Table Of ContentThe Greek cosmologists
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To
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Cambridge Books Online © Cambridge University Press, 2009
The Greek cosmologists
Volume i
The formation of the atomic theory
and its earliest critics
David Furley
Charles Ewing Professor of
Greek Language and Literature,
Princeton University
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© Cambridge University Press 1987
First published 1987
British Library cataloguing in publication data
Furley, David
The Greek cosmologists.
Vol. 1: The formation of the atomic
theory and its earliest critics
1. Cosmology, Greek
I. Title
113'.0938 B187.C7
Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data
Furley, David J.
The Greek cosmologists.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
Contents: v. 1. The formation of the atomic
theory and its earliest critics.
1. Cosmology, Ancient. I. Title.
BD495.F87 1987 113'.0938 86-26384
ISBN o 521 33328 8
Transferred to digital printing 2004
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Contents
Preface page vii
1 Two pictures of the world i
2 The judgement of Socrates 9
3 The beginning in Miletus 16
1 The origin of the world: matter alive 16
2 The dynamics and shape of the world 23
3 Anaximander and infinity 28
4 Two philosophical critics: Heraclitus and Parmenides 31
1 The value of logos 31
2 Heraclitus on change 33
3 The challenge of Parmenides 3 6
4 The effects of Parmenides'poem 42
5 Pythagoras, Parmenides, and later cosmology 49
1 Mathematics and cosmology 51
2 The pioneer of the centrifocal universe 53
3 Pythagorean fantasies 5 7
6 Anaxagoras 61
1 Anaxagoras 61
2 Mind as a cosmic agent 63
3 Anaxagoras'theory of matter 65
4 The cosmos of Anaxagoras 70
7 Empedocles and the invention of elements 79
1 The four roots 79
2 Love and Strife 83
3 The formation of the cosmos and its contents 8 6
4 'Mortal kinds in thousands, a wonder to behold' 94
5 The question of the cosmic cycle 98
6 Appendix: the action of Love and Strife 102
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vi Contents
8 LaterEleatic critics 105
1 The paradoxes of plurality 106
2 Melissus no
9 Leucippus and Democritus 115
1 The men and their books 115
2 What is and what is not 117
3 Atoms 122
4 Atoms and mathematics 127
5 Perceptible qualities of compounds 131
10 The cosmos of the Atomists 136
1 The infinite universe 136
2 The origin of our world 140
3 The Atomists' theory of motion 146
11 The anthropology of the Atomists 152
1 The materialist theory of the psyche 152
2 The growth of civilization 158
3 Nature and morality 158
4 The divinities of the materialists 160
5 The progress of rationalism 163
12 Plato's criticisms of the materialists 169
1 Matter as a secondary cause 169
2 Matter and predication 171
3 The impiety of materialism 173
13 Aristotle's criticisms of the materialists 177
1 The failure of Presocratic explanations 177
2 Aristotle's criticisms of Presocratic theories of elements 182
3 Criticism of atoms and void 188
4 Rival theories of motion, and the position
of the earth 193
Bibliography 201
Index of passages 211
General index 218
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Preface
This volume tells one side of the story of ancient Greek cosmology, and
takes it as far as the criticisms directed by Aristotle at his materialistic pre-
decessors. The book is to be completed in a second volume, The Teleologi-
cal World Picture and its Opponents. In that I shall give an account of the
cosmology of Plato's Timaeus and Aristotle's works on the philosophy of
nature, followed by the attempted rehabilitation of the atomic theory of
the universe by Epicurus and his followers. Then I shall try to describe the
arguments of philosophers of the Hellenistic period and later, including
the Stoics and the later Peripatetics. I hope to take the story as far as the
time of Simplicius and Philoponus, in the sixth century A.D.
I have tried to make the book readable by those with no specialized
knowledge of Greek philosophy, and no Greek. Although it is not de-
signed to be a course textbook, in writing it I have kept in mind the
students to whom I lecture every year in Princeton University in a course
called 'Introduction to Ancient Philosophy'. They include some who are
taking a major in Classics or Philosophy, but also many who have never
before studied the ancient world or read anything of the Greek philos-
ophers. I have tried to keep the philological technicalities to a minimum.
On some subjects I have adopted positions that need more detailed
defense than I have been able to give in this context. I have sometimes
argued the case in articles that have been published separately in the pro-
fessional journals, or in papers that are not yet published. I hope to collect
these together in one volume, and to publish them under the title Cosmic
Problems. References are given in the footnotes to those already
published.
Although I have tried to write a book accessible to anyone who is
interested in the history of science and philosophy, I hope there may be
something in it that will interest my professional colleagues too. Much of
the territory covered is certainly quite familiar. But the particular selec-
tion of subject matter, and the thesis that one can profitably treat Greek
cosmology as an opposition between two fundamentally opposed ways of
looking at the world, make this book a little different. It is very nearly
seventy-five years since Pierre Duhem launched his great Systeme du
monde with a volume on Greek (mainly Platonic and Aristotelian) cos-
vn
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viii Preface
mology; there has been much research since then, especially on the period
before Plato, as well as a vast change in our own cosmological outlook. So
it may well be time for another attempt to take a comprehensive view of
the subject.
I must acknowledge, with much gratitude, the help of many friends too
numerous to mention here by name. Those who study classical philos-
ophy form a relatively small enclave in the world of learning. It is a
friendly place to live in, and I have enjoyed and profited from personal
contacts with many of those whose names appear in the Bibliography at
the end of this volume, as well as from their writings. Those who have had
a special connection with this book are Tony Long, who read an earlier
version in typescript, and Richard Sorabji, who read a good deal of the
present version. Both made valuable suggestions for which I am very
grateful. I also thank an anonymous reader for the Cambridge University
Press, who made me think harder and (I hope) better about a number of
points.
Three of my graduate students, future colleagues, have given me great
help in the preparation of the typescript. Jeffrey Purinton interpreted the
handwritten draft of several chapters and put them on the computer.
Carolyn Higbie typed other chapters and made the first draft of the Bibli-
ography and Index of Passages. Paul Vander Waerdt read the whole type-
script and helped to remove many errors of commission and omission.
I must also acknowledge the help of several institutions. The early
stages of my work on the theme of matter and motion in classical an-
tiquity were supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation,
which enabled me to supplement a sabbatical leave from Princeton Uni-
versity and spend the year 1973/4 free of teaching responsibilities except
for a graduate seminar on the subject. In 1978/9 I received a Fellowship
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and also had the
stimulus and pleasure of teaching a Summer Seminar for College Teachers
funded by the Education Division of N.E.H. The manuscript of this
volume was completed in the spring of 1984, in another semester of sab-
batical leave. I am grateful to all these institutions, and especially to Prin-
ceton University for the unfailing support I have received from librarians
and administrators, students and colleagues.
DJ.F.
Princeton
1986
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Two pictures of the world
The educational tradition of the Western half of the world has fairly re-
cently adopted a new picture of the physical universe and man's place in
it. We are now brought up to believe that we live on one of the planets that
move in orbits around a rather minor star, itself a member of one galaxy
among a vast number of others. We are taught that our planet is not eter-
nal, but had an origin and will have an end; that it has grown into its pres-
ent condition through a long evolutionary process, in which the minerals
developed first, before any life appeared, and then the complex living
species that we see around us, including man, evolved over a very long
period of time through the processes of mutation, natural selection, and
inheritance.
This picture has largely, though not entirely, replaced an earlier one
that held the field for many centuries. According to that, the earth is sta-
tionary at the center of the cosmos. The stars, planets, sun, and moon
revolve around the earth. The cosmos is finite, being bounded by the
outermost sphere of the heavens, and is unique. This cosmic order,
according to the prevalent, Judaeo-Christian version of the picture, was
determined and brought into being at a certain point of time by God, who
adopted it because it is a good order. He also created all the living species
that now exist and arranged them in a hierarchical order of decreasing
complexity or excellence, with man at the top of the scale. 'Above' the
whole order of earthly creatures is a rather similar order of heavenly
beings, all better than man but having similar characteristics, with God at
the top. So the species Man, being created in the image of God, and being
the best of the creatures that live near the center of the whole universe, has
a uniquely privileged position.
Elements of this older picture of the world still survive in religious edu-
cation and in popular thought, speech and action. On the whole, it has
been banished from research laboratories and departments of philosophy
in universities, although there are some highly sophisticated attempts to
reconcile the new world picture with certain features of the old, especially
the creative role of God and the special relationship between God and
man.
The transition from the older to the newer picture was, of course, not
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