The Beginnings of Greek Philosophy 2: A funny thing happened on the way to Elea
Material Monism?
Last time we learned the standard story of how philosophy began among the Greeks. First there were Material Monists, who held that the world started from some basic stuff, such as water (according to Thales), air (according to Anaximenes), fire (according to Heraclitus), or perhaps earth (according to Xenophanes). The basic stuff changed into other stuffs, or, to be precise, it stayed what it was, but changed in its appearance.
For instance, according to Anaximenes, air, when it became rarified, manifested itself as fire; when it was condensed a little, it manifested itself as wind; when condensed more, I manifested itself as cloud; then successively it manifested itself as water, earth, and stones. But it was always really air.
Parmenides of Elea argued that there was no change, so there could no such process. There was only what-is or Being all along. And after him, the Material Pluralists tried to rescue scientific philosophy by saying that there is a plurality of changeless stuffs such as Parmenides’ Being, for instance, Empedocles’ earth, water, air, and fire. These are always what they are, but they combine with each other or separate to produce different conglomerations, which appear to come into existence and perish. But ultimately, only the elements really exist, and they are changeless in themselves.
This story goes back to Aristotle, except for the role played by Parmenides in motivating the change from monism to pluralism. So it has a wonderful pedigree, it seems to recognizing an ongoing debate among philosophers, and it seems to account for the development from one type of theory to another.
It is, however, problematic. Think about what it would take to make the case that, for instance, the wood of this table is really water. We would have to be able to identify water apart from any of its sensible properties. If I say that wood is really water, what evidence can I cite to make may point? Water is a clear liquid; wood is an opaque solid of a tan color. Water is heavier than wood (wood floats on water). Wood burns; water quenches fire. To identify the two, we would, minimally, need to be able to discern some non-sensible properties that reveal the true character of water, and show that wood has those also.
We would, in fact, need to distinguish between the changeable sensible properties of a thing and its invariant, presumably non-sensible properties. This is the sort of thing Aristotle does in the Categories: he notes that, for instance, Socrates is now pale, now tan, now blushing. His complexion changes, but he is still Socrates. What makes him what he is is not his complexion, but the kind of thing he is: a human being. The former characteristics he calls accidents, the latter, the essence. So if we are to claim that there is some ultimate reality that underlies everything, we need to be able to identify that thing apart from its appearances, that is: apart from its accidental or incidental properties.
Water, we now know, is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen with a molecular structure of H2O. We can test a sample of, for instance, wood, by subjecting it to spectroscopic analysis and seeing if it consists solely of H2O. We will find that it does not, but we will do so by objective methods based on a well-confirmed theory of matter. One which tells us how to identify water independently from its sensible and incidental properties.
All good and well. But there is no systematic distinction between these incidental and essential properties before Aristotle — although Parmenides seems to have the seeds of such a distinction. So what would it even mean for Thales to say that wood is really water? And does he ever claim that anyway? We don’t have many reliable quotations from the earliest philosophers, so it is hard to answer the question. But they seem to lack the conceptual tools to even make a case for Material Monism.
Let’s try an easier test. After Parmenides, the Pluralists, that is: the philosophers who believed in a plurality of changeless beings, the elements of the world, said that there was no real coming-to-be (birth) or perishing (death). Here are statements from the pluralist philosophers Empedocles and Anaxagoras:
… There is no birth [phusis] of any of all
mortal things, neither any end of destructive death,
but only mixture and separation of mixed things
exist, and birth is a term applied to them by men. (Empedocles fragment 8)
Fools! Their reflections are not far-reaching,
who expect what was not before to come-to-be [gignesthai]
or that something will die and out perish [exollusthai] utterly. (Empedocles fr. 11)
Coming-to-be [ginesthai] and perishing [apollusthai] the Greeks do not treat properly. For no object comes-to-be or perishes, but each is mixed together from and segregated into existing objects. And thus they should really call coming-to-be mixture and perishing segregation. (Anaxagoras fr. 17)
Ionian Physics
What about the early Ionians (the philosophers from Ionia, on the Aegean coast of modern-day Turkey: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes from Miletus; Xenophanes from nearby Colophon; Heraclitus from nearby Ephesus), who were supposed to be Material Monists. Are they worried about using the words ‘come-to-be’ and ‘perish.’? They should be, if they want to defend Monism. They should allow for changes of incidental properties, but not essential ones. They should rule out what will be known as unqualified coming-to-be. Socrates comes-to-be in an unqualified way when he is born (he comes-to-be period, full-stop); he comes-to-be in a qualified way when he becomes pale or tan or flushed. He comes-to-be F for some property F instead of coming to exist. In Material Monism water, for instance, always exists, but it can come to assume different properties than the sensible properties of liquid water.
So do the early Ionians worry about coming-to-be? According to one well-informed ancient commentator, Anaximenes does not seem concerned about his terminology:
Some generate other things from one material cause by rarefaction and condensation, as Anaximenes does when he says that “air when it is thinned becomes [ginesthai] fire, while when it is condensed it becomes wind, then cloud, then, when still more condensed, water, then earth, then stones.” (Simplicius Physics 149.28–150.4 = Anaximenes A5)
Consider the philosopher-poet Xenophanes, whose words we have:
We all come-to-be [or: are born, ekgenomestha] from earth and water.
(fr. 33)
Sea is the source of water, the source of wind;
for neither <would there be wind> without great sea,
nor currents of rivers nor rainwater from the sky,
but great sea is the begetter [genetōr] of clouds, winds,
and rivers. (fr. 30)
A begetter is a parent, and a parent is not identical to his or her child. Xenophanes also states:
For from earth are all things and into earth do all things die. (fr. 27)
Here Xenophanes seems to be stating an ancient formula, one which Aristotle echoes in the second sentence of the passage quoted in the previous post, to the effect that everything comes from some source and perishes back into it. This does not mean, however, that everything still is that source, but only that everything else arises from it and returns to it: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
If you don’t think that is what Anaximenes is also saying, consider Plato’s reflection on Anaximenes’ theory:
First, what we have now called water we observe, as we believe, turning into [gignomenon] stones and earth as it is compacted; but then as it dissolves and disperses, this same thing becoming wind and air; and as it is ignited, air becoming fire; and as air is compressed and quenched in turn, fire departing and turning back into the form of air; and again air, as it comes together and is condensed, becoming cloud and mist; and from these as they are felted still more, coming flowing water; and from water earth and stones again; and these things thus imparting to each other in a cycle, as it were, their generation [genesis]. (Timaeus 49b7-c7)
The real clincher comes from Heraclitus, the alleged Material Monist who makes fire the source of everything. Heraclitus, I have argued, is a kind of follower of the other early Ionians, in that he too has a sequence of stuffs (which happens to be a subset of that of the seven stuffs of Anaximenes: fire, air, wind, cloud, water, earth stones; Heraclitus simplifies this to fire, water, earth). But he calls attention to what his predecessors had glossed over: if I say that A gives rise to B and B to C, and in turn C returns to B and B to A, then no substance is permanent.
Everything is changeable, and, in a way, interchangeable. If A can be transformed into B and B to C, then A, B, and C are “transformationally equivalent.” They are not identical, but a given quantity of A can become a proportionate quantity of B, and vice versa. Heraclitus’s forerunners were saying that some entity, say A, was primary and more real than B and C. But Heraclitus points out that, by the very logic of the story, no one of the stuffs is primary; they are all equivalent.
The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fire-whirl. (fr. 31a)
<Earth> is liquified as sea and measured into the same proportion it had before it became [genesthai] earth. (fr. 31b)
And how does one stuff become another? Heraclitus is explicit:
For souls [which are fiery] it is death to become [genesthai] water, for water death to become earth, but from earth water is born [ginetai], and from water soul. (fr. 36; cf. fr. 76)
Death and birth are the ultimate transitions which negate identity. If A perishes when B is born, A and B are not identical; they may be causally related, but they are not continuous. And that, I take it, is the tacit implication of the theories of the early Ionians. Everything starts out as water, or air, or whatever, but it undergoes transformations as it differentiates itself into other stuffs. So there is a certain conceptual confusion in saying that A (for instance) is prior to everything else. Temporally prior in the cosmogony, yes. Ontologically or metaphysically prior, no. Psychically prior, perhaps — Anaximenes’ air and Heraclitus’s fire seem to be identified with soul and the power of thinking. But if A becomes B and B becomes A, it makes no sense to say that A is more real than B. So what is the ultimate reality for Heraclitus? That is another story for another day.
But we haven’t even gotten to Parmenides. Next time: Parmenides’ antagonist and his refutation of that antagonist.
