Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One
Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial

2.B.1. A Genealogy of Philosophic Enlightenment in Classical Greece
Chapter 2: Thales and Anaximenes (Ionian pantheism)
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copyright © 2003, 2006 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved. (Last revised: May, 2007)



We now turn to Thales. While Anaximander stayed true to the memory of Conservation and posited the arche as the infinite pure and simple, Thales, who preceded Anaximander, in his recall of the memory of Conservation posited water as the substratum called for in the recall. That is, among the four elements made so because of (in addition to their derivation from the states of matter: gaseousness, liquidity, solidity, and the "plasma-like" state of fire) their special quality of under-remaining (hupomenouses) in sameness despite affectations on the surface -- fire, earth, water, and air -- he elevated water above the others as more elemental, because, apparently, he saw the other three as mere modifications or aspects of water under different physical circumstances. E.g.

For the moist substance [h ugra fusiV], since it is easily formed into each different things [being moulded differently to each: eiV ekasta metaplattomenh], is accustomed to be transformed [morfousqai] variously; [this is reasoning from that special formlessness and boundarilessness and so formable quality reminiscent of the substratum] that part of which is exhaled [to exatmizomenon, also "steamed out"?] is made into air [air-izes aeroutai], and the finest part is kindled from air into aither, while when water is compacted and transformed into slime mud [ilun] it becomes earth [earth-izes apogaioutai]. Therefore Thales declared that water, of the four elements, was the most "causitive" [aitiwtaton]. (Heraclitus Homericus Quaest. Hom. 22; Kirk and Raven, ibid., p. 90)

Water then recapitulates the "hot soup of Big Bang". Aristotle (Metaphysics A3, 983b6) gives another reason for Thales' exaltation of water (the beginning of which has already been cited):

... for the original source of all existing things, that from which a thing first comes-to-be and into which it is finally destroyed, the substance persisting but changing in its qualities, this [the pre-Socratic physicists] declare is the element [stoicheion] and first principle [arche] of existing things; and for this reason they consider that there is no absolute coming-to-be or passing away, on the ground that such a nature is always preserved... Thales... says that [the first principle] is water (and therefore declares that earth forms on top of water [dio kai thn ghn ef'udatoV apefaineto einai]), perhaps taking the supposition from seeing the nurture [trophen] of all things to be moist, and warmth [thermon] itself coming to be from this and living by this (and that from which they come to be being the first principle of all things) -- taking the supposition both from this and from the seeds [spermata] of all things having a moist nature, water being the first principle [arche] of moist things. (Ibid., p. 87)

Next, we must recall our scenario for the origin of the notion of soul and animism where the soul as the breath of the ancestor departs from the ancestor's dead body and blends into the atmosphere of the cosmos to animate it.

kai en twi olwi de tineV authn [thn yuchn] memeicqai fasin, oqen iswV kai QalhV wihqh panta plhph qewn einai.

"And some say that the soul is intermingled in the whole [cosmos], for which reason, perhaps, Thales thought that all things are full of gods."

Thales thinks that the cosmos is divine, and everything in it is permeated by this divinity. Discovering remnant from mythic animism in Ionian metaphysics should not cause surprise since this metaphysics is firmly rooted within the functional perspective. But this remnant is taken up in the more differentiated mode of consciousness and subject to differentiation: as said, the divinity in cosmos is by now impersonal and mechanical, and therefore transcends the earlier petty interpersonal relationships among gods with the same emotional follies as humans.

Furthermore, to continue this new picture of divinity, since the soul moves the body -- and in the back of our mind we always hold the image of divinity as something like the universal soul into which the particular souls blend after leaving the body -- it is easy to regard the whole cosmos as animated because the cosmos exhibits a kind of movement in its natural phenomena. "The assertion may well imply that the world as a whole manifests a power of change and motion which is certainly not even predominantly human, and must, both because of its permanence and because of its extent and variation, be regarded as divine, as due to the inherence of some form of immortal yuch." (Ibid., p. 95) The animistic remnant is thus differentiated and elevated into some sort of pantheism, which is similar to the formation of the Generic Ancestor from multiple ancestral spirits through coalescing or differentiation of the essence of spirits -- except that here the unified divinity is impersonal and mechanical. This pantheistic tendency leads Thales to even regard magnesian stone as possessing (or rather be permeated by) soul (the cosmic, universal soul, it must be) because it moves iron.

This universal soul, moving the cosmos, must also be its substratum. The recall of the substratum, together with the image (still active since tribal time) of the dispersion of the immortal/ conserved soul into the immortal/ conserved cosmos (i.e. into the atmosphere) to become the substratum animating or moving it -- this would lead Thales to experience the identity of water (as the arche, as the substratum) with the universal soul. Moist is then the divine, pan-theistic principle underlying and moving the cosmos as a whole: the moist inherent in the atmosphere and the equivalent of "energy" in the modern perspective. And it is here that we must remember Anaximander's consideration of the apeiron as the divinity of the cosmos because "it steers all" (in addition to being eternal and indestructible). Anaximander derives his pantheism in essentially the same way.

QalhV noun tou kosmou ton qeon, to de pan emyucon ama kai daimonwn plhreV. dihkein de kai dia tou stoiceiwdouV ugrou dunamin qeian kinhtikhn autou.

Thales said that the mind of the cosmos is god, and that the sum of things ["the whole", pan] is besouled and full of daimons; right through the elemental moisture there penetrates a divine power [dunamin theian] that moves it. (Aetius I, 7, 11. Ibid., p. 95-6)

Calling the universal soul the "mind" (nous) of the cosmos is to express, on the objective side, the orderliness of the movement of the cosmos thus animated1, and, on the subjective side, the feeling of mystery, respect, and amazement (thaumazein) that is engendered inside the philosopher by the wonder of this movement of the cosmos. As we have said, differentiation of consciousness that results in better approximate understanding of the structure of reality will always re-order the soul of the human being that has attained this better approximation. This is to later become "minor salvation", the order of the soul. After this re-ordering the philosopher's ethical comportment is fundamentally altered insofar as he now relates to the world and fellow human beings in a new way: in an "enlightened state of mind".

Next we consider Anaximenes. Following Anaximander in time, he however took air to be the source of being [arche] and said air was the infinite [apeiron].

Anaximenes says the underlying nature [hupokeimenen phusin] is one and infinite [apeiron] like [Anaximander], but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature ["according to its being-ness": kata tas ousias] by rarity and density. Being made finer it becomes fire, being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest come into being from these. He, too, makes motion eternal, and says that change, also, comes about through it. (Simplicium Phys. 24, 26; ibid., p. 144)

(mian men kai autoV thn upokeimenhn fusin kai apeiron fhsin wsper ekeinoV [Anaximandrou], ouk aoriston de wsper ekeinoV alla wrismenhn, aera legwn authn. diaferein de manothti kai puknothti kata taV ousiaV. kai araioumenon men pur ginesqai, puknoumenon de anemon, eita nefoV, eti de mallon udwr, eita ghn, eita liqouV, ta de alla ek toutwn. kinhsin de kai outoV aidion poiei, di'hn kai thn metabolhn ginesqai.)

Thus the substratum sought for -- the equivalent of "energy" in the modern perspective -- this time is air. The pupil Anaximenes thus deviated from the purity of his master's recall. The other three elements are mere aspects of air under different conditions of density and rarity. The special quality of air and water, and then fire and earth, which attracts the attention of the ancients looking for the arche, as we have said, is their formlessness and under-remaining-ness despite superficial affectations; now to elaborate on this special quality in addition to these "elements" (actually physical states of matter) seeming to be the (four types of) commonality underlying all things existent, Thales and Anaximenes have shown both water and air to be transformable, by mere quantitative variations (density and rarity, etc), into other three elements which could further generate the rest of the world through more transformations or mutual mixture; this special quality, of water and air, and probably also of earth and fire, is so reminding of the substratum sought for, that not only can they be elemental, but any of them can be elevated to the "fundamental", as the "unified substratum" recapitulating the "hot soup" of Big Bang, the hot soup of pure energy in the beginning (more below). This special quality, as we have said, results from the fact that they are really only "states" (fluidity, gaseousness, solidity, and the "plasmic" state) into which any sort of matter can be transited and which the functional perspective erroneously objectifies. It is only to be expected then that air should have its turn as the arche after water.

But more. Anaximenes also said that the soul (breath: psyche) of human was this air, and regarded air as the breath of the world, ever-living, and the divine essence and source of all: the cosmic pneuma (again, "energy"). This is very close to our "primal scene" of the soul as breath leaving the dead body and blending into the atmosphere of the cosmos to become the "god" animating it and the essential constituent of it. Save that here this primal scene is recast in the more differentiated form of pantheism: the interpersonal god is now the divinity (to theion) as a principle, as mechanical and impersonal. Then same as in Thales, we note the convergence between the speculative and the animistic strand: one is, the memory of Conservation leading to the experience of substratum, leading to (here) air as the substratum, leading to the identity between this substratum and soul (psyche: breath-air), leading to the pantheistic divine, cosmic soul or pneuma as the Source (arche); the other is: memory of Conservation leading to the immortality of the soul, leading to ancestral spirits filling the cosmos, leading to the coalescing into the Generic Ancestor as the substratum or the source. But the end of this animism is not differentiated enough as to reconstitute itself as pantheism.

Therefore, "Anaximenes shared Thales' assumption that matter was somehow alive ["be-souled"], which would be confirmed by the constant mobility of air". (Ibid., p. 147)

That the breath-soul of the particular persons is the cosmic soul constituting itself in a particular instance is referred to in this fragment:

... for from it [i.e. air] all things come to be and into it they are again dissolved. As our soul, being air, [Anaximenes] says, holds us together and controls us [sugkratei, so does wind [or breath] and air enclose the whole world... He, too, errs in thinking that living creatures consist of simple and homogeneous air and wind... (Aetius I, 3, 4; ibid., p. 158)

(ek gar toutou [aeroV] panta gignesqai kai eiV auton palin analuesqai. oion h yuch, fhsin, h hmetera ahr ousa sugkratei hmaV, kai olon ton kosmon pneuma kai ahr periecei... amartanei de kai outoV ex aplou kai monoeidouV aeroV kai pneumatoV dokwn sunestanai ta zwia...)

Air rules and animates us while permeating us just as it rules and animates the cosmos while permeating it. Anaximenes (and in fact Thales, Anaximander, Empedocles, etc. as well, if considered more generally in terms of their pantheistic orientation) is most similar to the Chinese philosophers such as the Neo-Confucians and Yijing metaphysicians who posit air as the substratum that coalesces here and there in particular beings (sometimes under the moulding by "reason" or "law" [li], which is the formal cause in the Aristotelian sense). Furthermore, the Chinese "physicists" take metal, wood, water, fire, and earth as the elements in a manner similar to the Greeks, save that air (qi) is usually taken as the substratum that forms into the five elements in the Anaximenian way. The convergence is not surprising, due merely to the fact that any still yet immature consciousness (in the functional perspective) would take the "states" of matter as independent entities in themselves (because the structure below is not yet known) and elemental (because they underlie all things existent as the commonality behind the particularities of these things and also because of their "special quality" as formless and transformable); and in fact in the anamnesis of Conservation, the immature consciousness would most likely take air as the substratum not only because of this special quality but also because air sustains all life while permeating it thoroughly. Do we not recall that in Chinese medicine qi is the life principle that animates the body while running through it? (Of course what is designated here by qi, like the Greek psyche, in reality is the cumulative effects sensed by consciousness of the underlying metabolism and transmission of nerve impulses which a functional perspective does not see.) The Universal Soul as air and as substratum (arche) is an inevitable idea. Convergence is due to the universal structure of consciousness operative in the same environment.

These Ionian pantheistic "physicists" then resemble the contemporary physicists who understand the Universe as coming from an original uniform energy-matter pool originating in the Big Bang which then differentiated and recombined its elements to form everything we see -- save that the Ionian thinking is within the bound of functional perspective. In fact, the speculations of Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Empedocles later on (and all the Neo-Confucians as well) can be transformed into a "scientific pantheism" and so remain scientifically valid when their symbolisms for the arche -- air, apeiron, water, fire, the equal mixture of the four elements -- is replaced by "energy". The coincidence should not be surprising: this is the immature, most common-sense level of spirituality human beings can achieve (c.f. later).

The divinity of air is thus summarized:

Afterwards Anaximenes determined that air is god, comes into being, and is measureless [immensum] and infinite and always in motion... ("post Anaximenes aera deum statuit eumque gigni esseque immensum et infinitum et semper in motu..." Cicero N. D. I, 10, 26; ibid., p. 150)

Anaximenes (says that) the air (is god): one must understand in such saying the powers [dunameiV] which interpenetrate the elements [stoiceioiV] or bodies [swmasi]. (Aetius I, 7, 13; ibid.)

[Anaximander] left Anaximenes as his disciple and successor, who attributed all the causes of things to infinite air, and did not deny that there were gods, or pass them over in silence; yet he believed no that air was made by them, but that they arose from air. ("iste [Anaximander] Anaximenen discipulum et successorem reliquit, qui omnes rerum causas aeri infinito dedit, nec deos negavit aut tacuit; non tamen ab ipsis aerem factum, sed ipsos ex aere ortos credidit." Augustine C.D. VIII, 2; ibid.)

Air is the pantheistic principle of which gods are mere manifestations. This is coming close to Xenophane. Kirk and Raven's summary of Anaximenes' cosmogony gives us, again, a sense of a common sense intuitive speculation on natural phenomena within the functional perspective -- the mechanics of nature that has become transparent once the gods of myth are purged from it.

Anaximenes presumably gave an account of the development of the world from undifferentiated air... The heavenly bodies (astra) certainly originate from the earth, but only in that moist vapor is exhaled or evaporated from (the moist parts of) earth; this is further rarefied and so becomes fire, of which the heavenly bodies are composed. The formation of the earth had occurred by the condensation of a part of the indefinitely extended primal air. (Ibid., p. 152)

In the functional perspective what is immediately seen is taken for granted, as the way it is, so that, as the solar system and the universe are not yet known, not immediately seen, the earth and the firmament of heaven are taken as the cosmos as the way it is: hence the stars are merely explained as little fire-balls formed in the firmament of heaven through rarefaction of the air rather than taken, contrary to the way they appear, as entities actually bigger than the Earth. Anaximenes explains wind, cloud, rain, and earthquakes in a similar manner as does Anaximander and in the way of empiricist inferences within the functional perspective.

Footnote:

1. Consider the statement of Socrates in Phaedo: "One day, however, I heard someone reading from a book he said was by Anaxagoras, saying that it is in fact nous which orders everything and is the cause ["reason", aitios] of everything; and I was pleased by this reason [aitios] and it seemed to me to be good that nous should be the reason of everything..." (all'akousaV men pote ek bibliou tinoV, wV efh, Anaxagarou anagignwskontoV, kai legontoV wV ara nouV estin o diakosmwn te kai pantwn aitioV, tauthi dh thi aitiai hsqhn te kai edoxe moi tropon tina eu ecein to ton noun einai pantwn aition...: 97c) This passage is analyzed later in Phaedo. For now this shows that the primary motivator for utilizing the symbolism of "intelligence" or "mind" to further designate the substratum so as to arrive at pantheism-proper is the experience of the orderliness of the functionings of the cosmos and moreover of the seeming teleology inherent in them: that all things in nature seem to be formed according to a purpose; a purpose, that is: all are like cogs in a huge machine which works itself out harmoniously.


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