Greek philosophy is commonly associated with three titanic figures: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Collectively, their influence is perhaps the most significant intellectual legacy of most of the history of the global West. But Greek philosophy certainly began before Socrates - Thales claimed that everything is made of water up to 200 years before Socrates flourished.
What are the differences between this triumvirate of legendary philosophers and their predecessors? There are several, but one notable distinction is not often remarked on. Before Socrates, Greek philosophy was omnivorous - it speculated on humanity, yes, but also the material world, spirituality, the nature of space and matter and the fundamental composition of the universe. Bertrand Russell tells us that "They [pre-Socratic Greek philosophers] were interested in everything - meteors and eclipses, fishes and whirlwinds, religion and morality; with a penetrating intellect they combined the zest of children."
Take the philosophers Leucippus and Democritus, commonly lumped together in the category of "Atomists." The fundamental idea of this philosophy was that everything is composed of, well, atoms. Their understanding, at least that which we have from Democritus (the more prolific writer of the two), was that everything can be broken down into smaller and smaller pieces, until it can't. The smallest pieces are called "atoms," and they are indivisible, and between the atoms exists empty space. There are an infinite number of atoms, and even of kinds of atoms, that differ in size and weight.
There is a lot that is strikingly right about this theory of Atomism, at least given what we now know from chemistry and physics. It's uncanny, upon reflection, to think that these philosophers from the 5th century BCE developed such a close approximation to knowledge that modern science could only confirm in the 20th century. They got lucky, of course, because they lacked robust scientific evidence for their claims. In fact, this is one reason why they are considered philosophers, not scientists - they reasoned the existence of atoms rather than observing their behavior at microscopic levels.
Their philosophy extends beyond simply outlining this theory of atomism - they reason from the theory to make a lot of philosophical conjectures about the world. Democritus, for instance, was a strict determinist on the basis of atomism - he believed that nothing was due to chance, that all was determined by the motion of atoms in space. They reasoned about the nature of "the void," or empty space, and about the nature of "matter."
In short, their philosophy directly concerned itself with the material world. Science and metaphysics were inextricably bound together for the Atomists. As Russell says, they were "engaged in a disinterested effort to understand the world." And according to Russell, Democritus is the last Greek philosopher to engage in such disinterested philosophy.
So where do Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the rest diverge? Their philosophy is much more focused on man than on the world. They turn their gaze inward. They put, as Russell puts it, "undue emphasis on man as compared with the universe." Here, Russell lists the focus of each of the Triumvirate:
Then comes, with Socrates, the emphasis on ethics; with Plato, the rejection of the world of sense in favor of the self-created world of pure thought; with Aristotle, the belief in purpose as the fundamental concept in science. In spite of the genius of Plato and Aristotle, their thought has vices which proved infinitely harmful.
This shift in focus in philosophy to human-centered reasoning influences at least the following two thousand years of both philosophical and scientific progress in the West. In science, genuine inquiry into the nature of the material world was often stymied by the Catholic Church, or was simply seen as unworthy of study. And in philosophy, especially in the Catholic tradition, science comes to bear much less importance for thinkers than does theology and its attendant concerns of ethics and purpose - Augustine and Aquinas exemplify this trend.
Russell ends his chapter on the Atomists with this thought: "It was not until the Renaissance that philosophy regained the vigour and independence that characterize the predecessors of Socrates." While of course, the intellectual achievements of the Triumvirate are colossal and invaluable, I am saddened by the thought that their influence, as well as that of the Church in later centuries, might have proved counterproductive to thriving inquiry in both philosophy and science.
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