We hear from Aristotle that Empedocles was younger than Anaxagoras, but presumably not by much, since the two philosophers were, by all accounts, contemporaries.[1] Empedocles was a native of Acragas (which the Romans called Agrigentum, the Italians Agrigento), a Greek colony in the middle of the south coast of Sicily. He was influenced not only by Parmenides and other Presocratics, but also by Pythagoras in his views of the soul and religion. Like Parmenides, he composed philosophical poetry in epic verse in two poems, On Nature and Purifications, or perhaps in one poem having two titles, or having two sections each with its own title. In any case, it has become clear that he discussed both scientific and religious topics in the same work(s).
Like Anaxagoras, he learned from Parmenides that there is no coming-to-be or perishing. The basic realities, the elements of the world, always exist. He says:
I shall tell you another thing: there is no birth of any of all
Mortal things, neither any end of destructive death,
But only mixture and separation of mixed things
Exist, and birth is a term applied to them by men. (fr. 8)
Fools! Their reflections are not far-reaching
who expect what was not before to come to be,
or that something will die out and perish utterly. (fr. 11)
For from what in no way is, it is impossible to come-to-be,
and for what-is to perish cannot be fulfilled or known,
for it will always be wherever one puts it at any time. (fr. 12)
Empedocles recognizes four and only basic realities, his elements:
The four roots [rhizomata] of all things hear first:
shining Zeus, life-giving Hera, Aidoneus,
and Nestis, who by her tears moistens the mortal spring. (fr. 6)
Empedocles gives his four roots (rhizōmata, singular rhizōma) divine names, presumably here standing for Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, respectively.[2] These things always exist, and go to make up everything that is:
And men, when as these things are mixed together they come to aether in a man,
or in the race of wild beasts or bushes
or birds, then <they call> it birth,
and when they are separated, this in turn they call pitiful fate;
they do <not> speak rightly, but I myself concur in the custom. (fr. 9)
Besides the four elements there are two everlasting forces:
I shall speak a double tale: at one time they grew to be one alone
from many, at another time it grew apart to be many from one:
fire, water, earth, and lofty expanse of air,
destructive Strife apart from them, balanced in every direction,
and Love among them, equal in height and width. (fr. 17.16-20)
Love (Philotēs) is the power of attraction, that brings together the four elements, and Strife (Neikos) is the power of repulsion that keeps them apart. Empedocles recognizes an elaborate cosmic cycle, in which at one time the elements all blend together in a cosmic Sphere, and at another time, they all separate into concentric spheres, with earth at the center, water around this, air, around this, and fire around everything.[3] In the between times, the four elements gradually separate, forming compounds including living things until the elements separate completely; then, the four elements gradually join together again, forming compounds, including living things, until the elements merge completely again (fr. 17, fr. 26, fr. 35).
In this creative way, Empedocles seems to embrace both monism in his Sphere, and pluralism in his cosmos. The four elements he proposed had a powerful impact on later thought. Both Plato and Aristotle accepted them (with some modifications).[4] And they were adopted by many other theorists down to Middle Ages and even into the early modern era. They seem to capture the great cosmic masses: Planet Earth is composed (supposedly) of earth; it is surrounded by Ocean and great seas (water); above the surface of earth and water we find an all-encompassing atmosphere of air, with interspersed clouds of vapor and flashes of lightning; and above the atmosphere we observe the great fires of the heavenly bodies:
Come, I will tell you from what things at first sun
and all other things we now look on emerged to sight,
earth, sea covered with waves, moist air,
and Titan aether compressing them all in a circle. (fr. 38)
In his astronomy, Empedocles shows his debt to Parmenides:
[The moon] spins around the earth, a circular borrowed light. (fr. 45)
Here Empedocles quotes Parmenides’ allotrion phōs from his fr. 14. He speaks of the moon reflecting the sun’s light (fr. 43) and says the that moon “looks upon the bright circle of her lord’s face/ opposite her” (fr. 47). And he describes the moon casting a shadow the size of its figure in a solar eclipse:
[The moon] did away with his [the sun’s] rays
to the earth from above, and it obscured the earth
as much as the width of the bright-eyed moon. (fr. 42)
Thus he seems to have agreed with Anaxagoras that the moon projected a shadow, an umbra, that matched its own diameter. This, as we have seen, is false: the moon’s shadow forms a diminishing cone. But if the sun’s rays were parallel, the result would be correct.
It is possible that Empedocles, not Anaxagoras, first explained eclipses correctly. But it is unlikely. As we have seen,[5] Anaxagoras seems to have investigated the eclipse of 478 BCE when he was about 22 years old. If Empedocles were even five years younger, he would have been under the tutelage of adults at the time and not free to research the eclipse. Furthermore, the umbra of the eclipse did not fall on Sicily, so he would not have experienced the full power of the eclipse.
In any case, he did recognize the value of the new “antiphraxis” theory of eclipses: eclipses are caused by the blocking (antiphraxis, Aristotle’s term) of the sun’s light to the earth by the moon (solar eclipse) or to the moon by the earth (lunar eclipse). Now the cat was out of the bag. The two leading natural philosophers of the mid-fifth century BCE had accepted Parmenides’ account of the moon’s light and had recognized that it led to a compelling explanation of eclipses, which even allowed, in principle, a way of measuring the size of heavenly bodies.
[1] Aristotle Metaphysics 984a11-16.
[2] For a table of Empedocles’ names for elements, see Wright 1981: 23.
[3] See fr. 38, quoted below; it is not clear whether Empedocles’ planet Earth is a sphere or perhaps an oval or disk.
[4] Plato Timaeus 53b-57d; Aristotle On the Heavens I.1-3, III; On Generation and Corruption II.1-8. Both Plato and Aristotle allow some transformation of elements into each other, unlike Empedocles.
[5] Previous section.