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BEFORE SOCRATES
Something unusual happened in Greece and the Greek colonies of the Aegean Sea some twenty-five hundred years ago. Whereas the previous great cultures of the Mediterranean had used mythological stories of the gods to explain the oper- ations of the world and of the self, some of the Greeks began to discover new ways of explaining things. Instead of reading their ideas into, or out of, ancient scriptures or poems, they began to use reason, contemplation, and sensory obser- vation to make sense of reality. The story, as we know it, began with the Greeks living on the coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). These colonists, such as Thales, tried to find the one common element in the diversity of nature. Subsequent thinkers, such as Anaximenes, sought not only to find this one common element, but also to find the process by which one form changes into another. Other thinkers, such as Pythagoras, turned to the nature of form itself rather than the basic stuff that takes on a particular form. These lovers of wisdom, or philosophers, came to very dif- ferent conclusions and often spoke disrespectfully of one another. Some held the universe to be one, while others insisted that it must be many. Some believed that human knowledge was capable of understanding virtually everything about the world, while others thought that it was not possible to have any knowledge at all. But despite all their differences, there is a thread of continuity, a continuing focus: the human attempt to understand the world, using human reason. This fact distin- guishes these philosophers from the great minds that preceded them. There are excellent reasons for beginning a study of philosophy with these men and then proceeding to Socrates and Plato. This, after all, is how Western
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The Kritos Boy (Statue from the Acropolis attributed to Kritos.) Ca. 480 B.C. Just as the philosophers of classical Greece focused on human reason and its ability to know, the artists of the same period examined the human body in its idealized form. (Athens, Acropolis Museum. Photographer: Alison Frantz.)
philosophy did begin, and we can still recapture something of the excitement of this new way of thinking as we move from the bald statements of Thales to the all-embracing questions of Socrates, and thence to Plato’s efforts to fuse criticism with construction. If dissatisfaction with facile answers is the starting point of philosophic thought, the fragments of the Pre-Socratics are especially appropriate for a begin- ning. Not one of their works has survived complete—all we have are scattered quotations and reports from later writers. As a result, Pre-Socratic thought has a mysterious quality. Cryptic passages and forceful aphorisms, whose original con- text is lost, stimulate the imagination. Instead of looking for “the” answer, one is fascinated by a wealth of possible answers. And in the effort to show why some suggested answers are untenable, one develops critical faculties. Some fragments may remind readers of archaic statues—heads with broken noses, torsos without heads or arms—pieces so perfect in form that one has no M01_BAIR3854_06_SE_C01.QXD 11/12/09 10:08 PM Page 3
INTRODUCTION 3
regrets at the loss of the whole and may even believe that the complete work could not have been as fascinating. For all that, most interest in the Pre-Socratics is motivated by the fact that these thinkers furnish the backdrop for the thought of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle— this is why one lumps them together as the “Pre-Socratics.” But this magnificent succession of thinkers deserves more respect. Though often enigmatic and at times oracular, the Pre-Socratics are distinguished above all by their appeal to reason. And through the appeal to reason, each thinker makes it possible for suc- cessors to exercise criticism, to amend, to develop alternatives, to move beyond. The Pre-Socratics’ influence on Plato was so great that a study of their thought is essential to understanding many passages in his dialogues and his intentions; many problems were suggested to him by Heraclitus, the Eleatics, and the Pythagoreans— and, of course, by his originality. Aristotle studied the Pre-Socratics closely and dis- cussed them at length in the first book of his Metaphysics (reprinted in this volume). Of the later Greek philosophers, it has often been remarked that the Stoics were par- ticularly influenced by Heraclitus, and the Epicureans by Democritus. Elements of Orphism, an early Greek religious movement, also found their way into the ideas of the Pre-Socratics—most obviously, but by no means only, into Pythagoreanism— and hence into Plato and, later, into Christianity. In fact, a few of the fragments survived only as quotations in the works of early Christian writers.
*** What follows is only a selection. There is no such thing as a complete roster of the Pre-Socratics. The so-called Sophists were Socrates’ contemporaries, but Protagoras and Gorgias were older than he and had acquired reputations before he came along and challenged them; and they are included here. After all, it was partly in response to their teaching that Socrates’ thought was developed. Among the older writers, it is arguable who was, and who was not, a philosopher. Various poets, for example, are occasionally included among the Pre-Socratics. Not counting the Sophists, the present selection concentrates on eleven major figures. They might conveniently be arranged into four groups: (1) the three great Milesians (Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes); (2) the three great independents—figures who came from different places and stood for quite different principles (Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus); (3) the two great monists (Parmenides and Zeno of Elea); and, finally, (4) the three great pluralists (Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus). The only major name missing in this list is Leucippus, founder of the atomistic philosophy, who is included with his better-known follower, Democritus. If we were to offer all the fragments of these figures, we would have to include such unhelpful items as the following, each given in its entirety: “The joint connects two things”; “as when fig juice binds white milk”; “having kneaded together barley-meal with water” (Empedocles, fragments 32, 33, 34). Instead, the following selections were chosen to give an idea of each thinker’s main teachings, as far as possible in his own words, and to provide some sense of his way of thinking and feeling. In short, the selections should give us the essence of thinkers who still have the power to astonish students across roughly twenty-five hundred years.
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For a comprehensive work on the Pre-Socratics, see Volumes I and II of W.K.C. Guthrie’s authoritative The History of Greek Philosophy, six volumes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962Ð1981). John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892; reprinted New York: Meridian, 1960); John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968); Jonathan Barnes, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982); and Edward Hussey, The Presocratics (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995) are standard secondary sources, while the rele- vant sections of W.T. Jones, The Classical Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969); Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Volume I, Greece & Rome, Part I (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962); Friedo Ricken, Philosophy of the Ancients, translated by Eric Watkins (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); J.V. Luce, An Introduction to Greek Philosophy (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992); Catherine Osborne, Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Anthony Kenny, Ancient Philosophy: A New History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) provide basic introductions. Robert S. Brumbaugh, The Philosophers of Greece (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1981), is an accessible intro- duction with pictures, charts, and maps. Francis MacDonald Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), and Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947) are both classic works that discuss the movement from mythology to philosophy, while Kathryn Morgan, Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) is a more recent study on the subject. More recent works and refer- ences include Christopher C. Shields, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy (London: Blackwell, 2002); David Roochnik, Retrieving the Ancients (London: Blackwell, 2004); Nigel Wilson, ed., Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece (London: New York: Routledge, 2005); and Patricia Curd and Daniel Graham, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For collections of essays, see David J. Furley and R.E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, two volumes (New York: Humanities Press, 1970Ð1975); A.P.D. Mourelatos, ed., The Pre-Socratics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Gregory Vlastos, ed., Studies in Greek Philosophy, Volume I: The Presocratics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Terence Irwin, ed., Philosophy Before Socrates (Hamden, CT: Garland Publishing, 1995); Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin, eds., A Companion to Ancient Philosophy (London: Blackwell, 2004); and Patricia F. O’Grady, Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). In addition to the general sources listed here, the individual articles in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967) and Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1998) are frequently useful. Consult the following books for these specific thinkers: THALES: Patricia Frances O’Grady, Thales of Miletus: The Beginning of Western Science and Philosophy (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002). ANAXIMANDER: Charles H. Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960). M01_BAIR3854_06_SE_C01.QXD 11/12/09 10:08 PM Page 5
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PYTHAGORAS: Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, translated by Edwin L. Minar, Jr. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972); and Arnold Hermann, To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides— The Origins of Philosophy (Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides Publishing, 2004). HERACLITUS: G.S. Kirk, Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954); and Charles H. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). PARMENIDES: Leonardo Tarán, Parmenides: A Text with Translation, Commentary, and Critical Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965); A.P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970); David Gallop, Parmenides of Elea (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Néstor-Luis Cordero, By Being, It Is: The Thesis of Parmenides (Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides Publishing, 2004); and Scott Austin, Parmenides and the History of Dialectic (Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides Publishing, 2007). ZENO OF ELEA: Wesley C. Salmon, ed., Zeno’s Paradoxes (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970); Adolf Grünbaum, Modern Science and Zeno’s Paradoxes (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1967); and J.A. Faris, The Paradoxes of Zeno (Avebury, UK: Ashegate, 1996). EMPEDOCLES: Denis O’Brien, Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); and M.R. Wright, Empedocles: The Extant Fragments (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995). ANAXAGORAS: Malcolm Schofield, An Essay on Anaxagoras (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). DEMOCRITUS (ATOMISM): Cyril Bailey, The Greek Atomists and Epicurus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928; reprinted New York: Russell and Russell, 1964). SOPHISTS: G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Ugo Zilioli, Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism: Plato’s Subtlest Enemy (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007). Much of the critical work on the Pre-Socratics is found only in journal articles. The Philosophers’ Index offers a way to locate such articles. (Please note that some of the books on specific thinkers assume some knowledge of Ancient Greek and can be very technical.)
*** All of the fragments and most of the paraphrases in the following texts were collected by a nineteenth-century German scholar, Hermann Diels (and later modified by Walther Kranz), in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmann, most recent edition, 1967). Diels assembled the original Greek texts and furnished German translations for all the fragments. He also collected and printed, but did not translate, reports of ancient authors about the lives, works, and ideas of the Pre-Socratics. Kathleen Freeman published An Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947). Like Diels-Kranz, she trans- lated only the fragments, not the ancient paraphrases and reports about the philosophers’ lives and works. G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven, and M. Schofield translated M01_BAIR3854_06_SE_C01.QXD 11/12/09 10:08 PM Page 6
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many of these previously untranslated items in The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Almost all the translations I have used are either those of Freeman (marked with an F) or those of Kirk, Raven, and Schofield (marked with a K). In a few cases the translation is Kaufmann’s (marked with a WK) or the older first edition (1957) of Kirk and Raven (so indicated in the notes). Some of the translations have been modified by Kaufmann or myself (and are marked with an *). After direct quotations, the symbols (K , F, and WK ) are preceded by the number that the fragment bears in the fifth edition of Diels-Kranz’s standard work. (Freeman’s numbering is the same as that of Diels-Kranz.) After para- phrases, the ancient works in which the paraphrases occur are cited briefly (along with the abbreviation and number from one of the above sources). For discussions of the fragments and the paraphrases, see the Kirk, Raven, and Schofield’s work as well as Richard D. McKirahan Jr., Philosophy Before Socrates (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994).
***
Sources of the fragments: THALES: 1. Plato, Theaetetus 174a; K 72; 2. Aristotle, Politics A11, 1259a; K 73; 3. Herodotus I, 75; K 66; 4. Aristotle, Metaphysics A3, 983b; W.D. Ross’s translation; 5. Heraclitus Homericus, Quaest. Hom. 22; K 87. These may not really have been Thales’ reasons; 6. Seneca, Qu. Nat. III, 14; K 88; 7. Aristotle, De Anima A2, 405a; K 89; 8. Aristotle, De Anima A5, 411a; K 91. ANAXIMANDER: 1. Suda s.v.; K 95. Some of this has been disputed; 2. Themistius, Or. 26; K 96; 3. Simplicius, Physics 24; K 101A and 119. Some scholars believe that the quotation begins earlier and comprises the whole sentence; 4. Ps.-Plutarch, Strom. 2; K 121; 5. Ibid.; K 122A; 6. Hippolytus, Ref. I, 6, 3; K 122B; 7. Aetius II, 20; K 126; 8. Aetius V, 19; K 133; 9. Ps.-Plutarch, Strom. 2; K 134; 10. Plutarch, Symp. VIII, 730E; K 137. ANAXIMENES: 1. Diogenes Laertius II, 3; K 138; 2. Augustine, City of God, VIII, 2; K 146; 3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, A3, 984a5; K 139; 4. Simplicius, Physics, 24, 26; K 140; 5. Ps.-Plutarch, Strom. 3; K 148; 6. Hippolytus, Ref. I, 7, 1; K 141; 7. Cicero, de natura deorum I, 10, 26; K 144; 8. Aristotle, Meteor. B7, 365b6; K159. PYTHAGORAS: 1. Herodotus IV, 95; K 257; 2. Porphyry, V. P. 9; K 266; 3. Iustinus ap. Pomp. Trog. Hist. Phil. Epit. XX, 4, 14; K 272; 4. Aetius I, 3, 8; 1st edition K 280; 5. Proclus, In Eucl., p. 426 Friedl; 1st edition K 281; 6. Diogenes Laertius VIII, 36; Xenophanes, fragment 7; K 260; 7. Herodotus II, 123; 1st edition K 270; 8. Porphyry, Vita Pythagorae 19; 1st edition K 271; 9. Eudemus ap. Simplic. Phys., 732, 30; 1st edition K 272. The doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same events at gigantic intervals was revived in modern times by Friedrich Nietzsche; cf. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950; Cleveland, OH: Meridian Books, 1956), Chapter 11, “Overman and Eternal Recurrence”; 10–27. Iamblichus, Protr. 21; 1st edition K 275. These were some of the rules of the sect founded by Pythagoras. The numbers of the rules in K are given in parentheses after each paragraph; 28. Procl., In Eucl., p. 65 Friedl.; 1st edition K 277; 29. Diogenes Laertius VIII, 8; 1st edition K 278. XENOPHANES: 1. Diogenes Laertius IX, 18; K 161; 2. 11; WK; 3. 14; WK; 4. 15; WK; 5. 16; WK; 6. 23; F*; 7. 24; F; 8. 25; F*; 9. 26; F; 10. 27; F*; 11. 34; K 186; 12. 18; WK. HERACLITUS: 1. Diogenes Laertius IX, 6; K 191; 2. Ibid., IX, 5; K 192. Some scholars have ques- tioned the claim about the three parts of his book; indeed, some have doubted that he wrote any book at all; 3. 89; WK; 4. 113; F; 5. 1; K 194; 6. 2; K 195; 7. 50; K 196; 8. 55; K 197; 9. 101a; F; 10. 7; F; 11. 107; K 198; 12. 60; K 200; 13. 6; F; 14. 49a; F*; 15. 91; F; 16. 12; K 214; 17. 61; K 199; 18. 111; K 201; 19. 8; F*; 20. 53; K 212; 21. 80; K 211; 22. 36; K 229; 23. 62; WK; 24. 27; F*; 25. 52; F; 26. 40; WK; 27. 42; WK; 28. 57; WK; 29. 5; F*; 30. 14; WK; 31. 96; WK. To appreciate the full measure of this heresy, one should recall Sophocles’ Antigone and Homer’s Iliad.; 32. 102; K 206; 33. 79; F; 34. 76; F*; 35. 66; F; 36. 30; K 217; 37. 9; F*; 38. 97; F; 39. 4; F*; 40. 110; F*; 41. 112; F*; 42. 116; WK; 43. 118; K 230; 44. 117; K 231; 45. 29; WK; 46. 44; K 249; 47. 49; F*; 48. 121; F*; 49. 101; WK; 50. 18; WK; 51. 119; WK; 52. 123; WK; 53. 92; F*; 54. 93; K 244. M01_BAIR3854_06_SE_C01.QXD 11/12/09 10:08 PM Page 7
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PARMENIDES: 1. 1 (Lines 1Ð32); K 288; 2. 2; K 291; 3. 3; K 292. K construes the literal meaning as: “the same thing exists for thinking and for being”; Freeman’s “For it is the same thing to think and to be” is based on Diels’ Denn (das Seiende) denken und sein ist dasselbe. This much-discussed sentence seems to be continuous with the preceding two fragments; 4. 4; K 313; 5. 5; K 289; 6. 6; K 293. Freeman renders the final words: “in everything there is a way of opposing stress.” Either way, many interpreters believe that Parmenides here alludes to Heraclitus; 7. 7; K 294; 8. 8; F*; 9. 9; Kranz takes
The Milesians THALES fl. ca. 585 B.C.
Thales lived in Miletus in Ionia (on the west coast of present-day Turkey) and is said to have been so scientifically skilled that he accurately predicted the eclipse of the sun on May 28, 585 B.C. He was a contemporary of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, of the Persian prophet Zoroaster, of the Indian sage Gautama Siddhartha (the Buddha), and of the Chinese philosophers Confucius and Lao-Tze. Thales has traditionally been considered the first Western philosopher (though some scholars now claim that this honor belongs to Anaximander). Thales was apparently the first to ask the question, “What is the basic ‘stuff’ of the universe?” According to Aristotle, Thales claimed that this basic stuff was water. This claim involves three vital assumptions: (1) that the fundamental explanation of the uni- verse must be one in number, (2) that this one reality must be a “thing,” and (3) that this one thing must have within itself the ability to move and change. Later thinkers disputed Thales’ choice of the universe’s basic “stuff,” but his bold theory encouraged them and helped them develop their own philosophical programs. Like many other Pre-Socratics, Thales was by no means a philosopher only. He was also a statesman, an astronomer, a geometer, and a sage. The first three frag- ments that follow deal with Thales’ life. Number one is probably the world’s oldest “absent-minded professor” story, while numbers two and three appear to be defenses designed to show how practical Thales could be. The remaining fragments are reports on Thales’ ideas. There are no known writings by Thales himself.
[1]* A witty and attractive Thracian servant-girl is said to have mocked Thales for falling into a well while he was observing the stars and gazing upwards; declaring that
*The numbers in brackets serve the purposes of this volume. See the “Sources of the Fragments” section on page 6 for the source of each fragment.
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Miletus, Ionia, in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), was once an important port city at the mouth of the Maeander River. However, the slow-moving river (from which we get the term “meander”) carried silt from the interior mountains, moving the coastline five miles west. Today, the low-lying parts of the ruins are still flooded in the spring. It is not hard to see how Thales, who lived here, might think that “when water is compacted and changes into slime it becomes earth.” (Forrest E. Baird)
he was eager to know the things in the sky, but that what was behind him and just by his feet escaped his notice. [2] When they reproached him because of his poverty, as though philosophy were no use, it is said that, having observed through his study of the heavenly bodies that there would be a large olive-crop, he raised a little capital while it was still winter, and paid deposits on all the olive presses in Miletus and Chios, hiring them cheaply because no one bid against him. When the appropriate time came there was a sudden rush of requests for the presses; he then hired them out on his own terms and so made a large profit, thus demonstrating that it is easy for philosophers to be rich, if they wish, but that it is not in this that they are interested. [3] When he came to the Halys river, Croesus then, as I say, put his army across by the existing bridges; but, according to the common account of the Greeks, Thales the Milesian transferred the army for him. For it is said that Croesus was at a loss how his army should cross the river, since these bridges did not yet exist at this period; and that Thales, who was present in the army, made the river, which flowed on the left hand of the army, flow on the right hand also. He did so in this way: beginning upstream of the army he dug a deep channel, giving it a crescent shape, so that it should flow round the back of where the army was encamped, being diverted in this way from its old course by the channel, and passing the camp should flow into its old course once more. The result was that as soon as the river was divided it became fordable in both of its parts.
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[4] Thales . . . says the principle is water (for which reason he declared that the earth rests on water), getting the notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it..., and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things. [5] Moist natural substance, since it is easily formed into each different thing, is accustomed to undergo very various changes: that part of it which is exhaled is made into air, and the finest part is kindled from air into aether, while when water is com- pacted and changes into slime it becomes earth. Therefore Thales declared that water, of the four elements, was the most active, as it were, as cause. [6] He [Thales] said that the world is held up by water and rides like a ship, and when it is said to “quake” it is actually rocking because of the water’s movement. [7] Thales, too, seems, from what they relate, to have supposed that the soul was something kinetic, if he said that the [Magnesian] stone possesses soul because it moves iron. [8] Some say that it [soul] is intermingled in the universe, for which reason, per- haps, Thales also thought that all things are full of gods.
ANAXIMANDER ca. 610–ca. 546 B.C.
Anaximander was born in Miletus about 610 B.C., and he died around 546 B.C. During his lifetime, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and the prophet Ezekiel was exiled to Babylon. Anaximander traveled extensively and was so highly regarded by his fellow Milesians that he was honored with the leadership of a new colony. He may have been the first Greek to write a book of prose. Anaximander seems to have accepted Thales’ three basic assumptions (summed up in the statement that the universe must be one changeable thing), but he differed with Thales on the nature of the “stuff” underlying the “many” that we observe. In place of Thales’ water, Anaximander introduced the concept of the
ANAXIMANDER 11
more than anything else, is the one sentence, or half-sentence, quoted by Simplicius in fragment [3] which follows. This remark, the oldest known piece of Western philosophy, has elicited a large body of literature, including a forty-eight-page essay by Martin Heidegger.
[1] Anaximander son of Praxiades, of Miletus, philosopher, was a kinsman, pupil, and successor of Thales. He first discovered the equinox and solstices and hour-indicators, and that the earth lies in the center. He introduced the gnomon [a vertical rod whose shadow indicates the sun’s direction and height] and in general made known an outline of geometry. He wrote On Nature, Circuit of the Earth and On the Fixed Stars and a Celestial Globe, and some other works. [2] [Anaximander] was the first of the Greeks whom we know who ventured to produce a written account on nature.
*** [3] Of those who say that it is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, the successor and pupil of Thales, said that the principle and ele- ment of existing things was the
12 THE MILESIANS
[10] Therefore they [the Syrians] actually revere the fish as being of similar race and nurturing. In this they philosophize more suitably than Anaximander; for he declares, not that fishes and men came into being in the same parents, but that originally men came into being inside fishes, and that, having been nurtured there—like sharks— and having become adequate to look after themselves, they then came forth and took to the land.
ANAXIMENES fl. 546 B.C.?
Very little is known about the life of Anaximenes, except that he was a Milesian and a younger contemporary of Anaximander. Anaximenes proposed air as the basic world principle. While at first this thesis may seem a step backwards from the more comprehensive (like Anaximander’s unlimited) to the less comprehen- sive particular (like Thales’ water), Anaximenes added an important point. He explained a process by which the underlying one (air) becomes the observable many: By rarefaction, air becomes fire, and, by condensation, air becomes, suc- cessively, wind, water, and earth. Observable qualitative differences (fire, wind, water, earth) are the result of quantitative changes, that is, of how densely packed is the basic principle. This view is still held by scientists.
[1] Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus of Miletus, was a pupil of Anaximander....He said that the material principle was air and the infinite; and that the stars move, not under the earth, but around it. He used simple and unsuperfluous Ionic speech. He was active, according to what Apollodorus says, around the time of the capture of Sardis [by Cyrus in 546/5 B.C.?], and died in the 63rd Olympiad. [2] He [Anaximander] left Anaximenes as his disciple and successor, who attributed all the causes of things to infinite air, and did not deny that there were gods, or pass them over in silence; yet he believed not the air was made by them, but that they arose from air.
*** [3] Anaximenes and Diogenes make air, rather than water, the material principle above the other simple bodies. [4] Anaximenes, son of Eurystratus, of Miletus, a companion of Anaximander, also says, like him, that the underlying nature is one and infinite, but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature by rarity and density. Being made finer it becomes fire, being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then M01_BAIR3854_06_SE_C01.QXD 11/12/09 10:08 PM Page 13
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stones; and the rest come into being from these. He, too, makes motion eternal, and says that change, also, comes about through it. [5] And all things are produced by a kind of condensation, and again rarefaction, of this [air]. Motion, indeed, exists from everlasting; he says that when the air melts, there first of all comes into being the earth, quite flat—therefore it accordingly rides on the air; and sun and moon and the remaining heavenly bodies have their source of gen- eration from earth. At last, he declares the sun to be earth, but that through the rapid motion it obtains heat in great sufficiency. [6] Anaximenes...said that infinite air was the principle, from which the things that are becoming, and that are, and that shall be, and gods and things divine, all come into being, and the rest from its products. The form of air is of this kind: whenever it is most equable it is invisible to sight, but is revealed by the cold and the hot and the damp and by movement. It is always in motion; for things that change do not change unless there be movement. Through becoming denser or finer it has different appearances; for when it is dissolved into what is finer it becomes fire, while winds, again, are air that is becoming condensed, and cloud is produced from air by felting. When it is condensed still more, water is produced; with a further degree of condensation earth is produced, and when condensed as far as possible, stones. The result is that the most influential components of generation are opposites, hot and cold. [7] Afterwards, Anaximenes determined that air is a god, and that it comes into being, and is measureless and infinite and always in motion; as though either formless air could be a god . . . or mortality did not attend upon everything that has come into being. [8] Anaximenes says that the earth, through being drenched and dried off, breaks asunder, and is shaken by the peaks that are thus broken off and fall in. Therefore earth- quakes happen in periods both of drought and again of excessive rains; for in droughts, as has been said, it dries up and cracks, and being made over-moist by the waters it crumbles apart.