Moscow State Institute of International

Relations (MGIMO-University)
School of Government and International Affairs
& Alexander Shishkin Department of Philosophy

The Basics of Philosophy

Part II
Cosmocentric Philosophy

Lecture 2

From Thales to Zeno

Early Greek Philosophy of Nature
 From Thales to Zeno
Early Greek Philosophy of Nature
 The Milesian School: The Problem of the Originating Principle
(the Primal Substance)
• The Concept of the Unity of Being
• The Concept of the Originating Principle (the Arché)
 The Pythagoreans: Numbers as the Originating Principle
• Proportions as the Basis of Universal Harmony
• Logical Reasoning and the Genesis of Scientific Method
 Heracleitus: The Problem of Change
• The Concept of Genesis: The World as the Eternal Becoming
• The Concept of Logos: The Flux and the Order
 The Eleatic School: The Illusion of Plurality and Change
• Parmenides: The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality
• Zeno’s Paradoxes: Substantiation of the Eleatic Ontology
 An Argument against Void
 Three Arguments against Plurality
 Four Arguments against Motion
• Melissus: Systematisation of the Eleatic Ontology
• The Illusions of Perception versus the Reasonable Reality
 The Milesian School
The Problem of the Originating Principle

Miletus
 The Milesian School
The Problem of the Originating Principle

Thales
(c. 630 – c. 547 B.C.)
Anaximander
(c. 610 – c. 545 B.C.)
Anaximenes
(c. 588 – c. 525 B.C.)
All dates are conjectural
All images are imaginary
 The Milesian School
The Concept of the Unity of Being

The fact that things change

into one another reveals
the principle of unity
behind the apparent diversity
of everyday experience.
 The Milesian School
The Concept of the Originating Principle

Arché
(Gr. αρχή, Lat. Principium)
is an Ancient Greek philosophical term
that indicated something primary such as
1) the starting point in both the spatial and
the temporal senses of the word;
2) a primary source or cause;
3) authority;
in specifically philosophical use,
4) the originating principle (the primal substance) or
5) the epistemological principle.
 The Milesian School
The Concept of the Originating Principle

Of the first philosophers, then,

most thought the principles which
were of the nature of matter were
the only principles of all things.
That of which all things that are consist,
the first from which they come to be,
the last into which they are resolved
(the substance remaining, but
changing in its modifications),
this they say is the element and
this the principle of things, and
therefore they think nothing is
either generated or destroyed, since
this sort of entity is always conserved.
Aristotle.
The Metaphysics.
 The Milesian School
Thales

Yet they do not all agree as to the number

and the nature of these principles. Thales,
the founder of this type of philosophy, says
the principle is water (for which reason
he declared that the earth rests on water),
getting the notion perhaps from seeing that
the nutriment of all things is moist, and
that heat itself is generated from the moist
and kept alive by it (and that from which
they come to be is a principle of all things).
He got his notion from this fact, and
from the fact that the seeds of all things
have a moist nature, and that water is
the origin of the nature of moist things.
Aristotle.
The Metaphysics.
 The Milesian School
The Concept of the Originating Principle

The Thinker The Principle

Thales Water

Apeiron
Anaximander (the infinite,
the indefinite)

Anaximenes Air
 The Milesian School
Anaximander

Apeiron
(Gr. άπειρον; from α, privative,
and πέρας, end, limit)
is an Ancient Greek philosophical term
that indicated an unlimited (infinite)
and/or indefinite something
(presumably, primal substance).
 The Milesian School
Anaximander

Anaximander, the son of Praxiadas,

was a citizen of Miletus.
He used to assert that the principle
and primary element of all things was
the Infinity, giving no exact definition
as to whether he meant air or water,
or anything else. And he said that
the parts were susceptible of change,
but that the whole was unchangeable.

Diogenes Laertius.
The Lives and Opinions
of Eminent Philosophers
(translated by C. D. Yonge).
 The Milesian School
Anaximenes

But Anaximenes <…> affirmed that

the originating principle is infinite air,
out of which are generated things existing,
those which have existed, and those that
will be. <…> For when it is dissolved
into what is more attenuated that fire is
produced, and that when it is moderately
condensed again into air that a cloud
is formed from the air by virtue of the
contraction; but when condensed still
more, water, (and) that when the
condensation is carried still further,
earth is formed; and when condensed
Hippolytus. to the very highest degree, stones.
Refutation of
All Heresies.
 The Pythagoreans
Numbers as the Originating Principle

Tarentum
Metapontum

Croton
Samos Miletus
 The Pythagoreans
Numbers as the Originating Principle

Pythagoras
(c. 570 – c. 497 B.C.)
Philolaus
(c. 470 – after 400 B.C.)
Archytas
(c. 435 – after 360 B.C.)
All dates are conjectural
All images are imaginary
 The Pythagoreans
Numbers as the Originating Principle

… the so-called Pythagoreans,

who were the first
to take up mathematics,
not only advanced this study,
but also having been brought up in it
they thought
its principles were
the principles of all things.

Aristotle.
The Metaphysics.
 The Pythagoreans
Numbers as the Originating Principle

Since of these principles

numbers are by nature the first,
and in numbers they seemed to see
many resemblances to the things
that exist and come into being –
more than in fire and earth and water
(such and such a modification of numbers
being justice, another being soul and
reason, another being opportunity –
and similarly almost all other things
being numerically expressible); ...

Aristotle.
The Metaphysics.
 The Pythagoreans
Proportions as the Basis of Universal Harmony

… since, then, all other things

seemed in their whole nature
to be modelled on numbers,
and numbers seemed to be
the first things in the whole of nature,
they supposed the elements of numbers
to be the elements of all things,
and the whole heaven
to be a musical scale
and a number.

Aristotle.
The Metaphysics.
 The Pythagoreans
Logical Reasoning and the Genesis of Scientific Method

ab/2 ab/2
ab b2

c2
a2 ba
ab/2 ab/2

(a+b)(a+b)=a2+ab+ba+b2 (a+b)2 = c2+4ab/2

(a+b)2=a2+2ab+b2 a2+2ab+b2 = c2+2ab
The Pythagorean theorem a2+b2 = c2
 The Pythagoreans
Logical Reasoning and the Genesis of Scientific Method
 Assume the diagonal of a square m and its side n
are commensurable, i.e. their ratio is represented
by two integers: m : n (it is also assumed that m
and n are not both even, otherwise the fraction
could be reduced, the numerator and denominator
both divided by 2).
 The area of the square of the diagonal m relates to
m

the area of the initial square of n as m2 : n2.

 According to the Pythagorean theorem m2 = 2n2;
therefore m2 is even; therefore m is even, too
n (otherwise m2 being the product of two odd
numbers would be odd). Then n is odd (since m
and n cannot both be even).
 Since m is even, let us represent it as m = 2t. Then
m2 = 4t2 = 2n2, hence n2 = 2t2, i.e. n2 is even; hence
The discovery of
n is even, too, which contradicts the previous
incommensurability
conclusion that n is odd. Therefore, m and n are
(irrational numbers)
incommensurable, hence not both integers.
 The Pythagoreans
Logical Reasoning and the Genesis of Scientific Method

Mastering abstract thinking and logical

reasoning helped develop previously
acquired knowledge into a theory
and discover new truths.
 Heracleitus
The Problem of Change

Ephesus
Croton
Samos Miletus
 Heracleitus
The Problem of Change

How the one can become the many,

and how the unchangeable whole
can have parts susceptible of change?

Heracleitus

The World is
the Eternal Becoming
 Heracleitus
The World as the Eternal Becoming

The same world of all things,

neither any of the gods,
nor any one of men, made.
But there was, and is,
and will be ever-living fire,
kindled according to measure, and
quenched according
to measure.

Heracleitus
(c. 540 – c. 480 B.C.)
 Heracleitus
The Flux and the Order

• The primal substance is mutable by

nature: the originating principle is fire.
• The world is eternal, but is never the
same: everything is in flux, “one
cannot step twice into the same river”.
• Everything arises out of the conflict of
opposites.
• But this conflict results not in chaos,
but in an ordered cosmos for “out of
discord comes the fairest harmony”.
• The universal principle through which
the world exists as a coherent system
is the logos.
 Heracleitus
The Concept of Logos

Logos
(Gr. λόγος, speech, word, statement;
notion, reason, measure)
is an Ancient Greek philosophical term
that indicated reason of the universe
understood as the controlling and ordering principle
that gave it form and meaning,
thereby making it a cosmos,
i.e. the orderly harmonious state of the world,
as different from chaos,
i.e. the primordial disordered and formless state thereof
before the emergence of distinct forms;
in Christian theology identified with God the Son,
the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
 The Eleatic School
The Illusion of Plurality and Change

Metapontum
Elea
Ephesus
Croton
Samos Miletus
 The Eleatic School
The Illusion of Plurality and Change

Parmenides Zeno Melissus of Samos

(born c. 515 B.C.) (c. 495 – c. 430 B.C.)
(c. 485 – c. 425 B.C.)
All dates are conjectural
All images are imaginary
 The Eleatic School
The Illusion of Plurality and Change

How the one can become the many,

and how the unchangeable whole
can have parts susceptible of change?

Heracleitus Parmenides

The World is the Eternal The World is the Eternal

Becoming Unchanging Being
 Parmenides
The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality

• Only Being exists;

Non-Being is not There is no way for the Being not to be,
and can never be. or for the Non-Being, to be.

If it were otherwise,
the Being would be the Non-Being,
and the Non-Being would be the Being,
which is, of course, ridiculous.
 Parmenides
The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality

• Only Being exists;

Non-Being is not There is no way for the Being not to be,
and can never be. or for the Non-Being, to be.

• The Being is One

If we allow for the plurality of beings, we shall
and indivisible.
have to allow for the being of a Non-Being.

Two beings would be but one unless they

were separated from each other, but they
cannot be separated by some third being
unless this third one were in turn separated
from both of them (otherwise the third one,
rather than separating the two, would link
them together forming one unbroken being),
nor can they be separated by a non-being,
because no such thing as a non-being exist.
 Parmenides
The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality

• Only Being exists;

Non-Being is not There is no way for the Being not to be,
and can never be. or for the Non-Being, to be.

• The Being is One

If we allow for the plurality of beings, we shall
and indivisible.
have to allow for the being of a Non-Being.

• The Being is Eternal

Nothing can emerge from what is not,
and unchanging. nor anything can turn into what is not.

No being can emerge from a non-being

or from some other being, because
there is but one being and this being
cannot be or become different from itself.
 Parmenides
The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality

• Only Being exists;

Non-Being is not There is no way for the Being not to be,
and can never be. or for the Non-Being, to be.

• The Being is One

If we allow for the plurality of beings, we shall
and indivisible.
have to allow for the being of a Non-Being.

• The Being is Eternal

Nothing can emerge from what is not,
and unchanging. nor anything can turn into what is not.

• Non-Being cannot The thought and its subject

be thought. are the same.

If it were otherwise, they would be two, but

we cannot allow for the plurality of beings.
 Parmenides
The World as the One Indivisible Eternal Reality

Parmenides … is often said

to have invented logic,
but what he really invented was
metaphysics based on logic. <…>
This is the first example in philosophy
of an argument from thought and
language to the world at large.
It cannot of course be accepted
as valid, but it is worthwhile to see
what element of truth it contains.

Bertrand Russel.
The History of
Western Philosophy.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
Substantiation of the Eleatic Ontology

Zeno’s Paradoxes

The Argument for the Three Arguments for the Four Arguments for the
Incomprehensibility of Incomprehensibility of Incomprehensibility of
Void Plurality Motion

The Achilles Paradox

The Paradox of Place The Divisibility Paradox
(Achilles and the Tortoise)

The Addition Paradox The Dichotomy Paradox

The Countability Paradox The Arrow Paradox

The Stadium Paradox

 Zeno’s Paradoxes
Substantiation of the Eleatic Ontology

Aporia
(Gr. απορία, puzzle, impasse;
from α, privative, and πόρος, way out)
is an Ancient Greek philosophical term
that indicated a difficult or an insoluble problem.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Paradox of Place

If place exists, where is it?

For everything that exists
is in a place.
Therefore if place exists,
then place is in a place.
This goes on to infinity.
Therefore,
place does not exist.

Simplicius.
Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Paradox of Place

If for something to exist

it must exist in some place,

then that place, inasmuch as

it exists, too (for nothing
can exist in a place that is not),
must exist in some other place.

But for that place of a place to exist

it would have to exist in still another
place, and so on ad infinitum.

Therefore, “an empty place”

as something to be distinguished
from that the place of which it is,
is utterly incomprehensible.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Divisibility Paradox

... what is, is one only, and accordingly

without parts and indivisible.
For… if it were divisible, then
suppose the process of dichotomy to
have taken place: then either there will
be left certain ultimate magnitudes,
which are minima and indivisible,
but infinite in number, and so
the whole will be made up of minima
but of an infinite number of them;
or else it will vanish and be
divided away into nothing.
Both of which conclusions are absurd...
Simplicius.
Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Divisibility Paradox

If we allow for the divisibility of Being,

we shall have to admit that every part of
Being is, as further divisible, both

and altogether
of infinite size
sizeless

(as the product

(as divisible
of the infinite number
ad infinitum), of divisions),

which is,
of course,
impossible.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Addition Paradox

… if there are many things,

they must be both small and large;
so small as not to have size,
but so large as to be infinite.

Simplicius.
Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Addition Paradox

If we allow for the divisibility of Being, i.e.

for the Being to consist of further divisible
parts, we shall have to admit that it is

either or altogether
of infinite size sizeless

(if its parts, that are (if its parts, even if

infinite in number, infinite in number,
have some size), have no size),

but then it will and, hence,

have to be indistinguishable
the only one; from the Non-Being.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Countability Paradox

If there are many, they must be

just as many as they are,
neither more nor less.
But if they are as many as they are,
they must be limited.
If there are many things,
the things that are are unlimited,
since between things that are
there are always others,
and still others between those.
Therefore the things that are
are unlimited.
Simplicius.
Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Countability Paradox

If we allow for the existence of many,

we shall have to admit that
the number of things is both

and
finite
infinite

(because they are just as (because there are

many as they are: neither always other things
more of them nor less), between those that are),

which is,
of course,
impossible.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Achilles Paradox

The second [argument] is

the one called the Achilles.
This is to the effect that the slowest
as it runs will never be caught
by the quickest. For the pursuer
must first reach the point from
which the pursued departed,
so that the slower must always
be some distance in front.

Aristotle.
Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Achilles Paradox

The fleet-footed Achilles

will never catch up with
a slow-moving tortoise,

because Achilles must

first reach the point
where the tortoise started,

by which time the tortoise will have

moved to another point, again ahead
of Achilles, and so on ad infinitum.
Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Achilles Paradox
Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Achilles Paradox
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Dichotomy Paradox

Dichotomy
(Gr. διχοτομία; from δίχα, into two parts,
and τομή, section, division)
is a division of the whole into two parts.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Dichotomy Paradox

First is the argument that says that

there is no motion because
that which is moving
must reach the midpoint
before the end.
<…>
It is always necessary
to traverse half the distance,
but these are infinite,
and it is impossible
to get through things
that are infinite…

Aristotle.
Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Dichotomy Paradox

In fact Achilles will never start

(as, for that matter, will the tortoise),

because in order to reach

any spot on a course
he must first reach halfway,

and before he reaches the halfway

spot, he must reach halfway on
the course to that halfway spot,
and so on ad infinitum.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Dichotomy Paradox
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
Four Arguments against Motion

The first two arguments The following two arguments

(“Achilles” and “Dichotomy”)
(“Arrow” and “Stadium”)
have demonstrated will demonstrate
the incomprehensibility the incomprehensibility
of motion of motion
provided provided there are
time and space are limits to the divisibility
infinitely divisible. of time and space.

As the above options

exhaust all the alternatives,
motion must be recognised
utterly incomprehensible
and, therefore, non-existent.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Arrow Paradox

What is in motion moves

neither in the place it is
nor in one in which it is not.

Diogenes Laertius.
The Lives and Opinions
of Eminent Philosophers
(translated by C. D. Yonge).
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Arrow Paradox

An arrow can fly nowhere:

neither where it is,
nor where it is not.
The latter seems obvious,
and as to the former,
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Arrow Paradox

If everything when it occupies

an equal space is at rest,
and if that which is in locomotion
is always occupying
such a space at any moment,
the flying arrow is therefore
motionless.

Aristotle.
Physics.
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Arrow Paradox

An arrow can fly nowhere:

neither where it is,
nor where it is not.
The latter seems obvious,
and as to the former,

since the arrow occupies

a place equal to its size:
neither more, nor less (otherwise it
would be bigger or smaller than itself,
which sounds ridiculous),

it has nowhere to move

(in a place it fully occupies);
and since this argument holds
for any place along its course,
it cannot move at all.
Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Arrow Paradox
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Stadium Paradox

The fourth argument is about

equal bodies moving in a stadium
alongside equal bodies
in the opposite direction,
the one group moving
from the end of the stadium,
the other from the middle,
at equal speed.
He claims in this argument
that it follows that
half the time is equal
to the double.

Aristotle.
Physics.
Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Stadium Paradox
 Zeno’s Paradoxes
The Stadium Paradox

If two chariots move towards each other

at a speed equal to
the minimal unit of space
per minimal unit of time
past an immobile chariot,

they will pass a distance equal to the minimal

unit of space in a minimal unit of time
relative to that immobile chariot and
in half a minimal unit of time
relative to each other,

which would mean (absurd as it sounds)

that a minimal, i.e. indivisible, unit of time is,
indeed, divisible since one can meaningfully
Contemporary talk of a half of it. (Needless to add, it would
reconstruction of also mean that a minimal, i.e. indivisible, unit
the Stadium paradox. of space turns out to be divisible, too).
 Melissus
Systematisation of the Eleatic Ontology
• The ontology of the Eleatic school was systematised by Melissus of
Samos.
• Proceeding from the fact that something exists, Melissus argues that
this something (Being) must be
 eternal (since nothing can come out of nothing);
 infinite (since there is nothing different from Being to limit it);
 Melissus
Systematisation of the Eleatic Ontology
If Being were finite, it would be surrounded by Non-Being.

N G
O N
Being
N I
– E
B
Since Non-Being is not, there is nothing to limit the Being.
 Melissus
Systematisation of the Eleatic Ontology
• The ontology of the Eleatic school was systematised by Melissus of
Samos.
• Proceeding from the fact that something exists, Melissus argues that
this something (Being) must be
 eternal (since nothing can come out of nothing);
 infinite (since there is nothing different from Being to limit it);
 single (since plural beings would limit each other and hence could
not be infinite);
 homogeneous (since heterogeneity implies plurality);
 immobile (since motion requires void, i.e. a Non-Being);
 unchanging (since change implies motion).
 The Illusions of Perception
versus the Reasonable Reality

Reasoning in this way, therefore, they

[the philosophers of the Eleatic School]
were led to transcend sense-perception,
and to disregard it on the grounds that
“one ought to follow the argument”;
and so they assert that
the universe is “one” and immovable.
Some of them add that it is “infinite”,
since the limit (if it had one)
would be a limit against the void.

Aristotle.
On Generation
and Corruption.
 The Illusions of Perception
versus the Reasonable Reality

… Although these opinions

appear to follow logically
in a dialectical discussion,
yet to believe them seems
next door to madness
when one considers the facts.
For indeed no lunatic seems
to be so far out of his senses
as to suppose that
fire and ice are “one”.

Aristotle.
On Generation
and Corruption.
 The Illusions of Perception
versus the Reasonable Reality

Reason demonstrates that

void, plurality, and motion
are self-contradictory notions and
cannot indicate anything existent.

Senses, on the other hand, provide

ample evidence of the existence of
many things in motion, if not of void.

Our two sources of knowledge then

disagree on a number
of important points.

Which of the two is to be considered

more reliable? Are we to mistrust our
senses that breed illusions or reason
that leads to ridiculous conclusions?
Questions?