Dr Menahem Luz,
Presocratic Philosophers
Summary 2 (History of Presocratic Philosophy)
Contents
Even Socrates is a puzzle since he did not write anything but is refashioned as a fictitious figure in Plato's dialogues.
Later his work was reedited and supplemented by Walther Krantz in three volumes, and is known today as:
Although it is not expected that you should consult this work at this stage of your studies, you should grasp the significance of references to this work in scholarly books and articles. A short English translation of selections from Diels-Kranz was done by:
Diels-Krantz, Die Fragmente der Vorskratiker (Fragments of the Presocratics)
It deals with all the major and minor Presocratics from the earliest cosmological myths until the sophists.
In the class handbook, the fragments referring to this work are listed as DK
Kathleen Freeman Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, Oxford 1971.
W.K.C. Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy vol 1-2 (Cambridge) which is highly recommended although it is no systematic translation and commentary on all the fragments but does examine many of them.
J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin, 1987) -- but this contains no real discussion of the fragments.
It is true that Aristotle also imposes on the Presocratics his own preconceptions - but he does no more than other original thinkers who reinterpreted the Presocratics as a basis for their own philosophy - I am thinking primarily of Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy and Bertrand Russel's History of Western Philosophy or Martin Heidegger on Early Greek Thinking.
Nowadays, no one reads these works in order to understand the Presocratics, but in order to understand the philosophy of Hegel, Russel and Heidegger.For us, however, who wish to reach behind the Aristotelian veil, we must carefully examine the words of the Prsocratics in order to elicit the maximum from them and attempt to give an objective examinatin of Aristotle's subjective reinterpretation.
The Presocratics also use poetic and metaphoric language to describe their scientific models.
He recognised the use of the latter in philosophical dialogue when he distinguished between Plato thus is an example of how this distinction does not hold for Greek philosophy. The famous early anthropologist, J.G. Frazer wrote in The Golden Bough that even magic and myth have their own ratio - which is a different one from science. In magic and myth, the basic assumptions are: We still adhere to prerational concepts as the honour given to a flag - although this is a mere rag on a stick, people would die, avenge and commit murder for it. A wrong done to a flag is a wrong done to the entire nation - pars pro toto.
If we still slip into prerational thought, then it is not surprising that the earliest philosohers also did so as when Thales concluded that since the load-stone (magnet) moved iron, then it was full of gods just as the mythic man regarded the whole of the universe. For every two steps that the earliest philosophers took forward, they often went back one.
What then does distinguish the first philosophers from their predecessors? Two books discuss this issue: However, the difference is the point at which myth and poem cease believing in a literal interpretation of their metaphor. Scientific metaphor by contrast is a model to aid in the understanding of the universe
Nonetheless, prescientific models are still used in science. Democritus describes the birth of the stars in terms of a milk - churn, where heavier parts whirled to centre and lighter flung outside. Anaximander describes the universe like a wagon with wheels of stars turing round the earthÕ as axis. However, while the metaphor describes what it is like. If the creation of the world were described in poetry or myth, the same model could occur. However, in myth, the churning is not ony ascribed to the gods as a cause but also that it is taken literally. The god would actually churn the milk, the Egyptian beetle actually moves the sun, not just a metaphoric model. Further, in myth no real distinction between nature as an object and nature as a subject, it and thou - thus we still today speak of Mother Nature, or friends of the earth, benevolence of the universe etc The early cosmogonists not only literally believed in the metaphoric models of myth -- according to the principle of similarity is idenitity-- but also related to the universe as a living being - the boundaries between object and subject, animate and inanimate were indistinct. Frankfort thinks of primitive man having no knowledge of the inanimate. Cf the nymphs that inhabit the trees, god inhabiting the universe.
Nonethess, it cannot be denied that often there is no demarcation between both forms of thought. Often Aristotle accuses Plato of writing poetically and thus inconsistently. Defenders of Plato on the other hand, accuse Aristotle of a dry literal interpretation of Plato's intutiive thought.
At any rate, the first philosophers, like Thales and Anaximandros look for logical causes - aitiai - in trains of events - and here logical means a cause that has a direct and non-metaphorical relation with its results.
Some people have claimed that prescientific and reasoned thought are to be distinguished by their approach to fact. However, prescientifc medicine was also based on acquiring fact. Nontheless, causes of these facts was also explained in supernatural or in magical ritual or belief. By contrast to ritualistic medicine, the earliest Greek medical work, the late fifth century BC composition seeks to explain epilepsy and any disease only by a natural cause (prophasis: In other respects, the early cosmologists tried to explain the first principle of the universe but not in a temporal sense - not what divine act of creation made the universe - but in substantial sense -what is the first elemental substance that always underlies the universe. This idea was also treated in myth - the act of forming the earth from dust under the Shekhina, or of creating man from the breath of God. But the early cosmologists did not seek non-natural explanations. Mythic thought also has a non-real understanding of time - the cycle of the universe is in a sense non-temporal - we see this in Pesah festivities - we are supposed to think of ourselves as having emerged from Egypt every year. Early philosophers did think of time as repeating itself, but only in a cosmic sense not in a personal sense. Thus the first philosophers look for the principle that occurs either once in each cycle or is for ever at the basis of reality.
Argumentation also is a criterium for distinguishing mythic from analytic thought. The late fifth century scientists in fact often used a logical argument of the Ôlaw of the excluded middleÕ (modus tollens) to explain why their explanations were wrong: if A then B; but not-B; therefore not A. The Hippocratic author of On the Sacred Disease thus attacks the magical prohibition on goats skin, as leading to disease, for if this were so, none of the Libyans would be healthy since they use it, thus it is not so (Lloyd, p 25).
The fifth century is thus characterized by scientists like Hippocrates and the historian Herodotus who seek to explain facts by a rational cause that explain the facts.. Aristotle would have us understand that the earlier scientific period of the late 7th to 6th century was similarly characterized by much the same quest.for the scientifc aitia or causa to explain the fact. However, the proof for this is still unclear.
The first philosophers prided themselves that they searched for knowledge for its own sake and not for social or ritualistic reasons. However, they too make their own priestly Academic class (like the medical writers).
Further material on this section
(Cf. class booklet (tadpis) p 9-10).On the other hand, sometimes, thinkers seem to fall back into a mythic frame of mind to explain mechanistic process - as when Thales is said to have concluded from the movement caused by a magnet that it had soul and from that that everything was full of the god-like souls (Cf. tadpis p 6).However although his animism and mythology did believe that nature was alive and full of souls of nymphs and demons, Thales reaches the same conclusions but by a reasoned argument: the magnet moves objects; movers of objects are animate; therefore the magnet is animate.It does not matter that Thales employed a false premise (only movers of objects have souls) since it is more important that he is aware of the use of argument.
A recommended book on this subject is: Mary R. Wright, Cosmology and Antiquity London-NYreturn to top
Often, the modern world has preferred to see two different types of thought
However, this distinction does not hold for the Greeks nor for the modern world. The latter still uses non-analytical thought and the Greeks employed both in philosophy. We see this in Plato's distinction is that between
We are there told that the prescientific man regards the universe not as an object to be analysed and examined, but as an independednt life force capable of terrible things. In science Nature is a third person , an object, on which experiments are to be performed - in myth, Nature is regarded in the second person, as a YOU, experimenting and playing with the observer. This approach is not of course always primitive as it is present in much of modern poetry.
It is true that the eclipses of the sun, moon, rising of the Nile, were all noted down in the prescientific period, so that even prescientific priests of Babylon tried to predict them, but often the understanding was that man's actions can also affect them. The early philosophical cosmologists did not look for human or divine causes in the heavens.return to top
"I do not believe that the sacred disease is more divine or sacred than any other disease but, on the contrary, just as other diseases have a nature from which they arise so this one has a nature (physis) and a definite cause (prophasis)
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(On the Sacred Disease i. 10-12).
This practical approach to the subject is also for practical reasons:
"Each disease has its own nature (physis) and power (dynamis) and there is nothing in any disease which is unintelligible or which is insusceptible to treatment ... A man with the knowledge of how to produce by means of regimen dryness and moisture, cold and heat in the human body, could cure this disease provided that he could distinguish the right moment for the application of the remedies. He would not need to resort to purifications and magic and all that kind of charlatism" (18. 1).
Secondly, while non-scientific eastern astrologers and doctors assiduously collected the facts, wrong conclusions were reached because the cause was not explained as part of the physical background of these facts, but rather contradicted them.
In these cases, the difference between science and myth is in:
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