Classical Greek Philosophers

Overview

  • Focus on the different ideas and the philosophers behind them.

  • Examine Empedocles closely

  • Examine Aristotle closely

  • Classical Four Elements (plus one)

  • Hot/Cold, Dry/Wet

  • How this lead to alchemy

Before the Presocratics

Anciently, man thought that the universe was alive, that there were spirits, gods, demons and devils in everything. The universe, the things around us, were just as much to blame as ourselves for good and bad.

When people had ideas, they thought these ideas came from the gods. They didn’t question these ideas but accepted them as true. Some of the ideas were good, some were incredibly bad.

Questioning ideas was a religious no-no.

Milesians

Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes.

  • A “Physiologists”, what we might call a physicist today. Tried to understand the order behind the universe.

  • Wanted to know what the world was made of, what the nature of reality was.

  • Noted that everything is constantly changing. Everything is always becoming something else.

  • Noted that there was an infinite variation of unique things in the world.

  • Underlying everything was the “Arche” – a single and permanent substance. “Arche” could mean the origin, source or beginning, but could also mean “ruler”.

    • Corporal, physical.

    • Alive, divine, intelligent.

    • Self-caused, rule of all things.

    • Guided the birth, transformation, and death of all things.

    • This idea is called Hylozoism

  • Started the search for the GUT

Thales

  • Considered the first philosopher.

  • Thales considered Arche to be ultimately made of water.

Anaximander

  • The Arche could not be one of the four elements.

  • The Four Elements must derive from the Arche.

  • The Four Elements are constantly being born from the Arche, while other things die and return to the Arche.

  • The Arche surrounds the world.

  • The Arche is not material we can perceive, but is “apeiron” – unlimited, boundless or indefinite.

  • Four opposites: hot vs. cold, dry vs. wet; these are combined in the apeiron.

Anaximenes

  • The Arche is air

  • Talked about how air could transform into different substances via condensation and vaporization. (State transformations.)

    • Fire -> Air -> Water -> Earth

    • Earth -> Water -> Air -> Fire

Heraclitus

  • There is a universal truth (logos), but we are so clouded by deluding ourselves to believe “our” truth that we cannot see it. (Don’t think that just because you “know” something it is the truth.)

  • Logos is an objective truth that all can attain through observation and reason.

  • Logos permeates everything and controls it.

  • We can uncover the universal truth by introspection. (Do your homework, think deeply about what you are learning in physics.) “Those who seek gold dig much earth and find but little.”

  • Everything is changing. “Into the same river it is not possible to step twice.” If you observe something, it has already changed.

  • The world is a living fire. The soul is a fire. Strong souls are hot and dry. Weak souls are wet – as in drinking too much wine. Dead souls convert to water.

  • War and opposition creates existence. A stable and permanent peaceful reality is death. (We used to think that air was static, but now we know that the particles of air, nitrogen and oxygen molecules, are zipping about at hundreds of meters per second, despite appearing static and constant.)

Parmenides

Parmenides contradicted the previous pre-Socratic philosophers, and was quite popular.

Important ideas:

  • All things are connected.

  • Change is an illusion. You can’t trust your senses. The “core truth” is that things are and always will be in an unchanging state.

  • Non-existence is not logically possible. Vacuums can’t exist. Void can’t exist. There is no “empty space”. (Likely had a problem with zero and related concepts. We know today that vacuums do indeed exist.)

  • Something cannot come from nothing. (Nothing doesn’t exist.)

  • Something can’t come from something else. What you perceive as a “new thing” does not come from the “old thing”. You are merely seeing old things in a different way. (Conservation of Energy!)

Anaxagoras

  • Thought “everything is in everything” and that the reason why things appeared as they are is they contained more of one thing than the other things.

  • Contradicted Hylozoists by saying that mind and matter were different things, and that matter was dead and lifeless without it. This was an important step towards a mechanistic understanding of the universe.