Thales (c. late 7th century - 545 B. C.) thought that water was the basis of all reality. That when you're able to strip away all the appearances of the outward forms then what you're able to uncover beneath and behind all the forms of nature was moisture or water. One of the ways that Thales conceived this was that he perceived moisture in almost everything. It seemed to him that everything came from water. Even when Thales looked up into outer space what he thought he saw, though he couldn't know or understand, was that it was a great, vast ocean. All physical things in their outward appearances and changes all had originally derived their being from water, according to Thales. Water was understood by Thales to be the middle term between two other states of being. Those three states are gas, moisture, and solid. Thus, water was able to turn into gas when it was heated and it was able to us turn into a solid when it was cooled. Thus, both gas and solids were dissolvable into their primary element: water. By definition, the one thing from which all diverse forms of physical matter comes is thus the principle of all things. According to Aristotle, Thales "got his notion of water as being the basis of all reality from getting the notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all things is moist, and that it itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it. He got his notion from this fact, and from the fact that the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and water is the origin of the nature of moist things." As Thales imagined it, even the earth itself floated like a desk on a body of water. These were two of the advances made by these early philosophers. The first and most important advance was that they were able to recognize a reality that underlay any and all appearances of the diversity of forms throughout the world. Secondly, they conceived the fundamental element of all reality as being only grasped by thought, as being only understood by thought. Thus, in that sense or we have is a type of spiritual reality that unifies all physical reality. The Pre-Socratic philosophers, themselves, didn't recognize that what they had was a spiritual notion. They were intent on understanding what that one thing is that underlies all of reality. We today recognize that their advance was an intellectual one. What the particular element was that constituted the unifying element of the whole of the material order is not so much important as conceiving that there was an underlying element that was not apparent to the sense but only to thought. The essence of that element is something that cannot be perceived with the senses that can only be understood by the mind. Secondly, that the fundamental element could only be grasped by thought showed the way toward an ultimate differentiation of spirit from matter, which to the pre-Socratic philosophers, as yet, lay hidden from view. Since they made these intellectual advances, these early scientist/philosophers sensed a more precise way of understanding what the nature of reality was. It was a more precise way of understanding reality is then were their mythologies. Mythologies, of course, are in many ways richer than philosophy in that sense. Mythologies contained within themselves that kernel of meaning by which man was able to understand his place in the world without having to be specifically stated. Man did not have the language of precision by expressing his understanding of the world through mythology. He simply told the stories that he was told and all present at the telling understood the meaning of the story. They were able to understand how that mythological story was able to bring the meaning of their existential circumstances into their lives without having to say it in an explicit way. What philosophy does help us to say in an explicit way about reality is that one may be wrong about what that reality is, yet, the important thing is that we possess that power, that faculty that enables us to break through the physical appearances and conceive its underlying essence, its true center unperceived with the senses. Thus, up until the later philosophers were able to make the explicit distinction between matter and spirit, these early pre-Socratic philosophers, in their attempts to isolate the one, single material thing as the basis of all reality, simply failed in their explicit attempts. Anaximander, a younger contemporary of Thales, deduced that the basic element of all reality was the Boundless. Intellectually, this seemed a big advance over Thales in that Thales' answer seemed a cruder notion than the more conceptual Boundless. Anaximander did not think it was any one particular kind of matter, as Thales did by concluding it was water. Thales' concept of water, being within the scope of the materially perceived was more limited than Anaximander's concept of an infinite as the basis for all reality. Anaximander said that since water was itself an opposite of a correlative term, then, its corresponding term had to be explained as well. In that way, reality could not be reduced to its simplest principle for the simple fact that there were now two fundamental principles, neither of which could be reduced to the other. What Anaximander meant by this is that if one thing is the opposite of something else, such as black and white, then the reason for the existence of the one could not be explained unless you took into consideration the other, its opposite. In that sense, then, reality was not simple but complex and made up of parts rather than being a simple unity in its ultimate principle. If you recall, the changing of opposites from one to the other, such as birth to death, and death to birth, especially of the elements of nature, is what caused the scientist/philosopher of this time period to begin thinking about what underlay the identity of the elements of nature such that they retained their identity even though their outward forms changed. When something is born then its opposite, death, encroaches on it until that which is born dies. Likewise, when something dies then life encroaches on death until that which died comes back to new life in a new form. Thus, birth happens at the expense of death, and death happens at the expense of life. Water, then, according to Anaximander, could not be the principle of all reality because it, itself, changes into a gas (air) or a solid (ice). Anaximander says that the one element is committing an injustice against another, such as the heat in summer is unjust toward the cold of winter. The way that these concrete elements make up for their injustice is by being absorbed into the indeterminate boundless. Anaximander, therefore, concluded that the primary element (the Urstoff in German) is the Indeterminate. That means that it has no particular physical form or appearance. He called it the INDETERMINATE BOUNDLESS, being that into which all material being passes into and that out of which everything passes into their various physical forms. Anaximander called this primary element the "material cause". This is an important consideration as later we will see that Aristotle employed this term as one of his four metaphysical causes Anaximander did conceive the Boundless in a materialist way. The material order itself was infinite and Anaximander did not conceive the Boundless as being "Being" itself, which is a metaphysical concept. Rather, the Boundless was for Anaximander the totality of the whole material order. The Indeterminate Boundless was not static. On the contrary, there exists an eternal motion. This motion caused a separating off of all the material elements, which formed an unlimited number of co-existent, yet, perishable worlds. In a type of vortex the heavier elements of the world moved downward and the lighter elements elevated. The sea is the origin of all life (though not the origin of all reality) for Anaximander. Man himself evolved from animals. He explains this by noting that had man always been as he now is that he never would have survived. Rather, animals survived by instinct and conforming to the natural order and rational man grew slowly from those humble beginnings. Anaximenes Anaximenes was contemporaneous with Anaximander, though, younger and, perhaps an associate. He abandons the theory of the Indeterminate Boundless. He follows Thales in asserting a specific material element as the original stuff of all that exists. This determined element is not water but air. Anaximenes seems to have gone backwards from Anaximander. However, his view of things is that the quality is based on quantity. He selected air as the primary element because air, as a basic stuff, can go in either one of two directions. Air can either condense or can become rarefied. There when the force of air becomes wind, wind then becomes clouds, clouds then drop rain, and then, when the rain falls it becomes cold and hardens and becomes a solid, such as ice. A solid of ice then seems to have become more concrete and become land. On the other hand air can become rarefied or warmed. As it heats it then becomes a gas, which is the basis for fire. Thus, rarefaction explains how air becomes fire and condensation explains how air becomes eventually a solid. Perhaps, Anaximenes understood that air is a basic stuff that human beings need to live. Of course, even fish have lungs by which they are able to take any oxygen through the water. Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes are all from the island of Ionia in Greece. They formed the type of philosophical school, which was able to make an intellectual advance over the mythologists. Again, the reason these men are notable is not because of the answers they gave to philosophical and scientific questions. Clearly, they were wrong. However, mankind had to start somewhere in order understand the world about him. Explaining how nature works in as precise a way as possible is certainly an advance, in many ways, over explaining how nature works through the force all beings that reside in the imagination rather than in the real world. In that sense that we are able to understand how the real world works we are closer to the true. Nevertheless, mythology does bring us to closer to the truth of things in understanding the meaning of the world in which we live. So, we can say that it is not nearly as important what Pre-Socratic philosophers answered to scientific questions as much as the fact that it was important that they raised the questions that they did and answered them as such. They understood also that matter is eternal and, with the exception of Anaximander, thought that the world was flat. Now it was about this time that a Greek mathematician was able to figure out that the world was, in fact, round. So, the idea that everyone thought the world was flat back in those days is simply false. However, many people did believe that the world was a flat round disk on which we all stood. These philosophers never thought that the material universe had a beginning. This material universe was the only real world. What they then did not distinguish was spirit from matter. What was ironic was how they were able to conceive of an idea of an element being the unity of all things amidst its diversity and yet the answer been a physical element as its source, rather than spiritual. They did not see the irony in coming up with a physicalist answer to a question was inherently intellectual. If physical matter is all there is then how you account for the reality of ideas. These philosophers were materialists. They're not materialists in our sense of the term today. They did not deliberately reject spirit as having no part to play in the order of universe. They had not yet conceived of the notion of spirit. Consequently, they were materialists insofar as they posited a material element as the basic unit from which all of the diversity of the material order came about, but not in the same sense as today whereby the notion of spirit is purposely dismissed. Pythagoras is the next philosopher we will be discussing. In many ways, he is the most interesting of the philosophers. We often associate Pythagoras with mathematics. Certainly we have heard his name in mathematics classes in high school. However, back in the time when he lived, somewhere in the middle to late sixth century, he was really much more interested in mystery religions. He had started a religious cult that had as its core the concept of number. For Pythagoras, number was the basic material element that underlay all reality. It was for him, however, a religious knowledge as well as philosophical. Pythagoras, too, sought the unifying principle behind all reality. He very perceptively saw that all things had shape, form, size, and weight. All of these quantities, then, could be measured. Since man measures by number, Pythagoras concluded that all things consisted of numbers. If, then, everything could be reduced to numbers, and we can understand the relationship between and among numbers, then, the basis of all reality must be number. The notion of number, then, for Pythagoras was for him a spiritual knowledge. He thought that he had unlocked the key mystery of the universe. By understanding the intricacies of numbers in the various formulas of mathematics and geometry, then, he held the key to understanding the whole of the universe. He, thus, formed around himself a religious organization of like-minded gnostics. I call them “gnostics” because they thought they possessed a secret knowledge that gave them a type of worldly salvation. It certainly gave them an elite status among the citizens of Greece. They were a very secretive society with arcane rules and, in some cases, nonsensical requirements. If anyone were to divulge the secrets of their society, especially what they understood to be the mystical knowledge of mathematics, then, that person would be assassinated. Members of Pythagoras’s religious society wore cloaks and carried knives indeed assassinated members whom they suspected betraying their fellowship. The Ionian civilization to which Pythagoras belonged was in decline. In response, as often happens in decaying societies, a religious revival took place. The philosophy/science of the school of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes could not appeal to the religious sensibilities of the people. Fewer people believed in Greek mythology. In addition, a central element of all religions is morality. That, too, was in decline. The effect was to polarize people into two opposite directions: Skepticism and religious enthusiasm. The distinguishing characteristic of Pythagoras’ school, however, was its asceticism and religious dimensions. The philosophical elements with which we are here concerned, had been absorbed into its religious cult. Thus, Pythagorean religious society utilized elements both philosophical and religious that met the deepest needs of the people. Not only was the Pythagorean religious cult philosophical, it was scientific, at least in spirit. The members of the Pythagoreans religious communities formed a communal life together. One of their central doctrines was metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul. They cultivated a culture of the soul. Mathematics, music, and the practice of silence were all important and invaluable aids toward this goal. Mathematical principles were the principles of all things. The Pythagoreans recognized that their mathematics were in the Vanguard of a new science. What was especially striking to them was the importance of number. Numbers can express all things. Thus, all things are numerable. The relationship between two things can be expressed as a proportion. This proportion is numerical. One of their greatest discoveries was the mathematical relationship between notes in music. They understood that pitch depended upon number because it depends on the lengths and the intervals on the scale. Musical harmony, then, is dependent upon number. Since they understood the universe to be a harmony of musical spheres, so they understood that the unit harmony of universe depended upon number. The conflict of opposites seen by the previous pre-Socratics was now, according to the Pythagoreans, solved. Number was now, not only the basis for the whole of the universe, but the central mystical component. Pythagoras divided numbers between the odd and the even. Adapting Anaximander’s idea of the universe of the unlimited being given form by limit, Pythagoras said that even numbers were unlimited and odd numbers were limited. Thus, odd numbers give limit and, thus, form to even numbers, the unlimited. Number is spatial. One is the point, two is the line, three is the surface, and four is the solid. All bodies in space consist of points or units. But, all these points or units taken together form one number. Thus, the Pythagoreans considered things as numbers and not simply that things were numerable. What they effected was the application of the mathematical conceptions to the order of the material reality. Now, if you add one point to another you now have a line expressed by the number 2. If you then add another point to those two points you now have a surface, which is identified with the number. 3. When you add a fourth point to the surface in now have a solid, which is expressed by the number 4. Thus a body, which is a solid, is composed of points, lines, and surfaces. A body, then, is identified with the number 10. A point equals 1, a line equals 2, a surface equals 3, and solid equals 4. When you add 1 plus 2 plus 3 plus 4 that equals 10. The modern world operates on a base 10 numerical system. We live in the limited cosmos of bodies. The limited draws from the unlimited, which is air. Thus, Pythagoras drew upon both Anaximander in his understanding of the universe as being the unlimited as well as to draw upon Anaximenes who thought that all things were air. Pythagoras thought the unlimited gave air to the realm of bodies, the limited, and through it, life. The cosmos, then, consisted of a mixture of the limited and the unlimited. Thus all things that are alive, and thus have souls, are mixture of the unlimited and the limited, the odd and the even. Pythagoras’ insight, however, was really astounding. His dream was the mathematicization of all reality. Unfortunately, he could not realize his dream within his lifetime. Had Pythagoras lived today he would have seen the fulfillment of his dream. It is in the mathematicization of technology and science, especially physics, that has become the realization of that dream. Imagine doing physics without mathematics. How else would we be able to reach out into space and understand the properties of the planets and gases that inhabit the cosmos? Without mathematics it couldn’t be done in accordance with the strict method of the scientific experiment and observation. The only way we can know anything of astrophysics and astronomy is by way of the mathematical mode. Thus, science was able to wed the scientific method with mathematics in order to achieve the astounding intellectual understanding of the material order of the universe. Two good examples of the effect of mathematicization in our understanding of the universe are the compact disc and the computer. There is no stylus touching the compact disc. The digital disc is read by computer and is then translated into sound. The computer uses a binary system that it uses to communicate text and images on a computer monitor. Using the two numbers, 0 and 1, the binary system, the computer is able to operate at a very sophisticated level. We, of course, understand the sophistication of the computer and all other things digitalized in this world because we have the hands-on experience of them. What we ourselves are able to experience through the concrete technological developments of these conceptual ideas of Pythagoras, he was only able to anticipate in mathematical formulas. Heraclitus (lived in Ephesus and flourished asserts that the basic element of all reality is fire. Upon first seeing this one is prone to judge Heraclitus wrongly as this view, at face value is an over-simplification of his position. It is also been misattributed to Heraclitus that he understands the world of reality as simply being always in process and, thus, lacking in unity as well as any substances. He has written that no man steps in the same river twice. The idea, of course, is that the river into which one steps consists of water that is materially different water than the water of that same river into which one had previously stepped. Heraclitus has been understood to mean by this quote that everything is always in flux, in the process of becoming, and that there is no unity. However, this is not quite true and that is why there has traditionally been the misattribution stated above. Heraclitus asserts that all things are in process, as exemplified by his reference to the river, and that the unity of all things is their overall stability in being. For Heraclitus, fire is the crucible through which all things pass from one form to another: nothing is created, nothing is destroyed. Rather the external appearances of all things simply change forms through a process of heating that causes their structures to undergo a transformation into another structure without anything of the material universe being lost. The fire to which Heraclitus refers is, of course, not like a flame in a campfire. Rather, he is referring to thermodynamic or thermonuclear processes such as our own sun, or a distant star. An example would be placing a log of wood in fire and as you do the chemical properties of the wood make the transition from its familiar appearance to ash through a thermo-chemical process. However it is still the same material but has just changed its form. Heraclitus asserts, then, that there is a universal balance whereby nothing is ever lost, it simply goes through transitions. Things change from one form to another and the agent of the transition is heat. The heat itself can take many forms and isn’t necessarily something that can be seen with the eyes. His contribution to philosophy consists in this concept of unity in diversity and difference in unity. Heraclitus’ view contrasts to Anaximander, who thought that opposites encroach on one another and caused injustice. Anaximander regards the opposites of the natural as disorderly and something that should not be. For him the conflict between opposites taints the purity of the One. Heraclitus believes the conflict of opposites essential to the being of the One. The One exists only in the tension caused by the conflict of opposites. Without the conflict of opposites there would be nothing. If birth and death did not alternate and all was birth with no death then eventually life would be unlivable and, ironically, all things would die and nothing would be. Heraclitus says, “We must know that war is common all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away though strife.” He said that Homer was wrong ins saying: “Would that strife might perish from among gods and men.” Were Homer’s prayer to come true then that would lead to the destruction of the universe. Reality for Heraclitus is Identity in Difference, it is One and it is many at the same time and its essence is Fire. Sense-experience tells us that fire lives by feeding and consuming and transforming into itself all the various types of matter. The tension caused by the conflict of opposites in material things causes heat and thus fire. The fire consumes the opposites and transforms them. They eventually assume new forms. Without the matter that is consumed the fire would eventually die out and there would be no change. In the fire there is an upward process and a downward one. This upward and downward path is the essence of change and is what brought the cosmos (universe) into existence. When fire is condensed it causes moisture which, when further compressed, becomes water. Water congeals and becomes earth. This is the downward path. When the earth is liquefied then water comes from it and from the evaporation of water comes everything else. This is the upward path. How then did Heraclitus account for the relative stability of the universe? He called it measure. For all that is consumed it is also transformed into something else because the quantity of matter in the universe remains the same. This constant, measured kindling and extinguishing by fire of all things remains proportioned due to what he calls the “hidden attunement of the Universe.” Heraclitus’ philosophical speculation resulted in a relativism of everything. If what he says is true then good and evil are simply opposites where one comes from the other and nothing is ultimately evil. Whatever apparent injustice that occurs to a man would not be evil in the larger picture but would be so only at the level of the particular and would seem so only to that particular man. In the overall scheme of things that one injustice to that one man would be balanced out in the macroscopic view of all reality. Heraclitus wrote, “To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.” This notion of unity in diversity is for Heraclitus reason with the capital R as it is the universal law. It is the reason and the law of the universe. Man participates in this universal reason when he comes to see and to understand the nature of things as they are. Heraclitus refers to this universal reason as God and in a mythological way, he personalizes it. The One for him was God and that each man is but a momentary instantiation of that Universal Reason inherent in all things. Nonetheless, Heraclitus was the pantheist and did not believe in a personal God. Rather the universe is what it is as a result of this universal law of unity in difference. The universe was, for Heraclitus, a material universe one whereby all was in harmony and that Reason, or Universal Law, was an immanent ordering principal of all things. The attitude of man and was to accept this law of the opposition of all things as necessary for the existence of all things. This is the law to which man had to submit. Man as rational being should remain in the dry of the fire as that is the repose of reason and thought. The soul, which is man’s immanent reason, should remain dry and free from the moisture of the body and its inclinations: “The dry is the wisest and best.” Each man should attune his mind to the universal world of thought and reason. This universal reason is called by Heraclitus, Word or Logos. Human law, then, ought to be an embodiment of the universal law of Reason, yet, Heraclitus understood that human law could never be perfect and would only be an imitation of it. Heraclitus’ philosophy became the groundwork of the Greek philosophical system known as Stoicism. This philosophical system of thought would eventually be adopted by the Romans. For Parmenides there is only Being. What that means is that there is no diversity in reality. There are, in reality, no multifarious aspects of individualized, individuated species. The whole diversity of life in the universe is merely an illusion. There is only Being, and this Being is absolutely static. Thus, when the mind is able to focus on the basic and fundamental unit of all reality, then, within that fundamental unit there is only simple, undifferentiated oneness. Parmenides insight is his reference to Being as opposed to some material element, such as water, air, or fire. As we look about the world we see individual beings. For Parmenides the individual beings are merely an illusion. This Being, then, can only be grasped by thought. Parmenides’ argument goes something like this: if something is then it exists. If it exists, then, it cannot not exist. Since something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same manner, then that which is either is or it is not. Since something cannot come from nothing, and, only nothing can come from nothing, then if it exists, then, it cannot not be at the same time. If it is not, then, it cannot come to be. Now, individual beings are understood to change and because they change they are dependent upon what brought them into being. If they were brought into being by something else then the individual beings cannot be perfect. If they are not perfect, but, come into being and go out of being, then, they cannot be Being itself. If they are not Being itself then they cannot be at all. Rather, they are illusions. Parmenides Being cannot be becoming, but can only be Being, therefore, Being is one and without multiplicity. Parmenides was the real founder of the Eleatic School. He was born approximately 515 B. C. and died about 440 B. C. He seems to have known the great Socrates. He asserted the idea of the motionless One. Being is One and without change or movement. Becoming involves change and movement and is, therefore, an illusion. For if anything comes to be then that thing comes either out of Being or out of not being. If the thing comes from Being, then, it already is, in which case it does not come to be. But, if it comes from not-being, then, it is nothing, since out of nothing comes nothing. Becoming is, then, an illusion. Being simply is and Being is one, since plurality is also illusion. Any change in movement is due to phenomena (the outward appearance of things that you see or sense with you other senses, such as hearing) which appear to the senses. By rejecting change in movement, Parmenides is rejecting the way of sense appearance. It is, therefore, correct to say that Parmenides introduces the most important distinction between Reason and Sense; Truth and Appearance. In short, what is true is what cannot be experienced by the senses but can only be understood and grasped by reason. What can be grasped by the senses is then only a sense appearance and subject to change is therefore not true. So, unchanging, unmoving Being Itself is not perceived with the senses but is only known by reason and is therefore true. All the outward appearance of the world that we see and sense around us always appears to move and change and is therefore false and an illusion. We must trust what reason tells us not what our sense-experience relates to us. It is true, of course even Thales recognize this distinction to a certain extent, for his supposed truth, that is, water, is scarcely perceptible immediately to the senses. It needs reason, which passes beyond appearance, in order to be conceived. The central truth of Heraclitus is, again, a truth of reason and far exceeds the common opinion of man, who trusts in everything to sense appearance. It is also true that Heraclitus even makes the distinction partly explicit; for does he not distinguish between mere commonsense and his Word? It is Parmenides who first places great and explicit stress on the distinction, and is easy enough to understand why he does so when we consider the conclusions to which he came. In the baton of philosophy That Parmenides regarded being as material seems be clearly indicated by his assertion that Being, the One, is finite. Infinite for him must have meant indeterminate and indefinite, and Being, as the Real, cannot be indefinite or indeterminate, it cannot change, it cannot be conceived as expanding into empty space: it must be definite, determinate, and complete. It is temporarily infinite, as having neither beginning nor end, but it is spatially finite. Moreover, it is equally real in all directions, and so is spherical in shape, “equally poised from the center in every direction: for cannot be greater or smaller in one place in another.” Since Parmenides thought of being as spherical he therefore must have thought of it as material. Democritus and Leucippus: Democritus and Leucippus are associated with the element known as atoms. For Democritus there was no such thing as the basic elements of Earth, air, water, fire. All elements of the universe can be reduced to atoms which were little particles. In that sense Democritus and Empedocles are in an agreement. They were seeking one common element and found it in the building block known as atoms. In Democritus’ mind these atoms were little tiny round things. In the little tiny round things, some regular and others irregular, went into the building of the various forms that we perceive. So, consequently, Democritus did not understand atoms in the way that modern science understands atoms. Both Democritus and the modern scientists assert that atoms are active. But the atoms themselves, for Democritus, are the smallest building blocks and are dynamic only in relation to one another. There is no subatomic level for Democritus. According to Leucippus and Democritus there are an infinite number of indivisible units, which are called Atoms. These are imperceptible, since they are too small to be perceived by the senses. The Atoms differ in size and shape, but have no quality except that of solidity or impenetrability. Infinite in number, they move in the void. However, in whatever way the Atoms originally moved in the void, at some point of time collisions between Atoms occurred, those of irregular shape becoming entangled with one another. These then formed groups of Atoms. In this way the vortex is set up, and a world is in process of formation. Whereas, Anaxagoras thought that the larger bodies would be driven farthest from the center, Leucippus said the opposite, believing, wrongly, that in an eddy of wind or water the larger bodies tend towards the center. Another effect of the movement in the void is that Atoms which are alike in size and shape are brought together as a sieve brings together the grains of millet, wheat, and barley, or the waves of the sea heap up together long stones wit long and round with round. In this way are formed the four elements of fire, air, Earth, and water. Thus innumerable worlds arise from the collisions among the infinite Atoms moving in the void. In the beginning existed Atoms in the void, and that was all: from that beginning arose the world of our experience, and no extra power or moving force is assumed as a necessary cause for the principal motion. Apparently the early cosmology is did not think of motion as requiring any explanation, and the Atomist philosophy the eternal movement of the Atoms is regarded as self-sufficient. The sieve this speaks of everything happening by chance in this might at first sight appear inconsistent with his doctrine of the unexplained original movement of the Atoms and of the collisions of the Atoms. The collision of the Atoms, however, occurred necessarily owing to the configuration of the Atoms in their irregular movements, while the unexplained original movement of the Atoms, as self-sufficient fact, did not require further explanation. To us indeed they may well seem strange to deny chance and yet to posit an eternal unexplained motion, but we do not to conclude that Leucippus meant to ascribe the motion of the Atoms to chance: to him the eternal motion and the continuation of motion requires no explanation. It is to be noted that the Atoms of Leucippus and Democritus are the Pythagoreans monads endowed with the properties of Parmenidean being - for each is as the Parmenidean One. And inasmuch as the elements arise from the various arrangements and positions of the Atoms, they may be likened to the Pythagoreans numbers if the latter are to be regarded as patterns or figurate numbers. In his detailed scheme of the world, Leucippus was somewhat reactionary, rejecting the Pythagoreans view of the spherical character of the earth and returning, like Anaxagoras, to the view of Anaximenes, that the earth is like a tambourine floating in the air. But, though the details of the Atomist cosmology cannot indicate any new advance, Leucippus and Democritus are noteworthy for having carried previous tendencies to their logical conclusion, producing a purely mechanical account and explanation of reality. The attempt to give a complete explanation of the world in terms of mechanical materialism has, as we all know, reappeared in a much more thorough formed in modern era under the influence of physical science, but the brilliant hypothesis that Leucippus and Democritus was by no means the last word in Greek philosophy: subsequent Greek philosophers were to see that the riches of the world cannot in all its fears be reduced to mechanical interplay of Atoms. Empedocles attempts to produce a philosophy that is molded together from the previous pre-Socratic philosophies and not to produce his own. Empedocles agrees with Parmenides position that Being can neither arise nor pass away because being cannot come from not-being, nor can pass into that being. Since, for both men, Being is material it is thus that matter is without beginning and without end and is indestructible. On the other hand, Empedocles did not entirely agree with Parmenides. For Empedocles change is a fact of lifet. Empedocles then attempted to reconcile Parmenides idea that Being is permanent with the fact of change. He said the individual wholes or substances, such as rocks and trees, cease to be as wholes but break down into 4 fundamental particles of which they are composed but which are themselves indestructible. He stated that one kind of matter cannot become another kind of matter. For instance Thales’ water cannot become Anaximenes air. These fundamental and eternal kinds of matter or elements are air, earth, fire, and water. It was Empedocles who invented the classification of the four elements. He calls the four elements the roots of all. The thus air has its own particles, earth has its own particles, water has its own particles, and fire has its own particles. Air cannot become water which cannot become earth which cannot become fire. These objects mingle together to become objects or whole substances. Now the elements themselves neither come into being nor pass out of being but the objects that are formed by the mingling of these particles change their form depending on how their mingled and intermingled. Empedocles great insight is to unite the various elements (air, earth, fire, water) and reduce them to their lowest possible atomic states called particles. These four, then, are the constituent principles of all existence. All in universe can be reduced to these four types of particles. The whole universe is in a constant change or flux. Empedocles basically says that when the whole universe is either in state of strife or harmony among these various particles. When they are pulling away from one another they are in strife and when they forming among themselves they are in harmony. So the earth particles will form together, separate from the air particles, which are separate from the water particles, which are separate from the fire particles. The particles collect together, separately. This is when universe is in the state of dissolution. When it reaches a state of absolute dissolution it then goes into its next transition stage which Empedocles calls love or attraction. The particles, then, begin to form and attract one another and, in various combinations, are then slowly but surely able to form the universe as we see it. Thus the whole universe comes back together again as we know it in a mix. Now, these particles remain what they are in themselves but they coalesce with the other particles to form various partnerships, so to speak, without losing their identity. These partnerships among particles are what make up the multiplicity of forms which we see. When the whole universe has reached its zenith in the relations among these particles, then, repulsion or war takes place again and they begin to retract from one another and the process begins over again. Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae in modern day Turkey around the year 500 B. C. He became the teacher of the great Greek leader, Pericles, which was later to cause him to be imprisoned by Pericles’ enemies. And there’s no question, that for Plato, Anaxagoras had probably the most significant influence. Anaxagoras accepted Parmenides’ theory that Being neither comes into being nor passes away and is without change. Remember, that for Parmenides as for Empedocles and Anaxagoras that being is constituted of matter and is thus indestructible. The change is the result of the mixing of indestructible material elements or particles. The mixing and separating of these particles causes the coming into being of individualized objects and their passing away. In every object exists all the qualitative particles of every qualitative material, for instance, gold, when cut in half is still gold but when a dog is cut in half it is no longer a dog. So, particles are material objects, such as minerals and grass, etc. For Anaxagoras, when something dies or is destroyed it then is transformed into some other object because it contains within itself the particles of everything that exists and when some object comes into being it is explained by the fact that it contains a predominant proportion of those particles and a corresponding lesser degree of all the other particles. That is how he was able to explain how an object comes to be and passes away without compromising the main principle that Being itself can neither come into being nor pass away. Anaxagoras was concerned with the question of change and how something can come from something else, such as, how hair can come from what is not hair or grass from what is not grass, etc. In a philosophically central way Anaxagoras made the biggest philosophical advance among the pre-Socratics. Whereas Empedocles asserted that the fundamental power or force that differentiated the original material mass of the universe was the motions of Love and Strife, Anaxagoras asserted that it was Mind or in Greek, Nous. “Nous has power over all things that have life, both greater and smaller. And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve at the start . . . And nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are now and that will be, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon and the air and the ether which are separated off. And the revolution itself caused the separating off, and the dense is separated off from the rare, the warm from the cold, the bright from the dark, and the dry from the moist. And there are many portions in many things. But no thing is altogether separated off from anything else except Nous. And all Nous is alike, both the greater and the smaller; but nothing else is like anything else, but each single thing is and was most manifestly those things of which there are most in it. Nous is self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. Nous is the finest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest power. Nous is there where everything else is, in the surrounding mass.” However, unlike the common man of today who understands mind in a spiritual sense, for Anaxagoras, much like today’s psychologists, mind was a physical thing. However, Anaxagoras believed that mind was dispersed throughout the universe but made up of material elements. For us today, we have the mind-brain split. In other words, there’s an opposition between the mind and the brain in today’s debate. The concept of mind, for Anaxagoras, has elements of both mind and brain. Certainly, mind, for Anaxagoras, possesses a material quality yet the same time it also possessed a certain unacknowledged spiritual quality as it provided the purpose for the whole universe. By purpose, here, I mean an order and a direction for the universe. He was able to perceive that some power directed the activities in behaviors of the whole of material order. At the same time, it was a physical element such as a human brain. Mind did not, of course, look like human brain but rather by analogy was like human brain in its physical reality and like a human mind in its purposefulness. A word about the Sophists. Sophia means wisdom and those teachers who went by this name were supposed to have been considered wise. Early in the history of ancient Greece the term Sophist was meant as a title of respect.. Slowly but surely, however, those that considered themselves to be sophists were, in fact, not wise men. Rather, they were man in search of a career. They charged wealthy families for the tutoring services they rendered. They were to train young men, born of wealthy fathers who could afford a professional training, in the art of rhetoric. In Greece, the political-economic situation was such that the wealthy were freed from manual labor and thus sought the public life, which included voting and politics. To speak eloquently could advance one’s career. Thus, the duties of public life were considered to be an honor to bear. The true Greek philosophers objected to the sophists earning their keep in this manner as it could, and did, corrupt the seeking of knowledge for its own sake. The dominant philosophy among Sophist however was that there was no absolute truth. They arrived at this conclusion because they saw that the philosophers could not agree among themselves concerning these fundamental matters. And, since the art of rhetoric, especially in courts of law or the public political forum, required persuasion, then, it would be more advantageous to argue both sides of an issue rather than simply seeking the truth. For the sophists, then, the truth was simply in the eye of the beholder; truth was what you said it was. Among the most famous of the Sophists is Protagoras. Aristotle attributed to him the saying that, “man is the measure of all things.” Man determines for himself what is right and wrong, good and bad, and that with which to measure his world and his behavior. No doubt, though, Protagoras and the sophists did provide a very valuable service to Greek society. And yet, they brought into disrepute the philosophical endeavor since they considered themselves philosophers and not just practitioners as such.