Looking today at some of the pre-Socratics, those old reductionists (“everything is really air/water/etc.” and “change is unreal” or “only change is real”) who are so easy to snicker at… until you consider that they really were taking a bold stab at giving a rational account of things.
They were flying by the seats of their pants, without anything like a scientific method or system of peer review to guide them. But, give them a little credit. At least they weren’t just passing along tall old tales and genuflecting. They were trying to think.
My fave (& Carl Sagan’s, see below*): the old atomist. “With Democritus (460-360 BCE) the attempt to deanimate and demythologize the world was complete…”
Greek “soul” was insubstantial except when embodied, and then was a “mere breath”… (PW)
He developed a picture of the world that is remarkably close to ours, if you fudge the definition of “atom” a bit.
He never appeared in public without laughing at human folly, hence his moniker “The Laughing Philosopher.” He looks a little grim here, the sculptor may have been unsympathetic. But he had the last laugh, if indeed it’s true that he lived past 100. He must’ve had good atoms (the building blocks of genes and souls, too).
Hecht really sheds fresh light, in Doubt: a history, on the naturalizing impulse of the pre-Socratic and Hellenic thinkers. For instance, Democritus (the beautiful regularity of the universe was neither created nor maintained by the guiding intelligence of a god or gods), the Cynics (Diogenes‘ advice is that we stop distracting ourselves with accomplishments, accept the meaninglessness of the universe, lie down on a park bench and get some sun while we have the chance) and Stoics (feeling a part of the community of the universe) and Epicureans (there are no ghostly grownups watching our lives and waiting to punish us… we might as well make an art of appreciating pleasure… in this beautiful moment one is alive) and Skeptics (I do not lay it down that honey is sweet but I admit that it appears to be so), with fresh slants on Socrates (among those great minds who actually cultivated doubt in the name of truth) and Plato (whose form of the Good has been illicitly conflated with God for two millennia).
What I like most in her section on Greek doubt: the forest metaphor:
The experience of doubt in a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan world is a bit like being lost in a forest… we could stop being lost if we were to just stop trying to get out of the forest. Instead, we could pick some blueberries, sit beneath a tree, and start describing how the sun-dappled forest floor shimmers in the breeze. The initial horror of being lost utterly disappears when you come to believe fully that there is no town out there, beyond the forest… Hang a sign that says HOME on a tree and you’re done; just try to have a good time.
As Epicurus realized, it is accepting the finality of death that makes it possible to enjoy the pleasures of the garden. This is a very different garden than the one we got kicked out of in the Eden story. This time you have to eat from the tree of knowledge to get in.
In other words: we should try to make ourselves at home in the universe, at ease with the human condition, puzzling it out piece by piece as we go. That’s what the pre-Socratics were fumbling towards, back when the woods were even deeper and darker than now.
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Tags: Democritus, Hecht's Doubt
Up@dawn 
September 14, 2010 at 9:14 am |
Reminds me of Mitch Hedberg “Well I was lost, but now I live here!”
September 14, 2010 at 11:29 pm |
What Iike best is the the last paragraph. It says that the pre-socratics had a harder life then us, and were still finding peace. We are more advanced now, but are struggling to find any peace. Thats what I get out of it anyway.