Thales and Anaximander: Reasonable Guesses About the First Matter

Orientation #

He opens by answering a student’s follow-up on “this central question of philosophy” from last time, and says he gave out the natural fragments handout “last time” (prev. lecture). He then announces the plan: set Aristotle aside “for a while”, go back to the beginning of philosophy with Thales, and return to Aristotle later, where Aristotle “logically divides up everything that these men have said”. Verified sources: the handout “On the Natural Fragments” p. 2 is read for about five minutes; the printed volume DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 115. The previous class treated the central question (whether the way we know must match the way things are) and the next takes up Anaximander’s fragments.

The class, in order #

1. Why “central” and not “critical” (“I call it a central question”) #

A student asks whether the central question is the same as “the critical question”; he says he does not know what “critical” means (it just means to judge) and explains his own label.

1. Philosophers talk about two matters: the way we know (especially in logic) and the way things are.
2. This question brings both together, plus the end or purpose the philosopher has in mind; so it touches everything, hence “central”.
3. Answering yes to it yields “the most strange” consequences depending on the further premises added.

Natural-philosophy angle: Plato was a student of Cratylus, Cratylus of Heraclitus, and Heraclitus stressed that everything in the natural world seems to change. If the way we know must match the way things are, an unchanging knowledge of changing things is impossible, so Plato must seek unchanging things outside the natural world to know. Aristotle answers no: one can know changing things in an unchanging way.

• Playful test cases: is the definition of stupidity stupid? is the definition of folly foolish? does the definition of ignorance keep us ignorant? — the way we know is not the way the thing is, so we can have a wise understanding of the fool and an unchanging knowledge of the changing.
• Consequence: Plato seeks knowledge elsewhere than by studying the world around him.

2. Back to the beginning: fragments, Diels-Kranz, seeds (“the seeds of philosophy”) #

The class turns to the first natural philosophers, considered also the beginning of science.

• No complete work of any pre-Platonic philosopher survives; Socrates wrote nothing, like Christ. Thomas: Christ used the spoken word because it is more perfect than the written; the apostles wrote afterward. Plato wrote, Socrates did not; the earlier men wrote, but only fragments (quotations in later writers) remain.
• Diels-Kranz: Kranz continued Diels’ collection. “DK1, DK2, DK3” after a fragment are only reference numbers in his edition; they carry no significance and others number and arrange differently.
• Botanic likeness: the fragments are the seeds of philosophy (and to some extent of science); Plato’s dialogues show the seeds growing; Aristotle is “the grown plant”.
• His own collections: the natural fragments (used here); also ethical/domestic/political fragments, fragments on method, and natural-theology fragments, to be referred to at times.

3. Reasonable guesses and the second road (“from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out knowledge”) #

These fragments are read not as the truth but as reasonable guesses; “reasonable” has two senses.

• A vs. B: (A) there is a reason for the guess, a basis short of necessity; (B) reason, our faculty, is naturally inclined to it. Some guesses may fall under both. The great twentieth-century scientists found the Greeks interesting because of this natural inclination, which they share (witnesses to come).
• Because fragments rarely state their reasons, the task is to ask of each: is there a reason to think this, or is reason inclined to it? and to see why later thinkers often guess better than earlier ones.
• The second road of knowledge: not the natural road, but presupposing it, “the road of reason as reason” (“as Shakespeare defined it”). He says “from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out knowledge” for three reasons: (1) the passage is difficult; (2) the mind often fails to get there and a reasonable guess is as far as it gets; (3) this road is not sufficient, since each reasoned-out knowledge has its own matter and hence its own appropriate road, the third or “private road”. In logic, dialectic teaches reasonable guessing; the Prior and Posterior Analytics teach the common road of reasoned-out knowledge. Here it will be seen concretely: from these men’s guesses to Aristotle’s division of them and then to the starting points of reasoned-out knowledge.

4. The four Ws of the beginning of philosophy (“the fictitious sharpness of historical dates”) #

Where, when, who, why; only “why” matters, but the first three give perspective.

• Who: Thales, first natural philosopher, first philosopher, in some ways beginning of natural science.
• Where: not in what is called Greece today. The Greek tribes conquered Greece, intermarried, multiplied in a poor land, and colonized east (coast of Asia Minor, today Turkey) and west (Sicily, southern Italy). Philosophy begins first in the Asia Minor cities, later in Sicily and south Italy; Anaxagoras is said to have brought it to Athens (Plato mentions this). Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes were all of Miletus, hence “Milesians”. The poets came before, Homer also on that coast, south of Troy.
• When: with “the fictitious sharpness of historical dates” (a phrase from a historian), circa 600 BC. The one real date: Thales predicted a solar eclipse for 585 BC and was admired for it. Perspective: Socrates dies 399 BC (the Apology is the most commonly read introductory work), so roughly 200 years of Greek philosophy before Socrates’ death; Plato dies 347, Aristotle 322, Alexander (Aristotle’s pupil) 323, whose death led to reaction in Athens against Aristotle. 600 BC to 322 BC is called the Golden Age of Greek philosophy.
• Why: wonder, the one word both Plato and Aristotle give; wonder is the natural desire to know what and why, i.e. the cause. These men look for causes and for the first cause. Since the only things they knew were sensible things, and artificial things depend on natural ones, the first cause of natural things was for them the first cause of all things; only with Plato and Aristotle is it seen that there are things beyond the material and that wisdom is meta ta physika, “after the books of natural philosophy”; until then natural philosophy would be wisdom.
• Democritus’ fragment (given earlier that night): he would rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians. The Persian king was the most powerful and richest man known to the Greeks (a thousand chefs, a harem, worshipped as a god): power, wealth, honour, pleasures of table and bed. That intense desire for the cause is what matters.

5. Thales the geometer and political adviser (“the angle inscribed in a semicircle”) #

Thales was active outside natural philosophy, though this course treats only his natural philosophy.

• Geometry: rigorous proof that the angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle; and manifestation that the diameter bisects the circle, which Euclid takes for granted, by flipping one side over the other, as Euclid manifests the fourth theorem: non-coincidence would mean unequal radii, contradicting the definition of the circle. These men were geometers as well.
• Politics: proposed a federal government for Miletus and the Asia Minor cities to withstand Persia; unheeded, they were picked off one by one until Athens and Sparta stopped the Persians, which he calls the end of the first period of world history and the start of the second.

6. Thales’ sentence, from general to particular: beginning, one, simple (“Is it reasonable to look for the beginning of all things?”) #

“Water is the beginning of all things” (a “marvelous statement”, as Heisenberg calls it) is examined by descending from the general to the particular, as learned from Aristotle, so the general need not be repeated for each later opinion.

• Q1, a beginning of all things: students answer that we are inclined to wonder and to know causes; he concludes reason, seeking to understand, naturally looks for the beginning. Examples: adjudicating a squabble among children (“who started this?”); the Duke in Romeo and Juliet asking how the killings began, Benvolio tracing it back not to Romeo but to “the fiery Tybalt” drawing his sword and Mercutio starting the fight; a biography goes back to a man’s origin; to understand why the United States speaks English and Quebec French, go to the origin. Aristotle, Politics: the man who follows things from their beginning will best understand them.
• Q2, one beginning: a student suggests there is a good reason; he replies that early on a reason would be very hard to give (given the multiplicity of things, and everyone has two beginnings, father and mother), so the answer is inclination: in the absence of reasons either way the mind inclines to one. Sign from something more known: reason seeks order, order is defined by before and after, and order rests on something one. Examples: an army comes back to one commander in chief; the executive department heads all come under the president; chronological order dates all events by one event, the birth of Christ, and the Mohammedans by the Hegira, so it is not a Christian peculiarity; dating some events by Christ, some by his own birth, some by Mozart’s would be chaos, as two supreme heads of government (Afghanistan) would be. Max Born: the genuine physicist believes obstinately in the unity and simplicity of nature despite appearances.
• Q3 (his added step), a simple beginning: if composed, there is something before it and so many beginnings; students answer “simple”. So: one simple beginning of all things, which for the first thinkers means one matter out of which all things are made.

7. Matter before maker; Mother Earth and the ground (“one simple matter before looking for a maker”) #

Contrast with the Bible’s first sentence: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth” starts with one maker (later seen to be simple); Greek philosophy starts with one simple matter. Q4: is it reasonable to look for one matter before a maker (not to stop there)? Yes, because matter is more known to us, and we ought to start from what is more known — “the basic rule”.

• The wooden chair: you see no maker, but you see the wood, and take the wood away and no chair is left. The word “cat” on the board: for all one knows it was always there, needing no writer, but even so it depends on C, A, T; remove them and nothing is left. So dependence on matter is more undeniable than dependence on a maker.
• The Bible is the Word of God, the Maker, so it may begin with the maker; philosophy is the word of man, starting from what he can sense.
• Poets before philosophers spoke of Mother Earth, not water: Timon digging for roots addresses the earth as “common mother” whose womb and breast teem and feed all. Latin materia comes from mater (Cassell’s dictionary refers one back), the mother being the matter from which the child is made; Mother Earth is more like a mother than water.
• The native English word for cause is “ground”, akin to earth: so cause is named from Mother Earth, i.e. from matter. Shakespeare puns on it: the night watch in Romeo and Juliet sees “the ground whereon these woes do lie” but cannot without further circumstance descry “the true ground” of them.
• Mother more known than father: the oldest jokes, Athena asking Odysseus’ son whether he is Odysseus’ son (“my mother always said I was”), down to Shakespeare’s “it’s a wise son that knows his own father”. The father contributes almost no matter; nine months of matter and then milk come from the mother, and the father is more like a maker. Story of his son Paul concluding that, since Paul, Maria and Marcus came from Mama but Daddy did not, “you don’t really belong here, but you can stay”: the obvious connection is coming from the mother.
• Heraclitus, when he begins to see the need for a mover or maker, speaks of it as a father; this is why God is called Father and not Mother, since calling him mother would make him a cause in the sense of matter and misunderstand the cause of the universe. He calls this “very, very significant”.
• Descending to the particular brings more disagreement and less certainty: we agree there is one simple beginning (God), but not that it is a matter.

8. A formless matter (“something like water, a formless”) #

Q5: if one matter, is it reasonable to guess a formless one, formless meaning not only shapeless but colourless, tasteless, able to take on all shapes, colours, tastes?

• If red wine were the beginning, everything would be red; if sugar, everything sweet; but the world has opposites. So even before naming water the matter must be something like water. This is reasonable “in the sense of having a reason”.

9. Why water, with scientific and theological footnotes (“water is the beginning of all things”) #

Q6, most particular: is there reason to think that formless matter is water?

• Aristotle, discussing Thales (with more information than we have), says he was influenced by living things: biologists say we are mainly water; without rain nothing grows; seeds do not germinate unless moistened. So water is the beginning of life; for the living world, what better single guess?
• Non-living world divided into gas, liquid, solid: the beginning of all must be able to become all three, and in daily experience only water does (a lab might liquefy or solidify other things). So for the physical world too an eminently reasonable guess.
• Possible influence of Homer (who in one tradition came after Hesiod, the poet of Mother Earth): the gods swear by the river Styx as we swear by the Bible, suggesting water as origin even of the gods.
• Scientific footnote: the modern scientist takes water as H2O, not the beginning; but hydrogen is the simplest, most fundamental atom, the others almost multiples of it, so water is very close to hydrogen; and to the senses water appears homogeneous, its complexity known only by roundabout experiment.
• Theological footnote: God is the beginning, but is metaphorically called water. Augustine divides the 150 Psalms into three fifties, each with a Psalm of Thirst; “as the hind longs for water”; Psalm 62 (his most familiar, in the second fifty): “my soul thirsts… like the earth parched… without water”. Basis of the metaphor (student: “principle of life”): water is the source of life in material things. Hence also baptism, not only cleansing but a birth, “born again of water and the Holy Spirit”. Scripture’s metaphors must come from what is obvious to the senses, so none from hydrogen or H2O; also the dew of Hermon coming down on the mountains of Sion. “So you impressed with Thales now?” — all from one sentence.
• Housekeeping: the general questions will not be repeated for each later opinion; the class breaks.

10. Closing aside (“the Mother Angelica”) #

Not on the lecture’s matter: he recounts a television interview (EWTN) with a converted Baptist minister and his wife: a woman’s seven years of prayer for a daughter married to a Catholic, the daughter’s going to church with her husband as head of the family, the rosary taking two and a half hours, checking Catholic teaching against Scripture, the effect of the Catechism, and a sign of sun, moon and stars matching the Apocalypse passage.

His words #

• “central question”: the question that joins the two things philosophers talk about, the way we know and the way things are, and the philosopher’s end; he distinguishes it from “critical”, which just means to judge.
• “natural fragments”: his collection of the pre-Socratic fragments in natural philosophy, beside collections on ethics/politics, method, and natural theology.
• “reasonable guess”: a guess with a reason (a basis, not a necessity) or one to which reason is naturally inclined.
• “second road”: the road of reason as reason, from reasonable guesses towards reasoned out knowledge; the “third road” or “private road” is the one proper to each reasoned-out knowledge’s matter.
• “reasoned out knowledge” [ed.: science, episteme].
• “fictitious sharpness of historical dates”: a historian’s phrase he borrows for circa 600 BC.
• “wonder”: the natural desire to know what and why, i.e. the cause.
• “meta ta physika”: after the books of natural philosophy; wisdom, once immaterial things are seen.
• “formless”: not just shapeless but colourless, tasteless, able to take on all qualities.
• “ground”: native English word for cause, taken from earth, hence from matter.
• “Mother Earth”: the poets’ matter-cause; materia from mater.
• “scientific footnote”, “theological footnote”: his labels for remarks placing a fragment beside modern science and beside Scripture.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thales, “water is the beginning of all things” (handout “On the Natural Fragments”, p. 2; DHB Vol I, p. 115).
• Democritus, fragment: rather discover one cause than be master of the kingdom of the Persians.
• Psalm 62, the soul thirsting for God (quoted from memory); the “hind” Psalm quoted in a line.

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Politics (line on understanding things from their beginning); Aristotle’s discussion of Thales’ opinion; Prior and Posterior Analytics; the “central question” text from last time.
• Plato, Apology; Plato on Anaxagoras bringing philosophy to Athens.
• Thomas on why Christ used the spoken word.
• Diels-Kranz, Fragmente (his Greek edition).
• Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (the Duke and Benvolio; the night watch on “ground”); Timon of Athens (address to the common mother); “a wise son that knows his own father”.
• Homer, Odyssey (Athena and Odysseus’ son); the gods swearing by the Styx; Hesiod on Mother Earth.
• Genesis 1:1 (inferred); John 3 (inferred); Apocalypse (the woman with stars, in the aside).
• Euclid, Elements (fourth theorem; diameter bisecting the circle) (inferred).
• Heisenberg (“marvelous statement”); Max Born on the unity and simplicity of nature; Augustine’s division of the Psalms; Cassell’s Latin dictionary.

His questions #

• Is the central question the same as the critical question? He calls it central because it touches everything (way we know, way things are, the end); “critical” only means to judge.
• Is it reasonable to look for the beginning of all things? Yes: reason, seeking to understand, naturally looks for the beginning (children’s squabble, the Duke, biography, origin of the USA).
• Is it reasonable to look for one beginning of all things, and in which sense? By inclination, not by a reason one could then give; order rests on something one, and reason seeks order.
• One beginning: something simple or composed? Simple; a composed thing would have something before it.
• Is it reasonable to look for one matter before a maker? Yes: dependence on matter is more known to us (chair and wood, “cat” and its letters), and we start from the more known.
• Is order based more on something one or on many? On one: commander, president, dating all events by one event.
• Is it reasonable to guess a formless matter rather than red wine or sugar? Yes, there is a reason: things have opposite qualities.
• Is there any reason to think the formless matter is water? Yes: source of life (seeds, rain, our bodies) and the only thing in daily experience that is gas, liquid and solid.
• Why is God metaphorically called water? Because water is the principle of life in material things (student’s answer, accepted); hence too baptism as birth.