A HISTORY OF SCIENCE

EMPEDOCLES

The latest of the important pre-Socratic philosophers of the

Italic school was Empedocles, who was born about 494 B.C. and lived to the age of sixty. These dates make Empedocles strictly contemporary with Anaxagoras, a fact which we shall do well to bear in mind when we come to consider the latter’s philosophy in the succeeding chapter. Like Pythagoras, Empedocles is an imposing figure. Indeed, there is much of similarity between the personalities, as between the doctrines, of the two men.

Empedocles, like Pythagoras, was a physician; like him also he was the founder of a cult. As statesman, prophet, physicist, physician, reformer, and poet he showed a versatility that, coupled with profundity, marks the highest genius. In point of versatility we shall perhaps hardly find his equal at a later day–unless, indeed, an exception be made of Eratosthenes. The myths that have grown about the name of Empedocles show that he was a remarkable personality. He is said to have been an awe-inspiring figure, clothing himself in Oriental splendor and moving among mankind as a superior being. Tradition has it that he threw himself into the crater of a volcano that his otherwise unexplained disappearance might lead his disciples to believe that he had been miraculously translated; but tradition goes on to say that one of the brazen slippers of the philosopher was thrown up by the volcano, thus revealing his subterfuge. Another tradition of far more credible aspect asserts that Empedocles retreated from Italy, returning to the home of his fathers in Peloponnesus to die there obscurely. It seems odd that the facts regarding the death of so great a man, at so comparatively late a period, should be obscure; but this, perhaps, is in keeping with the personality of the man himself. His disciples would hesitate to ascribe a merely natural death to so inspired a prophet.

Empedocles appears to have been at once an observer and a dreamer. He is credited with noting that the pressure of air will sustain the weight of water in an inverted tube; with divining, without the possibility of proof, that light has actual motion in space; and with asserting that centrifugal motion must keep the heavens from falling. He is credited with a great sanitary feat in the draining of a marsh, and his knowledge of medicine was held to be supernatural. Fortunately, some fragments of the writings of Empedocles have come down to us, enabling us to judge at first hand as to part of his doctrines; while still more is known through the references made to him by Plato, Aristotle, and other commentators. Empedocles was a poet whose verses stood the test of criticism. In this regard he is in a like position with Parmenides; but in neither case are the preserved fragments sufficient to enable us fully to estimate their author’s scientific attainments. Philosophical writings are obscure enough at the best, and they perforce become doubly so when expressed in verse. Yet there are certain passages of Empedocles that are unequivocal and full of interest. Perhaps the most important conception which the works of Empedocles reveal to us is the denial of anthropomorphism as applied to deity. We have seen how early the anthropomorphic conception was developed and how closely it was all along clung to; to shake the mind free from it then was a remarkable feat, in accomplishing which Empedocles took a long step in the direction of rationalism. His conception is paralleled by that of another physician, Alcmaeon, of Proton, who contended that man’s ideas of the gods amounted to mere

suppositions at the very most. A rationalistic or sceptical tendency has been the accompaniment of medical training in all ages.

The words in which Empedocles expresses his conception of deity have been preserved and are well worth quoting: “It is not impossible,” he says, “to draw near (to god) even with the eyes or to take hold of him with our hands, which in truth is the best highway of persuasion in the mind of man; for he has no human head fitted to a body, nor do two shoots branch out from the trunk, nor has he feet, nor swift legs, nor hairy parts, but he is sacred and ineffable mind alone, darting through the whole world with swift thoughts.”[8]

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