At the beginning of this book, I set out a thesis and a critique to investigate. The thesis was that the presocratic philosophers attacked and entirely rejected the idea of the supernatural, believing what exists to be entirely natural and that proper explanations of phenomena should cite natural entities only. The critique was 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. I modified the thesis slightly, to include presocratic thinkers more generally and to substitute non-natural for the modern category of the supernatural. In one sense, the critique is correct. Virtually every presocratic thinker we have looked at believed in at least one item from the critique’s list. Even Leucippus and Democritus, the supposed arch mechanists, employed biological analogues in explanation and had a place for gods, the divine and prayer. However, the critique in many places has proved to be ineffective. Some presocratics were able to generate entirely natural conceptions of gods and the divine. They were also capable of generating notions of prayer, piety and honouring appropriate to their natural conceptions of gods and the divine, different from the notions of standard presocratic religious beliefs. Some presocratics replaced non-natural explanations with natural ones. Supposedly non-natural phenomena were either denied or given natural explanations.
Summary
How large a group of presocratics were naturalists, that is, has an ontology consisting only of natural entities and explained phenomena citing only natural entities, once we take this critique into account? Certainly it includes Anaximander and Anaximenes of the Milesian thinkers. While they may think of nature as divine, intelligent and active in steering a cosmos into existence, their pantheistic conception behaves in an entirely regular manner. This group would also include those strongly influenced by Milesian thought such as Diogenes of Apollonia, though we have no real way of judging how many that might be. Thales is more difficult to judge as we have less information on him.
That Anaximander targeted Hesiod on meteorological phenomena is also highly significant, as other presocratics followed in his explanation of these five phenomena. If it is correct that presocratic thinkers targeted difficult, important and interesting phenomena and in particular targeted non-natural explanations in Homer and Hesiod then this adds a coherence and a context to their rejection of non-natural phenomena. It is not our conjecture that non-natural explanations were implicitly denied, we have evidence that non-natural explanations were specifically targeted.
With the Hippocratics, On the Sacred Disease rejected a special, non-natural status for epilepsy and had a general attack on magic. If the author was a pantheist, as seems very likely, then their comments on piety and atheism are unproblematic for a naturalistic interpretation of that work. With On Regimen, I have argued that the macrocosm/microcosm analogy used there, the recommendation for prayer and the analysis of dream prophecy can all be taken as natural. While there can be no doubt about the macrocosm/microcosm analogy, non-natural views of the prayer and dream prophecy passages are possible. Here we have a game within a game. How many of the Hippocratic authors held entirely natural views? If the author of On Regimen did not, that does not compromise the other Hippocratic authors. This is important in broadening the naturalist group beyond the orthodox canon of presocratic philosophers.
Xenophanes, Heraclitus and Anaxagoras I have argued were all naturalists. So too the author of the Derveni papyrus, who attempted a naturalistic reading of Orphic theogony, parallel to contemporaneous attempts to read Homer and Hesiod in the same manner. The historian Thucydides also seems to have been a naturalist as well. In the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides, characters are given naturalist views, sometimes in contrast to non-natural views. While we cannot discern the views of Aristophanes and Euripides themselves, the way that they present these views is suggestive of knowledge, debate and diverse views on these topics among their audience. Again, this is important in going beyond the orthodox canon of presocratic philosophers.
The source material on Pythagoras and the early Pythagoreans is so complex and contested that it is difficult to come to firm conclusions, especially about Pythagoras himself. What I think we can say is that Philolaus and Archytas were naturalists. How widespread that was among other early Pythagoreans is almost impossible to tell, especially as early Pythagoreanism seems to have been such a diffuse phenomenon. Philolaus’ numerology proved to be a good example of the interesting ground that can be found if we reject the bi-polar characterisation of magic and science and are willing to recognise such ground.
Empedocles’ work is highly complex and there is as yet no consensus on how it might be seen as a unified whole, or indeed even that it can be seen as a unified whole. It is possible to produce a fully naturalistic interpretation of Empedocles. In favour of that are Empedocles’ strongly natural accounts of cosmogony, zoogony and the cosmic cycle which might be thought to encompass all phenomena. Against is the fact that there are significant tensions in the naturalistic account, plausible non-natural interpretations of some passages and Empedocles’ attitude to Homer, which seems at variance with other presocratic naturalists.
Leucippus and Democritus might at first sight seem obvious candidates as naturalists. Ultimately I have argued they are naturalists, but we have to take on board that they used biological analogues in their physics, that there is a debate abut the nature of the gods for them and that they did have a conception of prayer.
There is then a significant group of presocratics who were naturalists – philosophers, medical writers, historians and it would seem from the attitude of playwrights such as Aristophanes and Euripides, some of the populace as well. Some cases are more clear-cut than others. There is a solid core here, though there are competing natural and non-natural views for the author of On Regimen and for Empedocles. Even without these two though, there is a significant group.
The naturalists
What we do with this group who rejected the non-natural is another matter. As I mentioned in the introduction, I do not see the establishment of such a group of presocratics as part of a simple myth to reason narrative, nor part of a supposed ‘Greek Enlightenment’, nor as part of a Greek ‘miracle’. Naturalism may be an important contribution to our thinking about nature but it is not a unitary origin for science. I do not want to argue that there was an exponential or even linear increase in either size or influence of this group of naturalists. It is quite possible that their size or influence at times declined.1 That they existed and had some form of coherence is the simple conclusion of this study. The conclusion here needs to be judged against the critique of the presocratics rejecting the non-natural. That critique is substantial both at a historiographical and a specific level as I discussed in the introduction. It is important to have examined evidence of religious or magical belief that has been either marginalised or ignored in some studies. It is also important to have engaged with that critique historiographically.
I would emphasise that this group of presocratic naturalists is not co-extensive with the standard canon of presocratic philosophers. It includes several more people, many, if not all of the Hippocratic writers, further medical writers like Alkmaeon, the commentator on the Derveni Papyrus and perhaps more in their tradition, Thucydides, possibly some playwrights and elements of their audiences and may exclude Pythagoras, some early Pythagoreans and Empedocles. Whether ultimately we exclude Pythagoras and Empedocles, that there is a debate confirms that we need to look at the presocratics carefully on a case by case basis, and that applies to broad groups like the presocratic philosophers and smaller groups such as the Hippocratics and Pythagoreans.
This book has not been an attempt to ‘cleanse’ the presocratics of a belief in magic, gods or the non-natural. Many presocratics, in the sense of Greeks living before Socrates, believed in all of these. Nor has this book been an attempt to cleanse the presocratic philosophers or intelligentsia more generally of a belief in magic, gods or the non-natural. Many had theological beliefs, though in some cases that merely served to confirm their belief in a fully natural cosmos. Some believed in or addressed magical views. This book has been keen to seek out, attribute and analyse such views, more so than standard accounts of the presocratics. However, on analysis there is a very good case that a significant number of presocratic thinkers were not only naturalists, but also, if the targeting thesis is correct, actively rejected the non-natural.
Anaximander and targeting
In addition to the main natural/non-natural issue, I would like to say something in conclusion about some of the more innovative sub-theses of this book. If the Anaximander passage which gives natural explanations for thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, hurricanes and typhoons is an allusion to a famous passage in Hesiod where these phenomena are explained in terms of the gods, then there are some very important consequences. If there is deliberate allusion to Hesiod, then there would seem to be intentional rejection of Hesiod. Deliberate allusion would set a context of polemic, of the new natural thinkers setting themselves against the non-natural views of the poets. It would also show the natural explanation of meteorological phenomena to be a central concern of Anaximander and later presocratics, rather than just a concern of the doxographers. Furthermore, as I hope to have shown, there is an extensive tradition among the presocratics of giving natural explanations for these ‘Anaximander phenomena’.
Of course there is a big ‘if’ here, which is if Anaximander alluded to Hesiod. Perhaps the doxographers have their category of these five phenomena and fit the otherwise disparate view of Anaximander into this category. Although nothing can be proved here, I believe the balance of the evidence to be in favour of Anaximander alluding to Hesiod. The five phenomena form a slightly odd group, odd both in itself and as a doxographer’s category. What are the chances of the doxographers coming up with these five phenomena which match the five phenomena in a famous Hesiod passage by accident? The history of the category in doxography goes back to Aristotle’s Meteorology. Is it coincidence that Aristotle treats these five phenomena together or is he drawing on a presocratic tradition which did so? The group does have a strong coherence for Anaximander as he believed that all of these phenomena could be explained in terms of wind. If Anaximander did allude to Hesiod, that fits into a broader pattern of presocratic targeting of Homer and Hesiod on other issues of non-natural explanation. Indeed, Anaximander’s view that the apeiron is undying and unaging may allude to Homer’s description of the gods and the extant fragment may allude to Theognis in particular and the poets more generally on the order of the world.
That there is this pattern of targeting is undeniable given the evidence we have seen. That individual presocratics alluded to Homer and Hesiod is of course no great surprise. Scholars of individual presocratics will perhaps not be surprised that their man alluded to Homer and Hesiod, but may be more surprised at the extent to which other presocratics did and the systematic way they seem to target non-natural phenomena. The Hippocratics on the aetiology of disease is clearly a lead example, but we have seen other examples among the Hippocratics too, with allusions to how Hesiod classified cities, to Homer and Hesiod on how skills and medical knowledge are acquired and to Homer on the nature of mental illness. Xenophanes is a mine of examples as well, with the out and out criticism of Homer and Hesiod on the gods, his explanations of the rainbow, St. Elmo’s fire and the behaviour of the sun and moon, his outright rejection of divination and the way he mimics the way that Homer ends lines but leaves out references to the gods. So too we have seen the author of the Derveni papyrus provides an interesting example of an author trying to treat an Orphic theogony as a veiled natural theory and trying to tease a natural theory from the Orphic ‘riddles’. Anaxagoras did not only target Homer, but was also perceived by others to target Homer. He gives natural explanations of many meteorological phenomena and a natural explanation for a goat with one horn. Heraclitus too gives a critique of religion and natural explanations for the five Anaximander phenomena and a rejection of dreams and divination as a source of knowledge as well as an important emphasis that neither gods nor men made this entirely orderly cosmos. Leucippus and Democritus, apart from their account of how belief in the gods came about in the first place, also seem to allude to Homer on the issues of eidôla, and the like to like principle.2 Finally, if it is the case that Anaximander alluded to Hesiod on the five Anaximander phenomena, then it is highly likely that all the other presocratics who discussed these five phenomena understood the nature of the allusion and the targeting as well, fitting into the same polemical context. If they were making other allusions to Homer and Hesiod as well on the issue of the non-natural, as I have argued, this seems even more likely. That would include at least Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Leucippus and Democritus. Rejection of the non-natural is the polemical context, rather than being incidental to the polemical context.
The Hippocratics, pantheism and religious practice
The idea that we can attribute some form of pantheism to the Hippocratic author of On the Sacred Disease and so understand why they say that all diseases are both divine and natural is not new. However, the idea that we can understand the comments on piety and ritual within a naturalistic pantheism is new. There is no reason why ancient pantheists could not honour god/nature, be pious towards god/nature, criticise atheists or have rituals and have a notion of what it would be to be impious. Critically, pantheists can pray as well if we understand prayer to be about changing our own mental states rather than always being an entreaty for an independent god to intervene in the world. Xenophanes is an important example here.
This has important consequences both for understanding the Hippocratics and for understanding other presocratic thinkers. There is no need, in building a case for a belief that everything is natural for some of the presocratics to marginalise, ignore or attempt to explain away religious belief or practice.3 They may believe in an entirely natural god and these thinkers were quite capable of generating religious practices such as prayer for the sake of their own mental state in line with that belief in a natural god. We cannot then assume that when prayer is advocated in the Hippocratic On Regimen that this is prayer to an independent god to intervene. We have seen prayer in other contexts for intellectuals, with Xenophanes, Aristotle, Epicurus and Cleanthes where it is clearly not petitionary. I have also offered an alternative reading of the passage on ‘divine’ dreams in On Regimen such that this passage is then an attack on charlatans who succeed in prophecy by chance, rather than an affirmation that ‘divine’ dreams exist.
There has been criticism of what has been termed the ‘explanatory vacuity of pantheism’.4 This is unjustified and I hope I have been able to show that this is not the case for Greek pantheists who believed that nature has some form of inherent ‘steering’ function which allows the cosmos to be formed from some prior state of the universe.5 Without that steering a single well-ordered, beautiful world that is a cosmos would not form for the pantheists. One conclusion of this book is that forms of pantheism were more widespread among early Greek thinkers than is usually thought and is important in helping to underpin a view of the world as an entirely natural entity. Historiography has moved on from ideas of inevitable conflict between science and religion. There is no tension here between the view that the world is divine and the world is natural, and there is no inhibition of the investigation of nature.
In the introduction to this book, I included a brief section on Greek magical practice. I wanted to give some indication of Greek magical practice so we could have some comparison not only with the theories of the presocratic intellectuals but with their practice as well. That is important as a check on consistency, that theory matches practice. It is also important in marking out just how different the presocratic naturalists were from the magic of the Greek populace and the magic described in Homer and Hesiod. It is important to say something similar about religious practice. It is important as a check on consistency for the presocratic naturalists and important in marking out just how different their religious practices were from the presocratic Greek populace.
The Pythagoreans and numerology
It is important that we are able to differentiate between various forms of numerology. The literature has not done so adequately and in many cases has not even tried to do so, sometimes driven by a historiography which treats anything outside of mathematics and mathematical physics with the deepest suspicion. Often all forms of numerology are grouped together (and dismissed together) as equally foolish, mysterious or superstitious. This is unfortunate, as there are significant differences between modern numerology and what I have termed superstitious numerology, arithmology, number mysticism, number symbolism and cosmic numerology. Once we have this in mind, we can then have a much more nuanced discussion of the early Pythagoreans and numerology.
Certainly there are continuities between the superstitious numerology of earlier cultures and what some of the early Pythagoreans say, but against the view of Burkert, who has a polarity of the scientific use of mathematics against superstitious numerology, this is not all the early Pythagoreans have to say. They employed a cosmic numerology, with epistemological and cosmological motivations. While this was far from modern science, it was significantly different from the primitive numerology of earlier cultures and went significantly beyond ethical, symbolic or aesthetic considerations as well.
One theme of this book has been that we should avoid historiographies of magic which make a bipolar distinction between magic and science and this is well illustrated by the Pythagoreans on numerology. There is much that is possible between these supposed polarities in terms of natural magic and that is important for understanding presocratic attitudes to magic and to the natural. I have made largely the same point about religion as well. We need to be able to understand the interesting positions that combine religious belief and naturalism or the investigation of the natural rather than simply treat those as polar opposites or in some sense incompatible.
Finally then, there was something that can meaningfully be termed presocratic naturalism and there was a group of presocratic naturalists. That group is not co-extensive with the canon of presocratic philosophers but is substantial.