Table Of ContentPOLARITY AND
ANALOGY
TWO TYPES OF ARGUMENTATION IN
EARLY GREEK THOUGHT
BY
G.E.R.LLOYD
Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1966
PUBLISHED BY
THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1966
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CONTENTS
Introduction page i
part one: polarity
l Theories based on opposites in early Greek
thought 15
II The analysis of different modes of opposition 86
part tw o: analogy
III The pre-philosophical background 172
IV Metaphor and imagery in Greek cosmological
theories 210
V The role of comparisons in particular accounts 304
VI The analysis of argument from analogy 384
part three: conclusion
VII The development of logic and methodology in
early Greek thought 421
Bibliography 441
Index of Passages Quoted or Refened to 459
General Index 476
V
INTRODUCTION
AIMS AND PROBLEMS
The aims of this study are to describe and analyse two main
types of argument and methods of explanation as they are
used in early Greek thought from the earliest times down to
and including Aristotle, and to consider them, in particular,
in relation to the larger problem of the development of logic
and scientific method in this period. First I should say why
the subject and the period I have chosen seem to me impor
tant. It is arguable that natural science, cosmology and
formal logic all originate (so far as the West is concerned) in
Greek philosophy. But while it is convenient and quite
justified to see these disciplines as having a definite historical
beginning, in each case the influence of previous thought on
those who were primarily responsible for initiating the new
inquiry raises an intricate issue. The Presocratic philosophers
may be credited with the first systematic attempts to give
rational accounts of natural phenomena and of the universe
as a whole. But both their scientific and their cosmological
theories undoubtedly owe a certain debt to the common stock
of pre-philosophical Greek beliefs. Aristotle is generally held
to be the founder of formal logic as we know it, and this is
evidently true in that it was Aristotle who introduced the use
of symbols into logic, for example.1 But before Aristotle the
dialogues of Plato deal with many problems which may rea
sonably be considered problems of logic, particularly in con
nection with the method of Dialectic. And we can trace a
certain awareness of some logical and methodological issues
earlier still, for it was in the pre-Platonic period that philo
sophers and scientists first debated the respective merits of
‘reason’ and ‘sensation’ as sources of knowledge, for example,
1 See, for example, Cornford, 5, p. 264. Aristotle himself claimed originality
for his work in logic at SE 183 b 34 ff.
LPA
INTRODUCTION
and began to consider the question of the relation between a
theory and the grounds or evidence in its support.
The period of Greek philosophy which we shall be con
sidering is marked by notable advances in both the theory
and the practice of logic and scientific method. My main
problems concern certain aspects of these developments. The
first systematic exposition of a set of rules of argument is
found in Aristotle, but a number of questions may be raised
concerning the use of argument in earlier Greek writers and
the circumstances in which various modes of argument came
to be recognised and analysed. Even though modes of
argument were not at first identified as such, we may never
theless consider not only what arguments were commonly
used in practice in early Greek literature for the purposes of
inference or persuasion, but also how they were used; how
far, in particular, is it possible to determine what assump
tions were made concerning the cogency of different types of
argument in the period before Plato? How far do pre-
Platonic thinkers explicitly formulate the principles or
assumptions on which their arguments are based? And how
far did Plato carry the analysis of different types of argu
ment? If we can detect certain developments in the assess
ment of certain modes of argument in the period before
Aristotle, we may also ask how far these developments
influenced the actual arguments which were subsequently
used, and whether the analysis of techniques of inference led
to any major modification in the methods of argument which
the philosophers and others employed.
One topic that invites study is the use and development of
modes of argument in the sixth to the fourth century. An
other is the related question of the use and development of
methods of explanation in the same period. Again it was
Aristotle who (in the Posterior Analytics) put forward the first
fairly complete theory of what may be called ‘scientific
method5, but again certain questions may and should be
asked concerning the earlier period. The Presocratic
2
INTRODUCTION
philosophers and the medical theorists in the Hippocratic
Corpus attempt to elucidate a wide variety of natural
phenomena. How far is it possible to decide, either from their
actual theories and explanations, or from their explicit pro
nouncements on method, where these exist, what they ex
pected of an ‘account’ of a natural phenomenon? As in the
study of the development of modes of argument, three types
of problem present themselves, first to identify the modes of
explanation which were most commonly used in practice,
second to trace the development of ideas on methodological
problems, and third to analyse the interaction between
theory and practice (where one may consider how far the
ideas expressed by different Greek philosophers and scientists
on the subject of method influenced either the types of
theories they proposed or the way in which they attempted to
establish them).
The immediate purpose of this inquiry is to elucidate the
use and development of certain modes of argument and
methods of explanation, but I hope thereby to throw some
light also on some of the broader issues of the place of
informal logic in early Greek thought before the invention or
discovery of formal logic. Indeed the broader issu«! raised by
the problem of the nature of ‘archaic logic’ can, perhaps,
only be discussed in terms of such concrete topics as the use of
certain types of argument. In a series of works beginning with
Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (1910)1 Lévy-
Bruhl developed the hypothesis of a ‘ pre-logicaT mentality, a
mentality which is ignorant of the law of contradiction and
which is ‘utterly mystical*, and as this hypothesis had a pro
found influence on at least one generation of historians of
early Greek philosophy, some comments should be made on
it here. Gornford, for example, was much influenced by
1 See a\so La Mentalité primitive (1922) and VAme primitive (1927). One typical
passage may be cited from La Mentalité primitiae (trans. L. A. Glare, ΐ923>Ρ·43δ):
the primitive ‘will always seek the true came [i.e. of ‘natural phenomena’] in
the world of unseen powers, above and beyond what we call Nature, in the
“metaphysical” realm, using the word in its literal sense’.
3
INTRODUCTION
Lévy-Bruhl’s theory in From Religion to Philosophy (1912), and
Brunschvicg,1 Reymond,2 Rey,3 and Schuhl,4 in turn, pro
vide ample evidence of the stimulus which Lévy-Bruhl’s ideas
had on classical scholars interested in the problems of the
development of logic and science in ancient Greece, even
when they challenged certain features of his interpretation.
More recently, Snell, in his influential book Die Entdeckung
des Geistes,5 still attempted to distinguish between ‘mythical’
and ‘logical’ thought, using these two terms because (as he
put it) ‘they effectively describe two stages of human
thought’.6 The influence which Lévy-Bruhl’s hypothesis had
is all the more remarkable considering the criticisms to
which it was subjected from various quarters. Already in
1912 Durkheim contested the postulate of a ‘ pre-logical ’
mentality: ‘Ainsi, entre la logique de la pensée religieuse et la
logique de la pensée scientifique il n’y a pas un abîme. L’une
et l’autre sont faites des mêmes éléments essentiels, mais
inégalement et différemment développés. Ce qui paraît
surtout caractériser la première, c’est un goût naturel aussi
bien pour les confusions intempérantes que pour les con
trastes heurtés----- Elle ne connaît pas la mesure et les
nuances, elle recherche les extrêmes; elle emploie, par suite,
1 L’Expérience humaine et la causalité physique (ist ed., 1922; 3rd ed. Paris, 1949),
especially Book 4, chs. 9 and 10.
2 Histoire des sciences exactes et naturelles dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine (ist ed.,
1924; 2nd ed., Paris, 1955), pp. n6ff.
3 La Science dans l’antiquité, vols. 1 and 2 (Paris, 1930, 1933), e.g. vol. i»pp.
434 a
4 Essai sur Information de la pensée grecque (ist ed., Paris, 1934). - In the 2nd
edition, 1949, p. xiv and n. 4, Schuhl lists a number of other classical scholars
■who were influenced by Lévy-Bruhl and also notes that Lévy-Bruhl himself
modified his thesis in the Carnets (see below, p. 5).
5 2nd ed., Hamburg, 1948, trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Discovery of the
Mind (Oxford, 1953), pp. 223 ff.
6 Snell went on to note that these two stages or types of human thought do
not exclude one another completely, but he then described the difference be
tween them, as he conceived it, in the following vague and seemingly confusing
terms (3, p. 224): ‘Mythical thought requires receptivity; logic cannot exist
without activity. Logic does not materialize until man has become cognizant of
the energy within him, and the individuality of his mind. Logical thought is
unimpaired wakefulness; mythical thinking borders upon the dream, in which
images and ideas float by without being controlled by the will.*
4
INTRODUCTION
les mécanismes logiques avec une sorte de gaucherie, mais
elle n’en ignore aucun.’1 Moreover Lévy-Bruhl himself
radically modified his position in his later writings. In a
letter to Professor Evans-Piitchard (written in 1934 and pub
lished in the British Journal of Sodology in 1952) he granted
that the term ‘pre-logicaP was ‘rather unfortunate’, while in
the Carnets (no. in, dated 1938, published in 1947 in Revue
philosophique) we find the following note (p. 258) : Έη ce qui
concerne le caractère “prélogique” de la mentalité primi
tive, j’avais déjà mis beaucoup d’eau dans mon vin depuis 25
ans; les résultats auxquels je viens de parvenir touchant ces
faits [i.e. beliefs reported from certain African societies]
rendent cette évolution définitive, en me faisant abandonner
une hypothèse mal fondée, en tout cas, dans les cas de ce
genre.’
The hypothesis of a ‘ pre-logical ’ mentality has long been
discredited,2 and it was eventually abandoned by its author
himself. But some, at least, of the difficulties which that hypo
thesis was invented, to solve remain real difficulties. No doubt
it would be unwise to compare the problems facing the
student of early Greek thought with those facing the anthro
pologist too closely3 (and the methods of the two disciplines
1 Les Formes élémentaires de la oie religieuse (Paris, 1912), p. 342.
2 Writing in 1954, G. Lienhardt, for example, began a discussion of primitive
modes of thought with the warning that ‘none of us who study savage societies
would say, today, that there are modes of thought which are confined to primi
tive peoples’ (in The Institutions of Primitive Society, ed. E. E. Evans-Pritchard,
Oxford, 1954, p· 95)· The most recent full-length study of primitive thought is
C. Lévi-Strauss’s La Pensée saunage (Paris, 1962), in which Lévi-Strauss shows
with a great wealth of documentation how, for «cample, the members of
primitive societies often observe and classify natural species with extraordinary
accuracy and minute attention to detail.
3 The cautious judgements οζ among others, Schuhl (pp. 5 ff.) and Guthrie
(4, pp. 18 ff.) on the subject of the use of comparative anthropology, provide
an important corrective to the tendency to assume that material collected by the
anthropologists necessarily affords the key to the understanding of ancient
Greek beliefe. Yet in two contrats, in particular, it may prove very useful to
consult such material: first, for a negative purpose, to counter a suggestion that
some Greek belief is simply the result of a hypothetical ‘ universal tendency of
human thought’,* and secondly, with a positive aim, to suggest possible lines of
inquiry which we may follow in our attempts to elucidate what at first sight
may seem incomprehensible beliefe or practices.
5
INTRODUCTION
differ profoundly since the evidence for ancient Greek thought
is almost entirely literary). But dissatisfaction with Lévy-
BruhPs concept of a ‘pre-logicaT mentality may prompt
both the anthropologist and the classical scholar to attempt
to give a more adequate account of the informal logic implicit
in primitive or archaic thought. Indeed the evidence of early
Greek literature, limited though this is, is especially interest
ing and valuable since it enables us to study not only the
nature of the logical principles implicit in archaic beließ, but
also the development of logic itself and the gradual recogni
tion and analysis of those principles. In particular, the
evidence for ancient Greek thought in the period down to
Aristotle provides us with a unique opportunity to consider
how far the invention or discovery of formal logic merely
rendered explicit certain rules of argument which were
implicitly observed by earlier writers, or to what extent the
analysis of various modes of argument involved the modifica
tion and correction of earlier assumptions.
METHOD AND EVIDENCE
The broad field of this inquiry is the modes of argument and
forms of explanation of early Greek thought down to
Aristotle, but the method of approach to this subject which
I have adopted should be defined, and some remarks should
be made on the nature of the evidence on which this study is
based. First on the question of method. In dealing with the
types of argument and explanation in early Greek thought
two main methods seem to be possible, which might be called
for want of better terms the analytic and the synthetic. The
first would attempt a full description of the relevant texts,
reaching general conclusions only at the end of an exhaustive
survey of the evidence : this has the advantage of complete
ness. The second method would offer preliminary generalisa
tions as working hypotheses, as it were, which may, and
indeed probably will, require modification in the light of the
6
