Presocratics

Waterfield Commentary
R. Waterfield, The First Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

1. "So much of our information about the Presocratic philosophers and the Sophists is fragmentary or otherwise obscure..." Preface, Page ix.

2. "There is a great deal of secondary ancient material, especially about the Presocratics, whose importance was generally recognized in ancient times." ibid.

3. "A few scholars are perhaps over-pessimistic about our chances of recovering the thought of the Presocratics and Sophists. In some cases we have enough genuine fragments to test the validity of the secondary testimonia; in some cases the material surrounding shorter fragments can cast light on the original context. Nevertheless, there is an immense amount of discussion among modern scholars about what each of these thinkers really thought. Naturally, scholars prefer to rely as much as possible on the actual fragments themselves, but in the case of none of these first Western philosophers are there ever quite enough of these for us to be able to see the whole picture. In addition, a lot of the fragments are devilishly obscure.

"However, we may in many cases have a greater proportion of the original work than we might at first imagine. It is likely that the Presocratics’ and Sophists’ books were not long, but were written in a condensed form, because they were meant to be read out loud to an audience and then expanded by discussion afterwards, as much as they were intended as documents for posterity. This helps to explain the frequent dogmatism of their pronouncements, and also, given that much of what these early thinkers were saying was open to interpretation, this must make our judgement of the distortions of Aristotle and Theophrastus less harsh." ibid.

4. "In the last stanza of ‘The Gods of Greece’ by Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), the poet laments the passing of the old gods. The poem perfectly sums up a particular attitude––a Romantic attitude––that at some point mythos was replaced by logos, the desouled Word." Introduction, Page xi.

5. "The Greek word logos covers a wide range of meanings. In short, it covers a nest of what we might call logical and rational faculties and activities. What Schiller meant, then, was that at some point in history our emotional and intuitive side lost out to such ‘de-souled’ activities." ibid.

6. "Schiller’s view is also commonly reflected, though not as an occasion for Romantic mourning, in the standard histories of philosophy. The fact that both Romantics and academics are saying the same thing constitutes a fascinating case where a truce has apparently been declared in what Plato described as ‘the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy’ (Republic 607b). Time and again, in both abstruse academic tomes and more popular histories, we read how a revolution took place in the ancient Greek world, and how its first manifestations arose at the beginning of the sixth century bce. The thinkers associated with this revolution are known collectively as the Presocratic philosophers––‘Presocratic’ because they preceded Socrates in thought, even if the last of them are his contemporaries in time––and they are said to have invented philosophy and science for the Western world." Introduction, Page xii

7. "The work of none of the Presocratics or the Sophists remains in its entirety. We have to rely on fragments preserved in later writers and reports about their thought. Some of these reports were written by thinkers with their own agendas, who were implicitly or explicitly unsympathetic or even hostile to the Presocratics; others are the barest summaries of complex views, which often reveal a high degree of incomprehension. Unfortunately, distortion was the name of the game. While we owe an incalculable debt to Aristotle, his pupil Theophrastus, and their successors for preserving discussions of the Presocratics, it has now been established beyond the shadow of a doubt that they viewed their predecessors almost entirely through the lenses of their own philosophies." Introduction, Page xiii

8. "It is clear that the degree of distortion is extreme. We cannot have confidence that our ancient secondary sources have placed the ideas of their Presocratic predecessors within the right context in any single case. Of course, they might have done in a few cases, but we simply cannot be sure. And sometimes the possibility of distortion is plain to see." Introduction, Page xvi

9. "The idea that these thinkers collectively brought something new into the world, a scientific or proto-scientific attitude, a reliance on logos, is too simple and broad a picture. It is in fact rather naïve to lump all the Presocratics together as if they were somehow identical, although it has been a tendency in the history of philosophy from Aristotle onwards. Nevertheless, it is clear that not all the people standardly classified as Presocratic philosophers fit comfortably into the Aristotelian mould. They range from shamans like Empedocles, through mystics like Pythagoras and prophets like Heraclitus, to metaphysicians such as Parmenides, philosophers such as Anaxagoras, and proto-scientists like the Milesians and Atomists. To describe Empedocles as a ‘shaman’ or Heraclitus as a ‘prophet’ is not to say that they could not make valuable contributions towards scientific or philosophical debate; but it is to say that their emphases and experiences are not those of a complete scientist or philosopher. But despite the variety of interests the Presocratics display, there is something common to them all.

"Starting with the broad picture, we should ask what is meant by the claim that they invented philosophy and/or science. (Strictly, one should distinguish between those like the Milesians who brought something scientific into the world, and those like Parmenides or perhaps Heraclitus who reflected upon their predecessors’ scientific work and were therefore philosophers.) We need first an example of the kind of cosmological work they were doing. Anaximenes of Miletus is typical of the earliest Milesian phase of Presocratic thought, and is fairly easy to summarize without undue distortion.

"Anaximenes said that the prime matter of the universe was air, and that this could be condensed or rarefied into the various components of the universe. When rarefied it becomes hot and fiery and forms not just fire itself, but also the fiery heavenly bodies; when condensed it becomes cold and can be seen as water and ultimately earth. These four elements form the concentric layers of the universe. Air is and always was in motion, and it was presumably this motion which in some way initiated the process of condensation and rarefaction. Of course, having thought up the twin processes of condensation and rarefaction, Anaximenes might just as well have said that water or one of the other elements was the prime constituent of things, but he chose air because it is apparently all-pervading and can appear to be indefinite, and because we breathe it in and it causes life in us. Our soul is air. The earth and all the heavenly bodies are flat, he said, and float gently on the air like leaves." Introduction, Page xvii

10. "So, were Anaximenes and his peers scientists? What does it take to be a scientist? Above all, in today’s terms, it takes scientific reasoning––that is, adherence to the scientific method. Paraphrasing Aristotle, whose formulation of the scientific method is as good as any, and better than most, we can describe this as a method of both induction and deduction (or of resolution and composition, as the medieval schoolmen used to call them). The scientist (unless he is a follower of Karl Popper) starts with observation of an event; by a process of induction he reaches explanatory principles; from these principles, facts about the event in question and about related phenomena are then to be deduced. Of course, it is not that simple: it takes a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between observation and theory, refining and correcting both observations and hypotheses. But in this way the scientist has progressed from uncomprehending observation of an event to understanding why the event is as it is. From observation of the pretty spectrum of colours displayed on the wall, he has progressed to understanding that light is in fact composed of rays with different refractive properties.

"In other words, scientific reasoning is a combination of forming testable hypotheses to account for observed phenomena (this may take imagination and model-making as well as logic), and of testing and re-testing these hypotheses by experimentation and logic. The resulting hypothesis should explain the observed phenomena in as simple a way as possible, should allow one to predict the behaviour of related phenomena, and should cohere with the body of accepted scientific theories and doctrines. Throughout, everything should be quantifiable, measurable, and testable as far as is possible within the limitations of the technology currently available.

"There is absolutely no indication that the Presocratics were scientists in this sense. There is little sign that they undertook experimentation at all; the hypotheses they came up with about the world’s formation and constitution were not testable by scientific means; where observation and theory clashed, they invariably preferred theory to observation. They were, in short, dogmatists, not experimental scientists. Of course, it is not entirely fair to criticize the Presocratics for lack of experimentation; after all, a great deal of what interested them was not capable of empirical testing in their day; but that in itself helps to show that they should not be described as scientists in the modern sense of the word." Introduction, Page xviii

11. "What evidence do scholars have for their view that the Presocratics, or some of them, were scientists? Here we come to what we may call ‘scientific attitudes’, as distinct from scientific reasoning or method. A short list of scientific attitudes would consist of the following:

» The optimistic assumption that the world and its components are comprehensible; this is what Einstein was getting at when he said, ‘God may be subtle, but he is not malicious.’

» The assumption that the human rational mind is the correct tool for understanding the world.

» Adherence to a particular set of approaches to problem-solving; this involves, for instance, analysing problems into their component parts and then dealing separately with starting with simple problems before tackling more complex ones.

» Tempered curiosity: although curiosity about the world is essential for the scientist, it must not be allowed to lead the investigator into hasty hypotheses or extravagant leaps of the imagination, nor be governed by prejudice in any form.

» A love of and facility with abstract concepts.

"This is where the Presocratics fit in. Some or all of them display at least some of these attitudes. It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect them to be fully fledged scientists in the modern sense of the word but perhaps their adherence to––even invention of––at least some of these scientific attitudes is enough to justify our calling them at least proto-scientists. They tend to fall at the hurdle of tempered curiosity––that is, they tend to rush into what modern scientists would undoubtedly call wild and even visionary speculation––but they were the first to make and explore the consequences of the assumption which is absolutely crucial to the development of science, that the human rational mind is the correct tool for understanding the world. They were reductionists––that is, they formed general hypotheses in an attempt to explain as many things as possible by means of as few hypotheses as possible––and in their theorizing they relied on natural phenomena like air, rather than supernatural phenomena like the traditional Greek gods and goddesses. However, this broad picture must immediately be qualified by the reminder that the Presocratics (some more than others) retained a strong streak of what can only be called mystical thought.

"Given the current opposition between reason and irrationality, it is one of the ironies of history that science developed out of partly irrational roots. The kind of cosmology and cosmogony that the Ionians (the three Milesians and Xenophanes) were led to construct with the help of their scientific attitudes then came to be criticized by Parmenides and (if some scholars are right) by Heraclitus, before being reinstated ingeniously by the ‘Neo-Ionians’ who followed the Eleatics. But in all its phases Presocratic thought was holistic: it was an attempt to give a systematic account of the whole known universe and all its major features." Introduction, Page xx

Select Bibliography from Waterfield's Text
Texts

[1] H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., ed. W. Kranz, 6th edn. (Zurich: Weidmann, 1951–2).

[2] G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

[3] M. Untersteiner, Sofisti: Testimonianze e frammenti, 4 vols. (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1961–2).

[4] M. R. Wright, The Presocratics (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1985).

Translations

[5] J. Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987).

[6] P. K. Curd and R. D. McKirahan, A Presocratics Reader (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).

[7] M. Gagarin and P. Woodruff (eds.), Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

[8] R. K. Sprague (ed.), The Older Sophists (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972).

[9] P. Wheelwright, The Presocratics (New York: Macmillan, 1966).

General Histories of Early Greek Philosophy

[10] W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. i: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962); vol. ii: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); vol. iii: The Sophists and Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

[11] T. H. Irwin, Classical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

[12] R. D. McKirahan, Philosophy before Socrates (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).

[13] J. M. Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968).

[14] C. C. W. Taylor (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. i: From the Beginning to Plato (London: Routledge, 1997).

General Books on the Presocratics

[15] J. Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979; single paperback vol., 1982).

[16] P. K. Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

[17] D. J. Furley, The Greek Cosmologists, vol. i: The Formation of the Atomic Theory and Its Earliest Critics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

[18] E. Hussey, The Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1972).

[19] A. A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

[20] M. C. Stokes, One and Many in Presocratic Philosophy (Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies, 1971).

Collections of Articles

[21] J. P. Anton and G. L. Kustas (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971).

[22] J. P. Anton and A. Preus (eds.), Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. ii (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983).

[23] K. J. Boudouris (ed.), The Sophistic Movement (Athens: Athenian Library of Philosophy, 1982).

[24] –––– (ed.), Ionian Philosophy (Athens: International Center for Greek Philosophy and Culture, 1989).

[25] D. J. Furley, Cosmic Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

[26] D. J. Furley and R. E. Allen (eds.), Studies in Presocratic Philosophy, 2 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970, 1975).

[27] G. B. Kerferd (ed.), The Sophists and their Legacy (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981).

[28] E. N. Lee et al. (eds.), Exegesis and Argument: Studies in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos (Assen: Van Gorcum 1973 = Phronesis, suppl. vol. 1).

[29] J. Mansfeld, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1990).

[30] A. P. D. Mourelatos (ed.), The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Doubleday, 1974).

[31] K. Robb (ed.), Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy (La Salle, Ill.: Monist Library of Philosophy, 1983).

[32] R. A. Shiner and J. King-Farlow (eds.), New Essays on Plato and the Presocratics (Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Guelph), suppl. vol. 2, 1976).

[33] G. Vlastos, Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. i: The Presocratics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Greek Religion and Myths

[34] W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).

[35] P. E. Easterling and J. V. Muir (eds.), Greek Religion and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

[36] G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

[37] –––– The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974).

[38] M. P. Nilsson, A History of Greek Religion, 2nd edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1949).

[39] R. C. T. Parker, ‘Greek Religion’, in J. Boardman et al. (eds.), The Oxford History of the Classical World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 254–74.

[40] S. Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

The Predecessors of the Presocratics

[41] F. M. Cornford, Principium Sapientiae: A Study of the Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952).

[42] A. Finkelberg, ‘On the Unity of Orphic and Milesian Thought’, Harvard Theological Review, 79 (1986), 321–35.

[43] H. Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946).

[44] A. Laks and G. W. Most (eds.), Studies on the Derveni Papyrus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

[45] R. D. McKirahan, ‘Speculations on the Origins of Ionian Scientific and Philosophical Thought’, in [24], 241–7.

[46] O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd edn. (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1957).

[47] R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

[48] H. S. Schibli, Pherekydes of Syros (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[49] B. Snell, The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (1953; New York: Dover, 1982).

[50] M. C. Stokes, ‘Hesiodic and Milesian Cosmogonies’, Phronesis, 7 (1962), 1–37, and 8 (1963), 1–34.

[51] M. L. West, ‘Three Presocratic Cosmogonies’, Classical Quarterly, 13 (1963), 154–76.

[52] –––– The Orphic Poems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).

[53] –––– ‘Ab Ovo: Orpheus, Sanchuniathon and the Origins of the Ionian World Model’, Classical Quarterly, 44 (1994), 289–307.

Concept Studies of the Presocratics

[54] H. C. Baldry, ‘Embryological Analogies in Pre-Socratic Cosmogony’, Classical Quarterly, 26 (1932), 27–34.

[55] J. Barnes, ‘Aphorism and Argument’, in [31], 91–109.

[56] H. Cherniss, ‘The Characteristics and Effects of Presocratic Philosophy’, in [26], i. 1–28 (first pub. Journal of the History of Ideas, 12 (1951) ).

[57] F. M. Cornford, ‘Innumerable Worlds in Presocratic Philosophy’, Classical Quarterly, 28 (1934), 1–16.

[58] J. Ferguson, ‘The Opposites’, Apeiron, 3.1 (1969), 1–17.

[59] K. von Fritz, ‘Nous, Noein, and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras)’, in [30], 23–85 (first pub. Classical Philology, 40 (1945) and 41 (1946) ).

[60] E. Hussey, ‘The Beginnings of Epistemology: From Homer to Philolaus’, in S. Everson (ed.), Companions to Ancient Thought, vol. i: Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11–38.

[61] W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (London: Oxford University Press, 1947).

[62] J. H. Lesher, ‘The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 12 (1994), 1–34.

[63] G. E. R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).

[64] S. Makin, Indifference Arguments (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993).

[65] A. P. D. Mourelatos, ‘The Real, Appearances, and Human Error in Early Greek Philosophy’, Review of Metaphysics, 19 (1965), 346–65.

[66] –––– ‘Pre-Socratic Origins of the Principle That There are No Origins from Nothing’, Journal of Philosophy, 78 (1981), 649–65.

[67] –––– ‘Quality, Structure, and Emergence in Later Presocratic Philosophy’, Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, 2 (1986), 127–94.

[68] G. M. Stratton, Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological Psychology before Aristotle (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1917).

[69] W. J. Verdenius, ‘Notes on the Presocratics’, Mnemosyne, 3 (1947), 271–89, and 4 (1948), 8–14.

[70] G. Vlastos, ‘Equality and Justice in Early Greek Cosmogonies’, in [26], i. 56–91, and in [33], 57–88 (first pub. Classical Philology 42 (1947) ).

[71] –––– ‘Theology and Philosophy in Early Greek Thought’, in [26], i. 92–129, and in [33], 3–31 (first pub. Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (1952) ).

[72] M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient (London: Oxford University Press, 1971).

[73] M. R. Wright, ‘Presocratic Minds’, in C. Gill (ed.), The Person and the Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 207–25.

Discussion of Sources

[74] H. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1935).

[75] W. K. C. Guthrie, ‘Aristotle as Historian’, in [26], i. 239–54 (first pub. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957) ).

[76] P. Kingsley, ‘Empedocles and his Interpreters: The Four Element Doxography’, Phronesis, 39 (1994), 235–54.

[77] A. A. Long, ‘Theophrastus’ De Sensibus on Plato’, in K. A. Algra et al. (eds.), Polyhistor: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ancient Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 345–62.

[78] S. Makin, ‘How Can We Find Out What Ancient Philosophers Said?’, Phronesis, 33 (1988), 121–32.

[79] J. B. McDiarmid, ‘Theophrastus on the Presocratic Causes’, in [26], i. 178–238 (first pub. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 61 (1953) ).

[80] C. Osborne, Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics (London: Duckworth, 1987).

Presocratic Science

[81] F. M. Cornford, ‘Was the Ionian Philosophy Scientific?’, in [26], i. 29–41 (first pub. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 62 (1942) ).

[82] D. R. Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970).

[83] –––– ‘Solstices, Equinoxes and the Presocratics’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 86 (1966), 26–40.

[84] C. H. Kahn, ‘On Early Greek Astronomy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 90 (1970), 99–116.

[85] G. S. Kirk, ‘Sense and Common-Sense in the Development of Greek Philosophy’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 81 (1961), 105–17.

[86] G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970).

[87] –––– Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

[88] –––– Methods and Problems in Greek Science: Selected Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[89] D. O’Brien, ‘The Relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 88 (1968), 93–113.

[90] –––– ‘Derived Light and Eclipses in the Fifth Century’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 88 (1968), 114–27.

[91] S. Sambursky, The Physical World of the Greeks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956).

[92] B. L. van der Waerden, Science Awakening (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1975).

[93] M. R. Wright, Cosmology in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1995).