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The Ancient Greeks & NatureThe Indigenous Nativity, Philosophical & Scientific Foundations
of Classical Western Civilisation
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The Ancient Greeks and Nature
It should be recalled that the foundations of the classical physical sciences, mathematics and geometries can be traced back to the ancient Greek philsophers and sages whose recorded wisdoms and writings were rediscovered after the Dark Ages, and upon whose philosophies and sciences the emerging western civilisation sought to rebuild knowledge "anew".
This article examines the translated historical literature concerning the earliest of the ancient Greeks, by way of very brief summarisation of the extensive researched work of the classicist WKC Guthrie.
The following series of notes are drawn from my review of the book:
"A History of Greek Philosophy", Volume I: The Earlier PreSocratics and the Pythagoreans
- by W.K.C. GUTHRIE (Published 1962) .
I have made no attempt to make the following account coherent at this stage, except for a brief index, for its purpose is largely reference material for further research and development concerning my own understanding of nature as outlined in such articles as:
Therefore, in these annotations and collection of ancient quotations from over two thousand five hundred years ago, being a resource to myself, I can appreciate the possiblity that this reference itself may be a resource to others. In the spirit of global communications and the furtherance of the age of information, I have therefore placed these notes on the web, for benefit of the students of Life ......
In an Age where terrestrial nativity is being examined with increasing sensitivity, and the rights of Indigenous Peoples of all lands are being recognised as fundamental in the ontology of planetary affairs, it is fitting to re-examine the very foundations of the generic (post-dark-age) western culture which has been the basis of educational reforms and guidelines for the archetypal approaches to intellectual and natural thinking for the last few hundred years.
Do not forget that all living beings are a native of the terrestrial planetary system, and this has been so since the beginning.
Peace.
PRF Brown
BCSLS {Freshwater}
Mountain Man Graphics,
Newport Beach, Australia
THALES
A Milesian - often termed the father of speculative science - lifespan from 624 to 548
attributed as having predicted the eclipse of the sun - (Astronomical knowledge)
travelled extensively - influenced by Egyptians and Babylonians ...
saw water as the "motive element" - the "arche" of nature - identified soul or life (psyche) with the cause of all motion.
Thales was the first recorded of the ancient Greeks - but all reports of him are second hand.
"Oceanus, first parent of the gods, and their mother Tethys ...
Oceanus dwelt at the farthest limits of the earth
His was the great stream which flowing back on itself, encircles the whole earth.
He was the source of all rivers, seas, springs and wells." - (quote from Homer's Iliad,xiv,200)
[Page 66] ....... "Thales too seems, from what is recorded about him, to have regarded the soul as a motive force, since he said that the lodestone has a soul because it makes iron move." - Aristotle (DeAnima,I,405,a19)
Reputedly, Thales said: "All things are full of gods" ... as did all Greeks ... that "soul is mingled in the whole". Note that the instance of the lodestone and amber, though not vegetable or animal kingdom, show themselves to exhibit the psychical property (as it was to the ancient Greeks) of initiating motion.
WATER: In support of Thales reverence to the element water, Aristotle notes (a) the sperm of animals is moist, (b) plants are nourished by moisture, (c) Plants have The Sap, and in animals and man, The Blood. From the writer Theophrastus, Thales reportedly says: "That the fire of the sun and stars itself, and the while cosmos, are nourished by the exhalations from water."
MATHEMATICS: Attributed to Thales are the following ...
- A circle is bisected by its diameter.
- The angles at the base of an isoceles triangle are equal.
- If two straight lines intersect, then opposite angles are equal.
- The angle inscibed in a semi-circle is a right angle.
- A triangle is determined if its base and the angles relative to the base are given.
WIGHTMAN: Some commentary concerning water: The greater part of the earth's surface is water, water pervades every region of our atmosphere; life as we know it is impossible without water; water is the universal solvent; it disappears when fanned by the wind abd falls again from the clouds as rain; ice turns into water, as does the snow that falls from the sky; communal life is greatly afforded by the presence of a river; the Embryonic water
Thales lived - by all reports - an austere life, and he did not publish anything.
[Page 72]
ANAXIMANDER
a student of Thales (6110 530?) ... and was his successor.
first to publish a book
named the "arche" of all things as apeiron ... (the boundless)
Believed the genesis of all things came about "Not by the qualitative alteration of the element,
but by a separation of the opposites
caused by the eternal motion" - [Simplicus]
both the Milesians and the Ionians customarily were held to question "What is the world made of"?
The world of the ancient Greeks was not made of matter, but rather nature - [physis = nature]
"Things perish into that out of which they have their being"
"the 'opposites' must make recompense to one another for their injustice accorning to the ordinance of time".
[Page 106] Separating Out: "The sun is sepated (from the circumference/skin/bark) into wind (light/dry) and the rain-cloud (heavy/wet) - the lighter and finer vs the heavier and courser.
"Innumerable worlds come into being and pass away everlastingly
{Page 115]
ANAXIMENES
the younger contemporary of Anaximander, and his successor.
Believed that the "air" is the arche - primal element in nature ... "the infinite underlying substance of things is air - when it is rarifies is becomes fire, when condensed it becomes wind and then cloud, and if condensed further becomes the earth and stones. This with eternal motion is the cause of all change."
the "arche" of the comos was not matter, but eternal being: Soul/Life (Psyche) - alive, eternal, divine, immortal.
air associates breathe and life ... and anaximenes believed it to be the "stff" of the human soul.
"The air within us is a small portion of the God"
the stars have the nature of fire: the sun is flat like a leaf ...
[Page 146]
PYTHAGORAS
born Samos 570 - 490 bc, moved from the tyrany of Polycrates (538) to Croton, Southern Italy.
fled the rebellion of the Italians against his "order of Pythagoreans" which scattered back to Greece & elsewhere
introduced "philosophy" as a way of life, also travelled widely.
When asked 'What is philosophy?' by a ruler, he reportedly gave the following answer:
"Life is like a gathering at the Olympic festival, to which,
having set forth from different lives and backgrounds, people flock for three motives.
To compete for the glory of the crown, to buy and sell or as spectators.
So in life, some enter the services of fame and others of money,
but the best choice is that of these few who spend their time in the contemplation of nature,
and as lovers of wisdom (ie: philosophers).
an inscription on the temple of Apollo: "Nothing too much, observe limit"
Linked ... the immortality of the soul ... link to the divine ... divine fragment or spark.
THE COSMOS: In the ancient definition was - The World and its inherent Order".
philosophy is conformity with the divine - to follow God.
The Pythagorean Mathematics of Nature:
"HARMONY" ... a summary by Aristotle.
- {1} All things consist of number - literally .... physical bodies themselves are made of number, or since numbers themselves are not ultimate, the elements of numbers are the elements of everything.
- {2} Units posses magnitude
- {3} Spoke of as if number were the actual matter of which things were composed.
- {4} Regard unity and limit (infinity) as substances forming the basic element of everything else.
Further notes by Guthrie ...
There is a numerical, proportional structure of the concordant notes of the scale.
the infinite variet and quality of sound is reduced to order by the exact and simple law of ratio in quantity.
[Page 245]
The Ten Pythagorean Principles
Aristotle writes that others of this same school [Pythagoreanism] say there are 10 principles ...
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The TEN PRINCIPLES of PYTHAGORASAlso known as the table of the Opposites
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| limit | unlimited
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| odd | even
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| one | plurality
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| right | left
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| male | female
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| at rest | moving
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| straight | crooked
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| light | darkness
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| good | bad
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| square | oblong
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Of the principles, Pythagoras said that the monad was God and the good, the true nature of the One, Mind itself; but the indefinite Dyad is a "daimon" and evil, concerned with material plurality. [Aet.1.7.8.dox.302]
There is additional reference in this text by Guthrie concerning the parallels which may obviously be observed between this Pythagorean table of principles, and the outlining in the eastern lands of ancient China, concerning the TAO, and the complimentary natures of the principles of "Ying and Yang"
These are listed as follows: Sunshine/light - darkness/shadow, masculinity - femininity, activity - passivity, heat-cold, dryness - wetness, hardness - softness, odd - even.
It is rumoured that Pythagoras journeyed and studied amoung the Magi and Chaldeans, and with Zaroaster.
Delineation of the point (1), the line (2), the triangle (3) and the pyramid (4). Outline of the "Fluxion Theory" whereby a moving point generates the line, the moving line generates the surface, and the moving surface - the solid figures.
The Five Pythagorean Solid Figures
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From the account of Theoprastus [Aetius II,6,5,DK,44,a15]:
There being five solid figures, called the mathematical solids, Pythagoras says that ...
- the earth is made from the cube,
- fire from the pyramid,
- air from the octahedron,
- water from the eicosahedron,
- and the sphere of the whole [the Aither] from the dodecahedron."
[Page 271]
The Fifth Element of Nature
Notes from Guthrie: The truth is that the emergence of a fifth element in Greek thought was a gradual process. In bare outline, a common conception of the universe seems to have been shared by most religious and philosophical thinkers in the centuries before Plato. The cosmos, a sphere bounded by the sky, contains the conflicting "opposites" (ie: primarily the hot/the cold, the wet/the dry) which became (via Empedocles) the four root substances earth, water, air and fire.
The mutually destructive nature of these elements ensures that the creatures compounded of them shall be mortal. But this cosmic sphere is not the whole of existence. It floats in a circumambient substance of indefinite extent. This "surrounding" was of a pure and higher nature, everlasting, alive, and intelligent - in fact - divine.
Xenocrates, a student of Plato - himself educated in accordance to the Pythagorean thought, comments upon writings from Aristotle ...
"Why then does he [Aristotle] call it a fifth substance? Surely because Plato too declares the substance of the heaven to be distinct from the sublunary elements, since he assigned it to the dodecahedron and delineated each of the four elements by a different shape. He too therefore says that the substance of the heaven is a fifth one."
On the life of Plato, Xenocrates writes:
"Thus he then classified living creatures into genera and species, and divided them in every way until he came to their elements, which he called the five shapes and bodies, aither, fire, water, earth and air.
[Page 272]
Reference to the "Counter-Earth"
Referenced from writings by Aristotle on the Pythagoreans ... Aetius III,II,3 (DK,44a,17)
Pythagoreans held that the cosmos "Breathed in" from the Infinite Breath outside it: the "aither"
Pythagoras derived the world from the fire and the fifth element"
- Philolaus the Pythagorean says that FIRE is at the center, calling it the hearth of the universe; second comes the COUNTER-EARTH, and third the inhabited earth which in its revolution remains opposite the counter-earth, wherefore the inhabitants of this earth do not see those of the other" - [Aetius.III,II,3(dk,44a,17)]
- "They call the earth a star as being itself an instrument of time, for it is the cause of day and night. Day it creates by being lit up on the side which turned toward the sun, and night through the cone of its shadow. COUNTER EARTH was the name given by the Pythagoreans to the MOON (as also "heavenly earth"), both because it blocks the sun's light, which is a peculiarity of the earth, and because it marks the limit of the heavenly regions as does the earth of the sublunary." - [Simplicius: DeCaelo 512.9]
- Empedocles [Fr.62] ...
"Come now, hear how fire, as it was separated, raised up the darkling shoots of miserable men and women. Not erring nor ignorant is this tale. Whole natured forms first arose from the earth, having portion both of water and of heat. These the fire sent up, wishing to come to its like."
The Harmony of the Spheres
From the writings of Aristotle [DeCaelo - 290b,12ff] ...
"It seems to some [ie: Pythagoreans] that bodies so great must inevitably produce a sound by their movement: even bodies on earth do so, although they are neither so great in bulk nor moving at so high a speed, and as for the sun and moon, and the stars, it is incredible that they should fail to produce a noise of surpassing loudness. Taking this as their hypothesis, and also that the speeds of the stars, judged by their distances, are in the ratio of the musical consonances, they affirm that the sound of the stars as they revolve is concordant.
To meet this difficulty that none of us is aware of this sound, they account for it by saying that the sound is with us right from birth and has thus no contrasting silence to show it up; for voice and silence are perceived by contrast to each other, and so all mankind is undergoing an experience like that of a coppersmith, who becomes by long habit indifferent to the din around him."
[Page 317]
Pythagoras and the Nature of the Soul
From the writings of Plato [Republic 431ff] ...
"The virtue of temperance (sophrosyne) is said to be the virtue of the soul as a whole, the result of the smooth working of its parts together ... the man who possesses it is "well tuned" (nb: the Greek translation has nothing to do with the state of his health), and is achieved by bringing three parts into accord, just like the fixed three intervals in the scale - highest, lowest and middle - that is, a musical harmony is achieved.
In the case of the soul, the three parts that have to be brought into accord
are of course reason, passion and desire."
Guthrie: These "parts" are psychical and not physical.
The soul is both an attunement or "harmonia" and also immortal.
The soul was of the natue of air, or breathed in with air - pneuma - the "breath-soul".
'The soul is a kind of harmony, for harmony is a blend of contraries, and the body is compounded out of contraries" - Aristotle on the recorded beliefs of Pythagoras.
"The ancient theological writers and prophets also bear witness that the soul is yoked to the body as a punishment, and buried in it as in a tomb". - [Philolaus - Clem Alex Strom]
Pythagoras taught of the transmigration of the soul - man/plant/animal - and post-humous rewards for the good. It is recorded that he remembered his past lives as Aethalides (son of Hermes, whence the gift of memory), Euphobus (from the Homer epics), Hermotimus and Pyrrus (a Delian fisherman) before his birth as Pythagoras.
Ancient insight of Heliocentricity?
Pythagoras maintained that the fire was at the center of the cosmos. Very little if anything is known directly of his teachings due to the seclusion of his practice, the five year vow of silence required by initiates to his order. Information concerning Pythagoras is largely second hand, and the nature of the original doctrine may well be unknown, as the order scattered to many different locations after 545 bc.
Scattered remnants however, tell an interesting story:
"Philolaus is supposed to have maintained that the earth moved in a circle, though some say it was Hicetas the Syracusian" - [D.L.viii,85,dk,44a1]
"Thales and those who followed him said that there was one earth,
Hicetas the Pythagorean two, our own and the counter-earth."
[Page 343]
ALCMAEON
The life of Alcmaeon of Croton overlapped that of Pythagoras, and he was called by some later writers a Pythagorean
He believed in the immortality of the soul, its kinship with the divine, the divinity of the stars and the role of the "opposites" in nature.
Alcmaeon distinguished between sensation and thought, and was the first to give explicit recognition that the brain is the central organ of feeling and thought. He points out the difference between man and the animals:Man alone has understanding, animals have sensation but dont understand. [sythesis of sensation].
both Socrates and Plato thought the "brain is what provides sensation of hearing, sight and smell.
both Aristotle and (probably) Empedocles ascribed the common sensorium as the heart.
on SLEEP: "Retirement of the blood to the larger blood vessels, whereas awaking is their redifffusion".
on the SOUL, from the writings of Aristotle of Alcmaeon [De Anima 405,a,30]:
"He says that its immortality follows from its resemblance which it possesses by virtue of being in everlasting motion; for all the divine things also move continuously and for ever, to wit, the moon, sun and stars, and the heaven as a whole."
Translation note: "Everlasting = Self-Caused = Ever Moving.
Therefore the soul = "That which moves itself."
The common thought of the age concerning the "Divinity of the sun, moon, stars, etc" was not restricted to the sages, or the philosophers - it was commonly held by the general person.
The Hippocratic treatise "On Ancient Medicine" is dated 450 - 420 BC.
XENOPHANES
born same time as Pythagoras and lived to about 100 ... known as a poet & was against the "Homeric Gods"
"God is One, greatest amoung gods and man, in no way like mortals either in body or in mind.
He sees as a whole, perceives as a whole, hears as a whole.
Always he remains in the same place, not moving at all,
nor indeed does it befit him to go here and there at different times;
but without toil he makes all things shiver by the impulse of his mind."
[Page 403]
HERACLITUS
born about 540 bc in Ephesus of royal family, Heraclitus was a solitary,
his words were obscure, and he never disguised his contempt for mankind and
other "philosophers and poets" such as Pythagoras and Homer:
"The rest of mankind are unaware of what they do while awake,
just as they forget what they do while sleeping."
Rebuking some for their unbelief, Heraclitus says:
"Knowing neither how to hear nor how to speak"
The opinions of mankind - "to be children's playthings".
"What sense or mind have they?
They put their trust in popular bards and take the mobs for their teacher,
unaware that most men are bad, and the good are few.
"Human nature has no insight, but divine nature has it."
"Man is infantile in the eyes of a god, as a child in the eyes of a man."
"To God all things are fair, and good and just, but men have supposed some
unjust and some just."
"One man is to me ten thousand, if he be the best."
"The way up and the way down are the same"
"Divine things for the most part escape recognition because of unbelief."
"The limits of the soul woudst thou not discover though thou shoudst travel every road: so deep a logos has it."
"What we see awake is death - what we see asleep is sleep."
"The body is a tomb" ...... (Note: this is a standard Pythagorean belief)
"A man's character is the immortal and potentially divine part of him" [Fr 115]
"In the CIRCLE the beginning and the ending are common.
"What he calls death is not utter annhilation, but changes to another element" - [Plato on Heraclitus]
Heraclitus called fire "Want and satiety"
"For fire will come and judge and convict all things."
"From all things one, and from one all things."
"Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, livingdeath of the others and dying their lives"
(Guthrie: the transformation of opposites occur concurrently)
"Everything is an exchange for fire" .... fire is the arche of nature [Simplicius:Phys23:33-24]
"Let us not make random conjectures about the greatest of matters."
According to the writings of Macrobius, Heraclitus describes the soul as ....
"A spark of the substance of the stars."
THE LOGOS
Heraclitus put forward the idea of the logos as that which orders all things. In the inimical manner of the eastern mystical writers and characters (see The TAO) of the eastern planetary regions at this same time period, Heraclitus says:
"Listening not to me but the Logos it is wise to agree
that all things are one."
The Three Basic Statements of the Logos
{1} Harmony is always a product of opposites.
(a) Everything is made of opposites and therefore subject to internal tension.
(b) Opposites are identical .... polarity - Qualities are conceived with their contraries.
(c) War is the ruling and creative force and a right and proper state of affairs.
"War is father of all and king of all, and some he reveals as gods,
others as men, some he makes slaves, others free."
{2} Everything is in continuous motion and change.
"You cannot step in the same river twice ..."
For fresh waters are flowing on."
{3} The world is a living and everlasting fire.
"The world order (kosmos), the same for all, none of the gods nor of men has made,
but it was always and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
which was kindled in measure and extinguished in measure."
"The turnings of fire are: first sea, and of the sea half is earth and half burning".
"Fire is the thing which remains constant in all tranformations
and implies that
its measure is the same or is the 'common measure' in all things".
Apollonius of Tyana
In conclusion of this account concerning the manner in which the ancients contemplated
nature it would be an idea also to reference what is known of the life of one of the
last of the Greek philosophers - and one who is rarely known and referenced in the
classical disciplines. A better description of Apollonius of Tyana (approx 20BC - 90AD)
would be philosopher/sage and what we know of him is recorded in a publication
entitled The Life of Apollonius
of Tyana by Philostratus in about 220AD. The web reference supplied here will
access much of this work.
Briefly, Apollonius of Tyana travelled overland to India, in or around the time of Christ
in order to "converse with the Brahmins". The following extract is of particular
relevance to a further series of articles entitled
Theories of Aether, and is sourced from chapter XXXIV of Book II of the above publication:
"They sat down together as they would want to do, and they [the Indian Sages of 3AD] allowed
Apollonius to ask questions; and he asked them of what they thought the cosmos was
composed; but they answered: 'Of elements'.
'Are there then four?' Apollonius asked.
'Not four,' said Iarchus, 'but five'.
'How can there be fifth', said Apollonius, 'alongside of water and air and earth and
fire'?
'There is the ether', replied the other, 'which we must regard as the stuff
of which the gods are made; for just as all mortal creatures inhale the air, so do
immortal and divine creatures inhale the ether.'
Apollonius again asked which was the first of the elements, and Iarchus answered:
'All are simultaneous, for a living creature is not born bit by bit.'
'Am I', said Apollonius, 'to regard the universe as a living creature?'
'Yes', said the other, 'if you have sound knowledge of it, for it engenders
all living things'."
In conclusion of this account concerning the ancients, it would be fitting to thus
also reference the ancient civilisations of the east, as they have a greater extended
history that those of the western world. To this end I have prepared a number of
further documents which might be browsed by interested parties:
The Rig Veda -
An account of the earliest recorded views (3700BC) on nature and man.
The Katha Upanishad -
An account of more recent - yet still earlier than 1000BC - views and outlooks.
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The Ancient Greeks & NatureThe Indigenous Nativity, Philosophical & Scientific Foundations
of Classical Western Civilisation
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