Progress in philosophy

We no longer believe in any clear pattern in the philosophy of history – we do not see it as an inevitable progression, where the ideas of one philosopher lead naturally to its overcoming by the next philosopher and finally perhaps to some Philosophy itself where all the problems of previous millenia have been solved. Science may go forward, but philosophy seems like a mere endless bickering over the very same questions as before.

The era of ancient philosophy I have studied in the previous texts was earlier taken as a clear example of such inevitable progression. Thus, we see Hegel putting all the pre-Socratics in a neat order, where every link adds some important philosophical concept to the development, placing Socrates in the middle with his addition of ethics and method of discussion and topping it all with the works of Plato and Aristotle encompassing all that has gone before.

Such tales of progression could be easily criticized: for instance, there's no clear line of influence leading from one pre-Socratic to another, because their live overlapped with one another and some of them lived indeed even to the times of Socrates. Furthermore, it is not clear that anyone living at the time of Plato and Aristotle would have considered their philosophy to be the ultimate solution to all the questions of previous philosophers. Indeed, there were many philosophical schools, like Cynics, that Hegel places before Plato and Aristotle, which were still live and well and would have contested Hegel's reasoning. It is only the later times that raised the status of the two masters – and it's impossible to tell, how justified this raising is, because we have no full works of their contemporary rivals.

Still, we might discern at least some lines of influence leading up to Plato and Aristotle – although they were not the only ends of these lines. I remarked already at the beginning of my studies that the Ionians begun by stating theories based on studies of nature: theories concerning the constitution of world, its generation and possible future destruction and the constitution of the worldly things. Such studies were probably continued by a number of persons, although such empirical studies were not part of any profession in those days. We can discern features of such studies in some of the pre-Socratics and especially in stories recounting their lives. Plato confronted such empirical information in his Timaeus, alhtough he was clearly skeptical of its certainty. Finally Aristotle collected lot of this ”empirical science” and probably made also personal contributions, especially in his studies of animals. Because works of Aristotle were the first extant works containing this empirical treasure trove, he was often considered to have actually started many of the empirical sciences.

It is much harder to determine whether there were any development of religious type. I have suggested that several of the pre-Socratics were actively interested of religious issues: certainly Pythagoras and Xenophanes, possibly even Heracleitus – we may perhaps discern some religious strands even in Parmenidian idea of the unity behind everything. Most influential religious notion was still the idea of world as on the whole good and wisely governed: Anaxagoras thought there was a reason governing everything and Plato based his whole philosophy on supreme idea of goodness. Even Aristotle held on to this idea, when he noted that all existing things tried to imitate, as best as they could, the perfect being or God living in eternal bliss.

Empirical findings and religious ideas seem somewhat extrinsic to philosophy itself, but there were already a number of essentially philosophical questions. The eldest of these was probably the Parmenidian challenge: can we allow the existence of motion and multiplicity? This question was probably discussed by Empedocles, Anaxagoras and atomists, and it was definitely on the agenda of Plato and Aristotle. The common assumption of all these philosophers was that Eleatic school was wrong and there really was motion and multiplicity, and even the basic answer was same – there is some stability, but this still allows for the variability of some issues.

Study of nature began with Ionians, interest in religious issues originated with Pythagorians and metaphysical questions started with Eleatics. It was common in ancient times to ascribe the invention of ethics to Socrates, which is true only partially. Certainly there were people interested in the Socratic question: how should we live well, both individually and collectively? Indeed, the seven wise men of Greek history were supposedly wise just because they knew answers to these questions. In imitation of these wise men, sophists named themselves also ”wise men”, but at least some of them appeared to understood the required wisdom in the sense of a capacity to find means for required goals.

Socrates noted that before determining means, one should at first determine what one should aim at and take as one's goal. Furthermore, he took as his explicit task to find out what goals really deserved to be goals, while as far as we know, his predecessors in ethical issues were content just to proclaim what is good. Just like after Parmenidian establishment of metaphysics, no single line of development captivated the mind's of people. Still, the question itself connected various ethical doctrines, and it became in some circles the most important question of them all. Indeed, Plato at least begun by trying to find solutions for moral problems, even if answering these problems meant discussing also metaphysics. Aristotle forms an interesting exception, as ethics forms with him only a secondary topic and the true wisdom is to be found in a mystical contemplation of the origin and archetype of goodness.

The one thing were there has been evident development is methodology. Unfortunately, most of the earliest philosophers left no record as to how they arrived to theories they presented. Still, we might find interest in arguments at least starting from the Eleatic school. By the time of sophists, such argumentation had been dressed in ornate decoration and flowery rhetoric – the development of rhetoric was probably influenced by a need to master public speeches in city councils and courts. While rhetorical speeches tried to convince passive listeners, Socrates raised the listener into a bit more active role by making him a partner in discussion, although the true control was still in the hands of the clever interrogator. Plato generalized then this style of arguing into a proper methodology for seeking truth. He also distinguished this dialectical method clearly from mere rhetoric: it had more in common with mathematical argumentation than convincing people in courts. Aristotle then completed this development by noting that certain figures of argumentation or syllogisms worked always so that one had no choice but to accept their conclusion if one just accepted their premisses  He could thus envision the possibility of presenting human knowledge in a style, where statements expressing the essence of something led to further truths through valid deductions.

Was world planned or not?

Eleatics challenged the idea of a world full of change and multiplicity, suggesting both were only illusionary in comparison with the continuous material substance of the Anaximenian philosophy. The illusionary or at least secondary nature of motion was accepted by philosophers of post-Eleatic generation, who all believed in a stable structure behind all alterations that was itself incapable of any change. Indeed, many of them were supposed to be pupils of Eleatics, like Empedocles or the atomists Leucippus and Democritus, or then pupils of Ionian philosophers, like Anaxagoras.

The case of multiplicity was different. Parmenides and his followers were convinced that all apparent differences between types of objects were secondary or even illusionary: the whole world formed one indivisible continuum. The post-Eleatic philosophers answered by affirming the status of multiplicity. The number and nature of these multiple types of objects was a debated issue. Empedocles stayed closest to the common sense and suggested earth, fire, water and air to be the building blocks of material world. This was the beginning of the famous theory of the four elements, which now seems outdated and yet seemed so natural for many millennia. Indeed, three of the supposed elements corresponded to the three most familiar states of matter – earth being solid, water liquid and air gaseous – and the fourth, the fire, was a state or more like process that appears quite different from any of the three states. Furthermore, the basic idea behind the elemental theory was for a long time and in some sense is even now uncontested, and indeed, was a supposition common to all post-Eleatic philosophers: the basic elements of the world are unchangeable, like the Eleatic world substance was supposed to be, but they can enter in accidental combinations with one another, thus making the appearance of change more comprehensible than in Eleatic theory.

Although Anaxagoras and atomists shared Empedocles’ idea that the accidental combination and separation and recombination of basic elements formed the visible world, they endorsed somewhat more scientifically respectable notions on the constitution of the objects. Anaxagoras explicitly said that earth, fire and the rest of the four elements were not the true elements. Indeed, he remained silent on the issue what the true basic elements were. He only made the sound remark that e.g. plants must share some basic ingredients with horses, because horses use carrots for nourishment. In general Anaxagoras assumed that all different objects contained some common elements, at least when a sufficient state of division was taken: Anaxagoras believed that no final state of division could be found.

Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus, had a different notion of the nature of basic elements: they believed that there must be some final level of division, that is, a state of atoms that couldn't be divided further. The word ”atom” should not make us favour atomists over Anaxagoras. Atoms of Leucippus and his pupil were not like atoms of modern day science. The entities we call atoms are divisible, and furthermore, they are more insubstantial than their Greek relations: atoms of Leucippus and Democritus were full of matter and like small Eleatic continuums that came in different sizes and shapes, while atoms of our days are mostly filled with emptiness. More modern is the atomists' acceptance of such emptiness. Eleatics had declared that every place must be filled with some matter, because emptiness implied existence of non-existence of matter, which they deemed absurd. Other post-Eleatic philosophers were content with this denial of vacuum, as they didn't particularly require it. Atomists, on the other hand, were compelled to accept the possibility of empty space, because it is hard to imagine how any motion could happen if world was full of indivisible material objects resisting the movement of one another: Anaxagoras on the other hand, could say that most of the universe was filled with a matter so weakly combined that it was instantly divided and dispersed when some object moved through it. The atomists were thus forced to suppose the existence of an entity differing radically from material objects: space or a container that could not be felt or seen and which contained other objects instead of repelling them.

The post-Eleatic idea of basic elements involves the possibility of an external combination and segregation of these elements: whatever the nature of these basic elements is, their combination produces the material objects we are familiar with. A natural question is what causes such combination and breaking down of combinations. Empedocles was again one to suggest the easy answer: he proposed a force combining element – love – and another separating them – hate. These names are perhaps more of metaphors, except that Empedocles clearly was of the opinion that the combination of elements was the better direction: although all combinations were not destined to live long, some of them survived and most complex of them were animals and human beings. The force of separation, on the contrary, would one day result in the destruction of the current state of world.

Poised between the roles of natural forces and gods, Empedoclean love and hate were of an ambiguous nature. A similar ambiguity lies in the Anaxagoras' idea of a reason governing the world: his reason might well have been a mere an impersonal force instead of a personal constructor of the world. Still, the unitary nature of the reason makes Anaxagoras' theory simpler than Empedocles: the world was not a result of two battling forces, but could be explained by a single force. Indeed, one is bound to notice a similarity with monotheistic explanations of the existence of the world: something must have created the world. Yet, Anaxagoras did not believe in complete creation, which was an oxymoron for nearly all Greek philosophers: after all, they thought, how could something come out of nothing. The reason of Anaxagoras was only like an architect moving matter, which existed independently of it: reason was not omnipotent, but was restricted by the nature of the matter. Indeed, reason itself was most likely embodied in Anaxagoras' theory: he was thus more likely to explain facets of the world causally than through a reference to a plan that the reason had envisioned for the world.

If Anaxagoras saw some final purpose behind the motions of the world, atomists were of a completely different opinion. All motions were caused by necessity, that is, by one material particle causing the other to change its place through an impact: for instance, a billiard ball doesn't move by itself, but only when another ball happens to hit it. In philosophical jargon such a viewpoint is often called determinism. In its strict form it would admit no freedom of action: all our decisions would be decided by previous events and not by our free will. Usually determinism is connected with a materialistic denial of any soul or persona independent from the material world: human consciousness is just an apparent entity. But like Anaxagoras was no strict monotheist, Greek atomists were not yet strict materialist determinists. Both atomists accepted the existence of souls. True, the soul was material for them – another atom, although of a particularly fine shape – but the line between merely material and ”living” was not so strict for these early philosophers. Indeed, the younger of the atomists, Democritus, felt it completely natural to assume that these souls or human persons could determine their own ends: he was even ready to proscribe some recommendations of how humans should govern their lives.

Anaxagoras and atomists thus started the debate on whether everything in the world was planned or whether everything has happened without no rhyme or reason, merely through some causal determinism. Although the instigators of the debate, these philosophers were actually closer one another than their successors: it was left for posteriority to draw clear lines in this discussion.

What is, is

Until now we have met pre-scientific and religious thinkers. Only one group is still missing, namely, that of proper philosophers, that is, thinkers who have interests distinct of scientific and religious ones. The Eleatic school of philosophy is the first proper example of this manner of thinking.

The founder of the Eleatic school was Parmenides. Parmenides was supposedly a possible student of Xenophanes, whom we have already met, but the connection of Xenophanes with the actual thinking of the Eleatics is rather minimal: the most that he might have passed on to his supposed follower is the idea of whole universe as a divinity – indeed, Parmenides’ teachings flirt with a mystical idea of universe being a whole where everything is connected.

Although Parmenides might then have connection with the earlier thinkers with more religious interests, it is the more scientific Ionians that Parmenides has most to do with. Parmenides even presents his own physical model of the development of the world like the Ionians had done. Yet, there is a twist: Parmenides at once admits that his model is an illusion that does not correspond with true reality. His point is to criticise all attempts of the Ionian sort, because even the first assumptions of these attempts are faulty. At the same time he develops the views of Anaximenes on one material substance in a direction the latter might have deemed incredible.

Parmenides’ criteria for deciding which physical theories are correct is the simple statement “what is, is, and what isn’t, isn’t”. Sounds obvious, but does it lead anywhere? Parmenides’ idea is that whenever we have to use negatives like “it isn’t so”, we are actually speaking nonsense. For instance, if I say “there are no centaurs”, I seem to be speaking of centaurs as existing things, but at the same time I admit that there are no centaurs. Similarly, whenever I deny something, I seem to speak of a situation that holds, but then I immediately deny that such situation holds. Parmenides may appear to have been mistaken: surely we can speak of non-existence and things not being something – otherwise we wouldn’t have the word “not” in our vocabulary. Yet, in some sense Parmenides might be right. Negative sentences do not provide us with new information, but merely tell what mistakes we should avoid: if we know of an apple that it isn’t red, I really don’t know anything definite of its colour, but only know to avoid the false statement that it is red.

Now, any statement of the form “A is not B” involves obviously negation or denial of something: thus, according to Parmenides’ criterion such statements do not tell anything. The problem is that all classifications of things are based on such statements: for instance, you couldn’t define redness in any other way, but through contrast with yellowness, blueness, greenness etc. The curious result would then be that we couldn’t pronounce any difference of things: all we could note are similarities between things. The final conclusion would be that there exists only one thing. This is actually a logical consequence of philosophy of Ionians and especially Anaximenes. If all things are merely modifications of one matter – whether it is called water, air or something else – then everything truly is one “blob”, and all apparent differences within that blob are inessential. True, it seems that e.g. I am separate from the air surrounding me, but actually I and air are both just parts of one material continuum.

Parmenides point out also that statements like “it wasn’t like this” or “it won’t be like that” are also meaningless, because they contain negation. In one sense this seems obvious: the true actuality is the way things are now, while past and future events are not happening now and are thus not at the moment actual. But Parmenides has another point: things cannot have been different than they are now and they won’t be different than now, that is, all change is a mere illusion. Remember that Parmenidian world was a continuum of matter where all apparent differences were inessential. It may look like things come and go all the time – leaves are grown by a tree and then they fall and vanish. Actually the matter of the tree has just formed into leaves which then finally turn into earth: because tree, leaves and earth are just inessential modifications of one matter, no true change has happened. Parmenides is thus criticising Ionian idea that world could somehow have begun: matter is eternal and the only true existent, thus, there cannot be any true coming-to-bes.

It isn’t a surprise to hear that Parmenides denied the existence of void, that is, a place within universe where there is no matter: after all, if we said there is no matter in some place we would be using a negation. Of the statements of Parmenides, this might the most difficult to explain nowadays: after all, the idea of a vacuum seems quite acceptable. But actually a widespread acceptance of vacuum is quite a recent thing, and we might thus assume that it is more natural for human beings to think of space as completely filled with something. True, we do use such expression as “there is nothing in it”, but on a closer look they are just saying “there is nothing I am looking for in it” (no whiskey in a bottle etc.). Indeed, the whole question “Is there anything in it” seems to suppose that there is always some “it” filling the place (we shall return to this argument when we deal with atomists).

Parmenidian world is then a continuous blob of undifferentiated mass in which no true change happens. But what is then the shape of this blob? Parmenides himself concluded that the world must be a ball. He justified this once again by noting that other possibilities would require us to accept differences and thus negation. For instance, if the world would be a pyramid, we could make a distinction between the apex and an arbitrary point within the surface of the pyramid. Parmenides’ choice of the shape caused actually a sort of debate in the Eleatic school. Parmenides’ pupil Melissos noted that in a ball we could distinguish between the points in the surface and the other points: thus, the world couldn’t have been ball even according to Parmenides’ own methodology. Melissos himself suggested that the world would have no finite shape at all, but that it would be infinite. Yet, the idea of infinity was not in fashion those days, and indeed, it is hard to imagine what an infinite blob of matter would look like. Melissos’ suggestion remained therefore a curiosity.

Elealtic theory aroused apparently quite lot of controversy: indeed, a theory that denies all change and multiplicity doesn’t seem quite convincing. Eleatics themselves answered to the challenge by trying to make the opinions of their enemies sound equally ridiculous. Melissos and especially Parmenides’ other student, Zeno, invented a number of arguments which intended to show that denying Eleatic theory would lead to contradictions: thus, philosophical argumentation had begun.

Particularly famous were Zeno’s arguments against the existence of motion. Because in Eleatic world no true changes would happen, no motion would exist either: it wouldn’t matter if one piece of matter travelled to another place, because all matter would be part of one indivisible continuum. But Zeno had also other reasons beyond his Eleatic worldview to doubt that motion in the ordinary sense of the word truly occurs. If I start to walk from my living room to kitchen I must at some point travel the half-way distance between those two rooms, and before I can reach that half-way point I must have stepped over some point between this half-way point and my original position. It is easy to see that this process could be continued indefinitely and before reaching our destination we should have made infinite number of other journeys, which seems impossible. One way out of the difficulty would be to deny the dividing of the distance between the two rooms into smaller and smaller distances: it makes no difference to distinguish between e.g. the journey before the half-way point and the journey after it, because they are just aspects of the same journey. This is actually where Zeno is heading: we could then reasonably suggest that there is no justification for distinguishing even between the beginning and the end of the journey, which would be mere aspects of one indivisible continuum.

Elean philosophy was then in a sense first synthesis in the history of philosophy: it combined the material explanation of the world as a single material continuum in the Ionian philosophy with the need to discover the human position in the world – like everything else, human thought was also just another aspect of the One or the universe as a material continuum. Furthermore, it also was the first philosophy that we know to have taken seriously the need to justify its own view against the views of its combatants, thus truly earning the name “philosophy”.

A prophet, a critic and a hermit

The first group of philosophers we met were precursors of scientific thinking and almost formed a school of some sorts. The three thinkers we are about to be introduced are a more diverse group with no obvious line of master-pupil –relations, although later Greek historians were keen on establishing such relations. Yet, the three philosophers share at least a common subject matter: they were interested of the religious issues. Although the reader would be an atheist or otherwise dismissed all mystical talk, she shouldn’t stop reading just because of her dislike: an interest in something beyond what can be through experience or scientifically explained has been an important part of human life for millennia, and one should at least be interested where this need for religion has arisen.

The first philosopher introduced now is a fellow called Pythagoras, who lived approximately at the same time as Thales and his disciples. In fact, one legend tells that Pythagoras himself was a disciple of Thales, while others say that he was educated by some other individual in the group of Seven Wise Men: it was apparently important for Greek historians to find a basis for philosophy in the common sense wisdom. Although the first legend would be true, Pythagoras didn’t live in the Ionia, but in the so-called “Greater Greece”, that is, in the Greek colonies of the southern Italy.

We might say that Pythagoras did no philosophy at all. Instead, he organised a new religion. Whereas Western people unsatisfied with Christianity sometimes dream of the colourful nature of pagan religions, Greek pagans were often equally unsatisfied with their own religion which gave no hope of a happy afterlife, but spoke only of a dreary eternity in the valley of shadows, unless one had the luck of being a demigod or at least kin of gods. Besides this “official” Greek religion there was a mystical undercurrent of the so-called Orphic movement, which promised something extra for its followers. Orphic movement held that a person continued his or her existence after death, but in a different body. Furthermore, by following the rites of the religion a person could in some manner control which form he or she would be getting in the next life: the best possible option was a place with gods.

Pythagoras’ “philosophy” was then a form of Orphism: it is not certain whether Pythagoras was influenced by Orphism or the other way around, but the connection is clear. Pythagoras created a monastic society that followed strict rules of conduct, which mostly described what one must not do in order to remain clean: such taboos as the prohibition of eating beans seem quite strange nowadays. Like any proper founder of a new religion, Pythagoras was thought to be capable of great miracles – a proper Jesus or Buddha.

One might wonder why such a “wonder boy” has deserved a name in the history of philosophy. This has mostly to do with his supposed followers. Something similar happened as with Thales and Anaximenes: philosophical theories of the latter were transferred to the first. In the case of Pythagoras this transference was authorised by the unknown true inventors of the new idea. Aristotle named them so-called Pythagoreans: they used the name of Pythagoras to defend their own views, although the master himself might have not liked those opinions – such a creative us of the history of philosophy is still an ongoing pursuit.

Why use the name of Pythagoras to introduce one’s own opinions? One good reason apparently was that Pythagoras was known as a wise person knowing many deep secrets. Second reason might have been the fact that Pythagoras was apparently fond of mathematics: he was rumoured to have made a great sacrifice for the gods after learning the famous theorem named after him. For the future Pythagoreans this was a delight, because they themselves were convinced that mathematics and especially numbers were the key to unlocking all the secrets of the universe.

The idea of numbers as the basis of universe might sound convincing at first: after all, we do know now that mathematics is helpful in e.g. determining the movements of planets. Yet, the idea of Pythagoreans was more primitive. Mere numbers play actually a very minor role even in mathematics. A quantity of a planet’s mass isn’t very helpful by itself, but only in relation to other quantities, like the current velocity of the same planet. Even the mass of the planet or any other object (say 5 kg) is not a simple number, but actually a relation of the mass of this object to an object that weighs one kilogram. Mere numbers occur only when we count some groups of objects – like three rabbits on the field – and even there this number by itself seems hardly informative.

One place where mere numbers are essential at least partially is in geometry. Triangle is determined by its having three sides, quadrangles are determined by having four sides and so on. The Pythagoreans were obviously fond of geometry and they apparently thought that what is essential in geometry is essential in all universe. Thus, Pythagoreans were eager to assume that important concepts in other fields of life could be reduced to numbers: the connections Pythagoreans assumed to exist between numbers and other concepts were most of the time a bit farfetched. For instance, ideas of unity and sameness naturally brings to mind the number one, while number two should then correspond to multiplicity and difference; goodness could then be described also by number one, while evil differing from goodness was then naturally described by two; and because men were thought to be better than women, masculinity was identified with one and femininity with two.

As should be obvious by now, this mixing of numbers with other ideas quickly degenerated into a mystical numerology, where some numbers were felt to be more perfect than others: for instance, three as the combination of unity and multiplicity (1+2) was supposedly more complete than its predecessors – this idea lived on e.g. in the viewpoint that good plays should have three acts, because then we would have perfectly a beginning, a middle and an end. Indeed, we might say that Pythagoreans were forerunners of the numerological books which promise to reveal your inner essence by calculating the number of your name. In addition to such mysticism, Pythagoreans also tried to make physical applications of their theory of numbers. They assumed that world, which was supposed perfect, would exhibit the most perfect numbers. Hence, the Pythagoreans thought that there should be a total of ten planets, because ten as a sum of first four numbers (1+2+3+4=10) was assumed to be a perfect number (one wonders why fifteen wouldn’t then be even more perfect number: perhaps the Pythagoreans just counted their fingers and thought they should be adorned with what is most perfect).

Pythagoreans were, to put it nicely, quite original followers of their adopted teacher, as they added the numerical mysticism to the purely religious teachings of the Pythagoras. The tradition held that teachings of Pythagoras spawned yet another school of thought: the philosopher Xenophon, who was rumoured to be the founder of the Eleatic school that we shall meet later, was according to some accounts a pupil of Pythagorean school, although according to other accounts he criticised Pythagoras. Indeed, Pythagoras and Xenophanes were both reformers of the traditional Greek religion. But whereas Pythagoras tried to fix the lack of emotional attachment and of a sense of holiness in a Greek religion, Xenophanes was more interested of the meagre dogma of Greek religion.

If you didn’t know it already, paganism was full of gods and other spiritual beings of many sorts: beside the gods proper who dwelled in the Mount Olympus, there were all kinds of demigods, nymphs, fauns etc. The Greek gods were shaped like humans, and furthermore, they had very human characters: Zeus was cheating his wife, Hera, who was supposedly quite jealous of her husband. Gods fought against one another, seduced mortals and in general lived a life one would expect a god to be incapable of.

Xenophon thought the religion of Greeks filled gods with humanly characteristics: in effect, Greeks believed that gods were just humans with a bit more authority and power – indeed, they even had a human shape. Xenophon made the biting remark that apes and other beasts would undoubtedly make gods in their own image: e.g. the gods of the wolves would quite likely have sharp teeth and like eating sheep. Xenophon thus called for a new understanding of gods which would give more dignity to those supposed most perfect beings there are: furthermore he argued that there could actually be only one God, because many gods wouldn’t be as perfect as one god.

It is quite hard to say what kind of God Xenophon would have preferred over the unruly gods of his fellow citizens. The only remark that has been preserved on this matter tells that Xenophon believed God to be shaped like a round ball. It is quite probable that he was thinking that the Earth itself was some sort of God: another possibility is that he identified the whole cosmos with God. In any case, the God of Xenophon was still a material being, although supposedly perfect.

The final philosopher we shall meet this time, Heraclitus, was rumoured to be a pupil of Xenophon. Like a good pupil, Heraclitus was also told to have said that Xenophon and even Pythagoras just pretended to be wise, although they did not know true wisdom. This statement shows Heraclitus’ professional jealousy: Heraclitus was also in a sense religious thinker, because he was interested to discern the place of human in the makings of the cosmos, and he thus wanted to disparage other religious thinkers in order to promote his own ideas. Then again, Heraclitus was eager to note his enthusiasm for Thales who was more of a researcher of nature, because no rivalry existed between Heraclitus and Thales.

At first sight Heraclitus’ philosophy might have more in common with Thales and other Ionians than Pythagoras and Xenophanes. Indeed, he supposedly said that fire was the basis of everything, just like Thales’ student Anaximenes had said that air was the basic substance behind everything. But Heraclitus’ statement was more of a metaphor. Fire signified for Heraclitus the processual nature of the world. Everything was in a flux, and it was almost impossible to refer to anything twice, because the things we experienced changed at once into something else: living things were constantly decaying, while seemingly lifeless world was full of possible life.

This idea of eternal change of everything was commonly seen as the only novelty of Heraclitus’ thought: clever philosophers pointed at once that the change itself seemed not to be changing at all. This criticism was a bit hasty, because Heraclitus himself admitted that not everything changed, just those things that we could see with our eyes (like leaves that changed their colours from green to red and brown and finally turned into soil). Beyond those sensible and vanishing things there was something stable. Heraclitus was not speaking of any supernatural entities, but of regularities in the processes of the world. Life turns lifeless through death and decay, but lifeless turns back into life through birth of new creatures; fire heats up water, which also quenches fire. Such facts were for Heraclitus instances of laws that apply to a number of phenomena: opposites tend to change into one another, but they also might cancel one another. Heraclitus saw an everlasting tension of opposites governing the world we know and also sustaining the processes in it.

Heraclitus thought it was important that a person would recognise this contradictory nature of the world around her. True, people could live without being aware of the laws governing the world, that is, they could follow their senses and strive for variable and mutable things – indeed, most of the people do live in this way, Heraclitus added. But this sort of life hardly differs from a life of an animal that merely satisfies its desires as they come by. Knowing the immutable laws makes it possible for us to plan ahead and regulate our life. Heraclitus did not mean that a human being should use the laws to further her own agendas: this would be an animal life in another guise. Instead, he believed that a true knowledge of the laws should lead to a life according to those laws, that is, to a life where the person would live in harmony with her environment – this is a more religious, than scientific idea. Because the majority of the humans did not live in this manner, they lived a life of struggle against the necessary process of the world – no wonder Heraclitus decided to live as a hermit. Even the so-called wise men – such colleagues of Heraclitus as Pythagoras and Xenophanes – tried to supplant false wisdom in place of true appreciation of the world.

Although the three thinkers differed in their opinions, they all shared the same worry. Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Heraclitus all wanted to give new meaning and life to the spirit of the Greeks, which had been nourished by meagre stories of heroes and gods with no deeper purpose. Whether it was through a founding of new cult, through new image of God or through a discovery of the place of humans in the world, these philosophers wanted to give Greek world a purpose and a goal.

Ionian naturalists

If you have read the first blog text, then you should know by now that I am beginning from a guy called Thales. Who is this person, anyway? Well, he lived around year 600 BC in an area called Ionia, which was a place full of Greek colonies in Western coast of modern Turkey. He was a man interested of geometry and astronomy, but also, it seems, a shrewd businessman: when he had determined from the weather conditions that a good olive year was coming, he bought all the olive presses in the area and made a fortune. Thales was also involved in local politics, and it was probably for this reason that Greeks named him one of the seven Wises.

The reason why Thales is so important for the history of philosophy is that he was the first person to propose explanations for natural phenomena that were not based on religion. Thus, Thales suggested that the Earth was like a disc floating in the ocean and that all the earthquakes were actually mere tumult of the ocean underneath the crust. This view of the world was not too original, because even Homer had hinted that Earth was surrounded by Ocean. But Homeric Ocean was also a god who supposedly had certain ancestry according to the poems of Hesiod: such details of religious tradition are left out of Thales’ description.

Although the start of a non-religious speculation about the shape of the world was an important contribution, what makes Thales especially important is that he had successors. If Thales had died without leaving any heirs, his strange theory of Earth floating in water would have vanished from history. But it happened so that Thales apparently had a pupil, Anaximander. Anaximander was a pupil of Thales in the good sense that he instantly went on to modify his master’s theory of world. While Thales had described only the Earth, Anaximander added the stars and other heavenly objects to his theory. For Anaximander, Earth was no disc floating in water, but a cylinder surrounded by water. This cylinder was then surrounded, according to Anaximander, by wheels containing fire, which could be seen through small holes: these sparks of light were then obviously Sun, Moon and the rest of the heavenly gang.

The true novelty of Anaximander’s rather original theory was that he felt the need to explain also where the world and its occupants had come from. There was of course the religious answer that gods were somehow involved: for instance, Earth was actually a goddess who had been born from another God and so on. Anaximander was the first to give an alternative answer. He suggested that world had began from a chaotic jumble of everything mixed together – here he agreed with religious authorities of Greek – but he didn’t need any gods to sort this chaos, but supposed that this mishmash of elements began naturally to separate into organised things. Even human beings had not been designed by Zeus, but had developed from creatures of ocean after the water and the earth had separated. Anaximander was also the first to predict a natural ending for the world. If the world had somehow come out of chaos, it was probable that it was one day going to destroy and return to the original chaos.

Thales and Anaximander suggested hypothetical explanations for natural phenomena, and furthermore, explanations one might be able to test – if nor in Ancient Greece, at least in our time. Thus, we could burrow deep enough and see whether any huge amount of water trickles to the surface, or just fly high and see what the Earth looks like. Even Anaximander’s explanation of the birth of cosmos can be nowadays experienced by testing whether it works with the currently known laws of nature. Thales’ and Anaximander’s theories are thus something that a scientist could test and therefore not so interesting for a modern philosopher: if the guy in the physics lab can do it, why should we be needed?

Now, apparently Anaximander had a pupil of his own, Anaximenes (wonder if they ever got confused who was the master and who was the pupil). Anaximenes had also his own hypothesis of the shape of the world, but in addition he had more philosophically interesting ideas: all things are made of air, he said. Although this statement seems rather strange, Anaximenes probably had some good reasons for suggesting it. We see how heated water turns into vapour and gradually disperses into thin air: and we see how air condenses into clouds which produce water and even snow. We see how snow then melts back into water, which nourishes trees, and we see how wood burned become smoke and ashes. All of these familiar phenomena and others suggest naturally that air, water, snow, wood, smoke and rest are all mere modifications or states of one material substance. Anaximenes called it air, perhaps because he believed air to be the first shape in which matter was found, but we might as well call it water, wood or something else: if they are all just same stuff in different packages, it hardly makes any difference how we choose to name this underlying stuff.

Anaximenes’ theory contains elements that can be tested: we might experiment with all sorts of substances and see whether we can truly change everything into everything. Furthermore, Anaximenes suggested that water was born out of air through condensation: we might thus test whether water truly appeared when air was condensed. Yet, the basic thesis of Anaximenes is not testable. Say that all the substances could be turned into all the other substances. We couldn’t still be sure that all these substances would then be mere modifications of one stuff: we might think that e.g. water just vanishes, when snow appears, but that water and snow still wouldn’t have anything in common. Whatever experiments we made, we could never ascertain through them alone that water and snow have something in common. In some cases the assumption of an underlying substance seems rather natural: when I paint white wall with red colour, it is natural to assume that the old wall did not just vanished and that it was not just replaced by a red wall. Despite the naturalness of such a manner of thinking, it is not based on any empirical evidence – how would it look different if the old wall were always to vanish and be immediately replaced by a new wall when it was painted? Thus, Anaximenes’ assumption is more of a philosophical proposition: we might still argue for it, although not use tests and observations to validate its truth.

Anaximenes’ idea was so innovative in comparison to his predecessors that later philosophers thought that it should deserve the status of the beginning of the philosophy: Aristotle was the first to say this and others followed him. Although it would have been natural to declare Anaximenes then to be the first philosopher, they instead thought that it was Thales who invented the theory. Indeed, Thales had said something like “water is basis of everything”, which could be understood as a statement that water is the one stuff of which all other things are mere modifications. Anaximander would then have suggested that it wasn’t water, but some chaotic jumble of everything that was the primary stuff and Anaximenes would merely have added the air as another candidate. This reinterpretation was not just unfair to Anaximenes, but it also makes little sense: after all, if there is only one stuff, it seems a moot question if we should call it water, air or something else.

The three philosophers introduced here took the first steps towards true scientific and philosophical discussion, because they all avoided the traditional religious explanations. Yet, they were still on a border zone between religious and scientific thinking. They were not atheists and did not even avoid mentioning gods or spirits in their theories. True, they based the explanations mostly on matter, but they most likely thought that matter itself has some spirituality or liveliness within itself.