T O P I C S I N A N C I E N T P H I L O S O P H Y Themen der antiken Philosophie Herausgegeben von / Edited by Ludger Jansen • Christoph Jedan • Christof Rapp Band 1 / Volume 1 Nicholas Rescher COSMOS AND LOGOS Studies in Greek Philosophy ontos verl ag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ire, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected] 2005 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm nr Frankfurt www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 3-937202-65-X 2005 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 Printed in Germany by dd-ag, Frensdorf-Birkach PREFACE Already during my college years in the 1940’s, Greek philosophy was one of my early academic loves. Since then, working at the rather sedate pace of a paper or two per decade, I have produced over the past years a handful of studies in the field which, in a small way, reflect my affection for this fascinating field of study. The present book collects these together as a token of historical piety towards the Greek greats in whose footsteps all of us who labor in the vineyard of philosophy continue to tread. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her help in preparing this material for print. Pittsburgh PA January 2005 Contents Preface Chapter 1: Cosmic Evolution in Anaximander 1. Introduction 1 2. The Apeiron 2 3. Process 4 4. Cosmogony 6 5. Cosmology 14 6. Return to and Rebirth from Apeiron 21 7. Conclusion 23 Chapter 2: Contrastive Opposition in Early Greek Philosophy 1. Introduction 33 2. Elements and Opposites 33 3. Proliferating and Arithmetizing Opposites: Pythagoras 34 4. Relativizing Opposites: Xenophanes of Colophon 36 5. Normativizing Opposites: Heraclitus 37 6. Partitioning (and Mixing) Opposites: Anaxagoras 38 7. Empedocles 39 8. Plato 39 10. Aristotle 40 11. Summary 43 Chapter 3: Thought Experimentation in Presocratic Philosophy 1. Introduction: Thought Experiments 47 2. Thales of Miletus 48 3. Anaximander of Miletus 50 4. The Pythagoreans 53 5. Xenophanes of Colophon 53 6. Heraclitus of Ephesus 56 7. Coda 60 Chapter 4: Greek Scepticism’s Debt to the Sophist 1. Introduction 63 2. The Phenomena: The Ten Sceptical Tropes of Aenesidemus 63 3. The Main Conclusions Drawn from the Phenomena 67 4. Expansions: The Pervasiveness of the Sophists’ Scepticism 71 5. Greek Sophistical Doctrine 74 6. Theory and Practice in Scepticism and Sophistry 76 7. The Promise of Rhetoric: Nomos vs. Phusis 78 8. Language and its Problems 80 9. Conclusion: How Innovative Were the Greek Sceptics? 83 Chapter 5: Anaximander, Aristotle, and “Buridan’s Ass” 1. Introduction 89 2. The Problem 90 3. The History of the Problem of “Buridan’s Ass” 92 4. Choice in the Absence of Preference 99 5. A Postscript on Philosophical Issues 104 Chapter 6: Aristotle on Ecthesis and Apodeitic Syllogisms 1. Introduction 115 2. The Technical Situation 116 3. Scientific Demonstration 120 4. Ecthesis 122 5. Conclusion 124 Chapter 1 COSMIC EVOLUTION IN ANAXIMANDER 1. INTRODUCTION T he fragmentary and disjointed nature of the evidence regarding the doctrines of the Milesian philosophers makes it inevitable that any meaningful and cohesive exposition of their thought will be in the nature of an interpretative restoration of the original teaching. By an “interpretative restoration” of a theory, I mean an informative and plausible account of what may reasonably be taken to be its content, and which, while necessarily in some respects conjectural, is at once intrinsically plausible, and adequate to the textual evidence available in the surviving sources. The aim of the present chapter is to provide just this sort of interpretation regarding one aspect of Anaximander’s thought: his theory of the nature of the universe and his answer to the abiding questions of how it came in the past to be as it now is, and what is to become of it in the future. In this attempted restoration of Anaximander’s cosmology and cosmogony, primary reliance will be placed on the handful of ancient reports about his teaching that are available to us. No attempt will be made to engage in a systematic critique of various modern interpretations of Anaximander’s thought; reference to them will be made only as required to bolster some really critical point of interpretation required for the present account. In dealing with the teachings of Anaximander, one treads on ground that is at once small and has long been intensively cultivated. It is not easy here to come upon something which is fundamentally new. The major novelty of the ensuing presentation of Anaximander’s cosmology is indicated by the expression “cosmic evolution.” This chapter traces Anaximander’s views on cosmogony in a more detailed way than is usual in presentations of his thought. Insofar as it succeeds in this reconstruction of his teachings, it demonstrates that Anaximander in the sixth century B.C. had an evolutionary concept of the development of the cosmos under 2 Cosmic Evolution in Anaximander the operative agency of familiar natural processes that is more detailed, more “scientific,” and vastly more sophisticated than has generally been suspected. 2. THE APEIRON Simplicius reports that the apeiron of Anaximander “is neither water nor any of the things called elements; but the apeiron, from which come all the heavens and the worlds in them, is of a different nature. . . . When he (Anaximander) sees the four elements changing into one another, he does not deem it right to make any one of these the hypokeimenon, but something else besides them” (A 9.1).1 Aristotle correspondingly writes that the reason for taking the arche to be “an unlimited something different from the elements” must be that “air is cold, water moist, and fire hot, so that an infinity (apeiron) of any one of them would mean that the others would have perished by this time; this, it is said, would not apply to a (neutral) something out of which they all (i.e., the elements) came” (A 16.4). Again, Aetios reports that Anaximander “fails to say what the apeiron is, whether it is air or water or earth, or some other thing” (A 14.1, cf. Diogenes, A 1). Simplicius quotes Theophrastus as saying that the apeiron “is of an indefinite (aoristos) nature as regards . . . form” (A 9a). From these reports we may conclude that Anaximander denies specific qualitative definition to the apeiron. This inference is further substantiated by persistent characterizations of the apeiron as a mixture. Thus Theophrastus reports that the apeiron is conceived by Anaximander as a “mixture of all things (mixis ton hapaton)” (Simplicius, A 9a). And this description is also employed by Aristotle and Aetios (A 9.3 and A 17a, respectively).2 This “mixture” is not, however, a compound of distinctive elements (such as a mixture of salt and sand), but is a wholly homogeneous and undifferentiated composition (like a mixture of water and wine, or of hot and cold water) in which the “constituent” factors do not exist in any differentiable or discriminable way. Correspondingly Aristotle (A 16.2) and Alexander of Aphrodisias (A 16.1) speak of Anaximander’s apeiron as something intermediate in nature between the elements. But if the apeiron is some sort of mixture, what are its “constituents”? They are the traditional opposites (hot/cold, moist/dry). Thus Simplicius writes that “generation takes place . . . by separation; for the opposites existing in the substance which is infinite matter3 are separated, according Studies in Greek Philosophy 3 to Anaximander” (A 9.2, or rather, its context in Simplicius’ text), and again that “things come into being . . . by the separation of opposites” (A 9.1). Aristotle tells us that Anaximander is among those who “extract out of the one (arche) the opposites which inhere in it” (A 16.3, cf. also A 9.3). Correspondingly, Aetios reports, somewhat more definitely, that “Anaximander said that the heavens come to be from a mixture of heat and cold” (A 17a) and Plutarch confirms this, saying that Anaximander taught that “the development of the world began with a separation of heat and cold from the apeiron” (A 10). The apeiron of Anaximander is thus an undifferentiated—and therefore uncharacterizable—”mixture” in which nothing is in fact discriminable, but in which potentially separable factors, specifically the opposites, are present in a state of mutual neutralization. Theophrastus wrote that Anaximander viewed the apeiron as being “of an indefinite (aoristos) nature as regards both form and magnitude” (Simplicius, A 9a). And Aristotle’s discussion also leaves no doubt that the apeiron is boundless with regard to its quantitative, i.e., spatial, extent (A 14.3, A 15). We must conclude that no definite boundaries or limits apply to the apeiron, so that it lacks any quantitative as well as any qualitative definition. This aspect of the apeiron as a spatial “boundless” leaves open two possibilities: (1) that is is strictly infinite in its extension in space, or (2) that it is of finite spatial extent, but without any definite limits, like a fog bank, or the warmth of a fire, or certain clouds. Aristotle (A 15) and writers of his school (e.g., Aetios, A 14.1) interpret Anaximander’s apeiron in the former sense. However, the evidence available to us—including even that presented in support of this view— does not actually suffice to warrant any decisive choice between these alternatives, so that a decision cannot be made upon textual grounds, but is possible only in the context of a comprehensive concept of Anaximander’s world-system. It is my judgment (based upon considerations of this latter kind, as will be seen below) that Anaximander’s apeiron is limitless or boundless, but not literally infinite.4 Besides its role as arche or Urstoff, the ultimate material source of all existence, the apeiron is also an Urzustand, a primeval state in the history of the cosmos, from which all subsequent definitions could and did take place. It is that “from which came all the heavens and the world in them” and the “source from which all things arise” (Simplicius, A 9.1). It is the “sole cause of all generations and destruction, and from it all the heavens were separated” (Plutarch, A 10). It precedes all differentiations and in it all things come into being (Hermes, A 12, cf. Hippolytus, A 11).