Physis in the Pythagorean Tradition

Leonid Zhmud. Physis in the Pythagorean Tradition. Philologia Classica 2018, 13(1), 50–68, 2018

This paper discusses the notion of physis in the fragments of the Pythagoreans Philolaus of Croton and Archytas of Tarentum. Building on the twentieth-century discussion of the two basic meanings of physis, ‘growth’ and ‘being’ (section 2), it argues that Philolaus was most probably the author of the first treatise entitled Περὶ φύσεως, as the first-century BC writer Diogenes of Magnesia testifies. The remaining evidence on Presocratic books entitled Περὶ φύσεως is late and unreliable (section 3). ἁ φύσις in Philolaus B 1 and 6 denotes ‘all that exists’; the Pythagorean speaks of physis in a generalized collective sense as of everything that came into being and exists in the world-order (section 4). As distinct from Philolaus, Archytas did not develop a doctrine of principles, and his epistemology was not constrained by metaphysical presuppositions. Archytas B 1 considers physis from both cosmological and epistemological points of views, as ‘the nature of the whole’ that is available to human cognition. Without setting any conditions or limitations to this process, as Philolaus did, he reinforces the latter’s declaration that “all the things that are known have number” (B 4) by making four Pythagorean mathēmata the principal cognitive tools for scientific enquiry into nature (section 5).

Philosophica: International Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2016

It is a puzzling fact that the Greek term for Nature ‘physis’ could be used to refer to (inter alia) i) reality as a whole, ii) the nature (essence) of something, iii) to individual material beings or materiality and iv) all things that are self-generating. In order to understand and tie together this wide array of possible meanings, I will consider the thesis that ‘physis’ was in fact used as a concept of being, a term naming the fundamental property of all of reality in the early pre-Socratics, poets and scientists before 500 BCE. Investigating ‘physis’ in this way can give us a way of thinking about Nature as a dynamic and creative but material process that goes far beyond the classical understanding of Nature as the sum of things that self-generate or the modern mathematical understanding of Nature born with Galileo, dominant to this day.

Philosophica, 2016

It is a puzzling fact that the Greek term for Nature ‘physis’ could be used to refer to (inter alia) i) reality as a whole, ii) the nature (essence) of something, iii) to individual material beings or materiality and iv) all things that are self-generating. In order to understand and tie together this wide array of possible meanings I will consider the thesis that ‘physis’ was in fact used as a concept of being, a term naming the fundamental property of all of reality in the early pre-Socratics, poets and scientists before 500 BCE. Investigating ‘physis’ in this way can give us a way of thinking about Nature as a dynamic and creative but material process that goes far beyond the classical understanding of Nature as the sum of things that self-generate or the modern mathematical understanding of Nature born with Galileo dominant to this day. Keywords: physis, ancient Greek philosophy, Timaeus, process, dynamic materialism

2007

The paper offers a running commentary on ps-Archytas' On Intellect and Sense Perception, with the aim to provide a clear description of Hellenistic/post-Hellenistic Pythagorean epistemology. Through an analysis of the process of knowledge and of the faculties that this involves, ps-Archytas presents an original epistemological theory which, although grounded in Aristotelian and Platonic theories, results in a peculiar Pythagorean criteriology that accounts for the acquisition and production of knowledge, as well as for the specific competences of each cognitive faculty. L'articolo offre un commento al testo Sull'intelletto e la sensazione dello Pseudo-Archita, con l'obiettivo di chiarire cosa sia l'epistemologia pitagorica in epoca ellenistica/post-ellenistica. Attraverso la descrizione del processo conoscitivo e delle facoltà in esso coinvolte, lo Pseudo-Archita presenta un'originale teoria della conoscenza che, pur affondando le proprie radici in nozioni platoniche e aristoteliche, si traduce in una peculiare criteriologia pitagorica e rende conto tanto dell'acquisizione e della produzione della conoscenza quanto delle specifiche competenze di ciascuna facoltà conoscitiva.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2005

Mr. Arnold Hermann could presumably have used his connection with Parmenides Press to publish anything he wanted. Instead, he has put out a sober, bibliographically well aware, thesis about the origin, nature, and motivations of Parmenides' thought, one evolved in dialogue with scholars such as Cordero, McKirahan, and Curd. The resulting monograph, to be the first of three on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides, is a legitimate contribution to the field, to be taken very seriously as part of any scholarly bibliography. Best of all, in this reviewer's opinion, is the exploration of Parmenides' legal language and metaphors as they might affect the type of abstract object which can count as subject for the esti, the differences between or among routes and rules of inquiry, the necessity for a Doxa-section, the relationships with Xenophanes and Plato. Less successful, I think, is the attempt to put together a coherent picture out of the hazy evidence on Pythagoras and to distinguish levels of probability within that evidence. Nor, in spite of his praise for Mourelatos's book (". .. truly one of the most indispensable works on the Eleatic," 214), does Hermann seem aware (see 189) that the possibility of a pluralistic Eleatic ontology was also present in that book, before it was followed by Curd's book. Hermann's thesis is that Parmenidean philosophy was an answer both to Xenophanes' challenge, to his indication of the limits of our human inquiry-our difference from the gods-and the problem of irrationals in Pythagoreanism. By setting out the rational limits which any purely theoretical inquiry must have, Parmenides intended to show that, in pursuing theory, we can, indeed, think like the gods. (Here excellent use is made of work by Mourelatos and Long.) But by distinguishing theoretical inquiry from empirical inquiry, Parmenides showed the limits of Pythagoreanism, which had been unable to make that distinction. (Units are theoretical entities, but points are empirical, so there are in reality no Pythagorean unit-points; rational numbers are theoretical while irrationals are empirical, and so on.) (Here there are affinities with the recent Popper book.) That is, the Doxa-section, according to Hermann, shows tragically that we do not always think like the gods, especially when we think empirically. Our contemporary science is continuing the inquiry that Parmenides began, but the original Parmenidean philosophy was a methodology about how to inquire into abstract objects, not necessarily a metaphysics, a theory about what those abstract objects are. Here Hermann differs from the standard portrait of Parmenides as theorist of an intelligible world; he thinks that it is Plato who is more responsible than Parmenides for theorizing about which objects correspond to the methodology. (Here he follows Mourelatos and Curd in viewing fragment 2 as setting up types of inquiry rather than types of entity.) One has no quarrel with the claim that Parmenides' originality is at least partly methodological. Yet a methodology whose strictures are this strong was thought, by Plato at least, to require absolute monism; is it an accident that I cannot have a pluralistic ontology without having non-identities between members of pairs of objects, non-identity being an example of saying what is not (fragment 8, lines 36-38)? Does not this particular methodology necessitate a very particular metaphysics?

Invited paper XIII International Ontology Congress Physics and Ontology, 2018

In contemporary science and philosophy, the orthodox view is to consider “reductive materialism” the only legitimate way of accounting for all things, past, present and future — for, that is, what some may call “theories of everything.” According to this view, all psychological phenomena, including mind, life, and consciousness, are also reducible to physics and chemistry. In his recent controversial but important book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford: OUP, 2012), Thomas Nagel argues against “reductive materialism” and reductionist interpretation of biological evolution. But Nagel is also an atheist, so he’ll have nothing to do with the theistic option and its contention that the intentionality of a purposive being is at work behind the present order of things. Nagel argues instead for a special kind of teleology that he calls “natural teleology” as the only valid explanation. The existence of teleological laws means that certain physical outcomes have a much higher probability than the laws of physics alone would allow because they are on a path toward certain results. What interests me with Nagel’s proposal is that we find a historical precedent for it at the origins of philosophy and science in what is called the discovery or invention of nature or physis. In this paper, I’ll argue that when we turn to the history of philosophy before Aristotle, we see that this natural teleology, to borrow Nagel’s expression, led some thinkers to affirm reductive materialism, which in turn generated, as a reaction to it, theism as a philosophical position, a theism grounded in arguments for the existence of God/gods. In other words, there were no arguments for the existence of God before a case was made for atheism. In this battle of Titans, the concept of nature or physis was at the centre of the controversy, and the political and social ramifications were as acute then as they are now. The aim of this paper is to introduce the philosophers and scientists participating in this congress on physis to the different parties in the original dispute and to their terms of reference. But my presentation here will also have something to say about the emergence of a new form of thinking, if not a new kind of Homo sapiens: the advent of Homo philosophicus, and the self-conscious reflexivity this being presupposes.

MAGIS: Xaverian Journal of Education, Vol. XIII, 2024

Pythagoreanism, a cult of the 530s BCE, is shrouded in mystery and very few accounts of their secretive knowledge have been passed down to us. These worshippers of the sun god Apollo were some of the first mathematicians, scientists and philosophers. What we do know of them presents a stunning picture of the advanced experimental and calculative nature of Archaic Greece. The figure of Apollo helms the proposition of several radical ideas in the fields of mathematics, philosophy and music, providing a bridge between the divine religious abstract and the logical observable reality. Much of our current knowledge is built upon the Pythagoreans' works, who saw the language of the universe in mathematics and translated it through music, art, justice systems and more. This essay analyses the connection of the mundane with the arcane through the core essence of numbers, with specific focus on the Pythagoreans' study of the world.