There is a story about how philosophy emerged in Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BC.  It has a very good source, in Aristotle’s history of the subject, and it has been developed and endorsed by many of the leading historians of philosophy in the twentieth century AD.  This time I will tell you that story.  Next time, I will tell you what is wrong with it.

Here is Aristotle’s statement:

Of the first philosophers, the majority thought the principles of all things were found only in the class of matter.  For that of which all existing things consist, and that from which they come to be first and into which they perish last—the substance continuing but changing its attributes—this, they say, is the element and this is the principle of existing things.  Accordingly, they do not think anything either comes to be or perishes, inasmuch as this nature is always preserved … For a certain nature always exists, either one or more than one from which everything else comes to be while this is preserved.  All, however, do not agree on the number and nature of this principle, but Thales, the originator of this kind of theory, says it is water … (Metaphyics 986b6-13, 17-21)

Aristotle goes on to point out that among the earliest philosophers, Anaximenes thinks there is just one “principle” or original source (archē) of all things, namely air; and Heraclitus also identifies one source, fire.  (Some ancient sources identified Xenophanes as saying that earth was the single principle.) 

On this account, there is a general type of theory that all the earliest philosophers agreed upon, but they differed in what exactly the individual stuff was that exemplified it.  They all say there is a single real stuff, but disagree about what that is: is it water, or air, or fire, or maybe earth?  Or perhaps an intermediate “boundless” stuff different from all these, as argued by Anaximander.  Modern historians of philosophy have a name for the type of theory: “Material Monism,” indicating a single (monos) material stuff that comprises everything.  On this view, the “substance” (ousia) stays the same but changes in its attributes (pathē).  So, if Thales is right, the wooden table I am writing at is really water, but it has changed in its sensible properties so that instead of being liquid it is a solid, instead of being clear it is tan in color, etc.  On this view, everything starts out being, for instance, water in its familiar “default” state, but then it changes so as to acquire new properties and be differentiated into the various stuffs of the world we live in. 

Aristotle goes on to point out that some early philosophers claim that there is a plurality of basic stuffs, which we may call “elements” (stoicheia, singular: stoicheion), a word which Aristotle helped to popularize.  For instance, Empedocles claims that there are four elements: earth, water, air, and fire; all other stuffs, like wood, are compounds of this basic ingredients.  On the other hand, Anaxagoras claims that there is a large number of basic elements, including things like wood, flesh, and bone, with none of them being composed of anything else (although trace amounts of every stuff are found mixed, but not compounded, in every other stuff.  Let us call this view “Material Pluralism,” since it posits a plurality of basic kinds of matter. 

There is one other chapter to this story, based on the philosophy of Parmenides, who probably wrote in the very early fifth century BC, between the time of the Monists and Pluralists.  Aristotle doesn’t make a big deal about the time sequence, but modern historians of philosophy have.  First there were Material Monists; then there were Material Pluralists.  Between them, we get Parmenides.  Aristotle talks about Parmenides, but he doesn’t make him the turning-point of the story.  But that is just what modern students of ancient philosophy do. 

Parmenides wrote a philosophical poem (most of the Presocratics wrote in prose, which you might expect, except you would be wrong in one way: there were no, or almost no, prose writings before the earliest philosophers; they pioneered prose writing in a culture that had just invented the first true alphabetic writing a century or so earlier—but that is a story for another time).  In it he portrayed a “youth” on a mythical journey to the ends of the earth, who was greeted by a goddess, who taught him the truth about the world: there is only what-is or Being.  What-is is without change of any kind.  For the opposite of what-is is what-is-not.  For what-is to change is to arise out of or turn into what-is-not, or, in other words, from nothing or into nothing.  But there is no nothing.  Further, there can be no differences.  For to be different from what-is is to not-be, and there is no not-being.  Thus everything besides Being is deceptive.  If that was right, then there could be no world of change, and hence no cosmology or scientific account of the world.  Parmenides’ goddess does go on to offer her own new and improved cosmology, which she warns the youth is deceptive. 

Aristotle is well aware of Parmenides, but he doesn’t see him as a watershed figure in the history of philosophy.  In fact, he says Parmenides isn’t as ignorant as some of his extremist followers, because he allows there to be a cosmology (taking the goddess’s cosmology as a constructive contribution to scientific studies). 

What modern commentators have done is to recognize Parmenides as a game-changer.  He challenges the Material Monists, pointing out that the only rational account of the world makes what-is changeless.  If that is so, then there can be an abstract study of Being (call it “Ontology”), but no scientific account of changing phenomena (which are illusory), no cosmology or chemistry or physics. 

On this view, the philosophers writing after Parmenides and his poem realized that they needed to rethink their own conceptual foundations if they were going to avoid the pitfalls of not-being.  Their (general) solution was to reject coming-to-be and perishing, that is: the possibility of something’s coming into or going out of existence, since that would be coming-to-be out of, or perishing into, nothing.  But they thought allowing things to be different was not so dangerous.  For instance, if there could be, say four basic kinds of being (like Empedocles’ elements), which always existed, and hence did not come-to-be or perish, then interactions of those elements could account for the changing events of the world.  Their strategy was to reject the possibility of radical change, the change of existence, of basic realities: the basic elements were everlasting and changeless in themselves.  But they could, by rearranging themselves, produce new compounds or constructs that were temporary, thus accounting for the world and all its parts and processes. 

This modern version of Aristotle’s story makes a lot of sense.  The Material Monists develop a simple but elegant way of explaining the world.  They are challenged on quasi-logical grounds by Parmenides to explain how cosmology is possible.  They respond by producing a pluralistic model in which elements with Parmenidean qualities can interact to produce changeable effects.  They thus produce a more sophisticated scheme of scientific explanation. 

It is a wonderful story that has developed and prevailed for most of the twentieth century.  But it is, I think, wrong. 

Next time: a better origin story.