The Presocratics – A Historiography J A M E S W W A D D O M S

In the period before the emergence of Socrates, citizens of the seaport town of Miletus in Ionia, among other places, began to discuss the nature of the world and humanity’s place within it. Of those initial men in pursuit of a deeper understanding of their existence, the names of several have come down to us through history. They are collectively known as the Presocratics, and their

influence can be felt in every age where the triumph of questioning and experimentation is valued above the dogma of mysticism and theology. Thales of Miletus, (624-546 BCE) is delivered to us as a man of unusual capacity for formulating questions about subjects which were previously the stuff of folklore and mythology. Living several generation after Homer, who described the intervention of the gods in affecting mortal change, Thales developed a creative solution to the crossing of the Halys river, diverting a portion of it into a man-made channel. Thales also used logic to determine the height of the

Pyramids at Giza by comparison with his own shadow. This use of reason to solve practical problems instead of an appeal to the Gods or to fate is an early example of the exercise of the human capacity to think critically. In diverting a river, Thales projected an outcome in his mind and undertook with human effort a solution to a physical barrier; in measuring the pyramids against his own shadow, Thales demonstrated a belief which would become characteristic of philosophy and, indeed, all scientific thinking in his wake - a certain set of laws exists which govern all things equally. Thales proved that shadows of men and shadows of the grand structure of the Pyramids behave the same way. Following from this observation, Thales deduced that some element was the responsible party for all action and change, which acted uniformly on all things. This element bound what he called the many into the One, in his view, water. A contemporary of Thales, Anaximander, believed in his countryman’s description of a system at the heart of which was some basic building block of everything else. Anaximander believed that water, however, was not the basic ingredient of the natural world but simply another product of a deeper and smaller primary solution which he called the indeterminate boundless. Anaximander actually gives us the first stirrings of a theory of evolution, suggesting that people “evolved from creatures of a different kind.” In his view, the creatures of a different kind were of the sea. Anaximander was also the first in history to hint at what is now one of the prevailing notions of advanced quantum theory; that there are, in fact, multiple universes extant at one time and that they are not eternal, but have a definite point and time of origin and a similarly ordained point of

extinction. The interaction between these universal forces of creation and destruction are the arbiters of the change humans witness in the world. In Anaximander’s words, “From what source things arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of time.” Soon, a younger contemporary of Anaximander would reject the idea that all things come from a continuum of the boundless, and draw upon Thales for his concepts of a unifying force of nature. Anaximenes (585-528 BCE) was the last of the Milesian philosophers. He agreed that some definite element was at the heart of everything else, but he disagreed that water was that element. Anaximenes believed that Air was the basic element of existence, and introduced the important concept that objects and beings could be classified based upon the amount of air within them. This idea of comparison based on identifiable properties was important because it is the first time the suggestion that “differences in quality are caused by differences in quantity.” In his view, the change affected by the absence or presence of air was responsible for the vast motions in the natural world. In this view, the phenomena of wind, rain, fire, and even the existence of water, earth and stone, could all be explained by understanding their relationship to air. All three of the Milesian philosophers concluded that there was some basic ‘thing’, whether elemental or undefined and intangible, which governed the creation of everything else. Theirs was a dogmatic view of the universe, however, as they made no attempt to test with theory and experiment the veracity of their statements. Still, these men began asking questions of nature of material existence, and it is in that capacity, the first great inquirers of nature, that they are remembered to this day. Pythagoras of the island of Samos (570-497 BCE), later removed to Crotone, developed the concept that everything is made of numbers rather than elements or the indeterminate boundless. He demonstrated his ideas first in music, where he could show a direct relationship between the length of a string producing a note to the pitch of the note. He considered music a great aid to illness and applied his theory of numbers to the practice of medicine. His theory was particularly appealing to those who sought a materially comprehensible order to the universe. Through this understanding, some believed, lay the route to immortality. Pythagoras developed the science of geometry, and one of his great advances was the discovery that of any right triangle it may be said that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of its other two sides. This mathematical “proof” is striking in that it demonstrates for the first time the modern scientific thought process at work. Pythagoras looked at a right triangle, undertook to ascertain any relationships between the sides which must be constant across all triangles with sides of any length, and proceeded to prove that his concept was correct. This is the first such “proof” of philosophy. Previous to Pythagoras, all wisdom had to be taken on faith. Pythagoras gave the world a theory which could be proven anywhere by reproducing his experiment. A right triangle drawn in the sand at the base of the Great Pyramid, or in rich Aegean soil, or carved in the rocks of Ionia, no matter its size, will always demonstrate the same properties. The world was given its first unarguable philosophical, mathematical and scientific proof. In this achievement, the concept of form replaced the concept of element or boundless matter as the basis of all things. To Pythagoras and his followers, all nature was made of these forms and could be understood by their mathematical properties and their mathematical relationships to each other. Light and dark, loud and quiet, wet and dry could all be understood to a certain degree as mathematical opposites. This was truly a great advancement of the human understanding of the natural world.

Heraclitus from Ephesus (540-480 BCE) brought his attentions to the issue of the nature of change. His concept of eternal change, or Flux, was characterized in his famous saying, “you cannot step twice into the same river, because fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” He ascribed to Fire the agency of change, and united with the element the concept of God to form a dual entity that lay at the heart of all things, even reason. Heraclitus, like Pythagoras, illustrates an idea that all things exist and are governed by virtue of a natural law, which does not change but may be unheeded by some who do not endeavor to understand it. Unlike Pythagoras, Heraclitus seems to cull from the ensuing disorder a certain calmness of reflection. Pythagoras believed in the unity of mathematics, and thus stability, within nature. To him all answers flow from static concepts of numerical ratios. To Heraclitus, all answers flow from the inevitable and constant process of change. Understanding this flux, and opening one’s heart and mind to its inevitability yields immortal peace, even if that peace is founded in the eternal struggle between good and bad, light and dark, and even war and peace itself. Anaxagoras (500-428) developed the concept of the mind, comparing it to matter as a separate but interrelated entity in the natural world. He believed that mater was eternal and so Mind could not be the creator of matter, but rather, it was responsible for all the action of matter. His concept of the mind was so pervasive that it influenced generations of later Greek students of philosophy, and laid the framework for much of Aristotle and Plato’s discussions on the interactivity between the mind of man over natural circumstances. The Atomists developed the earlier theories of all the Pre-Socratics into what would come to be a pre-cursor to the modern theory of the atom. Leucippus (490-430 BCE) and Democritus (460-360 BCE) developed a system in which all matter was composed of smaller, invisible units which by some virtue of size or orientation had the capacity to bind with other units to produce more complicated arrangements. Their great advancement of the concept of empty space, or vacuum, was monumental and provided the arena in which this coupling and interaction took place. This theory did not purport to explain a definite original for matter (or space). Instead it focused on the unguided clashes with matter upon other matter, thus removing from their model a sense of purpose or design. This theory would continue in lauded reappraisals until the birth of modern physics, when it was proven that atoms can be broken down into even smaller disparate parts of a united whole. Democritus later turned his attention to the questions of morality, undertaking such musings that outlined the exact definitions of quality of life and such words as ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and ‘happiness’ and ‘sadness’. In asking these question, Democritus directed the course of philosophy from the daunting questions of material existence to the comportment of one’s own life.