Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
Lecture 13: Empedocles: Elements, Love, Hate, and Change

Transcript
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Aristotle talks about that in the third book about the soul when he gets through talking about sensing and understanding and he's saying the soul is in some way all things because the things we sense and the things we understand are in our senses in some way, right? and in our understanding and so through having sense and understanding we are in some way all things it's very important to see now with Empedocles we're going to go to Sicily and if you look at a big map of Sicily you'll find a place called Porto Empedocleon and as I mentioned before the Greeks had cities in Sicily, right? and if you read the Peloponnesian War there you know about the disastrous Athenian expedition, right? to Syracuse and so on as I mentioned I think before there's more good remains of Greek temples there in Sicily than there is in Greece today but now with Empedocles you're going to have a little break here not thinking, huh? because up to this point everybody seems to be looking for one first matter they may disagree as to what the one first matter is and some think of it as Mother Earth, right? and some is water some is air maybe some is fire, right? Empedocles purpose is a kind of break because he's going to give up the attempt to find one first matter and so sometimes they call them in the history books I think it was up to this point they call them Monus because of Mona meaning one and then they use a Latin word for these guys called pluralists, right? because they're saying they're plural many, many matters, right? now we've spoken before of how it's reasonable to look for one first matter and that reason is naturally inclined in that direction, right? but something can be reasonable also because there's a reason for thinking it, right? and is there some reason to think that there must be more than one first matter? is there some reason why Empedocles would try to give up, right? attempt to find one first matter he's actually going to say that there are four first matters, right? and they've been touched upon by those before earth, earth, fire, and water which have four basic first matters but before we get into that more particular thing is there some reason why he might give up the attempt to try to find one first matter? well as you read the fragments of Empedocles you can see perhaps something of what might have led him to think this, huh? and I think the best way to kind of present it is to start with an either or okay? and you could say that if there is one first matter as previous thinkers, right? seem to be doing right either that one matter has some definite quality or qualities or it has no definite qualities, right? okay the other alternative either it has some definite quality or it has no definite quality now to some extent the thinkers before saw difficulty in the first alternative didn't they? insofar as they move from other earth at least to water to air, right? or in the case of an axiomander to unlimited, right? having no quality, right? okay and there's a good reason for thinking that, right? and that is if you give the first matter some definite quality and there's only one first matter and everything else is made out of it everything would have to have that quality you can't have opposites and then you could have any opposites in the world, right? so if sugar was the first matter and sugar is definitely sweet and everything is made out of sugar as the only matter which everything is made everything should be sweet right? and therefore there would be nothing bitter in the world, right? we live in a world with sweet and bitter things in it, right? or if water was the beginning of all things everything should be what? wet wet and cool and there should be nothing hot and dry right? and again we live in a world of hot and cold and wet and dry and therefore it's the already fire was the beginning of all things I'd be drinking fire like fire water yeah in the what do you call it the side shows you know drinking fire you know you know when we punch by the house this would be hell on earth right? so there's some definite difficulties in taking that first alternative right? okay but now if you take the second alternative and say right that there's one first matter and it has no qualities right? maybe there's an even greater difficulty how do you get any qualities in this world right? see when you made Kuwait as a kid right? you took this colorless tasteless water and you added the Kuwait that gave it a color and a taste right? but if all you had was water and you had water to water what did you get? no color more water yeah no more taste right? you know so if it had no qualities how would you get any qualities in the world right? I mean if you had some qualities you know like a cook and you combine different things and get a new taste right? but you have to start off with something that has some kind of taste to begin with right? I mean you can mix colors and get kind of a new color or a new shade right? but you have to have some color to begin with right? so as you'll see in the fragments of pedicles you'll be talking about you can't get something out of nothing and that's a kind of common thought of it you can't get something out of nothing Julie Andrew sings about it right? King Lewis says nothing will get you nothing right? it's a common thought right? so maybe there's even a greater difficulty if you take the second alternative right? so the difficulty in either alternative therefore there must be more than one what? first matter right? make sense? okay now if there is many first matters right? how should they be distinguished? by their quality yeah let's be more precise how should the many first matters be distinguished? give you a little lesson here distinction here and Plato's in the softest other places always dividing into two right? there's a reason for that that maybe we should distinguish things by opposites and opposites are what? two okay now if I divide human beings into male and white that's a good division? why not? it goes to an opposite yes now where would you put me? with the male or the white? yeah so it doesn't make any sense doesn't it? it would make some sense to divide it would make human beings into male and female, right? Or young and old, right? How about male and young? Or female and old? Because your grandmother might be both female and old, right? But young and old, that makes some sense, right? Male and female, good and bad, right? But male and good. Does that make sense? See? No. So you want to divide by opposites, right? Okay. So, we're getting closer, right? Now, we don't know how it developed in Pettiglis' thinking was about which opposites should you use for the basic first matters, right? But if he takes these ones that the men before him said, individually, earth, water, air, fire, they seem to be distinguished by hot and cold, at least if you think of air as, what, like steam, and by wet and what? Dry, right? Okay. Now, you know when you divide into four, you usually divide and subdivide or you crisscross, right? In this case, maybe you could crisscross, huh? Hot and cold, wet and dry. Now, what's hot and dry? Or fire, yeah. What's wet and cold? Those things are pretty obvious, right? I think the scripture is talking about, you know, man's freedom and how before it is life and death. But I think the scripture is a water and fire at one point, isn't it? You see that in the text of scripture? Oh, yeah. Water and fire. Now, what's cold and dry? Yeah. And you might say, well, why do you say that? Well, you dig down in the cellar, it's cooler down in the cellar, right? And if you take the water out of the earth, it's dry as dust, right? So it's wet and cold. You think of air as a little more forest, you think the wearer is like steam, then it's hot and what? Wet, huh? Okay. Now, why take hot and cold and wet and dry? Why not take hard and soft? Or black and white? Or sweet and bitter, right? So some reason why these contraries are more basic than hard and soft? See, when you go and do something like sweet and bitter, it's not nearly as prevalent as something like hot and cold or things like that. Okay. But notice, huh, aren't hot and cold causes of hard and soft? Oh, yeah. And wet and dry, right? No. So you put the butter in the refrigerator and it gets hard, right? You put it on the stove or in the pan and it melts, right? Softens, huh? Okay. So hot makes it soft and cold makes it hard. So hot and cold are more basic than hard and soft, right? You buy when you stick loaves and after a day or so, it dries out and gets, what, hard, right? But if you moisten it, you know, then you can make it soft again, right? Like a sponge, right? You moisten the sponge and it gets soft and flexible and then tries out and it gets hard as a rock sometimes, these sponges, right? So hot and cold and wet and dry are causes of hard and soft, right? So if you're looking for the first cause of things, it would be better to distinguish them by hot and cold, wet and dry than by hard and soft, which seem to be effects, right? Okay. And then with white and black, if I put this white paper in the fire, it would turn what? Black, right? And they put black metal in the fire and it turns red hot and eventually what? White hot, yeah. And my hair is all over the place in the morning and so I wet it down and it gets dark and you think, you know, I was so gray and as it dries out in the day, it becomes what? Gray. Yeah, yeah. And a woman knows that clothing, you know, when it's wet, it's going to look like it has a different color, right? Than when it dries out, huh? Okay. And of course, you know how sweet and bitter, but how generally the taste and flavors of things are affected by what? Fire, right, huh? Okay. So hot and cold and wet and dry seem to be the most basic qualities, the most basic opposites that are known by our senses and they seem to be causes in changes in the other sensible qualities, right? So notice the three steps here, right? The reason why you'd reject one first matter, right? The reason why you're going to distinguish the many matters by opposites, right? And then the reason why these opposites are better than hard and soft or black and white and so on, right? You see that? Okay. And he is undoubtedly influenced also, though, by the fact that everybody had guessed one of these before. And we have a fragment of pedophiles, which I have in a different collection on method, where he says, you know, men see some part of the truth and they boast that they've seen the whole. You see? So maybe there's some truth to saying that earth is the beginning of things, right? But that's the whole truth. No, it's only maybe part of the truth, right? Another guy says, no, water is the beginning of all things. Another guy says, no, air is the beginning of all things, right? Okay. And so the fact that these famous thinkers or the poets had taken one of these in particular, right, gives some credibility to that being the beginning of things, right? But maybe they saw only a part of the truth and they boasted that they had seen the, what? Hole, right? Just like in the 19th century there, you know. Karl Marx says, everything is explained by the economic mode of production. Did you know that? Even your being here is explained by that. You see? And then along comes Freud and says, everything is explained by your sexual drive. You know, everything. Well, probably these people see some part of the truth, right? The sexual drive does explain some things, I guess. And the economic mode of production explains some things, right? But does either one explain everything, right? Or is it that these men have seen some part of the truth? And out of pride, right? They boast that they've seen the whole. You see? So maybe he thought that the men before him had seen some part of the truth, right? And now he can come and gather together the parts of truth that are scattered and divided amongst them, right? In a way, this is great work there, the consolation of philosophy, huh? Lady Wisdom, you know, comes down, you know, to console him in prison. And her garments are kind of, like, torn, right? And the commentator, you know, says, well, that's to represent truth, huh? That men in grabbing at the truth have gotten some part of it, and another guy's got another part of it, and they've torn and kind of dismembered a bit the truth. And this is what's represented in that way by the great Boethius, huh? Now, Empedocles lived in an age when, of course, the great authorities were not the scientists, but the poets, right? And so he adopted a poetic way of speaking, and wrote in verse, huh? In the Greek, huh? And he uses the names of gods and goddesses, right, to be appealing to his audience, right? Just like nowadays, everybody tries to be scientific, right? You see a book, you know, scientific philosophy, or history is a science, you know, or this is a scientific survey, you know, everything's scientific, right? So you have to pretend you're scientific to be accepted, you know, as a public speaker. So notice in this first fragment here, hear first the four roots of all things, right? Notice again, he borrows a word from living things, right? Bright Zeus, which one of the or is that fire fire life-giving hera earth no that'd be air yeah yeah the soul is air right hades so he's the god of the what that's earth yeah and obviously nestus who moistens with tears the springs of mortals that's watering okay the next one is somewhat the same thing but not as clear now in the bottom of page three the pedicles is going to take now not only what he's gotten individually from these great thinkers before him he's going to bring in this italian in case completely pathogens right that there are what ratios behind things right okay so you see here in these fragmentary form the thought that these elements will combine to make flesh and blood and bones and other things right but they combine in different what numerical ratios yeah and the ratio that they have explains the quality of flesh and blood and bones right this is very fragmentary but just see how far you can go with what he has here but the pleasing earth in its broad melting pots received two of the eight parts of glittering nestes that's two parts of water right and four of a feistus now feistus was the god of the furnace right so that's fire right and these became white bones begotten divinely by the gluing of harmony and notice sound and that just as far as that goes here put it in kind of modern terms here modern formula here bone is what w2 f4 right that's the formula as far as you get that fragment right and notice huh as far as that fragment goes there's more of the dry element in bone right then of the wet element huh and the bones of course of the driest part of the free main ingredients the obvious flesh and blood and bones right but now in the next fragment he says the earth anchored in the harbors of cyprus huh goddess of love came together with these in about equal measures with the feistus water and the ocean upper air and from these not from the and from these came blood and the forms of the flesh but notice that the ratio of the wet to the dry is different now right in the case of blood and flesh which are more moist right okay so in these two fragments here dk98 and the one on the bottom of the previous page you can see him bringing together the thought of almost all his predecessors right because he has earth air fire and water but now combining in different numerical ratios to make bone and flesh and blood right and some primitive attempt here at least to explain the difference in dryness etc of bone as compared to blood right by a different ratio of the wet to dry elements okay we don't know how far he pushed this but notice how we still in a way keep this idea that there are many elements right and they combine in different numerical ratios to make uh water and all the other chemical compounds right okay so he's kind of like a first chemist in a way right now the next group of fragments which are very important the next five fragments here you'll see empedocles bringing out the thought and some the reasons for the thought that there's really only one kind of change in this changing world and that is change of place now plato perhaps but certainly aristotle was to reject the idea that change of place is the only change in the world aristotle will maintain that there is inward change right and there's even substantial change there's change of quality but even in aristotle's thinking change of place is the most common kind of change but also the kind that uh we understand the best right okay okay in order to understand an inward change it's very difficult when you really come down to it and we think perhaps can you see it also in anxagris huh but maybe it runs through all the early greeks a kind of tendency to think of change of place as the only change there is and you'll see that same tendency in modern physical science huh modern physical science with begins really with galileo and kepler and newton and they're talking about change of place huh the fall bodies to the earth or the cannonball being shot or the planets going around the sun and so on and there's a tendency of physicists in modern times to say that change of place is the only change there is and what appears to be a change of quality or substance is merely a complicated or disguised form of change of place and uh that takes place i'll give some examples of that in modern science but the basic thought here we'll see already in pedocles that's what he says here in dk8 and i will tell you another thing there is no birth of any immortal thing nor end in destructive death see these words birth and death are unscientific words right let me talk about a birth of another grandchild mr breakfast huh see because birth seems to imply that someone has come into existence right there wasn't there wasn't at all before right and death seems to say that something has gone out of existence right this topic takes place i can't take places he'll go on to explain why okay and that's a very radical thing right to be or not to be as that one says right what is there but there is only a mixing and an exchange of what has been mixed huh birth over is a name given to these by men huh see so all you're doing is moving things around mixing them together in some combination and separating them and mixing them as mother combination and so on right and be like burquist you know saying oh at 210 my class was born and then at 4 30 oh my class died there was a death in the family no no burquist these guys they existed before your class were right and they were mixed together in this room right and then they were separated right see but nothing is reading come into existence going out of existence right they still exist and they existed before your class right didn't come into existence in your class right they're just a mixing and separating the people but they meaning men in general when these have been mixed in a way suited to men or to the race of wild beasts or to bushes or birds of prey they say then that this has been born and when these have been separated they call it wretched death they do not name these things rightly but sometimes i also follow the custom right see just like a modern scientist might say you know the sun rose today at 6 a.m or the sun set at 5 p.m or something and you say well did the sun really rise was the earth turning its axis well yeah well i just follow the custom that's what we speak you know i mean that's not scientific though i mean the sun didn't really rise it didn't really set you know it's the earth turning us axis right that's the truth you know the truth yeah but i follow customs sometimes right so you might hear me talking about you know birth or death or something like that you know but that's not really what's taking place right so when i go down to see my new grandchild i say oh a new mixture right when i go to the funeral home when somebody's died oh i see a separation separation of things now something in the back of your mind says there's more to it than this right you know brady russell had this kind of position you know that we're more or less a combination of molecules and atoms and so on right now but then he's running around the world trying to you know stop atomic war right well why get so excited about atomic war if it's just a rearrangement of atoms and molecules right i mean you know just a big rearrangement okay now what's wrong with these things fools he says for they have no far-reaching minds who think that what before was not comes to be because then you'll be getting something out of what nothing yeah or that anything dies and is destroyed utterly in every way right now we'll see a little more clarity in one example is there in the words of uh he says what is cannot cease to be by being cut right can i really destroy anything take it out of existence can i really annihilate turn into nothing anything um can i catch you up so there's nothing left to you you might speak that way sometimes right but if i could catch you up so there's nothing left to you you cut something up into what it's made out of right if i could catch you up into nothing what would you be made out of yeah isn't that stupid to think that only a fool would think that he's saying right the fool is the opposite of a wise man right can you get something out of nothing hmm you fool would think such things huh so nothing really comes into existence it goes out of existence all you do is push things around and shove them around and withdraw them and so on right that's science and here in the next fragment he's stating the reason for the first part for it is impossible that anything comes to be from what in no way is right that'd be getting something out of nothing right and that what is should perish completely is not accomplished or heard of because i say the reason for that is to go better than ang sagres right you can't cut something up into nothing right what about what about his race what about his ratios like right now with a living human being you have your particular ratio yeah but after that you you don't have that ratio so having something gone out of existence even for him yeah but that's that's kind of accidental you'd say you know it's an accidental change i'll grant you but nevertheless it's a it's a real change yeah but all you're doing is you're bringing in two parts of this and one part of that right so when i make manhattan right i take two parts uh whiskey and i put them in the over the cubes and one part of of um of uh sweet vermouth you know and so it's really just a change of place of the whiskey and the thing right see see um if you think something really goes out of existence you see you're back in the decayed oven there the fool has no far-reaching mind see we see dummy berkowitz you he says uh uh i put the log on the fire right and it was consumed by the fire it no longer exists right he says you have no far-reaching mind right everything that was in the log still exists what do you mean well look under the grate there right see those ashes right yeah now go outside the house and look up in the sky there you see that was the chimney and you're polluting the neighborhood there with these little yeah you see all you've done is separate these things that are in the log right and some of them are down the ashes and some of them got up in the life yeah yeah you see so there's going to be a tendency in pedocles and in all these early thinkers but also a tendency in the modern scientists in the 17th and 18th centuries and in the 19th centuries to try to um take anything that appears to be a change other than change of place anything that appears to be more inward change right and say that that is merely a what uh complicated or disguised form of change of place that you're too stupid to follow right and that's why you think right there's been a change of quality or a change of you know um i always take a simple example of this you see to show the nevitate of the person who disagrees with the pedocles right see so burkus comes in and he gets a cup of coffee right okay and he tastes the coffee this is kind of bitter this coffee right okay so he goes out of the room from what and while he's out of the room you go to the sugar bowl and you get a little bit of sugar out of the sugar bowl and you put it in burkus's coffee and you stir it so much that there's no grains in the bottom of the coffee right okay so dummy burkus comes back and the mug is still there and so on he tastes the coffee again oh my coffee has changed from bitter to sweet right it's still in the same place but it's gone from bitter to sweet right so there's a change of quality and not just change of substance i mean of uh place but now there's change of quality something goes from being bitter to being what sweet and he'd say fool you had no fart you mind that coffee was and still is bitter what do you mean see that sweetness you taste is the sugar which was and still is sweet right and the sugar had a change of place some some goes in the sugar bowl is now inside the what coffee well it's too small for you to see right huh you see you have a far enough reaching mind or the tools to to see it's in there right you see so what appears to dummy burkus to be a change of what quality right from bitter to sweet is really a change of what place of sugar from the sugar bowl to the what cup of coffee you see so that's the attempt to try to find an explanation that way now einstein in his book the evolution of physics he described some of the earlier things of the monoscientists and they're talking about you put a hot body and a cold body next to each other on the table there right and leave them together for a while and you come back after a while and the hot body would not be so hot and the cold body would not be so what cold right now the dummy the fool right will say well there's been a change of quality right the hot body has gone from hot let's say to lukewarm right and the cold body has gone from cold to lukewarm this is a change of quality in the same place right there's been no change of place but there's been a change of quality now right well the way they tried to explain it was by saying that there is a hot substance called what caloric i guess his name is caloric i guess we have now right caloric and some of the caloric that was in the what hot body has flown into the what cold yeah yeah so there's not been any what change of of quality from hot to cold or vice versa right but a hot body has what changed its place right just like in the other example i gave the sweet body had changed its place right but nothing had changed its quality you see that but there you see the monoscientists trying to explain it just like you know we explain purpose's uh uh attempt to say there's a change of quality here in my coffee right but later on they got a little more you know sophisticated modern science right and they said well what you call heat is merely what the gross appearance right on your hands of the kinetic energy right the movement of these little tiny molecules in the water right okay and um when the water gets hotter what actually is taking place is that these particles are moving faster and faster and faster right and therefore they're you know that's why it tends to expand and you know blow the lid off the things on um uh but uh there's all kinds of little changes of place that you're to what grows your senses to do right you see so change from cold to hot is merely a complicated change in many little tiny particles right of their you know motion motion yeah yeah so this tendency in modern science was to say that really change of place is the only change you change you is in the world, and what appears to be a change of quality, let alone a change of substance, is merely a disguised or unrecognized form, right? A complicated form in some cases, right? A very small-scale form of any changes of place that you're too stupid to follow, right? It's like purpose-watching, you know, the football game on TV there without his glasses, you know, and the University of Michigan, you know, comes out in the field marching out there, and let's say they're in the shape of the state of Michigan, and they're playing the Michigan rousing song, and so on, and then let's say they're playing Navy, so now they get into the shape of, what, a ship, and they play anchors away or something, and purpose says, oh, I discovered a new kind of change in the world. Change of what? Shape, right? You say, you dummy, put your glasses on, look more carefully. What you call a change of shape, right, is really the gross appearance to your imperfect eyes, right, of a hundred members of the what? Marching band of the University of Michigan, changing what? Place. Yeah, their place, yeah. So, you see, we all likeness there between modern science, right? And it's not really until quantum theory that this was really seriously challenged in modern science. But quantum theory in the 20th century, as Heisenberg said, introduced a quantitative version of what Aristotle had talked about, namely potency or ability. If you look at Heisenberg's Gifford lectures, right, he talked about this again and again, right? That's what he admired most of all in Aristotle, right? But Aristotle's understanding of potency or ability enabled him to understand how it's possible to have an inward change, huh? That is not a, what? Change of place, huh? But a change of quality and even in some cases a change of, what? Substance. Substance, yeah. But ability or potency is very hard to, what? Understand, huh? So before ability or potency was understood, it's very hard to see how there could really be any change of the change of place, even though when your child dies or your father dies or your mother dies or your friend dies. Everybody reacts as if this is more than just a change of place, right? That's right. Now, the opposite of a fool, of course, is a wise man, right? So he says in DK 15, for a wise man would not guess such things in his mind, he said as long as they live what they call life, so long they are, and experience wretched things and good things. I guess the Greeks are like us, they experience wretched things more than good things. But that before mortals were fastened together and after they are unfastened, they are then nothing, right, huh? Okay. So what Empedius is saying is that nothing comes into existence and nothing really goes out of existence, all you do is move things around, right? Now, in the next two group of fragments, you get the position of Empedocles about the, well, empty, right? You might contrast this with Democritus on the last page, where in that fragment at the top of page 10, Democritus is saying that a lot of these sense qualities don't really exist, but what truly exists is the atoms and the empty. So, there's two possible opinions about the empty. One is that it is, and that's what Democritus says, and the other that it is not, which is what Empedocles says. Okay? Now, let's talk a little bit about the empty. In these fragments here, notice what he's saying. Nor does anything of the whole become empty or over full. Nothing of the whole is empty, so when's going anything additional come? Now, if you say that the empty is, don't you seem to get into a contradiction? Because, is there something there? See, we're apt in modern times to speak of empty space, right? And we used to even say that in the atom there was empty space, you know, and so on. But, empty space has got length and width and depth, right? Okay? Now, is there something there that has length and width and depth? If there is, it's not really empty, is it? But, if there's nothing there, how can nothing have length width and depth? It's like a contradiction, right? So, you're trying to say, in a sense, that what is not, is what you're saying the empty is. Now, to mark it to a sense, apparently the reason why he thought the empty exists was that there couldn't be an emotion unless the empty was. You know, when you pack things in a suitcase, you know, and you have to sit in a suitcase together. Well, things don't move around very much in there if they're tightly packed, right? But there's nothing empty in the world, right? And how tightly packed would things be? Completely, right? You'd be like wedged in the ice, right? There'd be no give at all, right? You know, we'd all be stuck. And so, there'd be no motion, right? So, although Democritus admits that the empty is nothing, he's saying it's got to exist, otherwise there's no motion. And so, like Heraclitus, right, in trying to save the reality that we have of motion, right, he says, I'll admit that what is not, is. See? He admits that the empty is, right? Just a little bit like Heraclitus seems to be admitting that day and night are the same and hot and cold and wet and dry, otherwise there'd be no change of one becoming the other, okay? So, this is kind of a repeating thing in history, that men trying to understand change, right, often run into what seems to be a contradiction, right? And sometimes they say, well, I'm so convinced that change is real, I'll admit that contradictions really take place. It can both be and not be, right? And then you have a few loners like Parmenides who say, no, something can't both be and not be, therefore change is illusion, right? And then you have the third position of Aristotle who would say, yeah, and Parmenides is correct, something can't both be and not be, the same tiny way, the same way, but change is real, right? Therefore, this is only the appearance of a contradiction, and hidden under this apparent contradiction is a way of understanding that is true and avoids the contradictions, okay? That's the three possible positions that men get into, so Empedocles, I think, is denying that the empty exists, because in a way you're saying, well, what is the empty there, you know? Well, there's really nothing there, but then you're saying that nothing, what is not, is, right? Yeah. While the other guy, Parmenides is saying, yeah, but motion is real, and you won't be any emotionless. There's some guilt, some emptiness, huh? Okay. Aristotle would say, but couldn't there be emotion in some kind of a circular way, right? Like the beer, in the beer can, right? Even though it's full, could still, what? Yeah, or one thing is moving out, the other is moving in, you know? Maybe there's a way to understand change without admitting that what is not is. But men do get into that problem, right? And you find that even the modern scientists sometimes, you read them, right? They want to admit contradictions, right? They say for modern mathematics, it's not possible contradictions, I hear them say that. So, now at the bottom of page four, you want to take a little break here? Yeah, maybe. Some shit break here, yeah. I carry away here, and I, you know, from change of place to talk about these more radical kinds of change, right? So I came into existence in 1936. I don't know if I'm going to go out of existence, you know, but I am going to go out of existence, too, you know? Processions. Yeah, yeah, going forward, yeah. But no, if you say, I came into existence and I go out of existence, or my cat came into existence, goes out of existence, and so I can speak as if existence were a house that you come into and you go out of it, right? But if you're kind of imagining it, it's almost like a change of place, right? And that's not what it is, because you have to be before you get into the house. And you can go out of the house unless you continue to exist outside the house, but the house is existence, well then, you've got a real contradiction there, right? So, now we're going to come to the position of Empedocles about the mover, right? And in his thinking about the mover, and also in Annex Agris' one, and in some cases both of these, probable statements underlying your thinking, huh? And that's why I stated these here. Contrary effects have contrary, what? Causes, right? Or vice versa, contrary causes have contrary effects. Now, are those statements on the surface have some probability? Mm-hmm. Okay? So, if you see contrary effects, would you look for the same cause for both? Nope. Same? Let's take a very simple example here that we're all familiar with. Butter, huh? Sometimes becomes hard, and sometimes butter becomes soft, right? Would you all agree? Hard and soft are contraries. Now, would you guess that what makes butter hard is what makes it soft? Or vice versa, no. And as hard and soft are contraries, wouldn't you guess that what makes it hard and soft would be also a contrary too? Okay? Then you have the other way of looking at it, right, huh? If you have contrary causes, right? Wouldn't you expect contrary effects? If I'm nice to you, expect one effect. If I'm mean to you, expect another contrary solver, isn't you, right? Okay. All right. Now, what about the second one here? Wouldn't like the causes, insofar as they are like, give rise to like effects, right? And vice versa, if you see like effects, would you kind of guess that they're like this in their causes, right? Okay. What Empedocles sees is that earth, air, fire, and water come together, right, to make flesh and blood and bones. And then they are separated, right? Okay. And then maybe they're all mixed together again, right? So here you have contrary effects. Things are mixed together, and then they are separated, right? Would you expect those contrary effects to have the same cause? Just like with magnets, right? Sometimes they jump together, and sometimes they push each other away, right? Would you expect it to be the same thing that makes them come together and makes them separate? Like in the atom, right? There should be, the atom should blow up because the protons are, what, pushing away from each other, right? So it must be something contrary, right, that is putting them together, nuclear forces they call it, okay? So Empedocles is looking for contrary causes of contrary effects, right? Okay. That's kind of a general thing, right? Just like if I knew the body became hard and soft, but not why, I'd be looking for contrary causes, right? And maybe I might eventually discover that heat makes it soft and cold makes it hard, right? Okay. Now, what are the contrary causes that bring together earth, air, fire, and water, and separates them, right? Now we go to the other propositions, right? What brings us together? What brings human beings together? Well, they like each other, or love each other, right? What separates them? Yeah, yeah. So there must be something like love, right, in the universe that brings the elements together, right? And something like hate that separates them, right? And for want of a better name, just call them a kind of cosmic love, right? And a cosmic hate, right? So, Empedocles introduces two movers, right? Love and hate, huh? Love, which brings together earth, air, fire, and water, and hate, which, what? Separates them, right? And there's a cycle of coming together and separating, produced by love and hate, huh? So he says, I shall tell something double. At one time it grew from the many to be only one, right? Another time, another hand, it grew apart from the one to be many. There was a double birth of mortals and a double death, right? Speaking like, you know, the commoners, huh? The coming together of all things gives birth to and destroys one, the other, and the contrary. Nourish this things, grow apart, lies in all directions. But now, in the next sentence, he starts to talk about the movers, right? And in no place do these things stop taking turns forever. At one time, all things come together by, what? Love. At another time, again, everything is carried away by the hate of strife. Okay? Now we don't have to go into the whole, but he'll come back and see it again a number of ways in the remaining two paragraphs of this long DK 17, right? Okay? And the next fragment, he talks about that love and hate, huh? Okay? And of course, Aristotle sees empedically as a little bit like a Manichaean, huh? Because love seems to be something good and hate something bad, right? But in a sense, the Manichaean thinking that there's a good God and a bad God, right? The good itself and the bad itself, right? Goes back to the idea that there is good and bad in the world, right? And these are contrary, right? Well, contrary effects are contrary causes. Therefore, there must be what? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Aristotle's talking about this epiphyde. He's the first guy to think like this, right? Only the Greeks, right? Okay? But so there's some probability of what he's saying, right? Contrary effects are contrary causes. There's some probability of the Manichaeans, and they convinced Augustine for a while, right? No minor catch. They lost him finally, right? But that was more about his prayers, right? And, of course, the Manichaean heresy revived from time to time, you know, and the Dominican order was originally founded to fight the revival of the Manichaean heresy in the south of France, right? The Albigensians, right? Okay? So that's a very dominant thought, right? And the famous story of Thomas Aquinas there when he's sitting at the house, he's invited to dinner at the King of France's house, and in the middle of the dinner, he almost slams the table, you know, and he says, that finishes the Manichaeans? He was thinking out, you know, the arguments against the Manichaeans, and then he wakes up, he's aware of the fact that he's at the table of the king, you know, and St. Louis, of course, and the king was a saint, St. Louis, and he said, hey, someone get, you know, people or whatever it is, and write down what Thomas has thought of, you know? Well, so, but it's interesting that Aristotle gives kind of the same argument against the Manichaeans that Augustine does, but as far as you know, Augustine didn't know that part of Aristotle, right? So, these two great minds, Aristotle and Augustine, come up with the same argument against the Manichaeans, but independently, right? But Thomas Aquinas has the benefit of being able to read both Aristotle and Augustine, so he writes the De Malo, the question is, Disputate De Malo, the greatest understanding of evil that we have. So, Pedocles has these two here, love and hate, huh? But notice that it's like what you have in modern science, we have a force of attraction and a force of, what? Repulsion, right? And these are contrary forces, right, huh? Having contrary, what? Effects, huh? And there's some truth. to this, right, huh? Okay. What would it medically say for, like, when you go to the level of the human mind and the will, you know, I can do two opposite things simply for my will, and it's the same cause. Yeah, yeah. It can be nice to him and nasty to him. Yeah, yeah. Baristow has that as a third corollary about the causes too, right? The same thing can be a cause of opposites, right? By its presence and by its absence, right? But I guess emphatically he didn't go into... No, we'll see a little bit what he says about those things, okay? So in DK17 and DK21 and DK23, the details are not too important for our purposes here, but he's talking about love and hate, mixing these things, right, in one combination, and then separating them, right? And love, combining them again, and so on, right? Now, in the next group of fragments here on page six, there are DK57, DK59, DK61. You have only a part of Empedocles' thinking, and Aristotle, when he discusses Empedocles, gives us a computer picture of what Empedocles is thinking. But here you have, with Empedocles and the next thinker, Anaxagoras, there's another great dichotomy, right? Okay? Now, the first great dichotomy we saw was between Heraclitus, at least in his words, right? We said day and night are the same, and what? Parmenides, right? Parmenides says something cannot both be and not be, right? Therefore, change is an illusion, right? Heraclitus is saying all things change. Change is very real. And therefore, day and night are the same thing in the sleeping and the waking, right? See that famous dichotomy, right? Okay? We saw another little dichotomy between Empedocles and Democritus, right? The one saying the empty is, the other empty is not. But a much more important dichotomy, now, is this one here. When you ask, what is the cause of the good order of the parts of animals and plants, right? What is the cause? What is responsible for the good order in the parts of animals and plants? Now, Anaxagris, as we shall see, is going to be moved by the probable statements we saw. The like effects have what? Like. Like causes, right? Okay? And there's a likeness between the good order in the parts of animals and plants and the good order in artificial things. Okay? Now, the good order in artificial things is like the good order in the parts of animals and plants. And so, if I was to lose, say, my natural teeth, the teeth that nature has given me, right? And the dentist was to make me a pair of false teeth, right? Would he put the biting teeth in back and the chewing teeth in front? Depends on what you wanted. I remember, you know, the, the, the, when I was in high school, right, you know, I was in the military academy, right? St. Thomas Military Academy. And, once in a while, we'd see these army movies that are done for the, the, the recruits, right, in the army. And they presupposed nothing, right? As far as your education is concerned, right? I remember one guy telling me of being in the army there and they showed him a movie, you know, about cleaning your teeth, right? Freshering your teeth. And then afterwards, they all went down to, you know, have those round sinks, you know, and they've seen the ones and they passed off tooth patches and everybody put into practice like that during the movie, right? So, you presuppose nothing, right? Well, this guy in the one movie, the army movie, had false teeth, right? And when he tried to bite into an apple, of course, his teeth would, you know, they weren't, you know, they don't stay in position too well, I guess, so they didn't before anyway, you know? And then he takes a knife and he cuts the apple up into a small piece and they can eat it, you know, and he's happy, you know, and so on. But, you know, you see advertisements now on TV, you know, where people are eating apples, right, with their false teeth because they have the good thing, right? But, you know, if you try to eat an apple, you always bite off a piece, right? And then it goes to teeth in back to be chewed up, right? So wouldn't the dentist put the biting teeth in front and the chewing teeth in back just as nature did, right? Okay? Or, you know how our blood vessels are what? Are circular, right? The cross-section, right? Rather than this way. Well, you know, the pipes that they put into the house, you know, for water and so on, they are also what? Circular. Circular, yeah. And they say that if they made them, you know, square like this, you tend to get stuff in the corners, you know, and therefore clogged up, right? So we get, you know, we get clogged, yes, but we get more clogged up if we had square-shaped vessels. And so you can see the likeness there, huh? And so, you see, I like this between the good order and the parts of artificial things and the good order and the parts of animals and plants, right? Now, the cause of the good order and artificial things is known to us, right? It's namely the human mind, right? Okay? While the cause of the good order in the parts of animals and plants is at first unknown to us, right? Okay? But if like effects have like causes, a reasonable guess would be that the cause of the order in the parts of animals and plants is some other mind, right? Okay? Which Anaxagoras will call the greater mind, right? Because it's responsible for much more order than our mind, right? So that's a reasonable guess, right? Otherwise, you expect it to be as the great Heraclitus said, to eat rather than an order whole, right? Now, is there any other alternative to saying that there's a greater mind, right? Well, the alternative to that would be to say that it happens by chance, right? Okay? So, this mindless love, right, is bringing earth, air, fire, and water together, right? Since it's mindless, it brings them together in just any combination, right? And these fragments here that we have to survive are examples of these crazy combinations that result from the mindless love bringing these things together, right? on it many sides of foreheads without necks burst forth, and bare arms wandered breath to shoulders, and eyes wandered to knee to foreheads, right? But yet when God was more mixed with God, he's calling the elements, you know, gods, right? Poetic way of speaking, these things fell together in whatever way everyone happened to meet, and many other things besides them continually came to be. Many things were born with two faces and two breasts, offspring of cattle with faces of men, others the reverse, born of men with the heads of oxen, mixed in part from men and part female by nature, and so on. So what you expect is all kinds of crazy combinations, right? But, hate keeps on separating these things and love uniting them, right? So, predically said, eventually it happens to bring them together in a what? Good way, right? And it might be one in a hundred, maybe one in a thousand, maybe one in a million, maybe one in a billion, right? But if love is always bringing these things together and hate separating them, you know, eventually you happen to hit upon a good combination. Well, that combination can survive, right? And all the bad ones, what, would perish because they're not viable, they're unable to survive, right? You see? So those who had their teeth up here, you know, they couldn't eat properly, so they died off, right? Those who had their teeth here, right? Those who had their chewing teeth in front couldn't pair off the thing as well, so they maybe didn't survive, right? Okay? Now this is basically what you have in some of the modern biologists, right? A friend of mine was explaining what pedocles said to my