog…. That is how we make sense of the universe: we group different appearances (my pet as it appeared this morning– my pet as it appeared this evening) and reduce them to manifestations of the same entity (Scruffy); we group entities (Scuffy; Auntie…s Chihuahua; that stray ’pest… who chased me yesterday– ) and reduce them to kinds (Dogs) tagged by common names (’Dogs…). (B.t.w., when we reduce everything to one big kind, we get ’Beings… as a common name– the common factor that unites all things is that ’they are…– that…s why there…s so much fuss in Philosophy about the verb ’to be…!) Now let…s come to another big issue behind Lee…s question. Philosophers seek the arche , O.K.. Common people use language, and tag things with common names; hence they unknowingly assume that even though Socrates never appears the same, there is a stable ’Socrates… behind all the manifestations we get through aesthesis. There are sta-ble things in the world even though everything seems to be ever changing. Otherwise we would not be able to make any sense of anything– if, say, every time we meet something or someone we have to treat it as something totally new. The world would be unliveable if we were to assume that there is nothing stable behind the changing ap-pearances. Believing in an ’ordered universe… means that even though things seem al-ways changing, there is stability in the universe, there is IDENTITY THROUGH CHANGE. And common people tacitly admit they believe in an ordered universe every time they use language: if there was nothing but ever-changing appearances, we wouldn…t be able to speak about Scruffy or about ’dogs…. Yet, at the same time, common people often (tac-itly) make the mistake of moving from the observation ’the world APPEARS intrinsically

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TRANSIENT… to ’the world IS intrinsically TRANSIENT…. Everything comes and goes, every-thing changes, for so it SEEMS. Yet by their use of language humans admit that they cannot live in a world that is REALLY so. This dilemma introduces a distinction between the REAL and the APPARENT that becomes fundamental to Philosophy, especially with Socrates: Common people (hoi Polloi) stop at the appearances, Philosophers go beyond to seek the ESSENCE of things, the ’what is it… (ti esti) of things. The water in the river changes, but we still refer to it as the same ’river…. What is the river? What is its nature? What is the sea beyond the apparent wave motion? Do you believe that rives and seas exist? Why? Your senses tell you there…s nothing stable you can call ’sea… or ’river…. So there is no such thing as a ’river…, is there? Do you believe there is a guy called Socrates? Do you believe this is a ’hand…? It gets dirty, pale, wrin-kled, tanned, rough– there is no such thing as a ’hand…, is there? Yet if you were really to believe that there is nothing stable behind the apparent changes you would go crazy– you would be afraid to move your hand once its dirty it because it seems to be a different hand, no longer the hand you were always familiar with. So what? Well, let…s ask the question again. What is the river? What is its nature? What is there beyond the different manifestations of the river– of Socrates– of this hand? What is the arche ?

Sap. So, to conclude: looking for the ’Arche …, or for the ’nature… of something means looking for that thing that is stable notwithstanding the changes that thing experiences– or maybe, notwithstanding the changes that our senses make us believe the thing experi-ences (since, as some philosophers come to conclude, change may after all not be real but simply apparent). The first Philosophers stick to material stuffs as candidates for possible answers to the question, as we said before. They therefore seek material stabil-ity. Later Philosophers come up with concepts such as ’the form… or ’the essence… that indicate that what is stable lies beyond the material composition of things. That certainly makes more sense when speaking of rivers and persons, for example. For Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, the stability and simplicity underlying the apparent changes and differences could be found by finding that single MATERIAL ori-gin/constituent that remains the same notwithstanding the surface changes and differ-ences. For Thales, this is water: just as liquid water, ice and steam are all forms of the same water, so other things (the opposites, the elements) could be forms of water. When a pond freezes, its appearance to the senses (sight, touch, taste– ) changes, but, in fact, it is always the same body of WATER. Hence, when a friend brings a sample of ice from a mountain and a sample of water from a lake, no matter how different, they both have the same material composition and origin, the same principle, the same na-ture, the same ’arche …: WATER. It all seems different, but it…s all the same: it…s all water! So, for Thales, even if your friend were to bring you a piece of rock from the mountain, it would still be water.

5.3 Thales of Miles Lee Who was Thales? Whiz Thales {Talete minn Miletu} is

considered the first Greek Philosopher. He lived in the Greek city of Miles in Asia Minor, and flourished (was at the peak of his life) in 585 BCE. We have no extant fragments of his work; only testimonies remain. Four important ones are found in Aristotle;

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others abound in legends about this guy– well, you may read about his purchases of vineyards and his fall into a cistern in a standard textbook. Here are the 4 testimonies (with references to Aristotle…s works containing them– you may look them up in www.perseus.org):

1. The earth rests on water. (De Caelo 294a28) 2. Water is the archˆ of all things. (Metaph. 983b18) 3. The magnet has a soul. (De Anima 405a19) 4. All things are full of gods. (De Anima 411a7)

Sap. Quickly, Men…s, could you give us a typical interpretation of 3 and 4, which are the least important?

Men…s As regards 3, some experts have come up with the idea that Thales MAY have had a theory about life saying something like ’a thing is alive if it can cause movement in something else… (note: in Greek ’has a soul… = ’is alive…). We have no testimony that as-serts he had such a theory, but if we were to suppose that he did believe something of the sort, then the testimony would make sense. What scholars tend to exclude is panpsychism, i.e. that Thales believes that everything (from rocks to elephants) is alive.

The standard interpretation of 4 avoids recourse to traditional religion (well, the experts are so keen to defend Aristotle…s distinction between philomythos and philosophos that they would shun any suggestion that the first Philosophers had anything to do with tradi-tional religion). Hence, ’gods… is taken to mean ’forces in nature… (some later thinkers did insist that the traditional Greek gods where nothing but personified natural forces), and the testimony taken to mean ’do not look beyond the things themselves to understand their behaviour. They act according to forces present within them, within nature, not ac-cording to some supernatural ’divine will……. You can understand nature not by reflection on the GODS LIVING ON MOUNT OLYMPUS, but by making experiments on things them-selves to determine the FORCES PRESENT WITHIN NATURE ITSELF….

Sap. How about testimony no. 1? Men…s Aristotle13 seems to reduce it to (2), as one may easily do if ’rests… is interpreted loosely

as ’is based on…, ’depends on…, ’has its origins and foundations in…. By this interpretation, the earth, as all other things, has its origins and foundations in water; hence water is its… arche . Other authorities would rather postulate that this statement forms part of a cos-mological theory which pictures the earth resting at the bottom of a hemispherical bub-ble of air floating in a universe full of water (a sort of cosmic aquarium). Such a cosmic theory may find empirical evidence in earthquakes; if you hold such a view, you may easily explain earthquakes as the result of the rocking of the earth in the water-filled uni-verse.

Sap. Lee, such queer scientific theories may not have impressed you very much, but surely they are admirable because they are the oldest samples of scientific reasoning. The truly interesting testimony in our quest for the arche of nature is (2), which Men…s already explained somewhat at the end of the last section. I would like to read you a comment on this testimony by S. Marc Cohen14: Archˆ is Aristotleés word: it means beginning or source or principle (cf. ”archaic,� ”ar-chaeology,� ”architect�). Aristotle is here talking about what he called the material archˆ , which can be either the stuff from which something originated or the stuff of which it is composed. Thus, Thales thought (Aristotle tells us) that everything either originated in water (cosmogony) or is actually (now!) made of water (constituent analysis).

13 In Metaphys. A… 983b; in De Caelo his words sustain the second interpretation, below. 14 http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/thales.html (as on 11th December, 2002)

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So what is the scientific or philosophical interest of Thalesé ruminations about water? He is attempting to provide a theory which is:

1. General (it covers a whole range of similar cases, not just a single one). 2. Based on observation (although it transcends all observations). 3. Makes no appeal to supernatural causes.

This last point is worth dwelling on. Many people before Thales had offered explanations of natural phenomena. These traditional (Homeric) religious accounts also went beyond the observable. For example, thunder was attributed to Zeusé throwing lightning bolts; storms at sea were thought to be due to the wrath of Poseidon. The difference is that Thalesé explanations are natural, not supernatural. He does not appeal to anthropomorphic beings in attempting to explain natural phenomena.

I think Cohen…s comment is quite clear. It notes the two different possible understand-

ings of a material principle discussed above, i.e. as ORIGIN and as COMPONENT / CON-STITUENT. Indirectly, it also brings out neatly the importance of the difference between fragments and testimonies. The fact that we have no extant fragments of Thales means that all we know about this philosopher is filtered by Aristotle…s interpretation, and more precisely, by Aristotle…s attempt to provide a historical foundation to his theory of the Four Causes in Metaphysics A… by framing his predecessors as participants in a quest for the ’arche … (’Archˆ is Aristotleés wordé). Other testimonies (especially in the case of other Presocratics) may be of help, but it is useful to keep in mind that the authors of these testimonies were usually posterior to Aristotle and were almost certainly influ-enced by Aristotle…s reading of the Presocratics.

5.4 Anaximander of Miles Sap. Lee, maybe you could tell us something of what you read about Anaximander. Lee Born 611-10 BCE, died shortly after 547 BCE, disciple of Thales and probably his suc-

cessor as Master of the school of Miles. He is said to have written a treatise ’On Nature…, in prose, though abounding in poetic imagery. Some testimonies depict him as an inven-tor, a land surveyor and as a legislator. He conceived the earth as a cylinder suspended in a spherical universe surrounded by the heavenly bodies equidistant from the earth. Such heavenly bodies are made of fire, enveloped in air; they are visible through aper-tures, like those of a wind instrument, that may be blocked at times, causing eclipses. Besides numerous testimonies, we have one fragment of Anaximander, recorded in Simplicius (’Commentary to Aristotle…s Physicsé; VI Cent. AD), who was preserving an account of Theophrastus (’The opinions of the naturalists…; IV Cent. BCE), a student of Aristotle. It…s possible that Simplicius may have gotten the quote from yet another com-mentator, Alexander (i.e. from his now lost commentary on Aristotle…s Physics). Sim-plicius also states, in the testimony that contains the fragment, that the arche for Anaxi-mander was the APERION (i.e. the ’limitless…, ’undefined…, ’indefinite…, ’infinite…, ’uncon-fined…, ’borderless…).

Sap. Fine. I would call that a good summary. Let us get down to business, now and read the fragment.

Whiz ’They pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time.…

Sap. That…s quite a riddle. Maybe you could read the context, too. Whiz Simplicius writes: ’Anaximander ... said that the APEIRON was the first principle and ele-

ment of things that are, and he was the first to introduce this name for the first principle



[i.e., he was the first to call the first principle indefinite]. He says that the first principle is neither water nor any other of the things called elements, but some other nature which is indefinite/infinite out of which come to be all the heavens and the worlds in them: The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be, according to necessity, for15 they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time (Chronos), as he says in rather poetical lan-guage.é

Sap. O.K. This is basically it. What can we make out of it? Simplicius continues by saying that Anaximander came to designate the Apeiron as the principle since he had a problem with Thales… solution that placed one of the elements themselves as the substrate of the elements. Remember, when we were speaking of x and x1 and x2? Thales said that the elements themselves were different forms of the same thing, ’x…. But that thing was noth-ing but water, one of the elements. What problem could Anaximander have had with that? Well, remember the context– here Simplicius is commenting on Aristotle…s Phys-ics, and the idea that one element can be derived from another, (or more powerfully, ac-cording to the doctrine of the opposites) that one opposite may be derived from another, is unacceptable in Aristotelian Physics. As Aristotle says (Phys. 204b22), uniting somewhat the doctrine of the 4 elements and that of the opposites:

... the elements are opposed to each other (for example, air is cold, water moist, and fire hot), and if one of these were infinite the rest would already have been destroyed. But, as it is, they say that the infinite is different from these, and that they come into being from it.

So Simplicius assumes that Anaximander, through the same sort of reasoning, noted in Thales… theory what an Aristotelian would obviously note as wrong: the x behind x1, x2, x3, and x4 couldn…t itself be one of these (x1, x2, x3, or x4), but must be something beyond, and different from them. It must be something of which x1, x2, x3, and x4 (in our case, the elements) would be manifestations. One should never mix a thing with its manifestation. If Anaximander noted this flaw in his master…s theory, he must have started searching for something from which the elements, and the opposites, could be derived, something that is not itself one of the elements or the opposites– otherwise it would defeat the purpose. It cannot be black, or the white could not be derived from it; it cannot be good, or the bad would not result from it; it could not be water or else fire could not come out of it– . This sort of reasoning on the material level ultimately entails that we are after some-thing QUALITATIVELY INDEFINITE– it cannot have any recognizable characteristics. Being the single principle, which exists alone before all things came to be from it, it must also be SPATIALLY AND TEMPORALLY INFINITE: it has no beginning or end in time or space, it is infinite, limitless. All of these characteristics (qualitatively indefinite, spatially infinite, temporally infinite) are conveyed by the Greek word ’a-peiron…, ’limit-less…. That is why “ Simplicius thinks “ Anaximander called the principle ’apeiron…. Let us see, now, if some-one has the guts to attempt to decipher the fragment.

Men…s All Right– ’The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be‘: the things in existence (the world as we know it) originates from the apeiron and will return to become ’apeiron… upon destruction. �According to necessity‘. This must be so, there is no other possibility; the world (its elements, its opposites) cannot come from something else, nor can it become anything else upon destruction. ’for they pay pen-alty and retribution to each other for their injustice‘: the elements/opposites try to overcome and destroy one another but what happens if they do that is that the distinc-tions between them are lost, and everything, in time (�in accordance with the ordering of time‘) decays back into the indefinite, the infinite, the limitless. The eternal movement

15 Many scholars consider the part indicated in bold typeface to be the fragment; others reduce it to the part in bold after this note (and consider the first part as a comment by Simplicius or Theophrastus or Alexander).



is that from the apeiron, to the ordered world (kosmos), with its distinctions and borders (remember that in Greek mythology, the gods created the world by the process of sepa-ration of things from a primordial chaos, and that trespassing, is the great ’injustice… for the Greeks16– especially when humans try to go beyond what is mortal and invade what is divine…) and back to the apeiron.

Sap. Very good, Men…s. Why is the trespassing of the elements/opposites beyond their limits an ’injustice…, here?

Tank In this context, hot, cold, etc. are probably thought of as things, not qualities. No one of the opposites could have been infinite, or there would be nothing else and no one of the opposites could have been the archˆ , or its opposite would never have come to be. Now, since all the ”elementsó are either opposites or are essentially connected to an op-posite (e.g., water is cold, fire is hot), no element, no familiar stuff can be the original archˆ . This reasoning leads us to look for an archˆ that is devoid of any particular qual-ity or characteristic (which is quite hard to conceive, since we can think of nothing that is ’bare… of qualities, and even harder to describe!)– In all this we must insist that this stuff is not ’emptiness… or ’vacuum…, since the Greeks had problems with conceiving a void– they did not have zeros in their maths, and for them, emptiness was equal to nothing-ness, and ’the nothing… does not exist (so there is no such thing as emptiness)17. Hence the apeiron must have filled the whole universe as a sort of gas18. Now, coming back to the fragment, ’injustice… means invading and occupying the space of your adversary (think of the Greeks and the Trojans, etc.) such that the adversary is left devoid of any territory. Restoring justice means separating the opposites once again, creating boundaries– this is what the gods do when creating the world: they separate the opposites (in particular hot and cold, wet and dry) to give rise to the elements; they separate peoples to give rise to nations. Note that a mythological reading of the frag-ment is also possible19: Chronos (time) is also considered to be the oldest of the gods, the first being to originate and plausibly he is considered as the god directing the whole process, the god that ’gives order… to the chaotic apeiron. Some testimonies insist that the apeiron was in continuous circular motion, a rotating stuff that, so to speak, exuvi-ates the opposites and the elements.

Sap. That…s quite a detailed explanation. Lee, maybe you could read Cohen…s assessment of Anaximander, as a conclusion.

Lee Here it comes: Anaximander…s theory is: 1. A response to a (perceived) logical difficulty in Thalesé theory. 2. Postulation of a theoretical entity to explain observable phenomena. 3. The postulation of something beyond experience was not new (cf. the gods). What was

new: what is postulated is not personified or anthropomorphic. It is a kind of matter.

16 Some philologists have linked the concept of hybris (wanton violence) with that of trespassing limits set by Zeus. 17 Emptiness is archaically personified as the elemental goddess Chaos, which is also called Aeros (hence personify-ing ’air…). Chaos is also conceived as an entity opposed to the ordered world as we know it, kosmos. A good website on the Greek deities is www.theoi.com. 18 The closest conceivable thing to the ’aperion… is air; in fact Anaximander…s disciple Anaximenes does propose air as the arche . Some scholars also suggest that Anaximander may be referring to air, but the testimony that bears the fragment from Anaximander insists that for this philosopher, the arche was not one of the elements. A more ’mytho-logical… interpretation of the fragment would associate ’apeiron… with Air/Chaos, from which the ordered world (Kosmos) is derived, according to the ordering of Chronos through a series of separations (creation of boundaries). 19 This is not necessarily opposed to the more ’scientific… reading, but could complement it, given that these philoso-phers cannot have abandoned the mythological explanation of the universe completely– they were not that ’mature…. The traditional interpretation (that often portrays them as atheists, or at least as persons who have rejected the tradi-tional gods for some post-Socratic conception of ’God…) is clearly ideological when it tries to interpret such texts while completely putting aside mythology.

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Problem: how can the apeiron contain the opposites it gives rise to and still be a simple unity?

5.5 Anaximenes of Miles Sap. This problem you just mentioned with targets the MONISM in Anaximander…s apeiron. We

will come back to it when discussing Parmenides: can everything be reduced to a single material stuff? Monism is also present in Anaximander…s follower, Anaximenes. Anaxi-mander reduced all to the Apeiron, Anaximenes to Air.

Tank But is not this a retrograde choice?– Anaximander…s theory already concluded that the arche could not be yet another element!

Sap. It does seem so– but Anaximenes solved Anaximander…s problem differently. He was not too bothered, it seems, with the opposites, and concluded that all things result from transformations of air, via two processes: RAREFACTION and CONDENSATION. Air, becom-ing less dense (rarefying), turns into fire. Air, becoming more dense (condensing), turns into wind, then into cloud, then water, then earth, then stone. Hence, all the elements along this continuum can be transformed into each other through these simple proc-esses.

Men…s I have an idea. How about turning the problem inside out? It could be that Anaximander was speaking about air, after all. The whole thing about looking for a principle of the elements that is not one of the elements came from Simplicius, did it not? Sure, an Aris-totelian would have noted that flaw in Thales… theory– but maybe Anaximander did not. Simplicius thought he did, and interpreted the ’apeiron… accordingly!

Sap. That…s interesting. You are claiming that Simplicius misinterpreted Anaximander and pro-jected Aristotle…s theories onto his writings. That could be probable if Simplicius did not have the whole text of ’On Nature… in front of him while he was writing his testimony. Otherwise, I think he would have realised that ’apeiron… was Anaximander…s word for ’air… (if your interpretation is correct). Now, you need to do some philological work on Simplicius to determine what familiarity Simplicius could have had with Anaximander…s original text. That is beyond the scope of our present discussion– but it…s the real stuff historians of Philosophy do. Tradition has usually trusted the interpretation of doxogra-phers like Simplicius, with due reservations when they blatantly project later theories onto earlier texts. Let us simply take assume this attitude, and say that Anaximenes didn…t really like the idea of choosing ’apeiron… as principle. His continuum solves the Ar-istotelian objection to some extent: there is nothing beyond x1 to x4 from which they are derived. Each is derived from the other. The relationship to the arche is horizontal, not vertical, so to speak.

Whiz If it is so, why did he choose Air as the principle? What is special about air? He could have chosen any other element along the continuum.

Sap. That a question for us to answer. Two theories have been proposed. One insists that he shared some of Anaximander…s views about the arche being infinite and indefinite, and air seems to be the most likely candidate for that. According to this interpretation, he



would have shunned something theoretical (unobservable) such as the apeiron since we cannot verify its existence, and instead looked for elements with similar features. Ac-cording to another theory, Anaximenes must have distinguished clearly between the ’principle… as origin (cosmogonical principle) and as constituent (constituent principle) and that he intended air primarily as a cosmogonical principle. This means that for Anaximenes, all the other elements originated from an original body of air by such proc-esses. In the beginning, there was air. Everything came to be from air. In a way, Anaxi-menes could also look at Air as a constituent principle (everything is made up of air), but on his theory, this is as good as saying ’everything is made of water… or ’everything is made of cloud…).

Men…s Wait a sec. I still think that the Aristotelian objection holds. Anaximenes is using the word ’air… in two ways. In one sense, it is simply one of the elements along the contin-uum. In another sense, it is the component and origin of all the elements along the con-tinuum. Just like chemists use the term ’water…: it indicates the liquid form of the stuff H2O and is also used as the standard name of the compound be it in solid form (ice), liquid form (’water…– in the first sense) or gaseous form (’ice…).

Tank So you would accept the first interpretation. Air as the stuff from which all elements originate and are composed is something like the apeiron of Anaximander. Air as one of the elements may have particular qualities, etc. Do you think Anaximenes made the dis-tinction between the principle as origin and the principle as constituent?

Men…s No. I think that is a later distinction, that the Milesian did not come to appreciate. Sap. Well, Men…s, I think that you are having some very interesting ideas lately! Seriously, I

believe your ideas are precious. Most historians of Philosophy agree that first-year stu-dents in Philosophy provide the best insights into these authors since they seek the simplest explanations and avoid projecting later theories onto the works of these au-thors. Obviously, you have to confirm such insights by philological research. You have to check whether the ’simplicity… does not assume modern ideas about nature. For in-stance, adopting your distinction regarding the meanings of ’air…, some have tried to in-terpret Anaximenes as saying: ’everything (along the continuum) is made up of particles of a stuff I call ’Air…; the elements (water, air etc.) are simply Air in different densities, particles of air packed differently, in some the particles lie close together (e.g. in ’earth…), in others they are far apart (e.g. in ’fire…)…. This interpretation is suspicious because we have to be careful when speaking of particles. Anaximenes would probably not uphold a particulate theory– Why, do you think? Any ideas? – O.K. Hint: what did we say about emptiness and non-being?

Tank Particles must be surrounded by empty space. But the Greeks had difficulty in conceiv-ing such a thing as empty space. Everything must be full of air, and air must be a solid thing–

Lee But, if so, how can it rarefy or condense? How can there be more or less of it? Sap. Great conclusion, Lee– (great question, that is!). Anaximenes is not really that monist

after all. He is unwittingly admitting a second principle: empty space. But we will come back to that with Parmenides– So we…re back to the monist problem we started with. By the way, as regards Anaximander, we forgot to mention the biographical stuff. Clara, please, fill us in on this guy–

Men…s Born in Miles probably near 586 BCE, died around 528-25 BCE, probably friend and disciple of Anaximander, wrote a treatise ’On nature…, of which two fragments (one dubi-ous) remain. Used less poetic language than Anaximander in his writings. Said that the Earth was flat, and that it sat at the centre of the universe sustained by air. Heavenly bodies (pictured as leaves of fire) are fixed to a sort of heavenly dome that rotates as a whole around the earth, as a cap rotates around the head–



Sap. That…s enough. Any questions? Lee I think you favour the interpretation that Air is the arche because it is the only element

present at the origin, and all things derived from it, (rather than Men…s interpretation that ’Air… is just a name for the stuff composing all the elements along the continuum). Ac-cording to the former interpretation, locally, things change into air and air back into other things. Is there a point in cosmic history, according to Anaximenes, where all things will return back to air, where there will be a global conversion into air which would be a sort of ’end of the world…? And if so, would there be a new beginning again, every time, from air, as Anaximander ’s cycle of creation and destruction from and into the apeiron?

Sap. I think that Anaximenes would opt for a global cycle from and into air, since for the Greeks, time was cyclical, so the universe had to return to its point of departure every so often. A testimony from Hippolytus also points in this direction. At this point, I would like to add a further disturbing element to the picture. In a fragment from Aetius, Anaximenes depicts the universe as a huge living organism, breathing air (’Aer… in Greek denotes ’air…, ’breath… and sometimes even ’steam…). ’As our soul, which is ’aer… keeps everything together so does ’aer… embrace the world…. Air animates and sustains everything– even in the cosmic sense of being the stuff in which the universe ’floats…. This indicates that Anaximenes is not so detached from anthropomorphisms, as some experts would have him. Is Aer a sort of God, a spirit? Does Anaximenes think that the whole universe is a living thing? Is Aer a ’biological… principle? Is it a material principle after all? Are you con-fused now?

Whiz Yes– every time I feel I am understanding something you come with a new interpreta-tion–

Sap. That exactly how things are with these early Philosophers. I would be fooling you if you left here with a neat little scheme on your notepad–

Whiz And what about the exam? Sap. Keep it simple if you don…t have much time and space to dedicate. Say that the principle

for Anaximenes was air, and mention the continuum. Forget the last part about air and breath– it seems too esoteric for a typical examiner who…s knows the presocratics from the classical textbook. If you like, say that everything for Anaximenes is derived from/made of air. Want know a secret? What we do in here is not really about recon-structing what these guys actually said or wrote or thought. It…s about us training to ask radical questions about everything– and using these poor fellows and their frag-ments/testimonies as an example. Otherwise we would simply be doing Doxography, not Philosophy. We would simply be collecting interpretations from textbooks about an-cient Philosophers. You don…t have a clear picture of what Anaximenes thought? Well, neither do I. Who says he does is a fake! One thing I…m sure of: we…ve done some great Philosophy today!

05 the Milesian Naturalists

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