Heraclitus to the Moderns, Determinism, and Democritus's Atoms

Orientation #

He begins by turning back to “the reading we hadn’t looked at yet,” the appendix headed “The moderns on the mover” at the bottom of page five of the handout, after the earlier treatment of Anaxagoras’ greater mind (prev. lecture). He ends by saying this was “a little introduction there to the natural fragments of the first philosophers” and hands out copies for what comes next, which he does not name. The previous class worked through Anaxagoras’ fragment on Nous, and the next takes up Aristotle’s division of his predecessors’ opinions in Physics I.

The class, in order #

1. Four Greek opinions on the mover (“maybe four opinions about the mover”) #

Point: up to now the Greeks give four thoughts about the mover, two in Heraclitus, one each in Empedocles and Anaxagoras.

• Heraclitus (a): “War is the father of all things,” the struggle of opposites giving rise to things.
• Heraclitus (b): choosing fire as first cause may reflect the need for a mover; fire is a poor guess as first matter but a good one as mover (it makes water boil, hot air rise, changes things). Before Heraclitus the mover was not clearly seen, on the fragments we have.
• Empedocles: love brings the elements together, hate separates them; matter and mover begin to be separated (though love and hate are sometimes mixed in with the elements).
• Anaxagoras: greater mind, “very separated” from matter.

2. Heisenberg: fire, energy, and the matter/mover confusion (“both matter and a moving force”) #

Point: Heisenberg sees that in Heraclitus fire is both matter and mover, and that modern physics, replacing “fire” by “energy,” can “almost repeat the statements word for word.”

• Reading: energy is the substance of which particles, atoms, and all things are made (E = mc²; in collisions new particles with more mass come “from the energy with which they collided”); its total amount does not change; it can be changed into motion, heat, light, tension; it “may be called the fundamental cause for all change.”
• His caution: (1) the physicist’s energy is much more abstract than Heraclitus’ fire; (2) it appears in universal equations, something mathematical, and mathematics has “neither matter nor motion,” so it only shadows those realities. “Don’t push the comparison too far.”
• The syllogism comparison: Every B is A, every C is B, so every C is A. Aristotle says premises are to conclusion as matter, in the broad sense of matter (any parts out of which something is made): the conclusion’s subject C and predicate A are already in the premises. The middle term B is not a part of the conclusion but “seems to be the mover,” bringing A and C together. Example: a former student who arranged a party so a man and woman would meet; they married; he is not a part of the marriage but its instigator. In the syllogism matter-aspect and mover-aspect can be separated; in the universal equations of science he doubts they can.
• Why the Marxists go back to Heraclitus: once you separate matter and mover you end up with an immaterial mover, “on the way to God,” so they return to the confusion. The confusion comes first in our thinking (Heraclitus had not yet separated them), and mathematics lends itself to it.

3. War as the father of all things in the moderns (“All nature is at war”) #

Point: the struggle of opposites returns in Hegel’s dialectic, taken over by Marx, and in Darwin.

• Darwin readings: “all nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature”; “there must be in every case a struggle for existence” (individual with same species, distinct species, or physical conditions), the source of evolution. Marx dedicated his work to Darwin; books were exchanged, though Darwin was no Marxist.
• Lenin, quoted “for his nice, concise ones”: dialectics is the study of contradictions in the very essence of things; development is the struggle of opposites.

4. Empedocles and the mechanical philosophy (“unchangeable attractive and repulsive forces”) #

Point: Newton, Helmholtz and Einstein’s account of classical physics reduce nature to something like love and hate, attraction and repulsion between unalterable particles, but mathematically.

• Einstein, Evolution of Physics: Newtonian success led to the belief that all phenomena can be described “in terms of simple forces between unalterable objects,” an endeavour apparent for two centuries after Galileo.
• Helmholtz: the problem of physical science is to refer phenomena back to unchangeable attractive and repulsive forces whose intensity depends on distance; its solubility is the condition of nature’s comprehensibility. Einstein: “thank God it isn’t” (so limited).
• Newton: derives gravity from celestial phenomena, deduces motions of planets, comets, moon and sea; wishes he could derive the rest of nature by the same reasoning, suspecting particles are “impelled toward one another and cohere” or “repelled.” Physicists call 17th–19th-century physics “classical” or “Newtonian” after him.
• Aside: Helmholtz “has no meaning better than Empedocles” with his love and hate; the contrary causes are the same thought.

5. Einstein’s greater mind versus Anaxagoras’ (“a conviction, akin to religious feeling”) #

Point: Einstein, like Anaxagoras, comes to a greater mind as a natural scientist from the intelligibility of the world, but leaves it mixed with things, without reason.

• Reading: “certain it is” that a conviction akin to religious feeling of the world’s rationality lies behind all scientific work of a higher order. Why akin to religious feeling: religion says a greater mind made the world, so it is understandable, “made by an understanding.” Belief in “a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience” is his conception of God.
• The likeness: Anaxagoras was no believer in Greek religion (in trouble for calling the sun a hot stone when it was Apollo), before Christ, with no contact with revelation to the Jews; Einstein, Jewish in origin, was not a believing Jew nor Christian nor Mohammedan; denominational traditions had “no significance” to him. Other scientists say the same, e.g. Sir James Jeans: God as supreme mathematician.
• The difference: Einstein calls his view “pantheistic” (influenced by Spinoza); pan, all; theos, god; the superior mind is mixed up with things. He gives no reason; Anaxagoras gives “a very good reason” why the greater mind must be separate. “In that sense, Anaxagoras’s thinking is more advanced than Einstein’s about the greater mind.” He suspects Einstein is moved not by argument but by custom.

6. Tocqueville: why democracies incline to pantheism (“some tinge caught from pantheistic doctrines”) #

Point: the custom that seduces Einstein is democratic equality, as Tocqueville explains.

• Democracy in America, vol. II (democratic vs. aristocratic customs; book I on arts and sciences), ch. 7, “What Causes Democratic Nations to Incline towards Pantheism?”: pantheism has made great progress; Germans introduced it into philosophy, French into literature; the cause is permanent, not accidental. A system making all things “parts of an immense being” destroys individuality, and “because it destroys that individuality” charms men in democracies; it “fosters the pride, while it soothes the indolence of their minds”; all attached to “the true greatness of man” should combine and struggle against it.
• His confirmations: the Enchiridion Symbolorum throughout the 19th century keeps correcting German Catholic professors for pantheism; in the 20th century Küng [ASR “Kuhn”] and Rahner [ASR “Rana”] (readings uncertain) have statements that “waver back and forth” between orthodox and pantheistic. Star Wars, “the Force be with you,” is pantheism not from thinking but occurring naturally to the author.
• Why: a greater mind altogether distinct, with all knowledge and power, is “awfully undemocratic,” aristocratic; Tocqueville says most men love equality more than freedom. Mathematical physics too may incline one to pantheism, since its basis is equality, “the equation, all things are forever equal.”
• Student: the same tendency underlies communism; a student mentions hearing Teilhard de Chardin defended as merely “Augustinian,” misunderstood by Thomists.

7. Leucippus and the principle of determinism (“Nothing happens at random”) #

Point: Leucippus’ fragment, “nothing happens at random, but everything comes to be from reason and by necessity,” states the absolute principle of modern science, determinism.

• Popularly: the past necessarily determines the future; no contingency, no luck or chance (these only name ignorance of causes). Its source is the mathematical science of nature: in mathematics there is nothing like matter or free will to give rise to contingency. Laplace: knowing position and momentum of every particle, a supercalculating mind could tell the whole future; this produced crises about free will.
• Sign that it is the absolute principle: sciences imitating physics insist on it. Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine (c. 1860; three parts: method in general, method in biology, examples from his physiology) has “a very good understanding of the experimental method, a very bad understanding of philosophy and theology.” He says doubt is intrinsic to the experimental method: a confirmed hypothesis is still not known true.
• His logical reason (from the logic course): “if H then P; P; therefore H” is not a syllogism. Example: if Purpose (student) dropped dead he would be absent; he is absent; therefore he dropped dead: “wishful, but not logical thinking.” Einstein: physicists only realised this with relativity; Newtonian success was so great (the last planets found by assuming unknown planets rather than doubting Newton) that they thought it true, until a different hypothesis predicted all Newton did and more; hypothesis “always remains a system of guesses.”
• Yet Bernard says “we cannot doubt” determinism: to doubt it is to doubt science. Hence it is “the sacred, absolute principle.”
• Freud on dreams: even what seems most random must have a reason and had to be dreamed, then used to probe the subconscious. Cousin Dow’s dream: chased by a tiger into a dead end, the tiger says “I would like to buy a raffle ticket.”
• Aristotle rejects determinism because of his understanding of matter as potency or ability (to come later). In the 20th century quantum theory challenged it; Heisenberg formulated indeterminism and said quantum theory reintroduced Aristotle’s potency. Quantum theory is therefore a greater change than relativity, which did not question determinism.
• Story: Copenhagen interpretation (Bohr); Solvay Congress 1927; Einstein and de Broglie attack it with thought experiments; Bohr replies after a night’s work, finally showing Einstein overlooked something from his own relativity; Einstein never again attacked it publicly; de Broglie declared allegiance (later drifting back); Ehrenfest: “I’m ashamed of you, Einstein,” you cannot refute it but will not accept it; Einstein held determinism to his death.
• Reflection: history returns not in a circle but “like a spiral staircase,” the same point at a different level of experience; some biologists now question Darwinism’s denial of purpose on a concrete level.

8. Democritus: sense qualities by custom (“Our overthrow is your overthrow”) #

Point: Democritus, likely influenced by mathematical science of nature (which has no sense qualities, substance or purpose), denies sense qualities are real: sweet, bitter, warm, cold, colour “by custom.”

• His second thought: a fragment (placed elsewhere in the handout) where reason tells the senses they are not real and the senses reply, “our overthrow is your overthrow.” Schrödinger quotes it: physics has no greenness of green, yet reading instruments needs black and red markings; the whole scientific picture depends on what does not appear in it.
• Parallel paradox (Bohr): observations testing relativity and quantum theory are made with Newtonian physics, yet the numbers cannot be ordered by Newtonian physics; throw out Newton and you lose both.
• Aside on “revolution”: Heisenberg and de Broglie both say inside their books it should not be called a revolution (a revolution replaces the former government), yet publishers put “revolution” on the covers (de Broglie’s Le Quanta became “The Revolution in Physics”; Heisenberg’s subtitle “The Revolution in Modern Physics”). Contrast Albert the Great on the Topics: understanding the title “illuminates the whole work.” In commercial democratic times you have to sell the book.

9. Atoms and the empty (“cut in every way they could possibly be cut”) #

Point: what truly exists for Democritus are the atoms and the empty; he explains the word and the argument.

• Etymology: root tom, cut (anatomy, ana up, cut up, as Aristotle did with animals); a- negative, so atom = uncut, and in context uncuttable.
• Thought experiment (Aristotle’s account; the kind Einstein loved, performed in imagination): imagine bodies cut in every possible way; something must be left (you cannot cut something down to nothing, or it would be made of nothing); what is left after every possible cut is uncuttable; so everything is made of uncuttables.
• Ambiguity: in some texts the atoms have size and shape; in one Aristotle speaks as if they were points. In geometry only a point is uncuttable, but in nature the uncuttable is what resists cutting; Democritus may have hesitated between mathematics and natural philosophy (to return to).
• Heisenberg: do not compare our “atom” with his; compare elementary particles. Our “atom” was uncuttable by chemical means, then cut; the name stayed. Likewise “proton” (first) though quarks may be before it: such names “mark our ignorance at a certain stage.”
• The empty: motion requires empty space (otherwise “packed like sardines”), so he admits what is not is, a seeming contradiction, to keep change real. Aristotle’s reply: motion can occur in a circular way without the empty, one thing moving out as another moves in.
• Meaning of “custom”: sense qualities are not really there, as he is accustomed to say the sun rises at 6:10 though the earth turns. If mathematics is the key to the world, sense qualities have no place; the moderns say this even more, and then cannot know the world, since reason depends on the senses.

10. Man is a little universe (“man is a little universe”) #

Point: micro (small) cosmos: a famous statement, with two senses.

• Thomas in the Summa contra Gentiles, quoting Gregory and Augustine: angels, immaterial substances, are minds ruling the material world; likewise man’s reason rules his body.
• Or: man is in the middle, sharing the material world in his body and dealing with the immaterial in his soul; the Mohammedan philosopher (name not given) says man is “on the horizon” between the two worlds. Between death and resurrection the soul lives in the immaterial world; at the end reunited, the immaterial dominating, with vocal praise (“O God, you are my God… my flesh pines and my soul thirsts,” body as well as soul).
• Student: how can there be no time in the next world if we have bodies? Answer: in the beatific vision we partake of eternity, no before and after; things measured by time have a beginning and end in time, and the incorruptible body will not; “we’ll think of time later on.”

11. Art imitates nature (“pupils in the most important things of the spider”) #

Point: Democritus states concretely what Aristotle will develop, that art (reason) imitates nature.

• We learned spinning and mending from the spider, house-building from the swallow [ASR “swab”], singing from song-birds. Aside: the saint in a cell who learned perseverance from a spider rebuilding its web.
• Our knowledge starts from the senses in contact with natural things: shelter of cave or tree imitated by a roof. Thomas: even logic imitates nature as far as possible. Two dogs produce a dog, two cats a cat; two statements produce a statement; Eddington: put numbers into mathematical physics and you grind out numbers. “But ignorance is barren.”

His words #

• mover: the cause that moves, as distinct from matter; four Greek guesses (war, fire, love and hate, greater mind).
• matter in the broad sense: any parts out of which something is made, as premises are matter of the conclusion.
• middle term: the mover of the syllogism, bringing subject and predicate together.
• greater mind: Anaxagoras’ Nous; Einstein’s “superior mind.”
• pantheism: pan (all) identified with theos (god); the greater mind mixed up with things.
• principle of determinism: nothing at random; the past necessarily determines the future; no contingency, luck or chance.
• doubt intrinsic to the experimental method: because “if H then P; P; so H” is not a syllogism.
• ability: his word for potency [ed.: potency], the ground of Aristotle’s rejection of determinism.
• thought experiment: something performed in imagination.
• atom: a- (not) + tom (cut): uncut, and uncuttable.
• the empty: void space required for motion; Democritus admits “what is not is.”
• by custom: sense qualities are not really there; we only speak so.
• little universe: micro-cosmos; man ruling his body as minds rule the world, or on the horizon between material and immaterial.
• spiral staircase: history returning to the same point at a different level of experience.

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout, “The moderns on the mover” (bottom of p. 5): Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (Gifford lectures) on Heraclitus and energy; Darwin, two passages on struggle; Lenin on dialectics; Einstein, The Evolution of Physics, with Helmholtz; Newton on gravity and mechanical principles; Einstein on religious feeling and a superior mind.
• Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. II, book I, ch. 7.
• Handout p. 9: Leucippus, “nothing happens at random”; Democritus: sense qualities by custom; atoms and the empty; man a little universe; pupils of the spider, swallow and song-birds. (Handout p. 44 and DHB Vol I p. 157, verified.)

Mentioned

• Democritus, dialogue of senses and reason (elsewhere in handout); Schrödinger’s essay quoting it.
• Claude Bernard, Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine; Laplace; Freud on dreams.
• Heisenberg on quantum theory and Aristotle’s potency; de Broglie, Le Quanta / The Revolution in Physics; Ehrenfest.
• Aristotle’s account of Democritus’ thought experiment and reply on motion without the empty (loci not stated).
• Albert the Great on the Topics; Thomas, Summa contra Gentiles on angels (locus not stated); the Enchiridion Symbolorum; Sir James Jeans; Spinoza; Star Wars.

His questions #

• Among earth, water, air and fire, which is the mover? Fire: it makes water boil and hot air rise.
• Is the matchmaker a part of the marriage? No; the parts are the man and woman, he is the instigator, the mover, like the middle term.
• Why is the conviction of the world’s intelligibility “akin to religious feeling”? Religion says a greater mind made the world, so it is understandable.
• Why does Einstein hold the greater mind mixed up with things? He gives no reason; he is carried by democratic custom, as Tocqueville explains.
• If the prediction P comes true, does it follow that the hypothesis H is so? No; that form is not a syllogism, so doubt is intrinsic to experimental method.
• If bodies were cut every way they could be cut, would something or nothing be left? Something, since nothing can be made out of nothing; and what is left is uncuttable.
• What does the root tom mean, and the prefix a-? Cut; not; so atom is uncut, uncuttable.
• What is the main point of calling sense things custom? They are not really there, as the sun does not really rise.
• How can there be no time in the next world if we have bodies? In the beatific vision we partake of eternity; an incorruptible body is not measured by time; “we’ll think of time later on.”
• When two statements come together, what do they produce? A statement; two numbers, a number; ignorance is barren.