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Greek Natural Philosophy The Presocratics and their Importance for Environmental Philosophy First Edition By J. Baird Callicott, John van Buren, and Keith Wayne Brown Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Marissa Applegate, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Gem Rabanera, Project Editor Alia Bales, Associate Production Editor Miguel Macias, Senior Graphic Designer Alexa Lucido, Licensing Coordinator Sue Murray, Interior Designer Natalie Piccotti, Senior Marketing Manager Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions and Sales Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor Copyright © 2018 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permis- sion of Cognella, Inc. For inquiries regarding permissions, translations, foreign rights, audio rights, and any other forms of reproduction, please contact the Cognella Licensing Department at [email protected]. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for iden- tification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © 2017 Depositphotos/Jrleyland. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5165-2856-1 (pbk) / 978-1-5165-2857-8 (br) In memory of our early teachers in Greek natural philosophy: José Benardete and Catherine Lord, Syracuse University; Perry Robinson, University of New Brunswick; and Richard Owsley, University of North Texas. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi INTRODUCTION 2 (A) NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (OR NATURAL HISTORY): ITS MEANING AND RANGE 2 (B) THE ORGANIZATION, SCOPE, AND PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK 7 (C) RECONSTRUCTING PRESOCRATIC NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 10 (D) OUR INTERPRETIVE METHOD: THE DIACHRONIC DIALECTIC OF IDEAS 14 (E) WHY PHILOSOPHY SUDDENLY EMERGED WHEN IT DID: A COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION 18 (F) WHY PHILOSOPHY SUDDENLY EMERGED WHERE IT DID: THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT 28 (G) CODA: NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS 38 FOR FURTHER READING 43 CHAPTER 1 THE MYTHOPOEIC WORLDVIEW 44 (A) HESIOD’S THEOGONY 44 (B) HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS 61 (C) THE MYTHOPOEIC WORLDVIEW IN BAREST OUTLINE 69 FOR FURTHER READING 70 CHAPTER 2 THE MILESIAN SCHOOL 72 (A) THALES 72 (B) ANAXIMANDER 79 (C) RATIONALIZING AND NATURALIZING MYTHOLOGY 92 (D) ANAXIMENES 95 (E) WHAT NEXT? 104 FOR FURTHER READING 104 CHAPTER 3 XENOPHANES AND HERACLITUS 108 (A) XENOPHANES 110 (B) HERACLITUS 114 FOR FURTHER READING 131 CHAPTER 4 THE ELEATIC SCHOOL 134 (A) PARMENIDES 135 (B) ZENO 147 (C) MELISSUS 159 (D) WAS XENOPHANES THE FOUNDER OF THE ELEATIC SCHOOL? 164 FOR FURTHER READING 166 CHAPTER 5 THE QUALITATIVE PLURALISTS: ANAXAGORAS 168 (A) AFTER THE ELEATICS 168 (B) PHILOSOPHY COMES TO ATHENS IN THE PERSON OF ANAXAGORAS 171 (C) ANAXAGORAS’S COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, AND ARCHĒ 174 (D) ANAXAGORAS’S MIND 185 (E) ONE WORLD OR MANY? 187 FOR FURTHER READING 188 CHAPTER 6 THE QUALITATIVE PLURALISTS: EMPEDOCLES 190 (A) RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN THE “ITALIAN TRADITION” OF PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY 190 (B) EMPEDOCLES’S PERSONALITY 194 (C) EMPEDOCLES’S RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEW 196 (D) EMPEDOCLES’S WAY OF SAVING THE APPEARANCES 200 (E) EMPEDOCLES’S COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY 208 (F) EMPEDOCLES’S ZOOGONY 211 (G) EMPEDOCLES’S EPISTEMOLOGY 212 (H) SUCCESSES AND FAILURES OF THE QUALITATIVE PLURALISTS TO SAVE THE APPEARANCES 216 FOR FURTHER READING 219 CHAPTER 7 THE ATOMISTS: LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS 220 (A) THE CROWN OF GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL ACHIEVEMENT BEFORE PLATO 220 (B) ATOMISM AND THE ELEATIC CONNECTION 223 (C) THE ATOMISTS’ IONIAN/ELEATIC ONTOLOGY 226 (D) PROPERTIES OF THE ATOMS 229 (E) MOTION 232 (F) THE ATOMS AS LETTER-ELEMENTS 235 (G) SAVING THE APPEARANCES 237 (H) APPEARANCE AND REALITY 242 (I) THE SOUL 243 (J) COSMOGONY, COSMOLOGY, BIOLOGY, AND METEOROLOGY 245 (K) ANTHROPOGONY AND POLITOGONY 247 - - (L) CHANCE (TUCHE) AND NECESSITY (ANAGKE) 248 (M) DEMOCRITUS RIDENS—THE LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER 250 (N) ETHICS 250 FOR FURTHER READING 252 CHAPTER 8 PYTHAGORAS AND THE PYTHAGOREANS 254 (A) ARISTOTLE’S ACCOUNT OF PYTHAGOREANISM 254 (B) PYTHAGORAS 259 (C) PYTHAGOREAN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS 263 (D) DID PYTHAGORAS INVENT MATHEMATICS? 265 (E) DID PYTHAGORAS INVENT HARMONICS? 268 (F) DID PYTHAGORAS INVENT ASTRONOMY? 270 (G) PYTHAGOREAN COSMOLOGY 273 (H) PYTHAGOREAN NUMEROLOGY 275 (I) ARISTOTLE’S ACCOUNT OF PLATO’S PYTHAGOREAN METAPHYSICS 277 (J) MAKING SENSE OF ARISTOTLE’S ACCOUNT OF PLATO’S PYTHAGOREAN METAPHYSICS 280 (K) PLATO’S EXOTERIC (WRITTEN) AND ESOTERIC (ORAL AND SECRET) PHILOSOPHY 284 (L) THE GOOD AND PLATO’S POLITOGONY 287 (M) PLATO’S GEOMETRICAL ATOMISM AND THE FOUR ELEMENTS 288 (N) PLATO’S COSMOGONY 291 (O) CODA 293 FOR FURTHER READING 295 CHAPTER 9 A NEOPRESOCRATIC MANIFESTO: HISTORY AND RELEVANCE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 298 (A) HELLENISTIC, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 300 (B) THE 20TH CENTURY ECLIPSE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 309 (C) THE SECOND SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION—QUANTUM PHYSICS, ASTROPHYSICS, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE 314 (D) DEFINING A NEW ROLE FOR PHILOSOPHY AT THE TURN OF THE 21ST CENTURY 326 (E) A 21ST-CENTURY NATURAL PHILOSOPHY RENAISSANCE— ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, HUMANITIES, AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 333 (F) THE HISTORICAL SEQUENCE OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY 343 (G) A SECOND REVOLUTION IN COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 346 (H) CODA 347 FOR FURTHER READING 348 REFERENCES 354 INDEX 367 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS J. Baird Callicott, known as a founder of the field of environmental philosophy and ethics, has also been researching and teaching Greek philosophy for almost fifty years at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and the University of North Texas (UNT). Chapters 1–8 of this book are based on his course lectures. Keith Wayne Brown co-taught Callicott’s introductory Greek philosophy course as a Teaching Assistant at UNT from 1995–2015 and became an instructor of record in his own right, as Callicott retired from UNT. Brown joined Callicott as co-author in the preparation of the course lectures for publication. Callicott was delighted to learn that John van Buren—his co-editor in the book series on envi- ronmental philosophy at SUNY Press—was working on the Presocratics from an environmental-philosophy orientation. Upon receiving a preliminary edition of the course-lectures materials, van Buren agreed to become a co-author. His knowledge of contemporary scholarship in the field of Greek philosophy helps bolster the interpretation of the texts; and he brings the book’s classical historical focus to bear on the issues of Greek philosophy’s environmental origins and its relevance for contemporary environmental disciplines. All students of Greek natural philosophy owe an immense debt of gratitude to Hermann Diels (1848-1922). No work of the Presocratic philosophers survived the ravages of time and the fires of religious zealotry in whole and complete form. Diels lived in an era during which the backbone of European education consisted of reading Greek and Latin literature (the “classics”) in the original languages. He was thus prepared to undertake the gargantuan task of combing through all the extant literature from the “Golden Age of Greece” (the 5th century BCE) to Late Antiquity (as late as the 6th century) that provided information about the philosophies of the Presocratics. Diels collected this information in one magnum opus—Die Fragmente der Vorsokatiker, first published in 1903 by Weidmansche Buchhandlung in Berlin—which provided the Greek texts together with a German translation. Diels expanded this work in second, third, and fouth editions, assisted by Walther Kranz (1884-1960). After Diels died, Kranz edited a fifth, revised and further expanded edition, published over the years 1934 to 1937 and a sixth edi- tion, published in 1952, also by Weidmann. It is customary to cite this work simply as “DK”—“D” for Diels, “K” for Kranz. The DK texts are sorted into two data sets: “testimonia” (second- or third-hand accounts or summaries) and “ipsissima verba” (purportedly exact words, that is, direct quotations). A number is assigned to each philosopher and to each item pertaining to that philosopher. These letters and numbers have been adopted as the standard method of citing the Presocratics. For example, “DK 67A8” refers to Leucippus (67)—the inventor of the atomic xi theory of matter—an account of whose philosophy (A) is 8th in the arrangement of the Leucippus testimonia by Diels and Kranz. The sources from which Diels (and later Kranz) drew the “fragments” (as the ipsis- sima verba are customarily called) and the testimonia range widely not only over ten centuries but over many genres of literature—from the 5th-century BCE Histories of Herodotus (the earliest extant source) to the 4th-century BCE dialogues of Plato and treatises of Aristotle, to the 1st-century biographies and other writings of Plutarch, to the 3rd-century Christian apologetics of Hippolytus of Rome, all the way down to the 6th-century commentaries of Simplicius of Cilicia, a Neoplatonist. We cite these ancient authors as well so that the readers of this textbook can identify the ultimate source, in each instance, upon which Diels and Kranz drew. We might compare the task that Diels undertook to searching through scores of ancient treasure troves in which hundreds of pieces of dozens of jigsaw puzzles may be found lying in the midst of other materials, then trying to fit the pieces of each puzzle together in the hopes of forming at least part of an intelligible picture. Subsequent scholars may sometimes downgrade a few of the DK fragments to testimonia and many put the puzzle pieces together differently than did Diels and Kranz. In this textbook, we present selected fragments and testimonia of the Presocratic philosophers and other Greek authors in English translation. We have, in every case, worked directly from the Greek texts and have consulted the translations of other schol- ars in crafting our own: R. G. Bury. 1929. Plato, Timaeus. London: William Heinemann Ltd.; H.
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