Philosophy of Science

Session 5
 Philosophy of Science
The Ancient World (700 BCE – 250 CE)

Pre-Socratic Philosophers: NEXT WEEK

• Thales of Miletus: Everything is made of water (Jeffrey)
• Anaximenes: Everything is air (Patrick)
• Empedocles: Everything is made up of 4 roots: earth, air, fire, water
(Dominic)
• Heraclitus: Everything is flux (Rodel)
• Parmenides : All is One (Ronn)
• Zeno of Elea (c.490-430 BC): Zeno’s Paradoxes (Harvey)
• Democritus and Leucippus: Everything is made up of atoms (Mark Jude)
 Thales of Miletus (c.624-545 BC)
“First” Philosopher or “First” Scientist?
Everything is Water
• What is the world made of? It seemed to Thales that it must ultimately all be made from a single element --
water. At very low temperature, water becomes rock. At very high temperature, water becomes air. When it
rains, plants spring out of the earth
• Thales determined that water could experience principles of change like evaporation and condensation;
water was also responsible for moisture and nourishment
• Landmass comes to an end at the water’s edge, so the whole earth is floating on water, and so has emerged
out of water, and so is constituted of water
• That the flat earth floated on water and that earthquakes were caused when big waves hit the land
• The world of the ancient Greeks was water-borne, a world of coasts and islands, thus leading them at first to
believe that the whole earth was floating on water
• Thales was said to have inspired Aristotle by studying nature, rather than starting by postulating grand
theoretical entities.
 Anaximenes (c.585-528 BC)
There is one basic form of matter: air
• There is one basic form of matter and it is air
• Air is everywhere and when rarefied (thin air, less dense air especially at
high altitude) it becomes fire; when air is condensed, it forms water and
earth
• Air is breath of life, the soul
• The earth was flat and floated on the air like a leaf, as did the heavenly
bodies.
 Empedocles (c.490-420 BCE)
• That everything is made up of four (4) roots: earth, air, fire, water
• Originally the 4 roots formed a perfect sphere, held together by love, the
centripetal force. But gradual strife, the centrifugal force, began to pull
them apart. Love and strife are the two forces that shape the universe. In
this world, strife tends to predominate, which is why life is so difficult.
 Anaximander of Miletus (c.510-450 BC)
• One of the founders of the geocentric theory of the universe – the earth is at the center of things
in space
• The next question then is: What keeps the earth firmly fixed in place?
• “There are some who say, like Anaximander…, that it [earth] stays still because of its equilibrium,
not to be borne one whit more either up or down or to the sides; and it is impossible for it to move
simultaneously in opposite directions, so that it stays fixed by necessity.”
• Aristotle on Anaximander

• The pivotal idea here is that the universe is a rational place and that whatever is the case about it
admits (at least in principle) of a reason for its being so.
• If the universe is symmetric, then there could be no further reason – or explanation – for going up
rather than down, right rather than left. So then a centrally placed object is bound to remain in
place, stably fixed there not by physical machinations but by the rational symmetry of things
• Thus, there emerges the basic lesson that the explanation of things need not be mechanical:
rules, laws, and practices can also do the job. This is also known as the principle of sufficient
reason.
• Clearly there is here a significant advance in understanding the nature of explanation itself – one
which is predicated on the possibility of accounting for aspects of nature not in terms of causal
mechanism but rather of other noncausal but still rationally cogent explanatory principles.
 Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC)
Everything is flux
• Heraclitus is known to be the prophet of change, transiency, and the
impermanence of things.
• Everything exists in a state of permanent flux
• The world might appear to be stable but rather than permanence and
stability, beneath the surface, the world could be understood in terms of
continuous struggle between pairs of opposites

War Death

Plenty Famine

Life Peace
 Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC)
Everything is flux

• A glass of water is half full or half empty?

• The path up the mountainside and the path down are two
different paths or not?
• The young and the old Heraclitus are two different
individuals or are they the same Heraclitus?
• There is no contradiction. Everything is a coming together
of opposites, or at least of opposing tendencies
 Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC)
Everything is flux
• Although each part of the pair was separate, neither would exist without the other, as both were
merely extreme aspects of the same thing
• These opposites shared a common structural feature called logos (reason) and it was this that
maintained some sort of balance and regulated the continuity of change
• The cosmos is governed by a divine logos (“reason” or “argument”); the logos is universal, cosmic
law according to which all things come into being, and by which all the material elements of the
universe are held in balance
• Fire is the manifestation of logos
• It is the balancing of opposites (eg day/night, hot/cold, war/peace) which lead to the unity of the
universe or the idea that everything is part of a single fundamental process or substance
• Tension is constantly generated between pairs of opposites, and therefore everything must be in a
permanent state of flux or change
• Strife and contradiction are not to be avoided; they are what come together to make the world. If
you did away with contradiction, you would do away with reality. This in turn means reality is
unstable. Everything is in flux all the time
• Nothing in the world is permanent, everything is changing all the time
• Everything in the universe are in perpetual transition. Change is the law of life and of the
universe. It rules over all. We can never escape it.
 Heraclitus (c.535-475 BC)
Everything is flux
• “Different waters even flow upon those stepping into the same river… they scatter and combine… converge and diverge…
approach and depart.”

“Fire is the element, all things are exchanged for fire and come into being by rarefaction and condensation; but of this he gives no
clear explanation. All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of all things flows like a stream. Further, all that
is limited and forms one world. And it is alternately born from fire and again resolved into fire in fixed cycles to all eternity, and
this is determined by destiny. Of the opposites that which tends to birth or creation is called war and strife, and which tends to
destruction by fire is called concord and peace. Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the
world.”
A report by Diogenes Laertius on the idea of Heraclitus, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.
 Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 BC)
All is One

• “How could what is perish? How could

it have come into being? For if it came
into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is
going to be. Thus coming into being is
extinguished, and destruction
unknown.”
• Parmenides, On Nature.
 Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 BC)
All is One
• Parmenides met a goddess who promised to reveal to him both “the way of the truth or reality” and the deceptive “way
of the seeming” or opinion/appearance
• It surely follows that there was nothing before (the past) and there is nothing to come (the future), as both imply
non-being in the present, and this in turn that there has never been and never will be any change
• So things continue in some sort of eternal, static uniform present
• Any sort of change we think we see must be illusory – the way of seeming rather than the way of truth
• This is the ever conflict between reality versus what is seeming/ illusion.
• Everything that is real must be eternal and unchanging, and must have an indivisible unity – All is One
• If something exists (“It is”) cannot also not exist (“It is not”) as this would be a logical contradiction. Therefore, a state of
nothing existing is impossible, there can be no void
• Something then cannot come from nothing, so must always have existed in some form
• This permanent form cannot change because something that is permanent cannot change into something else without it
ceasing to be permanent. Fundamental change is therefore impossible
• So our perception of the world is faulty and full of contradictions. We seem to experience change and yet our reason tells
us that change is impossible. So we can never rely on the experience that is delivered to us by our senses
• It is self-contradictory to say of nothing that it exists. There can never have been nothing – it is not true that anything
came out of nothing. Everything must always have existed
• For similar reason, it is not possible for anything to pass into nothing. Therefore, not only must everything be
beginningless and uncreated, it must also be eternal and imperishable
• The universe is a single unchanging unity. All is One.
• Whatever appears as change, or movement, is something that occurs within an enclosed and unchanging system
• Change is a human illusion.
 Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 BC)
All is One
• It is impossible to talk about – or think about – what does not exist.
• “That which is there to be spoken and thought must be.”
• Parmenides supposes that the act of talking and thinking about something is parasitic, or
dependent upon there being a something for us to take and think about
• Given Parmenides’ claim that anything that exists can be thought of and spoken of, it
follows that that which can be thought and spoken of and that which exists are the same.
• Parmenides’ principle: That that which can be thought and spoken of and that which exists
are the same. There is no plurality, no movement, no change and no coming into
existence or ceasing to be.
• 1) Coming into existence and ceasing to be:
• Take the thought that a mango tree exists now, but did not exist before. But this
requires that you think about what does not, or did not, exist. But since Parmenides
established that we cannot think of what is not, it then follows, that we also cannot
think of things coming into existence
• For the same reason, we cannot think of things being destroyed, either. The thought of
a mango tree being destroyed requires the thought that it exists at one time, but does
not exist at a later time. But again, that involves thinking of what is not, so is a thought
we cannot have
• Therefore, while we have the impression of things coming into and passing out of
existence, this impression is deceptive.
 Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 BC)
All is One
• 2) Movement
• Parmenides supposes that for something to move (let’s say, a chair), it must move from one
place, where it is now, to another place, which is currently empty. But an empty space is
one where there is nothing, and nothing is not something we can think of, so we cannot
even entertain the thought that things move.
• Therefore, movement cannot be real.

• 3) Change
• Parmenides has already argued that things cannot come into and out of existence. But
change, it seems, requires that states of affairs come into and out of existence.
• Example: Traffic light to change from green to red
• What exists now is the light green
• While the light is green, there is at the moment no red. It is nothing. A state of nothing
existing is impossible.
• It is not possible for anything (eg green) to pass into nothing. Therefore, changing from
green to red is not possible. Green cannot turn to red since things cannot come into
existence from nothing
• Red also cannot come into existence because currently it is nothing. And a nothing
existing is, as mentioned earlier, impossible.
• There can be no change from green to red. The change that you thought that you “saw’
is just an illusion.
 Parmenides of Elea (c.515-450 BC)
All is One
• 4) Plurality
• In order for there to be a plurality of things – more than one thing – there must be
at least two things, each of which is not the other.

• But to say of something that it is not something else is to talk about what it is not –
that is to say, of nothing. And that, Parmenides thinks is impossible.

• Example: Are Harvey and Rodel one or two persons?

• To say that Harvey is not Rodel is to talk about what Harvey is not. But to talk
about what Harvey is not is not possible for nothingness is impossible.
Therefore, one cannot speak that Harvey is not Rodel.
• In the same vein, to say that Rodel is not Harvey is to talk about what Rodel is
not. But to talk about what Rodel is not is not possible for nothingness is
impossible. Therefore, one cannot speak that Rodel is not Harvey.
• Therefore, they are not two persons. All is one.

• There is no plurality, that is to say a multiplicity of “things”. Ultimately, there is

nothing but the Parmenidean one – a timeless, changeless whole. Everything else,
including the observable cosmos, belongs to the way of opinion and appearance, it
is an illusion.