Behind its rather lurid title, what is this book about? It is possible to make a case that the presocratic philosophers attacked and entirely rejected the idea of the supernatural, believing what exists to be exclusively natural and that proper explanations of phenomena should cite natural entities only. This is called presocratic naturalism. One critique of this view is that the presocratic philosophers still believed in gods and the divine, that they believed in the efficacy of magical practices and that they indulged in animism, astrology, numerology, dream divination, magical healing and mysticism in their explanations of the world. The aim of this book is to investigate how far these criticisms are justified. It is common to find these criticisms made with the implication that the alleged belief entails a commitment to the supernatural and so a belief in an entirely natural world is compromised. It is rare to find this entailment spelled out in any detail or to find any discussion of how to distinguish between the natural and the supernatural, which we will look at later in this introduction.1
The critique
Some readers will be more familiar with the complete rejection of the supernatural view for the presocratics, so let me say a little more to introduce the critique, which will also introduce some of the main areas of contention for this book. The basic assertion is that the presocratics did indeed believe in gods and various forms of magic and that this undermines any attempt on our part to construct a narrative of a rejection of the supernatural for this period. Historiographically, this has been supported in several ways. Dodds, in his The Greeks and the Irrational,2 questioned why we should consider the Greeks different to other ancient societies and assembled impressive evidence of what he considered to be irrational beliefs among the Greeks.3 That we should not improperly privilege the Greeks has been an important theme in this critique, with Pingree and von Staden coining the terms ‘Hellenophilia’ and ‘Hellenocentrism’ respectively in this context. Both have argued that evidence of magical belief among the presocratics has been systematically underplayed,4 and the idea that some historiographies have either marginalised or ignored religious or magical belief among the presocratics is central to this critique.5 Jaeger commented that religious belief is:
An aspect which has been unduly neglected or minimised by scholars of the positivist school because in the early Greek philosophy of nature they saw their own likeness.6
This issue of ‘seeing their own likeness’ has been applied to other historiographies,7 and one question is whether we have constructed a Greek rejection of the supernatural because we would like to see the Greeks as forerunners of our own rejection of the supernatural.8 Van der Eijk has argued that the persistence of the view that the Hippocratics offered natural instead of supernatural explanations for disease is at least in part due to institutional factors in the study of the ancient world, a point generalisable to presocratic philosophers and their supposed rejection of the supernatural as well.9
Lloyd has argued that the Greek conception of nature is in itself problematic. We must be wary of differences between Greek conceptions of phusis (usually translated ‘nature’)10 and our own conception of nature.11 There was never the Greek conception anyway but many competing ones, all invented and not discovered, and as far as our evidence shows, generated in a context of polemic.12 The polemical context might cause us to wonder how much conceptions of nature and supposed rejections of the supernatural were employed ad hominem rather than given as statements of principle. An important point made by Lloyd concerns what has been preserved of the presocratics’ views on nature, upon which much of the rejection of the supernatural case is constructed.13 Were these views preserved because they were central concerns of the presocratics, or because they were central concerns of the doxographers? Given that much of the doxographical tradition on which we depend for information about the presocratics is itself dependent on the Aristotle/Theophrastus project of constructing a history of phusikôn doxai, ‘Opinions on Nature’, we have to be concerned about what was and what was not selected to go into this work, and why.14 If what has been preserved reflects the doxographers rather than the presocratics’ concerns then reliance and emphasis on these passages may be highly misleading, especially where the doxographers have stripped away the context for these passages.15
The counterpart of the critique of what phusis meant for the presocratics is a questioning of whether there was such a thing as the supernatural for them. Certainly it is the case that there is no Greek word for the supernatural.16 Martin has argued that the category of the supernatural was not available to the Greeks, explicitly or by assumption and that translating Greek terms like ‘divine’ as ‘supernatural’ is highly misleading.17 Martin has also questioned whether it is proper to think of Greek gods as intervening in nature as we might do if following modern notions of gods and the supernatural.18
Kingsley has argued that there is important evidence on the presocratics, especially Pythagoras and Empedocles, in the magical tradition, outside of the usual doxographical tradition of views on philosophy and nature.19 If we take this evidence into account then we obtain a much more magical view of the presocratics. Dodds, Kingsley and others have argued for the existence of shamen, holy men claiming to communicate with the dead when in ecstatic states among the presocratics.20
At a more specific level, with Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes the standard critique is that they all believed in gods or the divine and that this compromises any claim that they believed everything to be natural.21 There has also been considerable debate on just how different the views of the Milesians were from those of Homer and Hesiod.22 Important for the Milesians are a few passages giving what we interpret as natural explanations of meteorological phenomena. Lloyd’s point about what has been preserved is particularly important here and two things remain to be shown. First, that there is an intentional rejection of the supernatural here, rather than a simple statement of or polemic about meteorology. Second, it needs to be shown that the rejection of the supernatural is universal to all phenomena rather than just specific to meteorology or some other subset of phenomena.23
The Hippocratic texts have been a matter of ongoing debate, especially On the Sacred Disease and On Regimen. Edelstein makes the classic case that the Hippocratics retained a belief in the gods and the supernatural, more recently supported by Fowler and van der Eijk,24 while Martin has argued that the Hippocratics believed in the activities of the gods and the efficacy of dreams but that supernatural is an inappropriate term.25 That On the Sacred Disease is part of this debate may be surprising, as a common view is that it rejects a divine aetiology for disease. However, its view that all diseases are both divine and natural, the nature of its critique of magical healers and its attitude to purification rituals and piety have all been hotly contended. On Regimen IV, which appears to advocate prayer and divination as part of a healing strategy, has long been thought of as a difficult text for a purely natural reading and there are other difficult passages in the Hippocratic corpus as well.
The old view of Pythagoras as an innovative expert in mathematics and geometry, who emphasised the importance of a mathematical approach to cosmology and music has given way to a view of someone whose expertise was in the fate of the soul after death and in the nature of religious ritual with the work of Burkert, Huffman, Zhmud and others. It has been argued that metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul on the death of the body could hardly be a natural process.26 Dodds and Kingsley have argued that Pythagoras should be considered to be a shaman, someone who believes they can access the world of the dead by entering into ecstatic states.27 Kingsley has argued that we should take some of the strange attributions to Pythagoras seriously (such as having a golden thigh) as these are indicative of an interesting relationship to Greek magic, ritual and ways to access the realm of the dead.28 To what extent the Pythagoreans shared Pythagoras’ own views has always been a contentious topic. It has also been argued that the Pythagoreans approach to number is that of ‘number magic’, ‘number superstition’ or ‘number mysticism’ rather than that of mathematics or geometry.29
With Empedocles, there is evidence of views on the transmigration of the soul, on the efficacy of magic, on the purification of the soul, on magical healing, on bringing back from Hades the strength of a man who has died and of Empedocles regarding himself as some form of god among men and some form of divine prophet. All this is well known, but has been marginalised by the assumption that Empedocles wrote two poems, one on religion/magic (supposedly called On Purifications), the other an account of the natural world (supposedly called On Nature). There have been strategies for privileging On Nature and marginalising Purifications.30 However, recent developments in scholarship and historiography, and the discovery of the Strasbourg papyrus have all thrown doubt on whether Empedocles’ thought was compartmentalised in this way and indeed even on whether he wrote two separate poems at all.31 This means that we need to deal with Empedocles’ views on religion and magic as an important part of his overall thought and this will impinge on whether we consider Empedocles to have rejected all elements of the supernatural. Kingsley has argued for a strong relationship between Empedocles and the Greek magical tradition, and again that we should take some of the strange attributions to Empedocles seriously as these are indicative of an interesting relationship to Greek magic and ritual.32
Even Leucippus and Democritus, sometimes taken as paragons of an entirely atomistic, mechanical and natural view have been argued to have a belief in gods and the divine and to have used biological analogues for the formation of the cosmos, allegedly compromising their supposed naturalism. The critique of the rejection of the supernatural view then is substantial both at a historiographical and at a specific level. It cannot be disarmed simply by citing passages of the Milesians on meteorology and the Hippocratics on disease as this evidence is hotly contested and there is much more evidence which needs to be taken into account.
Natural magic, natural theology?
In this introductory chapter I want to explore the ideas of natural and supernatural and the nature of the distinction between them. In relation to this it is important to look at how the presocratics characterised the natural and what they contrasted with it. I will also raise two important questions for this book. Can there be such a thing as natural magic? If the answer to this is yes (as I believe it is) then we need to look carefully at instances of magical belief to see if anything non-natural is involved. Second, can there be such a thing as a natural theology, in the sense that god or the divine is considered to be an entirely natural entity?33 Again, if the answer to this is yes (as I believe it is) then we need to look carefully at instances of belief in god or the divine to see if anything non-natural is involved.
There are also some historiographical issues to look at. When we talk about the presocratics and a supposed rejection of the supernatural, it is important to be clear which of the presocratics we are talking about. Some historiographies have tended to marginalise magic and I want to clarify this book’s attitude to evidence of the magical. I will also introduce an important theme for this book, which is that some presocratic thinkers deliberately targeted important, interesting or difficult-to-explain phenomena that had previously been given supernatural explanations, and in particular that they targeted famous passages in Homer and Hesiod. Finally, I want briefly to look at some historiographies of magic and some presocratic magical beliefs. I want to clarify my approach to magic in relation to these historiographies. It is also important to be able to generate a contrast between common magical beliefs and whatever magical beliefs may have been held by presocratic philosophers.
As this book has the word ‘supernatural’ in its title and deals to some extent with early Greek magical ideas, I want to make my own position clear on modern magic, the supernatural and associated ideas. I am an outright rationalist on these issues. As far as I am concerned, there is no basis for any of these beliefs. I am a sceptic in the strong modern sense that I not only doubt the claims of modern magic, but believe them to be false or impossible. Astrology in its modern form is a nonsense both theoretically and empirically.34 Alchemy is only of historical interest as it has long been superseded by chemistry.35 Transmutation of the elements is possible but only as specified by nuclear physics.36 There are some interesting social psychology effects in magic but ultimately modern magicians are no more than conjurors who are skilled at working a crowd, or frauds.37 Numerology, like astrology, is a theoretical and empirical nonsense.38 The idea that water has memory, a basis for many modern magical beliefs, is simply false.39 If asked for a dictionary definition of homeopathy, I would say ‘the art of selling tap water at highly inflated prices’.
I find it highly significant that James Randi has a standing offer of a $1,000,000 prize for anyone who can demonstrate a supernatural effect under agreed laboratory conditions. Very few have taken up the challenge and those who have, have failed dismally.40 A standard and telling question in my view for anyone who actually believes they have a supernatural power is this: why are you bending spoons/holding séances/doing card tricks for a living when you could be doing something seriously beneficial for humankind or for yourself?
Philosophically, my view is quite straightforward. All that exists is natural. All that exists obeys natural laws. There are many things in this world which are fascinating, intriguing, beguiling, surprising, stunning, beautiful, etc. There are none which break the laws of nature. That, in many ways, is their fascination. Why then, one might ask, am I writing this book? Ancient magic, and the disciplines we associate with magic, such as astrology and alchemy, were significantly different from their modern counterparts and of course had a very different context. I am interested in how and why the presocratics formulated certain ideas and whether that committed them to a belief in the supernatural. I am also interested in how our terms natural and supernatural relate to the ancient context. I do not think we have been clear enough on these issues and I do think it matters for our understanding and evaluation of the presocratics.
Just before we begin to think about the nature of these issues and the evidence we have, I would like to emphasise a few things this book is not. This book is not a general survey of presocratic philosophy. Kirk, Raven and Schofield,41 Barnes,42 McKirahan43 and Graham44 are all excellent works in this respect. This book will barely mention the major philosophical theories of some people critically important to the history of presocratic philosophy (Parmenides, Zeno and Anaxagoras to name but three) and will be looking at the principal ideas of others as they relate to magic and theology rather than as key developments in ancient philosophy.
This book is not and does not claim to be a comprehensive treatment of the presocratics on magic, religion and other issues that might be thought to be related to the supernatural. Such a project would be the work of many volumes. What I want to do in this book is to look at some important and interesting cases in relation to the presocratics. That involves looking at some people within the orthodox canon of presocratic philosophy (the Milesians, Xenophanes, Democritus, etc.). It also means looking at some people and material outside this canon. So I will be interested in the Hippocratics, in the Derveni Papyrus, in the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, in the historian Thucydides, in the views of Homer and Hesiod and in some material from the magical tradition. I do want to look at some Greek magical beliefs as it is important, when arguing about the details of whether one person’s views entail a belief in magic or the supernatural, to keep in mind as well the broader contrast of Greek magical beliefs and the tenor of presocratic philosophy.
This book is not an attempt, in some sense, to ‘cleanse’ the presocratics, the presocratic philosophers or those working in specific disciplines such as medicine of any belief in magic or the supernatural. Nor, may I add, is it an attempt to implicate all or as many as possible of the presocratics in some form of belief in magic or the supernatural. I am interested in reaching a better understanding of what the presocratics believed and the implications that had for them. Some of the analysis will be deflationary, in the sense that I will argue that we cannot infer from a belief in magic or a belief in some form of god or divinity directly to a belief in the supernatural. Indeed, in some cases I will argue that such beliefs actually affirm a commitment to an entirely natural world. On the other hand, I will be looking in some of the ‘darker places’ of the presocratics, at evidence and issues not often brought to light in modern discussions of presocratic philosophy and science.
This book is not committed to a simple muthos to logos, myth to reason account of the development of Greek thought in general or Greek philosophy in particular.45 Nor is the book committed to, or an attempt to revive the notion of a Greek ‘enlightenment’, a large scale rejection of certain ideas leading to a rapid development of science, parallel to the Enlightenment of eighteenth-century Europe.46 Nor is this book committed to the idea that there was a unitary origin for science and that was with the presocratics.47 Finally, this book is not committed to the associated notion of a Greek ‘miracle’ – it would after all be rather odd if it was, given what I have just said about the supernatural!48
Who were the presocratics?
An important question for this book will be which presocratics are we talking about? As a general definition I take them to be those people who were prior to Socrates and were speaking, writing and thinking in ancient Greek. ‘Prior to Socrates’ is rather loose. It could mean prior to Socrates’ birth, his acme, his philosophical work, its impact on contemporaneous Greeks, its impact via the dialogues of Plato or his death. Actually nothing hangs on this for the purposes of this book and the latest figure I will consider will be Archytas who is roughly contemporaneous with Plato. Much more important is the issue of which of the presocratics we are talking about in this period. Dodds’ seminal book,49 The Greeks and the Irrational, published in 1951, asked this key question:
Why should we attribute to the Greeks an immunity from ‘primitive’ modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?50
While I have reservations about some of Dodds’ terminology,51 I agree with his general conclusion. There is no reason to exempt the ancient Greeks from ‘irrational’ and ‘primitive’ beliefs and Dodds has brought together a large amount of evidence in support of his view. In relation to the key issue for this book, I do not want to deny that a large amount of the Greek populace, prior to Socrates and indeed after him as well, had a belief in the supernatural. There can be no doubt that they believed in the efficacy of magical practices founded on supernatural belief and they believed in gods with capricious wills and the ability to intervene in and override the natural order of the world about us.
Apart from the populace though, there were the presocratic philosophers and those investigating nature. The distinction between the groups was not sharp, as most presocratic philosophers had a good deal to say about nature and many of those investigating nature, some of the Hippocratic medical authors, were interested in philosophy as well. One can assert that the presocratic philosophers rejected magic and capricious, interventionist gods in favour of a view where all phenomena were seen as natural and were to be given entirely natural explanations. One issue for this book is how large a group of presocratics rejected the supernatural? This is why it is important to include people from outside the orthodox canon of presocratic philosophers.52 When we consider the views of the presocratics on magic and on the gods, does this group shrink to negligible size, or perhaps cease to exist at all? Or if we take on board presocratic attitudes to magic and the gods does this group expand in size?
To return for a moment to Dodds’ terminology, I prefer not to use the terms rational or irrational in this sort of context. Irrational is ambiguous between ‘lacking reason’ and ‘not conforming to the canons of rationality’. The latter does not entail the former. There have been many studies of magic in tribal societies where it has been shown that while their understanding of magical beliefs does not conform to the canons of rationality it does not lack reasoning or intelligence.53 ‘Irrational’ is also too often taken as pejorative and is also often taken as ‘completely irrational’. I would say much the same about the terms philosophical and pre-philosophical and the word ‘primitive’ and whatever we might contrast that with.
Natural and supernatural
What do we mean by supernatural and what is the distinction between the natural and the supernatural?54 There are commonly two ways of characterising the supernatural:55
1That which is above or beyond nature.
2That which is not subject to the laws of nature.
In my view neither is adequate and both could benefit from some further thought. The problem with (1) is that it does not tell us in what way a supposed supernatural entity is above or beyond nature. If we suppose for a hypothetical supernatural entity to be something which behaves in a law-like manner (it has its own laws) and can affect the natural but not break the laws of the natural, then that looks like just another piece of nature rather than anything supernatural.
One might take the view that the notion of ‘above’ gives us a hierarchical ordering. That may be so, but hierarchy on its own does not necessarily give us something supernatural, it may simply give us an ordered account of the natural. This is important in an ancient context as Aristotle might be seen to give us the latter alternative. The heavens are more actual and less potential than the terrestrial realm of earth, water, air and fire because aether is always executing its natural motion. There is though no sense in Aristotle that the heavens are supernatural.56 They obey their own laws and while they interact with the terrestrial realm they cannot override the order of the terrestrial realm.
If one equates the natural with the physical then one might say that whatever is not physical is supernatural, as it is above or beyond the physical. There is no pressing reason to equate the natural with the physical though. I could be a realist on many philosophical issues without being committed to a belief in the supernatural. Perhaps the simplest example here is being a mathematical realist about numbers. I might believe that numbers exist but it does not strike me that there is anything supernatural about numbers. The ancient Greeks certainly could be realists about many issues without considering the entities they supposed to exist beyond the physical to be supernatural.57 The notion of ‘above or beyond nature’ is then not very helpful, on its own, in characterising the supernatural.
The second sort of characterisation, that the supernatural is that which is not subject to the laws of nature. We can think about that in the following ways:
a)The supernatural does not obey the laws which natural entities obey.
b)The supernatural does not obey any laws.
c)The supernatural can override natural laws.
The first of these looks like a sine qua non, for as with the discussion above, if something does indeed obey natural laws it is then just another part of the natural, and not supernatural at all. This then raises a question about the nature of the supernatural. Does it have its own laws? I think one can go either way on this, depending on one’s attitude to (c). Certainly one can deny that the supernatural obeys laws at all. That is important for some modern conceptions of chaotic magic. It is also important for the ancient Greeks where the gods of Homeric myth do not seem to be bound by laws either in terms of what they can do or how they behave. There is an important contrast here with the Christian conception of God where God will always do what is good. One might accept that the supernatural has its own laws but also claim that the supernatural is capable of overriding or suspending natural laws.
It is also possible to approach the notion of the supernatural in terms of explanation, which helps to clarify related terms, paranormal and preternatural. Paranormal is usually taken to mean ‘outside the range of normal experience or scientific explanation’. Let us assume there is a phenomenon which defies current scientific explanation or which runs counter to current scientific explanation. The key question then is whether this is a reflection on our current scientific knowledge and with further advances in scientific knowledge we will be able to explain such phenomena, or whether there is something intrinsic here which defies, and always will defy scientific explanation. One way of forming the distinction between the preternatural and the supernatural is along these lines. The preternatural cannot yet be explained by science, the supernatural can never be explained by science.
The presocratics and nature
That, hopefully, clarifies our conception of what we mean by supernatural a little. What of the presocratic Greeks though? Did they even have a conception of the supernatural? The usual answer to this is that there is no word used by the presocratics which matches our use of supernatural.58 They had the word phusis, meaning nature. They had and used the term kata phusin, according to nature. Aristotle uses para phusin, contrary to nature, but uses this to mean contrary to an object’s nature rather than supernatural.59 There is a Greek term huper phusin, above nature, which we can find much later in St. Cyril in the fourth century ce,60 but not used in this way by the presocratics.
So is supernatural a proper term to use for the presocratics? I would prefer to talk in terms of the natural for the presocratics and whether they excluded the non-natural, anything that did not seem natural to them. So why do we need this discussion of the supernatural? The term supernatural has been widely used in the literature, both by those arguing for and those arguing against a belief in the supernatural for the presocratics. It is important to be clear about the nature and consequences of this debate and for that, we need to be clear about the term supernatural.
It is also important to be clear about the nature of the questions we are asking. The debates in some of the literature would lead towards formulating this question: Do we believe some of the presocratics to have rejected what we consider to be supernatural explanations? I would rather formulate the main question as: Did some of the presocratics consider themselves to have given only natural explanations? It is important that we recognise that those questions may have different answers. So does this book turn out not to be about the presocratics and the supernatural after all? In a sense no, as we will readily recognise as supernatural many of the explanations and entities which some of the presocratics reject as non-natural. I will also argue that what drives some of the presocratics is a commitment to the idea that nature is regular and exhausts what is, so that whatever might be thought to be irregular needs to be excluded as non-natural and so non-existent. Although not framed in terms of laws, this has significant similarities to the discussion above.
It is sometimes said that in order to have a conception of the supernatural one must have a conception of the natural.61 In order to give only natural explanations and to exclude non-natural explanations, and to do so consciously rather than accidentally, there must be a conception of nature. The standard Greek term for nature, phusis, had a range of meanings. It could mean nature, as in the nature of something or somebody, or nature in the broader sense of all of the natural world. It can mean the ‘regular order of nature’,62 especially used in the phrase kata phusin, according to nature. It also has connotations of origin and growth,63 ‘the natural form or constitution of a person or thing as the result of growth’.64 In common with many scholars, I take the presocratics to be talking about the origin and growth of something as well as its current nature when they talk of something’s phusis. 65 This is why the presocratics were interested in so many agony disciplines, cosmogony, zoogony, anthropogony etc.66
The presocratics’ conception of phusis is then different from our conception of nature, though there are of course similarities too. It would be quite wrong, for instance, to translate the Greek phusiologoi, literally ‘those who talk about nature’ as ‘physical philosophers’ or even ‘physicists’.67 Aristotle also talks of hoi phusikoi,68 ‘the naturalists’ and Plato speaks of peri phuseôs historian, the ‘enquiry concerning nature’.69 A very few presocratic thinkers may have been physicalists or materialists as we understand the terms, but most were not.70 Some had a more organic conception of nature, many used biological analogues for the processes they saw around them. This did not prevent them from having an invariant conception of nature or giving explanations citing only natural entities. I have argued elsewhere that the Greeks used biological analogues for invariant behaviour.71 The very notion of phusis itself for the ancient Greeks is effectively an organic one of growth so biological analogues for them are simply not going to be non-natural.
Having adopted ‘non-natural’ instead of ‘supernatural’ should I use some other term for natural? I am going to stick with non-natural with the stipulation that this means that which is outside the presocratic view of nature. Was there a unified conception of nature among the presocratics, or even just the presocratic philosophers? That I think needs to be answered in two ways. As Lloyd has argued, there was no unanimity among the presocratics about the makeup of the world, no single concept of nature.72 Anaximander, Heraclitus, Democritus and Anaxagoras for instance all had quite different, incompatible accounts of how the world worked. On the other hand, one can argue that a significant group of presocratics had a shared sense of giving natural explanations to the exclusion of non-natural explanations and that they shared a sense of a regular order of nature. This is not to argue that all Greeks, or even all presocratics shared this view, just that a number of presocratics did. Indeed, there is an important contrast here. While Homer and Hesiod were of course aware of regularities in nature,73 their gods were capricious. The gods were also capable of intervening in human affairs and in the regularities of nature. The idea of nature as invariant, that there is a regular order to all of nature is then a major move from the picture of Homer and Hesiod.74
Lloyd has argued that the presocratic idea of phusis needed to be invented.75 I would agree in the sense that the presocratics were pretty much the first Greeks to talk of phusis. The presocratics generated the notion of invariance for phusis. There is only one use of phusis in Homer, to describe a magical plant.76 As Lloyd points out though, one use of phusis in relation to one entity does not give a general notion of phusis in the sense of all of nature.77 That was something the presocratics had to generate for themselves.78
The classic example of something non-natural for some of the presocratics is the interference of capricious gods in the physical and mental processes of the world. Meteorology, with the reasons for meteorological phenomena being the caprice and power of the gods is an important issue here. So one might think of the repeating motif in Homer’s Odyssey, where by the rather spiteful will of Zeus a ship is hit by lightning generated by Zeus, a phenomenon which would not have occurred without the will or power of Zeus.79 In Hesiod’s Theogony, there is the battle of Zeus against the Titans where Zeus employs his weapons of thunder, lightning and thunderbolt.80
One can have an ontology which consists entirely of natural entities, which one might call ontological naturalism. One can explain phenomena citing only natural entities, which one might call aetiological naturalism. I will use the terms ‘naturalism’ and ‘naturalist’ to refer to a position where both these views are held.
Natural magic
In the modern West, magic is typically categorised in one of two ways. It is conjuring in some guise, when it is not really ‘magic’ at all and can be explained in terms of the skill of the operator, physical science and social psychology. Alternatively, there is a claim that it is ‘real’ magic and that there is an involvement with the supernatural or paranormal. It is important to recognise though that there is another possibility, though it does not come easily to modern thinking, that of natural magic. Historically, there was a strong natural magic movement in the Renaissance. Giambattista della Porta, in his Natural Magic, says that:
There are two sorts of magic; the one infamous and unhappy, because it has to do with foul spirits, and consists of enchantments and wicked curiosity, and this is called sorcery, an art which all learned and good men detest… the other magic is natural, which all excellent wise men embrace, and worship with great applause.81
Elsewhere he says:
I never writ here nor elsewhere, what is not contain’d within the bounds of Nature.82
The Christian context of the period required the development of the idea of natural magic. The Christian view was that humans do not have any magical power themselves. If anything happened which was contrary to nature, then there were two possibilities. Either God had worked a miracle through someone, or that person was in league with the devil and had derived the power to go beyond nature from the devil. To claim supernatural power was then to put oneself in a very dangerous position in the era of the witch hunt. If natural magic dealt with the natural world though, how did it differ from the science of the period? While science dealt with manifest phenomena, those that were directly observable or the causes of which were directly observable, natural magic dealt with what was hidden, with the occult. The occult here was simply what was hidden and had not accrued the modern connotations of evil or demonic. Natural magic saw more connections between things than science, hypothesising harmonies, sympathies and correspondences. Natural magic also tended to believe that matter, without being alive or having intelligence, had more active properties. What must be emphasised here though is the commitment in the natural magic tradition to natural and law-like explanation.
What is important about this? First, that there can be such a thing as natural magic. Second, phenomena which we might consider to be supernatural could be given natural explanations. Third, phenomena which we now consider to be natural were at one stage considered magical. The prime example here is that magnetism was at one point considered to be an occult subject and part of natural magic and is now part of mainstream physics.83 In relation to the ancient Greeks it is not enough simply to cite their belief in phenomena we would take to be supernatural in order to establish their belief in the non-natural. An important example here is the notion of sympathetic interaction. The classic statement of sympathetic interaction is that of Frazer:
First, that like produces like, or that an effect resembles its cause; and second, that things which have once been in contact with each other continue to act on each other at a distance after the physical contact has been severed.84
Sympathy was used widely in Renaissance natural magic as a natural means of interaction. Objects which were in sympathy could affect each other even when separated. They could be thought of doing so in an entirely regular and natural manner. The Newtonian idea of gravity as a force which acted at a distance even though empty space separated the objects was influenced by this sort of notion of sympathy.85 When we see something like sympathetic interaction supposed by the ancient Greeks, we cannot then immediately assume that this was a non-natural interaction. To quote Plotinus:
How is there magic? By sympathy, and that naturally there is a sympathy between like things and an antipathy between unlike things.86
The Greek philosopher/scientists produced natural explanations of phenomena that their fellow Greeks considered non-natural.87 They also accepted as real some phenomena which we would now dismiss, such as the role of amulets in healing. That they employed incantations or amulets does not entail that they believed in the supernatural. We need to know how they used them and what sort of explanations they gave for their effect.88
One might agree that there was indeed a Renaissance Natural Magic tradition but be worried about how that might be applied to an analysis of Greek magic. Would it not be anachronistic to apply this category to the ancient Greeks? There are two sorts of reply to this. First, that the important issue here is simply to establish that there has been such a category of natural magic. There is no need to impose anything from the Renaissance on the ancient Greeks, least of all the religious framework. All we need to recognise is that it is possible for phenomena to be considered both natural and magical. That may occur in intellectual settings other than the European Renaissance. None of this is to say that the Greeks did consider some phenomena to be both natural and magical, or that they in any way had to. It merely raises the possibility and breaks the implication of magical belief therefore non-natural belief.
The second sort of reply is that the Renaissance natural magic tradition is related to ancient Greece. The theoretical underpinnings of all the key aspects of Renaissance natural magic, astrology, alchemy, the macrocosm/microcosm analogy, the notion of sympathy, the notion of harmony can all be traced directly back to the ancient Greeks. The dominant tradition was Aristotelian and we can find the basis of forms of astrology in Aristotle’s cosmology, of Alchemy in Aristotle’s theory of matter and of the macrocosm/microcosm analogy in Aristotle’s meteorology. The notion of sympathy has its roots in the ancient idea of like to like found firstly in Democritus and Plato, in Aristotle as well and the idea of some form of celestial harmony can be found in the early Pythagoreans and Plato.
One chapter that may look slightly out of place in this book on the presocratics is the early chapter on Plato and Aristotle. What I want to do in that chapter is to try to show that Aristotle’s cosmology and matter theory provides an entirely natural basis for astrology and alchemy. That may be a slightly surprising claim to some, but the evidence is clearly there. Two important points then follow from this. First, disciplines which we consider to be magical could be conceived of in an entirely natural way in antiquity. Second, that foundation for natural magic disciplines formed the basis of Renaissance natural magic. While Aristotle is the dominant influence here, it is possible to show something similar for Plato.
Natural gods?
Is it possible to have a belief in an entirely natural god, or something which is both divine and entirely natural? Christian theology, where it argues for a transcendent god which is separate from nature and which can override the laws of nature, would seem to exclude this. This tradition has had a powerful influence on our intuitions such that the idea of a natural god may seem a somewhat strange one. Given the conception of the gods in Homer and Hesiod it may have been a strange idea for the presocratic Greeks as well, but I will suggest that it was possible for them to believe in entities which are both divine and in an important sense natural.
Let us begin with three characterisations of God, related to the previous discussion of natural and supernatural, which I would take to be straightforwardly supernatural:
1God is outside nature, God has the power to override the laws of nature.
2God is outside nature, God behaves in an irregular manner.
3God is outside nature, God behaves in an irregular manner and has the power to override the laws of nature.
The third of these I would take to characterise the gods of Homer and Hesiod. However, we might also consider this characterisation of God:
4God is outside nature, God behaves in an entirely regular manner and has no ability to override the laws of nature.
This removes two of the key criteria for considering an entity to be supernatural. It would be at least debatable whether this sort of God was natural or not. We also need to consider this characterisation:
5God is not outside nature, God behaves regularly and has no ability to override natural laws.
This removes all the criteria for an entity to be considered to be supernatural. It is then hard to see how a God so conceived would be anything other than natural. This is certainly not a vacuous case as one can formulate pantheism, loosely the notion that God is everything, in this manner. This is important for the presocratics as I will argue that some of them hold views with considerable similarities to pantheism. I will also argue something a little stronger, which is that for some presocratics the proper term is more like panpsychism, the idea that the cosmos has a soul or an intelligence. So one view we will need to investigate is that of Vlastos, who holds that:
In Ionian philosophy the divine is nature itself, its basic stuff and ruling principle. To say that the soul is divine is then to naturalize it; it is to say that it is subject to the same sequence of law and effect which are manifest throughout the whole of nature. And this is the very opposite of the Orphic doctrine of the divinity of the soul, whose content is rather obscure, but whose intent is perfectly clear: that the soul is not a natural, but a super-natural, entity.89
Trepanier compares:
The more modern definition of God or a god as a supernatural agent with the options open to the Presocratics. In every case but that of the atomists, and perhaps even including them, the gods are always part of the natural order.90
Some of the older literature holds that a key factor in the move from mythology to philosophy was a depersonification of the factors controlling the universe, a move from ‘thou to it’, to impersonal forces.91 I have argued elsewhere that the issue is really one of invariance rather than personification.92 One might have a depersonified force which is not invariant. One might have a God which itself behaves in a regular manner and which sees to it that the universe behaves in a perfectly regular manner.
It is interesting that St. Augustine discusses Varro’s classification of pagan theology into three different types.93 There is mythical (muthikon) theology, tales about the gods in the manner of Homer and Hesiod. There is civil theology, the common religion and rituals of the Greek city. Finally there is natural (phusikon) theology, theology as it is discussed by the philosophers. That is interesting in seeing a clear distinction between the gods of the philosophers and the god of Homer and Hesiod.94 I strongly disagree with Dawkins, who has commented that:
Pantheism is sexed-up Atheism.95
Whatever the case in the modern world, I will argue that this is false for the presocratic Greeks. There is an important explanatory content to their pantheism making it quite distinct from ancient atheism relating to how the cosmos obtains and maintains its order. That matter can ‘steer’ itself in this regard marks them off sharply from ancient atheists and gives them an important critique of the atheists.
One theme of this book will be that presocratic intellectuals were capable of re-thinking theological and religious ideas to fit their new systems of thought. So we have the new pantheism to go with the new natural explanations. I will also argue that these pantheists believed they could be pious and could honour nature/god. Critical here is the Greek notion of the cosmos as something good and so worthy of reverence. So too I will argue that presocratic intellectuals could devise a form of prayer appropriate to their own philosophical/theological beliefs, rather than pray in the manner of popular Greek religion. This is important as some commentators, seeing expressions of piety or recommendations to pray, have inferred from these a belief in the supernatural. That is unjustified without a closer look at the beliefs in question.
This is also important in relation to magic. Theologies often set a framework for magic so new theologies may have new ways of theorising magic or excluding magic and the supernatural. Views on magic and the supernatural in the modern West have been very strongly influenced by Christianity.96 Something that is true of ancient Greek theology generally is that their deities, either as part of a pantheon or single gods were not considered to be omnipotent. If we are interested in how widespread the rejection of the non-natural was, then the key question may be as follows. Did presocratic Greek intellectuals, using their own conception of god and their own criteria for natural/non-natural, to their own satisfaction show that there could be a belief in a god without a belief in the non-natural? I will argue that the answer to that, in many cases, is yes.
The historiography of the relation of religion and science has undergone a significant transformation in recent years. The conflict thesis, that religion and science are always in conflict, is now seen as outmoded and has been superseded by a complexity thesis.97 In the complexity thesis religion may promote science, may be neutral to it or may be in conflict with it, depending on specific circumstances.98 This is important for the presocratics, as we need not be forced into a polarity where religious belief conflicts with a belief in natural explanation or vice versa, forcing us to question the genuineness of the religious belief or the commitment to natural explanation. There is no need to argue then that where we find a commitment to natural explanation, any expression of a belief in god must be a matter of convention, to avoid religious prosecution and that behind this lies atheism or secularism. An important line for investigation will be that there can be genuine belief in natural gods and there can be genuine observance of religious practice relate to belief in natural gods. A second consequence of the move away from the conflict historiography is that we need not try to separate the ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’ aspects of a presocratic’s thought. This is particularly important in relation to Empedocles, whose fragments have been rather arbitrarily sorted into a ‘scientific’ poem and a ‘religious’ poem.99
This book, at least in part, is an experiment inspired by a reading of a critique of the way that we think about and relate to the ancient Greeks. The concern is that we have sought affinities between the ancient Greeks and ourselves and we put those affinities in the forefront of our account of the ancient Greeks.100 We have tended to pass over or ignore the differences between the ancient Greeks and ourselves. So we privilege for instance the ‘rational’ parts of the Hippocratic corpus over the magical or religious parts or Ptolemy’s mathematical astronomy of the Suntaxis over the astrology of the Tetrabiblos.101 The experiment then is this: What happens when we do feed in the material that is sometimes passed over, on astrology, dreams, divination etc? How far does that alter our picture?
There is also a more subtle issue of elision here, which while it applies to texts from all ancient periods, is perhaps more problematic with the presocratics due to our more fragmentary knowledge of them. There is a canon of presocratic material which we take to be genuine. The modern canon begins effectively with Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Presocratics)102 in the early twentieth century and current thinking is best represented by the excellent Toronto University Press Phoenix series on the presocratics.103 Working within the canon, one can seek affinities and pass over some material. However, there is also a question of which material gets in to the canon of what are believed to be genuine fragments. So let me try to state something clearly:
The policy of this book is not to exclude material which gives some magical or non-natural belief to a presocratic on those grounds alone.
Otherwise, it seems to me, we pre-judge the very issues which are under examination in this book. Now, one cannot have an open door policy on ancient material and I readily accept that a good deal of material about the presocratics cannot be considered genuine. There are grounds of provenance, philology, dating etc. which will rule some material out. There is a great deal of doxographic material we must be suspicious of on the grounds of the doxographers’ sources or their own agenda.104
Is the exclusion of material due to magical or non-natural content a major issue? For many of the presocratic thinkers we are going to look at, no. However, when this sort of thing does occur, it can be a significant problem. What to accept about the early Pythagoreans is a major issue.105 I will mention two specific examples here for illustrative purposes, which we will look at in more detail later on. There has been argument over whether Empedocles Fr. 111, which ascribes some apparently magical views to Empedocles, should be considered genuine or not, on the basis that there is nothing which expresses similar views in Empedocles.106 An editor of the Hippocratic corpus has questioned whether a piece of text in On Prognosis was genuine, when it apparently expressed the view that diseases have something divine to them, on the basis that no Hippocratic would ever say such a thing.107
A related issue here is that of how we treat a magical belief in a presocratic when we find one. Do we treat that on a par with other beliefs, or do we employ strategies which keep magical and non-magical beliefs separate? Strategies here might be to assume that the magical belief belongs to an early or late period of the individuals thought, was part of a work with a different audience, or supposed schizophrenia.108 Studies in the history of science on figures such as Ptolemy (astrology), Kepler (astrology), Harvey (macrocosm/microcosm) and Newton (alchemy) have shown that these figures believed their thought to be an organic whole of which the ‘magical’ part was integral to the rest. So unless there are independent grounds to believe otherwise, I will treat magical beliefs as integral to an individual’s thinking. Given what I have said earlier about natural magic, this is often less problematic than it might initially be thought to be. Much of this applies to religious views as well. So I will not exclude material which gives some religious belief to a presocratic on those grounds alone, nor, in relation to what I have said earlier on religion, will I treat religious views as merely conventional unless there is good reason to do so.
A final thought on elision is about how we portray ourselves. We might like to think of ourselves, the humans of the twenty-first century, as people who have rejected supernatural explanations. Yet there are many who believe in astrology, mysticism, faith healing or a God who actively intervenes in the world. One could take Dodds’ schema and apply it to the twenty-first century.109 Despite that, there are people today who reject supernatural explanations. How many presocratic Greeks rejected non-natural explanation is something I hope to find out in the course of this book.
Targeting
One important thesis of this book will be that some of the presocratics targeted important, interesting or difficult-to-explain phenomena that had previously been given supernatural explanations. I hope to show that a wide range of presocratics targeted a wide range of supposedly supernatural phenomena. The classic example here perhaps is the Hippocratic On the Sacred Disease where the author discusses epilepsy and claims that this disease is not caused by the gods.110 I will try to show that there are many similar examples and that often the target of the attack is either the work of Homer or Hesiod, or both. One important part of this targeting thesis will be a strong assertion about Anaximander, which I will say a little more about below, but I will argue that there are many other examples of targeting in thinkers such as Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus as well as more examples in the Hippocratic corpus.
This targeting thesis is important because of some aspects of the new critique of the presocratics on the natural. One part of the critique is to argue that the presocratics had supernatural beliefs. Another is to argue that while there may be isolated cases of attacks on supernatural beliefs, these do not add up to a coherent, conscious, sustained rejection of supernatural belief. We moderns, the argument goes, seeing an affinity with the way that modern philosophy and science reject the supernatural, light upon some isolated cases, interpret them in a modern manner and give these instances privileged status in our account of the presocratics. In fact, the argument continues, the supposed rejection of the supernatural is not so clear and these instances were not as significant to the presocratics as they may seem to us. We will need to look at these instances on a case by case basis, but if the targeting thesis is correct, especially in its stronger form, this will go a long way towards disarming this second part of the critique of the presocratics.
The other key point at stake in relation to the critique is the issue of polemical context. If the targeting thesis is correct, there is a polemical context for these passages and that is a rejection of the non-natural. So the rejection of the non-natural is not incidental to some other polemical context, it is the polemical context.
One criticism which might be made of the account which follows is that it treats the target of presocratic targeting as unitary, when in fact it is quite diverse. So one might, from the point of view of twenty-first century scholarship, want to differentiate between ‘the poet of the Iliad’ and ‘the poet of the Odyssey’ in giving an account of, say, the use of magic in Homer. One might also want to look more closely at the literary function of the use of the non-natural in Homer and Hesiod rather than take it literally in each case. I have not given a more intricate account here, partly because that is a considerable task in itself but mainly because this book is about how some presocratics reacted to Homer and Hesiod. It is their perception of the work of Homer and Hesiod which matters here, not ours. That perception could be quite unitary and blanket and a good example here would be Xenophanes Fr. 11:
Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all those things which are shameful and reproachful among men: theft, adultery and deceiving each other.
On the chronology of Homer and Hesiod, I am open and do not want to push a view that Hesiod is more philosophically sophisticated or forms a bridge between myth and philosophy and so must be later than Homer.
Historiography of magic
This book deals with aspects of Greek magic, but its arguments do not depend on any heavily theorised definition or conception of magic. Indeed, recent scholarship has come to doubt whether it is possible to give a single, all-encompassing definition of magic.111 For the purposes of this book, I am happy for the presocratics to indicate what they think is magic and to avoid any discussion of whether they were correct to think of any particular instance as magical or not.112 I agree with Collins that:
It has always been easier to define ancient magic by contrasts than in its essence.113
This is one reason why the next section is on Greek magical practice. As what interests me is whether certain presocratics thought their views were entirely natural or not, making a sharp demarcation between magic, religion and science is not a significant issue here.114 There is no single presocratic definition of or treatment of magic. This in some ways is a little frustrating, but is typical of magic in many cultures and time periods.115
I do have a few things to say about how we treat magic, to introduce a useful idea and to make my own view clear.116 Emanating from Levi-Bruhl, there is the idea of participation in an extended world. Some people believe that they live in a world which is richer in hidden powers, spirits and other entities than how we conceive the world. These people then participate in this world, employing what we would call magic in order to access, manipulate or entreat this extended realm. So Levy-Bruhl says that:
The things that a man has used, the clothes he has worn, his weapons, ornaments, are part of him, are his very self, just like his saliva, nail-parings, hair, excreta, although to a lesser extent. Something has been communicated to them by him which is, as it were, a continuance of his individuality, and in a mystic sense these objects are henceforth inseparable from him.117
Some people believe that the dead have not definitively left us, but live an afterlife, perhaps still living around us in spirit form, perhaps in another place. It may be possible for us to travel in spirit to the other place or for the dead who usually reside elsewhere to come among us. Again, with this world view one might employ magic in order to participate in it.
The importance of this for this book is twofold. First, it should be evident that Homer and Hesiod had extended worlds which will support the use of magic. Second, a key question for the presocratic thinkers we will be looking at will be did they subscribe to an extended world? Some chapters will begin by looking at ontology and asking does that ontology support the idea of an extended world or not? In relation to this it is important that for Homer the extended world supports intervention in the physical processes of the world but in the mental processes of humans as well. Dodds comments that:
The most characteristic feature of the Odyssey is the way in which its personages ascribe all sorts of mental (as well as physical) events to the intervention of a nameless and indeterminate daemon of ‘god’ or ‘gods’. These vaguely conceived beings can inspire courage at a crisis or take away a man’s understanding just as the gods do in the Iliad.118
Perhaps the most famous example of this in the Iliad is where Agamemnon, robbed of his lover by Achilles, steals Achilles’ lover and then states that the cause of his behaviour was Zeus and the Erinyes taking away his understanding.119
One can characterise magic and science as opposites, what I refer to as the bi-polar approach. So on this view:
1Magic is irrational, supernatural, superstitious, lacking any theoretical underpinning.
2Science is rational, natural, evidence based, theory supported.
We could debate whether that is a fair characterisation of magic and science for the twenty-first century. Historically, it is extremely unhelpful. We have already seen enough of the natural magic of the Renaissance to recognise that it will simply not fit this sort of scheme. The historiography of the relation of religion and science has undergone a transformation in recent years, moving away from ideas of inherent antithesis between religion and science.120
The historiography of the relation of magic and science has undergone similar changes. There has been a move away from a bi-polar characterisation of magic and science to more complex models.121 Magical disciplines are seen as broad churches, done by a wide variety of people for a wide variety of reasons. The theoretical bases for these disciplines is also seen to be very varied, ranging from the minimal or the mystical through to justification in terms of the leading philosophical or scientific theses of the time, as we will see in relation to Aristotle. So as I term it, magical disciplines contain a ‘broad spectrum’ of views on how that discipline works. Some of these views will be natural, some non-natural, to us or to the people who held them. This notion of broad spectrum will be important when we come to look at numerology. It has been held that either we have numerology, which is primitive superstition, or we have modern mathematics and mathematical physics. I will argue that there is interesting ground between the two, ways of thinking about how numbers relate to epistemology and cosmology, which was exploited by some of the Pythagoreans. One of the problems of the bi-polar view, or views which characterise science as rigidly mechanical or positivist, is that they deny the existence of any such interesting ground.
Greek magical practice
Finally for this introductory chapter, I want to look briefly at a few magical frameworks and magical practices for the presocratics. I make no attempt to be comprehensive here. I just want to give a sense of some of the world views and practices that some of the presocratics will react against. Of key importance here are the writings of Homer and Hesiod. It should be clear that both Homer and Hesiod portray extended worlds as discussed in the previous section. The Gods intrigue against each other and intervene in the affairs of mortals. Xenophanes’ criticism that the gods of Homer and Hesiod are guilty of ‘theft, adultery and deceiving each other’ can hardly be denied.122 While the dead do not live about us, the underworld is accessible under certain circumstances. So Odysseus in Odyssey XI manages to summon the dead, by digging a trench, pouring libations of milk, honey, wine and water around it and sprinkling barley meal. He slaughters two sheep and allows their blood to run into the trench.123 In Hesiod’s Works and Days, the first humans were the golden people and after their death they lived on as good spirits on the face of the earth, watching over mortals.124 Dreams are seen as important and prophetic and are often sent by gods.
On some more specific instances of magic or divine intervention, in both Homer and Hesiod, diseases are caused by the gods, the plague in the opening passage of the Iliad and Pandora’s box in Works and Days.125 There could be magical healing too though, as in Odyssey XIX where Odysseus tells the tale of how when he was young he was gored by a boar and the flow of blood was staunched by an incantation being sung. In Odyssey X, Circe uses drugs and a wand to transform men into pigs.
In terms of magical practices, verses from Homer were used as healing incantations for a wide range of maladies.126 The general use of incantations in healing was widespread. The idea of personal purification was also seen as important in combating disease. Those claiming foresight were also commonplace, as were people claiming to be able to interpret prophetic dreams. There were means of attempting to bring on such dreams, involving ritual, diet and prayer.127
A common form of magic was that of binding, particularly the binding curse.128 Typically this was in one of two forms. The binding spell could be written, perhaps on wax or a piece of broken pot but most often on thinly rolled lead. The lead might then be rolled up and pierced with a nail. Alternatively, a doll might be used, loosely resembling the person the spell was aimed at, made of fabric or wax, or perhaps clay such that the limbs could be bound. These dolls too might have nails put through them. There was a relatively standard language for the binding spell, and the binding required the aid of divinities for it to work. Typically these curses were places in wells, or some place appropriate to the curse. Many were placed on the graves of those who had died young or who had met a violent end, whose spirits were thought to be restless on account of the injustice of their death. Here again we see the idea of an ‘extended’ society including the dead. Not all binding magic involved curses. Some was amorous, intended to lead the victim to do something, though some of this magic could be quite malicious as well.129
There was then a considerable range of magical beliefs among the presocratics, ranging from the literature of Homer and Hesiod, to how that literature was used in the common magic of healing practitioners, seers, witches, necromancers and the practice of binding magic. Ogden’s sourcebook of Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman World is an excellent read for an impression of the nature and diversity of magical thought and practice in ancient Greece.130
Some new interpretations
Having gone though the broader historiographical issues, I would just like to introduce three important more specific new interpretations this book has to offer. The first is that a key passage on meteorology in Anaximander, giving natural explanations for five phenomena alludes to a famous passage in Hesiod where the same five phenomena are given non-natural explanations. If that is so, it has considerable consequences in establishing a context for polemic and intentional rejection of the non-natural. It is also significant in that several other presocratics give natural explanations of these five phenomena, especially as it is hard to believe they would be ignorant of the allusion to Hesiod, Anaximander’s intentions or the polemical context. It is possible to discern a tradition of discussion of these phenomena in the presocratics following on from Anaximander at least Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus and probably Xenophanes as well. If so, we have an important tradition of targeting meteorological phenomena involving many of the presocratics.
Second, it has been suggested before that a form of pantheism might fit some of the Hippocratic writings. I argue that we can have an account of the Hippocratics as naturalists without marginalising or ignoring the religious practice that is suggested in some Hippocratic works. It is possible for pantheists to honour god/nature, to have a pious attitude and to criticise atheists. Important here is the Greek notion of the cosmos as something not merely well ordered but good. It is also possible, with a broader understanding of prayer, for pantheists to pray, not for an independent god to intervene, but as an action to bring themselves in tune with god/nature. This has an important consequence in that the Hippocratic On Regimen, and especially On Regimen IV, have been thought impossible to give a naturalist reading to as it advocates prayer and divination. Here I argue that if we play close attention to the Greek and the context, On Regimen IV is critical of any non-natural conception of divination while giving a natural explanation for an ability to predict the future.
Third, the literature has previously treated ancient numerology as an undifferentiated whole. Here I argue that there are some significant differences between types of ancient numerology and that this is crucial in understanding what some of the early Pythagoreans were doing. If we take a bi-polar approach of mathematics and modern mathematical physics on the one hand as proper use of number, and group together all numerologies as improper uses of number we are liable to gloss over interesting aspects of the early Pythagoreans. Here I argue that between modern views on the application of number and early ‘superstitious’ numerology, there is interesting ground which some of the early Pythagoreans exploit in terms of epistemology, music theory and cosmology.