Pre-Socratic Philosophers: Understanding the Cosmos
The assumption that the generation of beings, change, and movement may arise from a single principle, or arche, complicates things. One cannot actually originate the plurality witnessed by the senses, which contradicts the logical-rational information of Parmenides. Empedocles spoke of four elements: Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Generation and corruption are effects of the mixing or separation of such elements. But why do they come together or separate? This is due to two opposing cosmic forces: Hate and Love. Their joint action allows the emergence of the cosmos and all things. Love and Hate explain life and progress, uniting and separating the first elements.
Anaxagoras attempted to reconcile the thought of the first physicists with the philosophies of Parmenides and Heraclitus, admitting the plurality, movement, change, and transformation of reality. Nothing arises from the principle, or arche. It looks and is like many elements of reality as a compact mass (spermata), which results in mixing or separating the plurality and change. He resorts to a kind of subtle matter, independent, infinite, unbounded, unchanging, eternal, imperishable, beyond and distinct from those elements: the Nous, or Intelligence, whose role is to operate and govern these processes. The aggregation and disaggregation of the spermata make things infinite in number and different from each other.
Atomists rely on sensory information regarding plurality and movement and respect the thought of Parmenides. But they explain physis differently. They posit the Void (Non-Self) and deny any other force causing the issue. Democritus, in explaining the cosmos as a whole, felt that only mathematical realities can be divided into infinity, but not physical (material) realities. Dividing matter comes to something indivisible: the atom, with the characteristics of the Being of Parmenides. The atoms are infinite in number, the world’s body itself, differentiated by position, shape, and order. Movement is explained without recourse to external causes to matter since motion is an essential property of matter. They advocate the need for the existence of the Void for motion and plurality to be possible. If there were no Void, if everything was full, movement would not be possible. Everything is a matter governed by mechanical laws. The physis is nobody. These approaches lead to tensions with traditions: myth (irrational) compared to logos (reason).
Comparison of Parmenides and Heraclitus
The Thought of Parmenides
Parmenides’ thought is related to the Pythagoreans. When asked about the arche of reality, he presupposes the rational impossibility of explaining its changes. His poem, written in an epic style, features characters such as Truth, Justice, and Opinion. In the poem, the justification of his thought is presented as infallible, being sent by the goddess Justice. He distinguishes between two ways of knowing: that of Truth and that of Opinion. The first is based on Reason as the only way to Truth. He reports that the common principle is Being. Reason reports that Being is and Non-Being is not, that being and thinking are one, and that Being is not and cannot be. The knowledge of reality (Being) is a matter of reason. The senses are via your mind. It is an abstract and logical thought, but it leads to a logical impasse in speech because if you think rationally, all thought is contained in a single word: “be.” Any rational certainty provided no new information to knowledge; he finds a logical impossibility since there is only Being.