the history of western philosophy begins in that area of the world which i hope you recognize as the egmc with greece uh asia minor um the first known philosopher who's talked about at least thales of militis came from just about that location in the center of the west coast of the asia minor peninsula in other words the greek colonies scattered around the aegean now um a question that one usually starts with is how do you account then for the rise of western philosophy there in the egyan area in ancient greece and um there are several lines of explanation which are important one is of course that it stands at the crossroads between east and west where traditional ideas would be challenged by the interaction with eastern culture simply because of the way in which the trade routes came through asia minor and down the meander valley the river meander meanders down to the sea so this is the meander valley there and the trade routes come that way so all right uh cross-cultural stimulation led to the asking of some basic questions um a second thing that is emphasized a great deal and i think appropriately is that the early greek philosophers were really pre-scientific scientists they were asking questions about the natural world about the natural order about the natural processes uh they raised questions about basic elements what basic element or elements underlie all of the rich furniture of the heavens and the earth that we see what are the causal processes that account for the variation of things and the changes that occur that sort of question um early philosophy of nature primitive cosmology questions about the origin of the cosmos as we know it began to arise and you could see how they could be connected with the differences between east and west and the stimulation that comes with the mythology of the two interacting and coming into some degree of conflict but there is a third feature that is tremendously important and i think i've come to think increasingly a particular importance the earlier greek poets dramatists had the conviction that the cosmic order which we observe in nature is also a moral order a notion of cosmic justice is something that surfaces among some of those early literary figures uh in between the odyssey and the early ad it begins to appear in his yard it's explicit in easterlus and sophocles it's present so that the question is whether there is an order to the cosmos that includes a moral order if this is a moral universe how do we explain that fact so then we have really two philosophical lines of thought in accounting for the origin of greek philosophy here one that focuses simply on reflection about the physical cosmos and the other about reflection on the moral order which they believed to exist in the processes of nature so what i want to do today is to focus on the first of these their attention to the physical order and then next time to turn our attention to the moral order take a look at that okay now with that in mind take a look at the outline that i've just given you of the pre-socratic philosophers those prior to socrates you notice i've grouped them where the principal grouping is in terms you notice of various kinds of monism under romans one two and three as against pluralism that is to say the question as to whether there is one basic element that accounts for everything or whether there are many basic elements that would be obviously a kind of qualitative monism or pluralism the case may be qualitative is the one basic element are the many basic elements but uh it also involves a quantitative question um whether they're the universe is numerically one all-inclusive solid kind of sphere or whether there are numerically many distinguishable things now that sounds abstruse for the simple reason that you think you're something different than i am which implies there are many different things so with a quantitative monism are going to is is going to arise some very fundamental question about the reliability of our sense experience because if sense experience tells us we are many in number but the theory becomes that everything is one in number there's something wrong either with the theory that everything is one or else something wrong with our sense experience so um that will arise later on when we get down to the group labeled eliatics absolute monism named eliatics after elia which is in the toe of italy where some of these people were so that quantitative issue arises there but at the outset we're dealing in that naive monism of the mylesians with a qualitative pluralism or qualitative monism how many basic elements are there now remember they've never been in the chemistry lecture hall they've never seen the table of the elements and impressed as they are by the ordered arrangement of things the initial tendency is to look for one basic element as you read these materials and i hope you will have read through the primary and secondary materials on the pre-socratics by the end of this week as you read these materials you'll find that thales thought that everything was ultimately reducible to derived from the one element he called water now for the moment disregard the fact that you don't think it's an element h2o he wasn't to know that poor thales you'll see still sounds like rather a wild hypothesis everything composed of water well wait a minute water is a remarkably adaptable kind of thing it comes in liquid solid and vapor it is essential to life not only to your life and mine but to uh vegetation notice how brown everything is around here we've had quite a drought this summer i think i've mowed my front lawn once since early june which is a welcome change but it's a tragic one you'll see no water is so fundamental to everything that goes on that necessity that understandably thales conjectured but maybe this is the basic stuff well um he um wasn't the only person in the business and you notice the name of an ax amanda who because he recognized that you have not only wetness you have only dryness you have also dryness he began to see you have opposing qualities and the same in other regards heat and cold light and dark male and female and in as much as if you have opposing properties no one can be more basic than the other he supposed that the basic element must be something that is undefinable and that's what the word epyron means it cannot be defined it cannot be delineated marked off the greek word peres means a border a demarcation line the alpha primitive makes it negative so a pyron it has no definition it's undefinable you see an examinees on the other hand thought that air was the basic essential and so you begin to get this variety and what's surfacing if you're familiar with greek literature what's surfacing is um the fact that they are playing with the various elements that the greeks um talked about um even in their literature earth air fire and water those are the four classic greek elements some have suggested that they represent the four necessities of life earth food air breath fire warmth water something to drink nourishes or they are fire and water for necessities of life but you notice that um here we have uh aneximines here we have phthalese later on we'll find heraclitus and some of the stoics plugging in on fire you see in other words in terms of the elements as they conceived them the elements with which they were familiar which one of these is most basic or is it none of these as an examiner supposed well the milesians were asking these rather simple questions uh processes of change they thought could be explained in the case of air with condensation which produces moisture yes so there are all sorts of possibilities in these proposals on the other hand pythagoras and heraclitus incidentally that's the pythagoras you meet in mathematics the mathematician that um produced what becomes known as pythagoras theorem that the square on the hypotenuse of a right angle triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides remember that pythagoras okay pythagoras and heraclitus seemingly um independently of each other in the uh late sixth century that's the same before 500 in the late 6th century was saying that there is um to to nature as it were two sides each of which is equally important a double aspect theory now you you can get um perhaps a rough idea of what i mean by double aspect if you consider the question about a object that's almost becoming rare in this culture a saucer you know this is the age of mugs rather than delicate english china with tea cups and sauces but at least you know the uh the shape of a saucer is a saucer concave or convex yes from one point of view looking down on it from above it's concave from the other point of view looking up at it as somebody carries it along its convex two aspects to it so to say that a saucer is both concave and convex is to talk about the double aspect nature of the saucer okay now what pythagoras and heraclitus are impressed with is that there are two aspects to everything in nature on the one hand everything seems to be in a process of change on the other hand there is order what we call uniformity of nature predictability you see oh yes to um to think of that change heraclitus suggested that the basic element is like fire you know fire is always changing uh have you noticed um sitting around a fireplace in the winter you get sort of mesmerized by the flickering flames that are always changing you see it's almost hard to concentrate on reading philosophy around the fire for that reason constant change you see yet on the other hand this is an ordered universe there's regularity you know how certain kinds of wood will burn and when they're wet how they won't so you have both change and order change and order and pythagoras and heraclitus independently of each other tried to talk about precisely that the way in which um heraclitus does it is to suggest that what we have is fire or some fiery vapor heat rising steam rising everything rising and changing and flickering and burning down and so forth fire plus some sort of um intelligible traceable order that he calls lagos now you've run across that word before and that's the word that the apostle john is going to use in the first line of his gospel in the beginning was the word is in arcane holagus in the beginning the logos you see this is where it first begins to appear in greek thought and john later adapts a great conception in the light of hebrew conceptions to his purposes watch it now on the other hand uh pythagoras the mathematician also talks of things changing and the idea of fiery vapor is something he alludes to but instead of talking of lagos what he talks about is a kind of mathematical order to things a mathematical order to things um so that you can represent all sorts of different shapes numerically see this is a mathematical kind of universe where you can trace out the mathematical order this is why he was interested in geometry you see so you have these two emphasizing that there is an orderedness to nature for all the processes of change and footnote in anticipation of the theme next time that means that amidst all of life's change we should live a rationally ordered life you see the ethic arises from this well pythagoras and heraclitus on the other hand when you get to the early addicts they want absolutely no pluralism no discrimination of two aspects no world of change and parmenides in very forthright fashion declares that change is illusory plurality is illusory physical motion is illusory the senses are simply the way of illusion if you want the way of truth you have to think in abstraction from all of the senses think abstractly and if you want to see more of what is meant by thinking abstractly well you can read the parmenides selections and the kaufman anthology but give attention to zeno because zeno tried to make the case for this absolute monism by posing paradoxes change is a paradoxical self-contradictory thing that couldn't occur for instance take for instance a hair that is chasing a tortoise does the hair ever catch the tortoise no because you see here is the line along which the tortoise is moving by the time it gets to there the hair has gotten that far by the time the tortoise gets there the hair gets that far but the time the tortoise gets there the hair gets that far and because the hair keeps advancing the tortoise because the tortoise keeps advancing the hair never catches the tortoise you see he's already eating it and that's illusory you see um does um a chicken ever cross the street no because if this much is the street then first the chicken halves the distance h-a-l-v-e-s halves the distance then the chicken halves the remaining distance then it halves the remaining distance then it halves the remaining distance then the remaining then the remaining then it never gets across the street you see millet seeds were regarded as the smallest seeds that there are melon seeds now to show the paradoxical nature of pluralism zeno poses this how much sound would one millet seed make if you drop it no sound all right drop a sack of ten thousand millet seeds how much sound will it make zero times ten thousand which is zilch nose out but you heard the third illusion rationally it's impossible the way of illusion is the way of the senses the plural plurality of things that we see are illusory as plurality processes of change and motion are illusory from a strictly logical standpoint there can be no change no plurality now i don't think that there has ever developed a school of thought known as xenoism or parmenidism uh because um those people represent uh sort of a logical terminus that um nobody wants to follow them too it's one thing to say that the senses are sometimes illusory it's one thing to say that sense perception is relative and changing sure and we'll find lots of people plato and so on and so forth say that but to say that they are completely illusory well um if you say that why would you say it to whom would you say it and why utter any sound in saying it if that position is correct why even record what xeno and parmenides say it if that position is correct it's self-defeating you see but the point is not the position that they came up but the kinds of issues they're posing what does it mean to say that everything is one whole that this is a universe well presumably it doesn't mean what parmenides thought but on the other hand is this a world of radical pluralism with everything disassociated radical individualism in an anarchistic kind of cosmos with no law and order you see in effect what the pre-socratics did for us was to pose the issues and very often it's far more important what question services but what answers surface let's see it certainly is with these people well when you get to the pluralists you might say um this is a breath of fresh air because here you have people in pedicles and exaggerous democratists who see a multitude of different things pentacles in fact picks up on all four earth air far and water all four elements and in order to explain the um kind of uh process that's involved he comes up with some sort of a cyclical view of cosmic history you see seeing things going that way with integration and disintegration of the elements all the way through the history of the cosmos but the four basic elements and exaggeras on the other hand there thinks there must be a basic elements of every kind of qualitative thing no matter how different he calls them seeds so your body will have seeds of bone seeds of skin seeds of flesh seeds of blood seeds of muscle seeds of hair so on so forth and there are some suggestions that it might be seeds of dark hair or seeds of light hair seeds of curly hair or seeds of straight hair where you're going to stop this sort of pluralism but then having postulated such an infinite diversity of different things all of these seeds how are you going to account for the ordered unity of the human body and for that matter of the universe and so what an exaggerus does is to talk about um what he calls noose or mind as if there is some cosmic mind drawing things into ordered unity in an ordered direction some sort of divine noose you can see that uh in groping for the source of cosmic order the groping towards some concept of a supreme being you see the beginnings of theology in the ancient greeks in distinction from some of their mythology you see but on the other hand when you get to democritus the picture is different because while impedicles and anxious were qualitative pluralists okay qualitative pluralists democritus is a qualitative monist everything is of one and the same quality but a quantitative pluralist that is to say physical things are composed of infinitesimal atoms an atom the word literally means it cannot be split it cannot be cut an indivisible pellet of matter okay so physical things that we know are composed of of vast numbers of atoms indivisible pellets and the qualitative differences between cats and cabbages and cauliflowers and kings you see the qualitative differences are due to the combinations of atoms producing those qualitative differences different combinations for a king than a cauliflower now the idea is that the atoms come in different shapes and whirling around in some sort of cosmic vortex natural kind of motion whirling around in this cosmic vortex collide hook onto each other combined so larger aggregates form and as a result of sheer chance mechanical processes the whole body of things in heaven and earth has been formed over the course of history so what you get then in these last people is particularly interesting because whereas an exaggerus is suggesting a teleological explanation a teleological explanation that is to say there is this cosmic mind that orders things in these intelligible ways okay on the other hand democritus has a purely mechanistic explanation has a purely mechanistic explanation blind forces combining by chance to produce the kinds of conglomerates that make up the cosmos it's as if um somebody took a whole bundle and bundles and bundles of individual letters and whirled them round long enough and out came the sunday edition of the chicago tribute you see that sort of explanation the sheer chance but obviously here you have two philosophers handing heading in vastly different directions you see a mechanistic kind of materialism in which nothing exists but material atoms being moved by chance forces okay and on the other hand a teleological explanation which is pushing in the direction of either some kind of theistic metaphysic or some kind of idealism but some explanation which sees some immaterial reality of a rational sort uh accounting for the ordinance of the cosmos now that's been a quick rundown and and before i pick up and pull some threads together let me pause did you get the story what do you want to get clear again ruth um you're saying that qualitative quantitative clause yes because all of the atoms individual atoms are qualitatively the same qualitatively alike so a qualitative monist but a quantitative pluralist many of them but all of them qualitatively alike yeah does that make sense um getting the terminology under your belt and as part of your active vocabulary is part of the part of the task of this juncture oh emphatically use okay i'm inclined to say no i think he's groping towards a teleological view for this reason that in that cyclical picture of the elements combining and disassociating he ascribes that cyclical process to two forces that he calls love and hate attraction repulsion now depending how you take those terms love and hate they could be simply metaphorical terms for attraction and repulsion as we think of it in magnetism and electricity you'll see in which case it would be a mechanistic thing but on the other hand if you take love and hate to be some inner directedness because of natural affinity you see it doesn't have to be conscious any more than a daffodil growing up in the spring or turning to the light implies consciousness you see but as long as there is is an order that is end oriented then you could say this is the beginning of a teleology so i'm inclined to say that empedocles isn't out into the clear yet one way or the other but i think he's edging towards the um the teleological view yeah okay um no i i want you to uh to get this general structure of the pre-socratic period uh down as um well as you can we're not going to spend a lot of time on it just today and next time but we'll be referring back to it again and again it'll become point of reference okay so keep in mind the mylesians okay qualitative monists of a rather simplistic sort the myelesians the double aspect theories of pythagoras and heraclitus the early addicts their absolute monism the pluralists who pose the mechanism versus teleology question and the reading that you're doing will put the flesh on these bones this structure is important now what um what i want to uh to underscore is um the kind of question that these people are raising um we we think of um thales as about 600 bc okay thales about 600 bc by the time we get down to uh socrates we're about 400 bc so we've got essentially a 200-year span in which the pre-socratics are at work 200-year span in which in effect they are formulating the philosophical agenda that western philosophy has worked with ever since they are formulating a philosophical agenda that western philosophy has worked with ever since now maybe you're inclined to ask well why should we take their agenda well the thing is that it is so interwoven into western thought patterns in every discipline not just in philosophy in every discipline for the simple reason that the later sciences emerged as spin-offs from philosophy you'll see have you noticed how your science professors have doctor of philosophy degrees and many of them never saw the inside of a philosophy classroom except for people like dr chapel here who audits philosophy courses bless her heart you see simply because some natural philosophy so-called philosophy of nature natural philosophy the sort of thing that these guys are doing is the seed bed out of which the empirical and mathematical sciences develop subsequently you see if you um take dr spradley's courses in the history of science you'll find that the history of science up through or approximately the renaissance is essentially one strain of uh what we do in the history of philosophy you see then you begin to get the development of astronomy and physics independently of philosophy later of chemistry and of biology sociology doesn't begin until the mid 19th mid 19th century psychology as a science not until early 20th centuries late as 1910 what's now the journal of philosophy was called the journal of philosophy psychology scientific method etc i know that's a mouthful but that's the way it was so um the agenda that is created you see by the pre-socratics was um carried on in natural philosophy in ancient and medieval times and transmitted into modern times so that in a sense the question we're asking is still what are the basic elements or if not basic elements what's the basic stuff you see whether you want protons or quirks take your choice we're still asking the same kinds of questions and how do you describe the causal processes and the causal forces at work that produce change same type of questions but what is that agenda what is that agenda and i i think you can see um pretty clearly that it's the kind of agenda that um you should have been introduced to more or less in your introductory course where um we usually try to get questions in what we call metaphysics whether or not the label that way questions in metaphysics having to do with the nature of reality whether it be questions about the natural world mechanism and teleology or questions about um whether matter is real in itself or not as george berkeley thought you see whether mind and matter are two different kinds of substances in the mind body problem in talking of the nature of persons whether everything that occurs is due to causal processes in a deterministic scheme or whether there's such a thing as free will whether there is an ultimate source of cosmic order whether in fact god exists but those are metaphysical questions and you can see that that is part of the agenda then posed by the pre-socratics now i've also suggested that secondly there is a further agenda under the surface in epistemology theory of knowledge you see where you find there are some of these ancients who are thorough going in empiricists saying all that we know comes from sense experience and indeed thales seems to talk like that certainly the pluralists do though they do have occasional speculation beyond that they're basically empiricists as distinct from rationalists like parmenides and zeno who disparage completely since experience and say that only abstract logical thought really gives us reliable knowledge you see and so epistemological questions are posed about how we know just how reliable is experienced just to what extent can abstract rational thought provide knowledge how are these two related you see that agenda thirdly there is an agenda about ethics and about society if you like social philosophy because as i hinted both um both uh pythagoras and heraclitus maintain that if this is a rationally ordered universe then we should live rationally ordered lives if we want to fit into the universe want to find our place you see and even democritus suggests that a life guided by reason is a value in a mechanistic materialistic universe how come well these blind forces cause pleasure and pain so if you gain enough understanding of the causal processes and guide your life by what you know of the causal processes you can then minimize the pain and pursue the pleasure but that takes a rationally guided life so out of these positions flow ethical positions what is the good life and what do we have to do to pursue it you see so the this whole agenda of western philosophy then seems to be implied spelled out at least in its basic terms by these pre-socratics