PRESOCRATICS: The Pluralists EMPEDOCLES and ANAXAGORAS

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PRESOCRATICS The PluralistsEMPEDOCLES and
ANAXAGORAS
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• ANCIENT NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (600-400 BCE)
• 600 Milesians basic concepts of naturalism
• Pythagorians idealism via mathematics
• 480 Heracliteans vs. Eleatics
• Pluralists reality is not monistic
• Empedocles/Sicily naturalism Pythagorean psyche
• Anaxagoras/Athens naturalism Xenophanean God
• 430 Atomists reality is monistic
• Leucippus (480-420? Know little about him)
• Democritus of Abdera (460-370)

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Empedocles of Sicily (492-432) 

• Legendary figure
• Taught naturalistic theory of universe
• Conceived of human life in Pythagorean terms
• I will tell a double story.

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Metaphysical Schizophrenia Becoming /
Being (physis, nature) (psyche,
spirituality) / \ Being elements
immortal psyche
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Cosmic Origins

• I will tell you the beginning, from which all
  that we gaze upon came to be clear earth  and
  moving sea and moist air and the Titan aither,
  squeezing all things round in a circle.

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Principles of Love/Attraction and
Strife/Repulsion

• I will tell a double story. For at one time they
  grow to be  only one out of many, but at another
  time they grow apart to be many out of one at one
  time all coming together into one by Love, and at
  another being borne apart by the hatred of Strife.

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Evolving Nature

• On his view, it was of necessity that, for
  example, the front teeth grew sharp and well 
  adapted at biting, and the back ones broad and
  useful for chewing food this result was
  coincidental, not what they were for.
• Whenever such parts came about coincidentally as
  though for that purpose, the animals survived,
  since their form made them fit for survival.
• Other animals, differently constituted, perished,
  as Empedocles says of the man-headed calves.

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Idea of Evolution

• Evolution time-bomb waiting to explode into
  human consciousness
• Did not happen in the ancient world
• Teleological view of Nature would prevail

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Immorality, Fall, Reincarnation

• There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient
  decree of the gods, that whenever anyone pollutes
  his own dear limbs with the sin of murdercommits
  crime and swears a false oathhe wanders away
  from the blessed ones for thrice ten thousand
  years, growing to be through time all different
  kinds of mortals, taking the difficult paths of
  life one after another. One of them I am now, a
  fugitive from the gods and a wanderer. But what
  is lawful for all extends far through the
  wide-ruling aither and through the immense glare.

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Pluralism of Empedocles

• Physical reality
• One universe/cosmos
• Composed of elemental material substance
• Exists in space and time
• Obeys causal laws
• Came into being, will perish
• Operates by Principles of Love/Attraction and
  Strife/Repusion

• Reality of souls
• Many psychai, non-material individuals
• Each inhabits a material body, but is not itself
  in space and time
• Under moral law
• Immortal
• Acts freely, but those actions change its destiny
  in next life

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Anaxagoras (500-428) 

• Migrated to Athens 460
• Member of Pericles circle
• Prosecuted for impiety (?)
• Distinguished causal and teleological
  explanations
• Taught existence of God Mind (Nous)

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Causal-Naturalistic Explanation

• When one-horned goat was born on Pericles
  estate, his enemies claimed it was a portent,
  showing he sought to become tyrant.
• Anaxagoras cut open the head and showed the two
  horns had grown together the phenomenon had a
  purely naturalistic or rational explanation.

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Story from Plutarch

• Pericles was leading the fleet, when an eclipse
  formed above. The sailors begged him to stop the
  attack, since the gods had sent this warning.
• Pericles stood up on the back deck and lifted his
  cloak, so the sailors were cast in its shadow.
  The gods have nothing to do with it, he said.
  The moon has moved between the sun and the
  earth, blocking its light.
• The attack went on, and was victorious.

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Causal Origin of Universe

• All things were together, unlimited in amount and
  smallness. These things being so, it is necessary
  to suppose that in all things that are being
  mixed together there are many things of all
  kinds, and seeds of all things.
• Rotation caused the separating off, and the dense
  is separated from the rare, and the hot from the
  cold, and the bright from the dark, and the dry
  from the wet. The dense and the wet and the cold
  and the dark came together here, where the earth
  is now, but the rare and the hot and the dry went
  out into the far reaches of the aither.

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Teleological Explanation

• Anaxagoras also taught there was another kind of
  explanation in terms of the goal (telos) that
  was meant to be attained.
• For example, the arrow is set in flight in order
  to hit the target.
• Does not the root grow in order to get water so
  the plant will live?

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Teleological Universe

• Anaxagoras Mind rules all things that possess
  lifeboth the larger and the smaller. And Mind
  ruled the entire rotation, and started the
  rotation. And Mind set in order all things,
  whatever kind of things were to bewhatever were
  and all that now are and whatever will be.

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Pluralism of Anaxagoras

• Physical reality
• One universe
• Composed of elemental seeds
• In space and time
• Obeys causal laws
• Came into being, will perish

• Reality of God
• One God-being
• Divine mind (i.e. non-material)
• eternal
• Set universe in motion
• To bring about goals (teloi)

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MATTER vs. CIRCLE OF LIFE Becoming
(non-living) (moving life) / \ Being
seeds Being Nous
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• One day I heard someone reading from a book of
  Anaxagoras, that it is Mind that directs and is
  the cause of everything. I was delighted with
  this, and thought that Mind would arrange each
  thing in the way that was best. I thought he
  would tell me, whether the earth was flat or
  round, and would then explain, why it was
  better so if it was in the middle of the cosmos,
  he would show that it was better to be in the 
  middle. I was prepared to find out the same way
  about the sun and the moon and the stars. Once he
  had given this kind of explanation in regard to
  each thing, I thought he would go on to explain
  the good in things as a whole. This wonderful
  hope was dashed as I went on reading and found
  that the man made no use of Mind, nor gave it any
  responsibility in the management of things, but
  mentioned as causes only such things as air and
  aither and water and other things like that. -
  Socrates