Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 12: Heraclitus, Change, and the Problem of Contradiction

Transcript
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Obviously, he does see a difference between being sleeping and being awake, right? But he speaks or says in words that the sleeping and the awake are the same, right? Because one becomes the other, right? The living and the dead are the same, right? The end are the same, right? So if you just take his words, he seems to be admitting that something both is and is not, right? And that's what led Parmenides to make explicit, hey, that's impossible, right? He says only a two-headed mortal could think that. You have to have one head to think that it is so, one to think it isn't so, right? But one and the same head couldn't think both at the same time, right? And, of course, a two-headed mortal would be a monster, right? Something unnatural, right? And, of course, Heraclitus said we should follow nature, right? But if you just take Heraclitus' words, day and night are the same, then he seems in words to be making a contradiction, right? Okay? So now you have the famous dichotomy, right? The most famous dichotomy in human thought. Are you going to follow Heraclitus, who says everything's changing, but change involves a contradiction, therefore it's possible something to both be and not be, right? Or are you going to follow Parmenides and say something can't both be and not be, right? Therefore, change is a, what? Illusion, right? Okay? Now, if you had to choose between these two, right, which would be more reasonable? Right now it would be Parmenides, but we don't know enough to make the difference. Now, usually when I ask this in class, some people will say, well, our knowledge starts with our senses, right? And as Shakespeare says in Taurus and Crescita, things in motion sooner catch the eyes than what not stirs, right? So if you're following your senses, what catches your senses, it's motion, it's change, right? So starting from your senses, you might say change is real, right? And therefore, it's possible to both be and not be right. Okay? But Parmenides says, well, you can't really think that's so, right? That it is and is not, right? Therefore, this talk about change must be a, what? Illusion, right? Okay? Now, here's the way to avoid these two alternatives, right? But if you had to choose between these two, which should be more reasonable? Yeah, so that change exists, and that... Parmenides seems more logical if you're just doing it analytically, right? Well, you see, Parmenides seems more logical. Yeah, you're following reason there, yeah, see? If you're following your senses, you kind of kind of follow Heraclitus there, right? And Hegel and Marx, right? Following the words, not necessarily the thought, but the words there of Heraclitus, the official name of the Marxist philosophy is dialectical materialism. But the dialectical part comes from Hegel, right? And what they mean by dialectical is that there's real contradictions in things, and the struggle of the opposites gives rise to development, right? So, sometimes I use Heraclitus against Heraclitus on this matter, and I say, well, Heraclitus says in other fragments that we have to follow what is common, right? Okay? So if you and I disagree, right, it doesn't get us anywhere for me to say, you know, I'm right and therefore you're wrong, and you return the compliment, okay? If you and I disagree, we have to get back to something we can both agree about, right? And then try to decide between us, right? Like two scientists, you know, if you've got one hypothesis and another hypothesis, we might both, you know, make a prediction on the basis of our hypothesis, right? And find an experiment we could both observe that would contradict maybe one of our predictions and not the other one, right? Okay? Now, I say, what does Heraclitus and Parmenides have in common? Well, at first sight, they have nothing in common, right? Because the one guy says everything's changing, and the other guy says there's no change at all, that's all illusion. And yet one guy seems, at least in words, to be saying something can both be and be and not be. We are and we are not, as he said, right? And the other guy says, no, that's impossible, you know? Okay? But the one guy affirms, the other guy deny. and vice-versa, right? But, if you think about it more deeply, right? You say, hey, they do have something in common. They think you have to choose between change and the impossibility of contradiction. And if you choose change, you have to reject the impossibility of contradiction. And if you choose the impossibility of contradiction, you have to reject change, right? That's what they agree about, right? You've got to, you see? Now, why do you have to choose between them? Because, apparently, they contradict each other. That's Parmenides' principle, right? So, in choosing between them, if Hercules is really doing that, right? He's doing so on the basis of Parmenides' principle, right? So, the ball game's over. Parmenides is one. Okay? But, at the same time, you know, it's absurd to deny that change exists, as Plato and Aristotle recognize, right? And this is kind of a great discovery now, right? Once you recognize that Parmenides is correct in saying that this is fundamental, you know, and yet you realize it's absurd to deny that change exists, then there must be a way of understanding change that does not involve a real contradiction. And, therefore, that apparent contradiction underneath it is hidden the way nature really is, right? And that's what Plato and Aristotle set out to do, right? To untie the apparent contradiction, right? Okay? And that's been followed all the way up to the Summa Theologiae, right? That idea of presenting what seems to be a contradiction, right? And then untying it, right, huh? And Aristotle will talk about this way of discovering things, right, by untying contradictions in the beginning of the third book of Wisdom. We'll see that in the reading later on. In the next one, what does Heraclitus mean in this one saying, changing, it rests? Okay. Now, two things there, huh? One is, I've heard people say, right, I find travel very restful. Oh, yeah. Okay? And I say, now, how can that be? Because travel is obviously motion and the opposite of rest, right? So they're saying I'm finding motion very restful. Okay? There's a part of contradiction there, right? Okay? Now, vice versa, huh? You've got, you know, some ceremony, like a long event in church, like that, right? And you tell the little boy, little girl, you've got to sit still, right? And sitting still for all that time makes him very restless, right? So being still makes him restless, right? Seems like a contradiction, right? Of course, here you can see that when my body is in motion, right? The person says I find travel restful, right? They go for a walk, right? That when their body is in motion, then their emotions calm down, right? Okay? And with the little boy, it's a reverse, right? When his body is made to be at rest, right? Then his emotions get all agitated, right? See? So it's not the same thing that's at rest and at motion, right? Okay? Now, maybe Heraclitus is stating it that way because he wants to, what? Stimulate your, what? Thinking, right? Okay? But if you just take the words on the surface, right? In words, he seems to be admitting a contradiction. Day and night are the same and so on, right? You know, people sometimes talk about just day and night to express things in a kind of, what, paradoxical way, right? Okay? I've seen this sticker on somebody's car in the church parking lot there in Mass in the morning, you know? The best things in life aren't things. Have you seen that one? Oh. Yeah. Well, just take the words now. The best things in life are not things. It's called Rift in itself. Yeah. There's kind of an appearance there, right? But I think the meaning of it is, you know, that what? People. Something like that? Yeah, sometimes we say people are not things, right? But in some sense, the word things, they are things, right? Okay? Now, I've talked about that using equivocal words, right? Where something is said of two things and one of them keeps the common word as its own, right? And the other, because it adds something noteworthy, gets a new name, right? That's true about the word thing, right? Thing is said of things and persons, right? And persons gets a new name because they add. So in one sense of things, a person is a thing, they're not nothing, right? But in another sense, they're divided against things, right? So, the best things in life, yeah. So in the first part of the sentence, things is what? In a common sense, right? And when you say are not things, it's, right? So it kind of makes you stop and think, what are they saying here, right? What's the meaning of that, right? You have to stop and, in this case, distinguish the two meanings of things and so on, right? You see? But on the surface, there's an appearance of contradiction, maybe it's to make you stop and think, right? Why do we say day becomes night? Becomes means comes to be. Does day really come to be night? Well, then day is night, right? Well, I don't mean that. Then why do you say that, you see? And if day doesn't become night, then day remains day forever, right? And we'll never have any night. Or if it's night time, night does not become day, so it's always going to be night. You see? If the ignorant can't become knowing, you'll always be ignorant. Right? Okay. You see that? Yeah. Now, we've got to stop pretty soon here, huh? We stopped at 4.30. We stopped, yeah. But as you look at the next three fragments here, DK54, 51, 8, which I'll leave you to think about, and we'll talk about them next time. You can see, maybe Heraclitus doesn't mean that these things really are contradictory, right? But he wants to bring out the appearance of contradiction, okay? To make you stop and what? Think, right, huh? Just like Thomas, you know, when he gives the first part of each summa, you know, you get, you know, three or four arguments against what he's going to say, right? And then one on the other side, right? So there's a little contradiction there, right? And that's to make you stop and what? Think, right? And then the body of the article, as you call it, but sometimes in the earlier works, you know, they'll call the body of the article the solutio, right? Which means in Latin the untying, right? The untying of that apparent contradiction, huh? And then the question is disputate, you know, you might have, you know, many more than that, you know, on the other side. Yeah, you might have made 10, 15 on one side and, you know, 5 or 10 on the other side, right? And so your mind really gets kind of tied up temporarily, right? And then you have to untie this, right, huh? Okay? So we'll continue with the central thinking of the thought, huh? and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, orden and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. The last time we were on page two of the current readings, and we had seen this group of fragments, where Heraclitus is speaking about change. He pointed out what seems to be contradictions, right? And he spoke as if change is between opposites, which it is. And since we actually say that, what, the hard becomes soft, and the healthy becomes sick, and so on, and day becomes night, we seem to be saying that one opposite becomes the other, which would be a, what, contradiction, right? Now, does Heraclitus really think that day and night are the same, and the sleeping and the waking are the same? Well, some people took that as being the truth, like Hegel in modern times, and Karl Marx, and people like that, right? But notice now, around the middle of page two there, D.K. 54, and a few fragments there, which show that maybe Heraclitus is pointing out what seems to be a contradiction, huh? He says, The hidden harmony is better than the, what? Apparent. Now, Socrates brings out this very well, doesn't he? Socrates would always, what? Say, What do you think? And you tell him what you think, and maybe some things you think, lead to a contradiction with something else you think, and therefore your thoughts are not in, what? Harmony. Okay? Now, most people walking around, though, they think their thoughts fit together, right? You see? When Socrates pulls them out of your head, and compares them, and sees what follows from some of them, they tend to, what? Contradict others, right? Okay? So the simplest example of that in Socrates is the first conversation with the slave boy in the Mino, where the slave boy is asked by Socrates, how do you double square? Double the side, he says. Okay? But if you take an example like a square that's two by two, and you double the side, and get a square of four by four, eventually you'll see that four by four is not double two by two, even the slave boy can see that, right? So, Socrates leads you out of a state of apparent harmony, into what? Contradiction. But hidden underneath this contradiction, is a what? A harmony that is true, right? And hidden underneath that contradiction, is the way you actually do double a square, which is to take the diameter of the square, and that would be the side of the square, it tries to speak. Okay? Now, notice what he said in the beginning, nature allows to hide. And now he's saying the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony. But that's what's really out there in what? Nature, huh? Nature. Okay? Now you could apply that to other things, too, besides knowing, huh? You could apply it to what? Friendship, right? The hidden harmony is better than the apparent. The apparent harmony is the harmony that cut you off or something, right? Mm-hmm. Or the harmony when the man and the woman are going out and, you know, placing entertainment and so on and being entertained, right, huh? And so they seem to be in harmony, right? But can you really become a good friend to somebody without coming into some kind of conflict with them? See? But maybe hidden underneath this conflict is a true, what? Harmony, right? Okay. They do not understand how that which is opposed agrees with itself. There is a harmony of opposites, as in the case of the bow and the leer. Well, being an old Indian, I know better the bow example there, right? If I start pushing with this hand in that direction, and I start pulling with this hand in this direction, my hands are working at cross purposes, aren't they? But now with the bow, when I get the guy over there, I'm pulling this way with this hand and I'm pushing with this hand, but are they working at cross purposes? No. The more I pull this way, the greater force, right? The arrow will go all the way across the room and through that man there and put him to the wall. Do you see? So, although my hands are pulling in opposite directions, they're really working together, aren't they, right? So, maybe things seem to be opposed when they're not. And now this beautiful statement, the opposite is useful. I tell my American students, the American economic system is based on that, isn't it? It's based on competition, right? Competition is useful, right? Keeps the price down, right? So, if I'm charging too much of the product and someone else offers it for a lesser price than me, I will be out of business, right? Unless I come down my price, right? Or if he makes an improvement in his product, and I'm going to have to, what? Improve my product, right? And our government is based upon the idea that opposing parties is, what? Useful, right? And certainly in the 20th century, a one-party state is usually tyranny, right? Communist Party or the Nazi Party or the Fascist Party or something. So, are there other ways that the opposite is useful? In the courtroom. Courtroom. Same thing, right? We think in the courtroom there ought to be one guy trying to prove he's guilty. Another guy trying to prove he's not guilty, right? And we think out of that opposition we'll get closer to the truth, right? That if you just heard the guy saying he's guilty or you just heard the guy saying he's not guilty. So our legal system in a way and our political system and economic system are based upon the idea that the opposite is, what? Useful, right? And character develops when you have some, what? Opposition, right? And it's useful for someone to oppose my thinking, what I think. Okay. Well, if I'm mistaken what I think, then his opposition to me is useful because I might discover my error and escape from it, right? But even if I have true thinking, right? When he opposes me then I'm forced to what? Think it out. Yeah. To defend it better and so on, right? And so Augustine says that heresy helped to develop theology, right? And so you see so many works I see in Augustine and other works in the patristic period contra so-and-so contra manichelos contra donatistas or whoever it is, right? And contra this man or that man, right? Who's come up with some crazy idea, right? Who was attacked in the article of the faith, right? And that position was useful for the development of what? Theology, yeah? And from those differing comes the most beautiful what? Harmony. Well, just take the example of a beautiful painting, right? If the whole painting is filled with light or the whole painting is dark it would not be beautiful, right? But you have to say the Rembrandt the man in the helmet and there's a shaft of light that catches the thing, right? Okay. So my mother used to say that a diamond is most beautiful under candlelight, right? Rather than under, say, this kind of a light, huh? Because all of opposites, right? Seems to kind of sparkle, right? And the stars at night are beautiful but if the whole sky was illuminated wouldn't it be beautiful? Or if the whole sky was dark but the black sky with the stars against it is, what, beautiful, huh? And usually the sun is more beautiful at sunrise or sunset, right? Or there's shadows and things of this sort, right? Than the, um, during midday, right? When it's just all light, huh? Maybe you notice in this kind of weather that we had the moonlight a full moon and you get that pattern of the trees, you know, on the snow. It's really beautiful. But those are but those are that we're going to do it, right? opposites right we get the moon in our new chapel now it does yeah moonbeams yeah and obviously this is true about marriage and the present controversy right from opposites comes the most beautiful harmony huh but now he says all things come to be by strife well here he seems to be talking about a third kind of cause right the cause of motion and becoming right the mover the maker right and he attributes this to the opposites right that are in things and to the struggle of the opposites right so he says war is the father of all things the king of all things and these he has shown gods but those men these he has made slaves and those three well now um hegel took this over right the hegel's dialectical method in his sense is that everything is a struggle of what opposites right and the communists or marxists got this from what hegel so carmen lennon says that what um dialectics in the marxist sense is the struggle of opposites huh okay war is the father of all right okay so sometimes a marxist will go right back to this statement here right of heraclitus and say ah good exposition lennon says of the rudiments of dialectical materialism right but no it's dialectical materialism is saying what that everything starts with matter right and things develop out of matter through a struggle of what opposites right there's some truth to this right but notice what he says here war is the father of all things he doesn't say the mother but the father right and we saw before how with mother earth the mother and in latin there with the word materia is derived from mater mother right that is used to the word father here is that he's thinking of another kind of cause now the mover or the what maker yeah and that's one reason why we call god a father and not a mother right because he's a cause in the sense of a uh mover the unmoved mover right or the first maker he's not a cause in the sense of matter right and so in aristotle talks about the mover cause he says as the advisor or the father right giving an example of the father as a cause in the sense of nature and then the advisor a sense of mover or maker by reason right so it's very significant these are the word father here next fragment is touching upon that same thing we must know that war is common and strife is justice that all things come into be into being by strife and fate or necessity you see heraclitus is the man who most of all emphasized the change in the world around us all things flow nothing abides so it's not strange that he should begin to think of this third kind of cause which is the source of motion right the source of becoming now the next fragment here we mentioned in the beginning how we look at these fragments as reasonable guesses and a guess can be reasonable because there's a reason for it right good reason for it especially or because reason meaning the power of the ability um is naturally inclined towards it and notice in this beautiful fragment he says it is wise listening not to me heraclitus but to reason to agree that all things are one right that it's a very nature of reason to look for something one unity yeah yeah now perhaps it's more known that reason looks for order right but order is based upon something one so we order all events for example chronologically by one event right one event right so i was born in 1936 right and everybody could go around the table and say when he was born right okay and when abraham lincoln was assassinated and when george washington crossed the delaware and so on but all these events are put in order by one event the birth of christ right or we say aristotle died in 322 bc okay so we order all other events in time before or after one event okay and the army is what ordered by going back to one man of course we spoke of this already when talked about how thales the very first philosopher looked for something what one right okay if you read the great physicists too they always talk about the search for unity how they never give up looking for something one right to explain everything equation of everything now in the fragment on the bottom of page two you get the position of heraclitus on the first matter instead of taking mother earth or water or air he takes what fire in this fragment all things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things just as goods for gold and gold for goods huh or we could say goods for money and money for good right uh they don't really turn things into money right and then return money to something else that's kind of a nice little comparison right now is fire as good a guess as water or air you know in a way looking at looking go coming from his position it seems to be a very good guess simply because it's so volatile and okay okay constantly changing okay if you're thinking of a mover fire would be a better guess than water right it's transforming yeah yeah but if you're thinking of fire as the matter out of which things are made then fire would not seem to be as good as water or air because it has more definite qualities than they have right okay although perhaps in terms of being fine and thin and penetrating things you would be a better guess huh so one way it's a better guess being finer maybe and thinner and more penetrating in other ways so far as it has more definite qualities even than water it's more definitely hot and dry than water is cold right it's not as good a guess right but maybe he's thinking a bit of the mover when he gets his fire too right wouldn't it be it wouldn't be natural for him to come at it from that position yeah yeah point of view but it's kind of interesting that what makes it a good mover it's being so hot so it can boil the water and make the hot air rise and so on what makes it a good mover makes it in a way a bad guess as the first matter which is a kind of a sign maybe that you shouldn't identify the matter with the mover and we'll see in pedocles and more so in alexagris that they'll start to separate more and more the what matter in the mover right and pedocles much more than than the heraclitus does where they're kind of jumbled together and even more so in what anaxagris they'll be separated huh but the marxists like to go back to this you see because they don't want to separate matter and the mover because that's going to put you on the road to the immaterial unmoved mover right on the road to god so they want to keep that confusion right now the modern physicists like the great heisenberg said if you exchange for the word fire energy you can repeat word for word what he says right because we say in modern science that all things are exchanged for energy and energy for all things according to einstein's equation right force equals i mean equals mc squared right um and heisenberg said that the modern physicists things have energy both as that out of which things are made right but also it's the mover right so that kind of confusion of the two right okay now Obviously, you've got to be careful in that comparison, because the fire of Heraklitus is a much more concrete thing than energy in modern physics. Energy in modern physics is something that appears in the universal equations of modern physics, right? So it's a very abstract mathematical thing, right? The universal equations. Sometimes I made a little comparison here, which is a certain likeness of these universal equations of modern physics to the premises of a syllogism. Because in both cases, you deduce something from them, right? Now, Aristotle, when he talks about the premises of a syllogism, sometimes he speaks as if they are the material cause of the conclusion, what the conclusion is made out of, right? Sometimes he speaks of them as if they are the mover or the maker of the conclusion. Well, let's just take the the form of syllogism to illustrate this point. Syllogism is an argument in which some statements laid down, right? Another follows necessarily because of those laid down. So, I laid these two down. Every B is A, whatever B and A might be. And every C is B. What follows necessarily? Every C is A. Every C is A, yeah. Now, you can say that the conclusion is made out of its parts, right? And its parts, C and A, are found in the, what? Premises, right? So, in that sense, premises are the matter of the conclusion, C and A, right? Okay? But B, the so-called middle term, huh? It's not a part of the conclusion, is it? What does it contribute to that? What brings together C and A, right? Okay? So, the middle term is more like the mover or maker. And the major and the minor terms that are brought together in the conclusion are more like, what? Matter, right? So, the universal equations of physics are maybe a little bit like premises, right? They have some likeness to matter and some likeness to mover without really being those two things, right? It's like this guy I know arranged for this man-woman to be at the same party where everybody was married except for them. They thought they were suitable to each other, right? And they suddenly were. Very quickly were engaged. So, is he a part of the marriage or not? A mover, right? That's a catalyst. Yeah. He was a mover there that parts the marriage, right? But they were brought together by him, right? Okay? So, the middle term is like that man, right? Or like the middle man economics who brings together in some way the consumer and the producer, right? So, Heraclitus may be somewhat confusedly thinking of matter and mover together in his, what? Fire, right, huh? So, in that sense he represents an advance beyond the guys before who've been talking simply about the matter out of which things are made, right? And he's seen the need for the mover. Beginning and end are common in the circumference of the circle. But we saw the importance of that for cause, right? And even for the first kind of cause that we've seen namely matter. We saw that explicitly in the words of an axiomenda, right? What is the beginning of things is also there, what? In, right? Okay. But the materialist is thinking like we think what we say on Ashburn's day it's not too far away I guess dust thou art, right? And to dust thou shalt return, right? So if you're made out of dust you go the material you go back to dust, right? Right, huh? Okay. But God also is a beginning and end of things but in another meaning of beginning and end, right? He's a beginning of things in the sense of a maker or creator, right? And an end in the sense of purpose that for the sake of which, right? So I'd always like to say to people I'd rather have a beginning and end in that sense than the sense which bad would be by beginning and my end, right? You see? But that's interesting, huh? That he'll point that out that same point So the Greeks are saying that reality is basically what? Circular, right? In the sense that the what? Beginning and end are the same, right? Rather than a straight line, right? Okay? We tend in the modern world to talk about progress, right? And progress is a lot straight line That as a beginning it seems to have no end, right? Like these computers right, huh? They're always making them better and better, right? You see these little portable phones now these little handheld telephones now that take a picture, right? The advertising now one of my nieces has one of these things you know and she goes over to somebody at the house there, you know You can take a picture with your telephone Yeah, yeah, yeah I suppose you could probably transpose it to somebody It's constantly being updated all the time You buy a new computer and in six months it's outdated you know even doing that old thing I keep on being able to do more and more things and I have told to say well a few things a few word processing that's all I do and they usually make things more difficult for me to do what I want to do But anyway Now the next group of fragments here you see that maybe Heraclitus is anticipating something will meet very explicitly in Empedocles But he seems to be saying now maybe there's something behind this earth that the poets talked about right? This water that Thales talked about this air that Maximus talked about and this fire that I talk about right? He's saying the way up and down is one and the same maybe this is part of the circle of things Now he's kind of looking maybe at the universe as it appears to us in ordinary experience What you find here in the center of the universe so to speak is the earth right? And on top of the earth there's some water and on top of the water there's air and then the sun the moon and the stars there up there you get some fire right? Okay And now he seems to speak as if earth could become water right? And water could become air and air could become fire and vice versa fire could become air air water water what? Earth right? Now if that is in fact true then is any one of these four the fundamental or first matter? No Unless he's there's something underlying it right? But he doesn't really go into saying what that first matter would be right? But he says the death of earth is water coming to be right? Just like we might say what? If you had given me a glass here of snow right? Well snow is earthy right? Or if it was ice especially right? That would be like earth right? And it's the death of ice to become what? Water right? And the death of water is air coming to be like when I boil the water it turns into air right? Okay So you've got something hot and moist to air there right? And then of air it's what? The death of that is fire right? It's like a wax candle right? It's kind of earthy thing right? And that becomes at the top there liquid like water right? And then all of a sudden you've got fire there right? And then vice versa, the death of air is coming to be for air, and the death of air is coming to be for water, right? So this way up, and the way, what, down, right? Yeah, something like that. You go from the solid to the liquid, and from the liquid to the gas, right? And then steam condenses into water, right? And the water solidifies into ice, right? Okay. Is death to souls to become water? He's speaking like an axiomones, right? That the soul is air, right? It is death to souls, or air, to become water, and death to water to become earth, huh? Water comes to be from earth, and the soul, or air, from what? Water, right? Now, interesting to use the word death there, right, huh? Okay. Of course, the word nature is taken from, what? Birth, yeah. And you might pose birth to death, right? Okay? So, it's interesting how we borrow words sometimes, from living things, to apply to even non-living things, right? I used to kid the physicist, when I was teaching at St. Mary's College in California, you know, talk about quantum jump, you know. I said, well, how can I jump? It doesn't have any legs. But, the word jump is taken from the act of the legs, isn't it? Yeah. Quantum jump, what are you talking about? Okay? Now, in DK30, you have this idea that there's some fundamental matter, maybe fire, which, what? Underlines. Yeah, it stays forever, right? We think this thought is common to the early Greeks, that whatever is the first matter, or what they thought was the first matter, that is, what? Eternal, right? It doesn't grow, right? It remains under all change. The universe, which is the same for all, no god or man has made, but it always was, is, and will be an everlasting fire, kindled in measures, and extinguished in measures. Well, the Marxists, I will take DK30, and then DK53, war is the father of all things, and that's how you get the Marxist philosophy, right? The Marxist philosophy, communism, the official name of it is dialectical materialism. And materialism means, what? That matter is the beginning of all things, right? But dialectical is saying that things develop out of matter by, what? The conflict of the opposites found in matter. So war is the father of all things, and matter is the beginning of all things, right? Okay? But the opposites in matter, the contradictions in matter, they would call it, give rise to development of these things. Did they actually draw on these and constructing that, or did they just think these were interesting illustrations? Well, they kind of come back to these, see, the Hegel's the original inspiration for the Marxist, the doutical method, you know? And of course, the tendency of modern science is to be materialistic, right? And, you know, the thing, even what I call evolution, too, in biology, which is so influential, in a sense, behind the thinking of the way they understand evolution, anyway, is that matter is the beginning of all things, right? And the struggle for survival out there gives rise to different forms of life, right? So it's basically this idea. So that's why Marx, you know, dedicated one of the editions of Das Kapital to Darwin, right? I do. Yeah. They have that thought in common. But now, in his next fragment, DK 124, our friend Heraclitus seems to be contradicting what he said in DK 50, where he says, It is wise, listening not to me, but to reason, to agree that all things are one. It's the very nature of reason to make us look for unity, but you could also say it's the very nature of reason to make us look for what? Order, right? Okay? And perhaps it's even more known. Reason looks for order, right? So, if he was being consistent, he would say, It is wise, listening not to me, but to reason, to agree that there is order in things. Right? Okay? And you see this, you know, in people like Einstein and so on. You know, Einstein was not a believing Jew or Christian or anything like that. But he says, all scientific work of a higher order is based on a feeling like that religion, he says, that there's basically, what? Or the universe, right? That you can find order if you look for it, huh? Okay? So, you see, and I say people like that, that natural inclination of our mind to unity and order, right? Now, in DK50, the previous page, he had spoken of this, right? But now he makes a very strange statement. The most beautiful universe. I translated it that way because the Greek word for universe is cosmos, huh? Okay? That's where I get the word cosmetics, huh? Okay? But cosmos has the idea of something beautiful, but well arranged, well ordered, right? Okay? So, in calling universe a cosmos, the Greeks were, in the very name they gave to it, respecting the beautiful order that's in the universe. Okay? Now, we use the word for the universe, the word universe, which means turned into one, right? So, the Latin word and the Latin derived word and the Greek word, one is taken from unity, the other from order. But the two go together, right? Okay? But now he's making the strange statement that this cosmos, this beautiful ordered whole, is what? A heap piled up at random. See? Now, what he's probably thinking of here is that if the universe, the beginning universe, is a mindless matter, right? Or a mindless mover, like fire, right? What kind of universe would you expect from a mindless mover, a mindless matter? It would simply be something at random. Yeah. Yeah. See? And so, if the fire went through this building, right? Would you end up with a beautiful, ordered hole? When the fire got through with, you know, those terrorists that started that fire in the World Trade Center there in New York, right? Was that beautiful, ordered hole at the end? Not very. No. It was a heap piled up at random, right? So, Heraclitus, in a sense, is pointing out an apparent contradiction here, right? Yeah, what I was saying was, I didn't realize that cosmos was rooted in the idea of order. So, I'm simply thinking of a material unity. Yeah, yeah. Because you would have that, say, at the end of a fire, everything would be charcoal or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the Greek word is a kind of a sign that men think of the universe as having some beautiful order to it, huh? And now he's saying this beautiful, ordered hole that we, what we call it, the forward hole, is a heap piled up at random, which would be, what would be if it was simply the product of a mindless, what? Force. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this kind of anticipates in a negative way, right? Then maybe there is some other mind than ours, right? That is the beginning of this beautiful, ordered universe, son. Okay? Or behind the order in the parts of your body or the dog's body or the cat's body or even the tree's body, right? There is a, what? Greater mind, huh? But this greater mind will come out with Anaxagoras, right? The man whom Socrates got so enthusiastic reading when he was a young man, right? Okay. But notice what he has to say here about our reason, huh? We'll see that when Anaxagoras develops the idea of the mind, he will also emphasize something infinite about the mind, right? Okay. He says, one could not find in going the ends of the soul, having traveled every road. So deep is the reason it has, huh? So he's saying there's something endless, right? Something infinite about me. Okay? We'll come back to that when we see the great fragment on the mind by Anaxagoras. The first thing you see about the mind is infinite. Okay? Okay.