The Problem: We are concerned here with the characteristics features of this phenomenon, and then the historical problem of how to account for the Intellectual Revolution:

• the discovery of nature
• the practice of rational criticism and debate
• man is the measure

1. Background to the discovery of nature
   1. Myth:
      1. The purpose of myth is to provide a logical structure capable of overcoming contradiction;
      2. It is not devoid of truth, thought its answers may often strike the modern as fallacious, 'scientific' answers have also failed. What it does do is to relieve anxiety about the unknown, it suggests that powerful forces (whether the sun will rise, the weather) can be controlled. It answers questions about (for example) unexpected or irregular events
      3. The subject of myth is the supernatural.
   2. Assumptions of Scientific Mind
      1. Universe is natural whole: gods; supernatural forces are not active; not necessarily atheistic, simply that gods do not intervene.
      2. Unchanging patterns or laws governing forces. Nature always acts the same way unless another pattern / force conflicts ( Aristotle, nature works "always or for the most part" to produce the same result)
      3. Human can ascertain (tho not necessarily control) those forces; does not mean that one knows everything, only the the potential is there to understand.
   3. The Logic of Myth
      1. No separation of subject and object; external world seen as sympathetic or hostile. Child kicks door; the golf club.
      2. Reason serves purpose of immediate action. Monkey uses stick to get banana. Science speculates about all.
      3. Objects of interest only in so far as they affect humans; no knowledge for its own sake. Note that science cannot provide all the answers; we must tolerate the fact that the evidence is ambiguous (i.e., that our knowledge is incomplete). Sometimes too, solutions of science are as mythical as those found in the pre-scientific world.
      4. Each event is unique.
2. The Pre-Socratic "Philosophers" actually more physicists than philosophers in the modern sense of the word; more concerned with investigation of natural and natural phenomena than with ethics. Critical concepts, assumptions and methods:
   1. The assumption of an underlying order = kosmos; Leucippus "Nothing happens in vain (without reason), everything has a cause and is the result of necessity".
   2. The definition of the First Principle (arché‚) or Elements. What is the substratum of matter? what persists despite change in form? Thales. Some examples: Everything from water; earth, air, fire and water; atoms
   3. Conservation of matter. What is, remains. Something cannot come out of nothing. It is or is not.
   4. Transformation and change: rarefaction and condensation ("all things are produced by a kind of condesation, and again rarefaction"); irregularly shaped atoms in void; anything that has the power and will to move has soul (not a metaphysical phenomenon).
   5. Theory of knowledge/skepticism: senses panta rei (everything flows). How can we know that what we observe is true? and not a mirage?
3. Instruments of Pre-socractics First two found in ANE In this passage, where to you find examples of the following?
   1. Classification
   2. Accurate observation:
   3. Public debate; critique of competitors (Heraclitus: "Learning of many things does not teach intelligence; if so it would have taught Hesiod, Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus..."
   4. Analogy: heaven like an over surrounded by fire
   5. Law of contradiction: water vs. fire; motion; lightening; children.
   6. Verification: autopsy (=eye witness)
4. Some specific problems treated by the Pre-Socratic Scientists.
   1. How to explain apparently irregular and unpredicatable terrestrial and celestial events in a way that would make them orderly, and do so without reference to the gods.
   2. Research (istoria)...human effort and not revelation; the major thrust was now developing a theoretical structure that could be tested by common sense. Note the opening words of Herodotus's histories.
   3. Most important: all explanations, regards of scientific value by our standards, are non-theological. Nonetheless, they were not atheists, but not conventionally religious:
      1. 'one god ... in no way similar to mortals either in body or in throught...but without toil he moves all things by the thought of his mind.
      2. Reject the anthropomorphic. Nonetheless, Protagoras and Socrates were accused at Athens of impiety "concerning the gods, I am not in a position to know either that they exist, or that they do not exist; for there are many obstacles in the way of such knowledge, notably the intrinisic obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life"
      3. Protagoras. Both scientists and sophists were commonly accused of being 'immoral' . "He [Protagoras] was the first to declare that there are two possible positions on every question, and opposed to each other...people have contradictory opinions, some of which are more useful than others...
5. Some important solutions / theories regarding the cosmos:
   1. notion of equilibrium (proportion, harmony). Anaximander: "the earth is on high, held up by nothing, but remaining at the center, fixed by necessity and equal distance from all things."
      
   2. Assumptions:
      1. only circular motion is eternal Plato: by the assumption of what uniform and ordered motions can the apparent(ly irregular) motions of the planets be accounted for? Aristotle: For motion in space is the first of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first kind of spatial motion, and this the Prime Mover produces.
      2. Preserve the phenomena. Ptolemy: "the earth cannot make any movement whatever...for if it did, it must do so with a violent motion...
   3. Cosmology: earth floating in water; various weight density of elements each in natural place. Stars, moon, planets, meteorites. Anaximander's universe; Pythagoras'. (Anaximander: On thunder, lightning, whirlwinds ... Anaximander says that all these thing occur as a result of wind: for whenever it is shut up in a thick cloud it bursts forth...and makes a flash)
6. The Revolution in Ionia (the Greek cities on the western coast of today's Turkey) : Some factors in the transformation of thinking.
   1. Extensive contact with East: data, material prosperity, leisure
   2. A human centered universe (humans make law; not given by gods)
   3. Breakdown of traditional religion?? Gods too human? Yet temple building everywhere.
   4. High level of cultural achievement, especially the role of Homer.
   5. Colonization -- trade -- communication. The pre-Socratic philosophers were aware of the opinions of others: their ideas resonated with a sufficient large number of Greeks who listened to individual 'intellectuals/teachers' and communicated their views to others.
   6. "There is something about the polis..." =>
      1. consensual government; public debate of all issues; a belief that sustained, self-conscious reflection was the key to political stability, ability to consider alternative perspectives;
      2. neither Solon nor Thales attribute their insights to the gods, nor do they claim them to legitimize.
7. Consider:
   1. Note how Herodotus uses these elements in his study of Assyrian customs (cultural anthropology), in his acount of the flow of the Nile (geography), in Aristophanes' comedy Clouds, and in Thucydides analysis of historical causation. Map of the world in 450B.
   2. On public discussion:
      1. "Nothing makes arrogant people angrier than being worsted in argument by the weaker party." [Andromache to Hermione. Euripides, Andromache 189]
      2. He was the first to charge for teaching a course...a practice not to be despised ; for we value the things we spend money on more than those we get for free...Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.

Classroom Exercise. Here is an edited version of Thucydides' description of the plague that struck Athens in the second year of the Peloponnesian War. In what ways is this document 'scientific' [by Greek standards]?

Class Reporting Tool.