Empedocles Tutorial Notes

Empedocles Empedocles, a younger contemporary of Parmenides who flourished around 440 B.C., embodied the unique blend of philosopher, prophet, man of science, and charlatan that we had already encountered in Pythagoras. However, his doctrine bore some similarities to that of Heraclitus. He was a democratic politician from Acragas, on Sicily's south coast, and he also professed to be a deity. The struggle between democracy and tyranny was a continuous in most Greek communities, but it was particularly acute in Sicilian cities; the leaders of the party that was currently losing were either executed or banished. Exiled individuals seldom hesitated to engage in talks with Greece's adversaries, Carthage in the west and Persia in the east. Eventually, Empedocles was exiled, but it seems that he chose to follow the path of a wise man rather than an interesting refugee. Presumably, he was more or less Orphic in his early years, mixed politics and science before to his banishment, and only developed prophetic tendencies in later life as an exile. The legends spoke much about Empedocles. He was claimed to have performed miracles, or what appeared to be miracles, using both magic and his scientific knowledge at different periods. We was informed that he was able to control the winds, that he brought back to life a woman who had appeared to be dead for thirty days, and that, in the end, he perished by plunging into Etna's crater to demonstrate his divinity. The great empedocles, that passionate spirit, sprang into Etna and was burned alive, to use the poet's words. This topic was the subject of a poem by Matthew Arnold, but it is not included in the above couplet, despite being one of his worst. Empedocles was a poet like Parmenides. Though Lucretius, who was influenced by him, gave him high marks for poetry, there were differing views on this matter. The quality of his poetry must continue to be questioned because only fragments of his compositions have remained. His science and his faith are incompatible, thus it is important to address them individually. I will address his science, philosophy, and religion in that order. His discovery of air as a distinct material was his most significant scientific achievement. He demonstrated this by making the observation that water does not enter a bucket or other similar vessel when it is placed upside down in water. "The bulk of the air inside, pressing upon the close-packed perforations, keeps it out till she uncovers the compressed stream; but then air escapes and an equal volume of water runs in," the man explains, referring to a situation in which a girl playing with a shining brass water clock places the pipe's orifice upon her attractive hand and dips the water clock into the yielding mass of silvery water. This section appears in the respiratory explanation. Additionally, he found at least one instance of centrifugal force: water does not spill out of a cup when it is whirled around at the end of a thread. In addition to his rather imaginative notion of evolution and survival of the fittest, he was aware that plants have sex. At first, "countless tribes of mortal creatures, endowed with all manner of forms, were scattered abroad, a wonder to behold." There were single limbs looking for unity, heads without necks, arms without shoulders, and eyes without foreheads. There were shambling monsters with many hands, creatures with faces and breasts pointing in all directions, creatures with the bodies of oxen and the faces of men, and still others with the faces of oxen and the bodies of men. These beings linked together as each may chance. Hermaphrodites existed that combined the traits of males and women, however they were infertile. Eventually, just a few varieties remained. In terms of astronomy, he was aware that the sun and moon both shine due to reflected light; he asserted that light travels slowly enough for us to not be able to observe it; and he was aware that the moon's interposition causes solar eclipses, a fact that he appears to have picked up from Anaxagoras. He established the Italian school of medicine, and both Plato and Aristotle were affected by the medical school that grew out of it. Burnet (p. 234) claims that it had an impact on the overall inclination of philosophical and scientific thought. All of this demonstrates the scientific vigor of his era, which was unmatched in Greece's subsequent eras. Now, let me discuss his cosmology. As was previously indicated, it was he who declared earth, air, fire, and water to be the four elements—though he did not use the term "element." While each of them was eternal, they might be combined in many ways to create the complex substances that are always changing in the world. Strife kept them apart, but Love kept them together. For Empedocles, love and struggle were just as basic as earth, air, fire, and water. There were times when Strife was greater than Love, and other times when Love was in the ascendancy. There had been a time in history when Love had triumphed supremely. Men solely worshiped the Cyprian Aphrodite at that era. The only forces influencing change in the world are chance and necessity rather than any higher aim. There is a cycle: when Love has totally combined the components, Strife progressively separates them again; after Strife has split them apart, Love progressively brings them back together. As a result, every complex component is transient, but Love, Strife, and the elements are eternal. Heraclitus is compared, but there is a softening in that change is brought about by the combination of Strife and Love rather than by Strife alone. In the Sophist (242) Plato unites Empedocles and Heraclitus. Some Ionian and, more recently, Sicilian muses have concluded that it is safer to unite the two principles (of the One and the Many) and to assert that there are many aspects of being that are held together by enmity and friendship. These are held together, as the more severe Muses assert, by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, while the gentler Muses do not insist on perpetual strife and peace, but rather acknowledge a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity occasionally triumphant under Aphrodite's sway, and plurality and war, due to a principle of strife. According to Empedocles, the material universe is a sphere; during the Golden Age, love was inside and struggle was outside; later, progressively. Love was driven out and Strife came in until, in the worst case scenario, Love will be completely outside the sphere and Strife entirely within. Then, an opposing movement starts, though it's unclear why, and it lasts until the Golden Age returns, although briefly. After that, the entire cycle is repeated. Empedocles does not hold the belief that either extreme may be steady, despite what one might have assumed. He wanted to explain motion while considering Parmenides' arguments, but he never intended to reach an unchanging cosmos. The majority of Empedocles' religious beliefs are Pythagorean. "There was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom," he writes in a fragment that most likely alludes to Pythagoras. "For whenever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, yea twenty lifetimes of men." The altar "did not reek with pure bull's blood, but this was held in the greatest abomination among men, to eat the goodly limbs after tearing out the life," as previously indicated, when mankind worshipped solely Aphrodite during the Golden Age. He once boastfully refers to himself as a god: Friends who live in the big city overlooking the yellow rock of Acragas, near the citadel, engaged in charitable endeavors, providing a safe haven for strangers and unskilled persons who are cruel, all hail. I walk among you as an immortal deity, no longer a mortal, honored as equals with fillets and floral garlands around my head. Immediately, I always receive respect when I enter prosperous towns with these people in my train. Countless people follow me and ask me what the best course of action is; some want oracles, while others, who have been suffering from severe pain from various illnesses for a long time, beg for my word of healing. However, why do I keep bringing up these points, as if it were important, that I should be greater than mortal, transient men? An oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods, eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, states that whenever one of the daemons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his hands with blood, followed strife, and sworn himself, he must wander three times ten thousand years from the abodes of the blessed, being born throughout the time in all manner of mortal forms, changing one laborious path of life for another. At another moment, he feels himself to be a great sinner, suffering for his impiety. Because the powerful Air propels him into the Sea, which then spits him out onto the parched Earth; the Earth then launches him into the Sun's beams, which propel him back into the eddies of Air. They all reject him once one snatches him from the other. I now count myself among these, a god-forsaken traveler and exile, and I put my faith in senseless conflict because of it. We are unsure of the nature of his transgression; it might not have been something serious. "Ah, woe is me that the merciless day of death did not destroy me ere ever I wrought evil deeds of devouring with my lips," he exclaims.Don't consume any Laurel leaves at all. "Rednecks, rednecks, rednecks, keep your hands off the beans!" So maybe he hadn't done much worse than eat beans or chew laurel leaves. Empedocles foreshadows the most famous phrase in Plato's work, which compares this world to a cave where everything that is seen are shadows of the truths in the light world above. The Orphics' teachings are the source of this passage. Some people finally reach eternal joy in the company of the gods—possibly those who avoid sin through several incarnations: Finally, though, they emerge among mortal men as prophets, songsmiths, doctors, and princes; from then on, they ascend to the status of exalted gods, dining at the same table as the other gods, safe from the grip of fate, unaffected by human suffering, and unable to cause harm. All this seems to include very little that was not already taught in the courses on Pythagoreanism and Orphism. Beyond science, Empedocles' uniqueness lies in his theory of the four elements and his application of the two principles of Love and Strife to the explanation of change. He disapproved of monism and believed that necessity and accident, rather than intention, govern the path of nature. Compared to Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle, his thought was more scientific in these regards. It is true that he agreed with modern superstitions in other areas, but he was no worse than many other more recent scientists in this regard.