by A. A. Long
There is no mind (noos) in men, but we live each day like grazing cattle, not knowing (ouden eidotes) how god shall end it. (Semonides, fr.1)2
In such circumstances, “human wisdom” consists in recognizing the limitations inherent in our mortal existence and “not aiming too high.” As Epicharmus cautions: “Mortals must think mortal things, not immortal ones” (DK 23 B20).
Traces of this older “poetic pessimism” can be seen in the teachings of the earliest philosophers. Two ancient sources (Arius Didymus and Varro in DK 21 A 24) report that Xenophanes held that “it is for god to know the truth, but for men to opine.” In the same vein, Xenophanes’ near contemporary Alcmaeon cautions that:
The gods have certainty (saphêneia) concerning non-evident matters, but [it is given] to men to conjecture from signs (tekmairesthai). (DK 24 B1)3
Heraclitus (DK 22 B104), Parmenides (DK 28 B6.4–7), and Empedocles (DK 31 B2.1–8) all issue the standard indictment of the noos of ordinary mortals.
In a number of other respects, however, the teachings and activities of the early Greek philosophers reflect a distinctly more optimistic outlook. According to Aristotle, Thales was the first of a series of investigators who sought to account for all natural phenomena by reference to a basic material substance or principle (Metaph. I.3 983b20). If we accept Aristotle’s account as even approximately correct, we must think that Thales – and his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes – assumed that the basic causes and principles of nature lay open to human discovery. Since the accounts put forward by the Milesians show evidence of successive refinement, their inquiries have also been thought to represent the beginning of a “tradition of critical rationality” in the West.4 Thus, although we have no express remarks on the topic of knowledge from any of the first philosopher-scientists, it seems entirely reasonable to attribute to them some degree of “epistemological optimism.”
Several early thinkers also display an interest in the method or methods by which knowledge might be acquired, either by themselves or by others. The Ionian philosophers generally were remembered by later writers as specialists in “that part of wisdom they call inquiry concering nature” (tautês tês sophias hên dê kalousi peri physeôs historian).5 In DK 21 B 18, Xenophanes appears to give his support for inquiry or “seeking” as opposed to relying on divine “disclosures” or “intimations”:
Indeed not from the beginning did gods intimate all things to mortals, But at length, as they seek (zêtountes), they discover better.
In the Philebus, Plato refers to a method of inquiry “through which every discovery ever made in the sphere of the arts and sciences has been brought to light,” crediting the discovery of this method to a “Prometheus or one like him”:
All things, so it ran, that are ever said to be consist of a one and many, and have in their nature a conjunction of limit and unlimited. This being the ordering of things we ought, they said, whatever it be that we are dealing with, to assume a single form … then we must go from one form to look for two, if the case admits of there being two, otherwise for three or some other number of forms. (16c)
Some of the doctrines attributed to Pythagoras and his followers reflect the method Plato appears to have in mind here: that is, understanding the nature of an entity by enumerating its component elements.6 At some point in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., the Pythagorean thinker Philolaus presents several accounts of natural phenomena along just these lines, identifying “Limiters” and “Unlimiteds” as the two component elements of “nature in the universe as a whole and everything in it” (B1 and 2), and affirming that nothing can be known without number (B4). The goddess who appears in Parmenides’ poem will also promote “inquiry,” though of a different sort, when she urges her student to steer his thoughts away from the path of familiar experience and to focus instead on her elenchos – her “testing” or “critical review” –of the possible ways of thinking about “what is.” On these occasions at least, the philosophers undertook not only to convince their audiences of the truth of their novel doctrines but also to describe a process through which the truth could be discovered by anyone.
Finally, virtually every early thinker about whom we have any significant amount of information embraced what might be called the basic presupposition of epistemological optimism: that the events taking place in nature happen in accordance with a set of fixed – and therefore discoverable – general principles. The idea of a regulated process of change may have been only implicit in Thales’ view of water as the substance from which all other things come into being and to which they return. However, when Anaximander states that things “happen according to necessity, for they [presumably the opposites] pay penalty to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of Time” (DK 12 A9), we have a clear expression of the view that nature is subject to its own internal principles of order.7 Anaximenes’ twin forces of condensation and rarefaction, Heraclitus’ Justice, Parmenides’ Justice and Necessity, Empedocles’ Love and Strife, Philolaus’ harmonizing power, Anaxagoras’ ordering cosmic mind, and Democritus’ Necessity all represent variations on an original Milesian theme: nature operates in a regular, and therefore understandable, manner.
Four early thinkers in particular – Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles – explored the conditions under which knowledge – especially in the form of a broad understanding of the nature of things – can be achieved by human beings. These reflections do not exhaust early Greek interest in epistemological questions,8 but they do feature many ideas that figure prominently in later accounts of knowledge.
II. XENOPHANES
As has been noted, Xenophanes’ remarks about knowledge are best read in the light of his interest in religious matters: the powers of the human mind, like other human capacities and achievements, must be placed in comparison with the extraordinary cognitive powers of a supreme deity.9 In DK 21 B23, for example, we are told that:
One god is greatest among gods and men,
Not at all like mortals in body or in thought.
Thesenseof thephrase"notat all like mortals … in thought” emerges from the description of a divine being able to grasp things as a whole (i.e., without the individual organs of sense perception) and to “shake all things” through the power of his thought alone:
… whole he sees, whole he thinks, and whole he hears … (B24)
… always he abides in the same place, not moving at all,
nor is it seemly for him to travel in different places at different times (B26)
… but completely without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind. (B25)
In B34, Xenophanes appears to draw the appropriate conclusion for creatures lacking in cognitive capacities of this sort:
And indeed no man has been, nor will there be,
Who knows the clear and certain truth (to saphes)
About the gods and such things as I say concerning all things.
For even if one were to succeed the most (ta malista)
In speaking of what has been brought to pass (tetelesmenon eipôn)
Still he himself does not know (ouk oide); but opinion (dokos) is allotted to all.
Both the wording and full significance of this fragment remain matters of controversy.10 According to many ancient writers (see A1.20, A25, 32, 33, and 35), Xenophanes was a pioneering if somewhat inconstant sceptic. While his theological pronouncements may have been disconcertingly dogmatic, in B34 he appears to be anticipating the sceptical conclusion that there is no criterion that when applied can convert mere conjecture into a clear and completely reliable truth. But doubts about this reading were expressed as early as Diogenes Laertius (A1.20), and most modern authorities reject it as anachronistic. Xenophanes’ reference in line three to “the gods and … all things” suggests that “all things” could not have meant “all possible subjects” (for if it did there would be no reason to proceed to mention the gods as well). Since here “all things” probab
ly means “all the constituents of the natural realm” (cf. B27: “all things are from earth …”), B34 should not be read as the expression of a universal scepticism.
The similarities between Xenophanes’ conception of a supreme being as “one” and “unmoving” and Parmenides’ view of “what is” as “eternal, continuous, motionless, and changeless” led some later writers to view Xenophanes as the founder of Eleatic philosophy. As such, he was also assumed to have embraced a distinctly rationalist conception of knowledge, that is, to have “denied the senses in favor of reason” (see the reports of Aristocles and Aetius in A49). Scholarly opinion remains divided on whether this Eleatic Xenophanes ever existed, but most suspect that the association of the two thinkers was based mainly on two loosely phrased remarks by Plato (Soph. 242d) and Aristotle (Metaph. I.5 986b21).
Many features of Xenophanes’ poetry, along with some of the views attributed to him in the ancient reports, sit poorly with the picture of a philosopher who discounted the validity of all sense experience. In the symposiac poem in B1, for example, he offers us a detailed description of a banquet that was also a feast for the senses:
In the midst frankencense gives forth its sacred scent,
and there is cold water, sweet and pure.
Golden loaves lie near at hand and the noble table
is loaded down with cheese and rich honey.
An altar in the centre is covered all about with flowers
while song and festive spirit enfold the house.
In B28, Xenophanes mentions that, “The upper limit of the earth is seen (horatai) here at our feet…,” while in B31 he describes the sun as, “… passing over the earth and spreading warmth over its surface …. ”
Other fragments and reports display Xenophanes’ interest in phenomena in distant locations: the presence of water in underground caverns, month-long “eclipses” (the annual disappearance of the sun in northern latitudes?), mountains and volcanic eruptions in Sicily, the freak electrical phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s fire, divergent conceptions of the gods from Thrace to Ethiopia, and differing social customs from Lydia to Egypt.
In one especially revealing couplet, Xenophanes contrasts the popular conception of Iris – the rainbow-messenger goddess of traditional Greek religion – with the meteorological phenomenon that is there “to behold”:
And she whom they call Iris, this too is by nature a cloud,
Purple, red, and greenish-yellow to behold. (B32)
As in his demythologized descriptions of the sea (B30) and sun (B31), Xenophanes maintains here that the quintessential natural marvel, the rainbow, should be described and understood not in terms of its traditional name and attendant mythic significance, but rather as “a cloud, purple, red, and greenish-yellow to behold.” In these fragments Xenophanes appears not only to have accepted the testimony of the senses as a legitimate source of knowledge but to have encouraged his audience to employ their powers of observation to learn more about the world around them.
The main point of Xenophanes’ remarks in B34, I would argue, is that no human being has grasped or ever will grasp the truth about the greatest matters – the attributes of the gods and the powers that govern the natural realm. The rationale behind this claim does not appear to be given in our text, but two considerations seem especially relevant: (1) given the contrast that Xenophanes draws elsewhere between divine and mortal capacities, we can be sure that no mortal being has the capacity to possess a godlike synoptic view of “all things”; and (2) given the common association of saphêneia with obtaining direct access to events and states of affairs,11 our inability to observe matters firsthand would preclude any possibility of our knowing the clear and certain truth (to saphes) about them. The hypothetical line of argument contained in lines three to five would reinforce this conclusion. No one (moreover) should be credited with such a synoptic view simply on the basis of having described, perhaps even successfully predicted, individual events as they take place.
In these teachings Xenophanes sought to establish an upper limit to the search for truth, cautioning his audience that the limitations inherent in our human nature would always prevent us from knowing the most important truths. Yet in B18 and B32, he appears to encourage inquiry into natural phenomena and to express his preference for “seeking” for one’s self over a reliance on divine disclosures. We should, therefore, remember Xenophanes not as the founder of Eleatic philosophy but as both advocate and cautionary critic of Ionian science.
III. HERACLITUS
Diogenes Laertius does not tell us the title of the little book Heraclitus deposited in the temple of Artemis but, given the subject matter of many of the surviving fragments, “The Truth – and How To Know It” would have been an apposite choice. What truth did Heraclitus seek to impart, how did he believe it had to be discovered, and to what extent did his views on these topics represent a novel conception of the nature and sources of human knowledge?12
Clearly, one central element in his message was that “all things” are linked together in some important way: “It is wise for those listening not to me but to the logos to agree that all things are one” (DK 22 B50).
While logos here can be understood as Heraclitus’ account or description of the world (i.e., “listening not to me, Heraclitus, but to the account I have to offer”), the fact that the logos is described in B2 as “common” suggests that it refers also to the “real nature” or “deep structure” of the things themselves (cf. the reference in B45 to the depth of the soul’s logos).
It also seems clear that the unity of things consists, in some sense, in the relationship of tension, strife, or conflict that holds between opposing qualities or entities:
What opposes unites, and the finest attunement stems from things bearing in opposite directions … (B8)
One must realize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things come to be through strife and are so ordained. (B80)
The ways in which the opposites lend support to one another, or require one another, or over time pass over into one another, are tied to the workings of one specific substance – fire – which functions both as the source from which other things come into being as well as a regulating force that sets limits or measures on the processes of change:
The totality of things is an exchange for fire, and fire an exchange for all things, in the same way in which goods are an exchange for gold and gold for goods. (B90)
The ordered world (kosmos), the same for all, no god or man made, but it always was, is, and will be, an everliving fire, being kindled in measures and being extinguished in measures. (B30)
Two especially visible and powerful forms of fire, the sun and lightning, are given credit for directing and controlling all natural changes:
And thunderbolt steers the totality of things. (B64)
The sun … shares with the chief and primal god the job of setting bounds to … the changes and seasons that bring all things. (B100)
Thus Heraclitus’ thesis, at least in part, is that the natural world should be seen as a kosmos, an orderly realm in which all natural changes are overseen and directed by a supremely powerful cosmic intelligence. This cosmic power, fire (perhaps, in more modern terms, energy), shows itself openly in lightning and the light from the sun, but it exists also in the hidden tension or conflict uniting all opposites (cf. B65: “And Heraclitus calls it [i.e., fire] ‘need and satiety’”).
Not surprisingly, the Zeuslike power that sets the limits for all natural processes and transformations is said to be supremely wise: “One thing, the only wise thing, is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus” (B32). While wisdom (presumably in us) consists in understanding how it operates: “Wisdom is one thing: knowing the intelligence (which steers) all through all” (B41).13
And in so far as, ”… the dry soul is a flash of light, wisest and best” (B118), we should recognize that our soul stands in some relationship with this cosmic power and should seek to align our
thoughts and actions with it.
According to Heraclitus, so profound an insight into the nature of things could never be gained from the teachings of recognized authorities and experts – of either a poetic or a philosophical stripe:
The learning of many things does not teach wisdom (noos); else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus. (B40)
The teacher of most is Hesiod – this is the one they feel sure knows the most, he who did not know day and night, that they are one. (B57)
What wisdom (noos) or intelligence (phrên) do they have? They place their trust in the popular bards and take the throng for their teacher, not realizing the many are bad, and the good are few. (B104)
The reference (in B50) to “listening not to me but to the logos” suggests that we should take Heraclitus’ stricture quite universally: no awareness worthy of the name “knowledge” is gained simply by accepting a claim on the authority of our teachers, not even when the teacher is Heraclitus.
The inclusion of Xenophanes and Hecataeus – early practitioners of fact-finding travel and observation – on the list of those who prove that “much learning does not teach wisdom” suggests that inquiry of the Ionian sort will never bring us to a proper understanding of the cosmos. Fragments B45, “One could never discover the limits of the soul by going, even if one were to traverse every road, so deep a logos does it have”; and B101, “I inquired into myself,” also suggest that Heraclitus opted not to pursue “inquiry” in the form advocated and practised by his predecessors.14