THALES

Thales of Miletus (c. 624 - 546 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic philosopher, mathematician and
astronomer from the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia (modern-day Turkey). He was one of the so-called
Seven Sages of Greece, and many regard him as the first philosopher in the Western tradition.

He was the founder of the Milesian School of natural philosophy, and the teacher of Anaximander. He
was perhaps the first subscriber to Materialist and Naturalism in trying to define the substance or
substances of which all material objects were composed, which he identified as water.

His innovative search for a universality in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy
have earned him the label the "first scientist".

Thales (pronounced THAY-lees) was born in the Greek city of Miletus (on the Ionian coast of modern-day
Turkey) in about 624 or 625 B.C. (an estimate based on his age at death). The 3rd Century A.D. historian
Diogenes Laërtius reported that his parents were Examyas and Cleobulina of the noble Milesian family
of Thelidae (and descended from Agenor and Cadmus of ancient Thebes, Greece), although other
sources suggest that his parents may have been Phoenician (from the modern-day region of Lebanon,
Israel and Syria).

Details of his life are sketchy and often contradictory. Some reports suggest that he married and had a
son, Cybisthus (or Cybisthon) or possibly adopted a nephew of the same name, while other reports
suggest that he never married. Some say that he left no writings; others that he wrote at least two
works, "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox" (neither have survived). Some anecdotes suggest that
Thales was involved in business and politics, and at one point bought up all the olive presses in
Miletus after predicting a good harvest for a particular year (either to make money or merely to
demonstrate that he could use his intelligence to enrich himself if he had wanted to).

His involvement in local politics is also rather anecdotal in nature, but Thales apparently impressed both
sides of the ongoing conflict between the Lydians, Medes and Persians over the fate of the region of
Ionia, when he predicted an eclipse of the sun which brought fighting to a standstill. He was also
reportedly involved in the negotiations which followed the hostilities, and managed to obtain favourable
terms for Miletus.

Thales is said to have died of dehydration while watching a gymnastics contest in 546 or 547 B.C., at the
age of 78 (although other reports have him living to the age of 90).

In retrospect is is difficult to separate history from legend, but he is usually considered one of the Seven
Sages or Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece, a group of 7th and early 6th Century B.C. philosophers,
statesmen and law-givers who became renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom. The
aphorism "Know thyself" has been attributed to Thales (as well as to at least six other ancient Greek
sages). Much of what we known of Thales' philosophy has come down to us from Aristotle and so may be
somewhat distorted by Aristotle's own views. Some sources say that he left no writings; others that he
wrote at least two works, "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox" (neither of which have survived).

The early Pre-Socratic philosophers (of which Thales was one of the very first) tried to define the
substance or substances of which all material objects were composed (as do modern scientists even
today, hence Thales is sometimes described as the first scientist). He searched for the "physis" (or
nature) of objects that cause them to behave in their characteristic way. He was one of the first Western
philosophers who attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world (Naturalism or Materialism)
without reference to supernatural or mythological explanations, such as the Greek anthropomorphic
gods and heroes. He explained earthquakes, for example, by hypothesizing that the Earth floats on
water and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves.
His most famous belief was his cosmological doctrine that water was the first principle (roughly
equivalent to Anaximenes' later idea that everything in the world was composed of air). He claimed that
water was the origin of all things, that from which all things emerge and to which they return, and
moreover that all things ultimately are water. He probably drew this conclusion from seeing moist
substances turn into air, slime and earth, and he clearly viewed the Earth as solidifying from the water
on which it floated and which surrounded it.

While considering the effects of magnetism and static electricity, he concluded that the power to move
other things without the mover itself changing was a characteristic of "life", so that a magnet and amber
must therefore be alive in some way (in that they have animation or the power to act). If so, he argued,
there is no difference between the living and the dead. If all things were alive, they must also have
souls or divinities (a natural belief of his time), and the end result of this argument was an almost total
removal of mind from substance, opening the door to an innovative non-divine principle of action.

Thales recognized a single transcendental God (Monism), who has neither beginning nor end, but who
expresses himself through other gods (Polytheism). His idea of justice included both the letter of the law
and the spirit of the law (e.g. adultery and perjury about it in court are equally bad). He had some
common sense moral advice: that we should expect the same support from our children that we give to
our parents; that we should not let talk influence us against those we have come to trust; and that we
should not do ourselves that for which we blame others. He believed that a happy man was one who
was "healthy in body, resourceful in soul and of a readily teachable nature".

His political views were generally in favour of a benign tyranny, rather than democracy (which most
thinkers of his time distrusted as an inefficient and unreliable system). He believed that men were
naturally better than women, and that Greeks were better than barbarians (non-Greeks).

Thales was known for his theoretical and practical understanding (and innovative use) of geometry,
especially triangles. He established what has become known as Thales' Theorem, whereby if a triangle
is drawn within a circle with the long side as a diameter of the circle then the opposite angle will
always be a right angle (as well as some other related properties derived from this).

He was also an important innovator in astronomy, and he had an effective theory of the path of the sun
from solstice to solstice and supposedly correctly predicted a solar eclipse. Some sources have
attributed him with the "discovery" of the seasons of the year and the 365-day year (consistent with his
determination of the solstices). While this may be an exaggeration, his questioning approach to the
understanding of heavenly phenomena arguably marked the real beginning of Greek astronomy.

ANAXIMANDER

Anaximander (c. 610 - 546 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic philosopher from the Greek city of Miletus in
Ionia (modern-day Turkey). He was a key figure in the Milesian School, as a student of Thales and
teacher of Anaximenes and Pythagoras.

He was an early proponent of science, and is sometimes considered to be the first true scientist, and to
have conducted the earliest recorded scientific experiment. He is often considered the founder of
astronomy, and he tried to observe and explain different aspects of the universe and its origins, and to
describe the mechanics of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth. He made important contributions to
cosmology, physics, geometry, meteorology and geography as well as to Metaphysics.

Anaximander was born in the Greek city of Miletus (on the Ionian coast of modern-day Turkey) in about
610 B.C., the son of Praxiades, but little else is known of his life.
According to Diogenes Laërtius (a biographer of the Greek philosophers, who lived in the 2nd or 3rd
Century A.D.), he was a pupil of Thales (founder of the Milesian School of philosophy, and possibly also
Anaximander's uncle), and succeeded him as master of the school, where his work influenced
Anaximenes and Pythagoras.

Although he was among the earliest philosophers in the Western world to have actually written down his
studies, only one fragment of his work remains and, by the time of Plato, his philosophy was apparently
almost forgotten.

At a time when the Pre-Socratics were pursuing various forms of Monism and searching for the one
element that constitutes all things (each had a different solution to the identity of this element: water
for Thales, air for Anaximenes, fire for Heraclitus), Anaximander argued that neither water nor any of the
other candidates can embrace all of the opposites found in nature (e.g. water can only be wet, never
dry) and therefore cannot be the one primary substance or first principle of the universe.

He judged that, although not directly perceptible to us, the only substance which could explain all the
opposites he saw around him, is what he called "apeiron" (variously translated as "the infinite", "the
boundless", etc), an endless, unlimited primordial mass, subject to neither old age nor decay, that
perpetually yielded fresh materials from which everything we perceive is derived. The Universe
originates in the separation of opposites in this primordial matter, and dying things are merely returning
to the boundless element from which they came. He saw the universe as a kind of organism, supported
by "pneuma" (cosmic breath).

Anaximander is sometimes called the "Father of Cosmology" and the founder of astronomy for his
bold use of non-mythological explanations of physical processes. He was the first to conceive a
mechanical model of the world, in which the Earth floats very still in the centre of the infinite, not
supported by anything. He envisioned the Earth as a cylinder with a height one-third of its diameter, the
flat top forming the inhabited world, surrounded by a circular oceanic mass. This theory allowed for the
concept that celestial bodies could pass under or around it, and provided a better explanation than
Thales’ claim of a world floating on water (what would contain this ocean?).

Anaximander was the first astronomer to consider the Sun as a huge mass (and therefore to realize how
far from Earth it might be), and the first to present a system where the celestial bodies turned at
different distances. He built a celestial sphere, and his work on astronomy shows that he must have
observed the inclination of the celestial sphere in relation to the plane of the Earth to explain the
seasons. Anaximander also speculated on the plurality of worlds, which places him close to the
Atomists and the Epicureans who, more than a century later, also claimed that an infinity of worlds
appeared and disappeared.

Some consider Anaximander the earliest proponent of evolution (even though he had no theory of
natural selection). Noting the existence of fossils, he claimed that animals sprang out of the sea long
ago, and he put forward the idea that humans had to spend part of this transition inside the mouths of
big fish to protect themselves from the Earth's climate, until they had time to adapt to the emergence of
dry land.

His other interests were in mathematics (he explained some basic notions of geometry and introduced
the sundial gnomon to Greece), meteorology (he attributed some phenomena, such as thunder and
lightning, to the intervention of elements, rather than to divine causes, and he explained rain as a
product of the humidity pumped up from Earth by the sun) and geography (he was probably the first to
publish a map of the world, i.e. the entire inhabited land known to the ancient Greeks, rather than the
local maps which had been produced in ancient times).
ANAXIMENES

Anaximenes (c. 585 - 525 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic philosopher from the Greek city of Miletus in
Ionia (modern-day Turkey). He was a key figure in the Milesian School, a friend and pupil of Anaximander
and he continued the Milesians' philosophical inquiries into the "archê" or first principle of the universe
(which Anaximenes deemed to be air), and sought to give a quasi-scientific explanation of the world.

In the physical sciences, Anaximenes was the first Greek to distinguish clearly between planets and
stars, and he used his principles to account for various natural phenomena, such as thunder and
lightning, rainbows, earthquakes, etc.

Nothing is known of his life of Anaximenes (pronounced an-ax-IM-en-ees), other than that he was the
son of Eurystratos of Miletus, and was the pupil or companion of Anaximander. Some say that he was
also a pupil of Parmenides of Elea, although this seems unlikely. He lived for at least part of his life
under Persian rule, and so he may have witnessed the Ionian rebellion against Greek occupation. There
is some evidence from letters that he was in communication with Pythagoras, although any influence on
Pythagoras' philosophical development was probably minor (other than the desire to explain the world in
non-mythological terms).

According to Diogenes Laërtius (a biographer of the Greek philosophers, who lived in the 2nd or 3rd
Century A.D.), Anaximenes wrote his philosophical views in a book, which survived well into the
Hellenistic period, although nothing now remains of this.

Like the other Milesian philosophers before him, Anaximenes' main concern was to indentify the single
source of all things in the universe (Monism). Thales, the earliest Milesian, had taken this to be water.
His pupil Anaximander refined this somewhat, arguing that no single element could adequately explain
all of the opposites found in nature, and propounded the solution of an endless, unlimited primordial
mass which he called "apeiron".

Anaximenes arguably took a step backwards by revisiting the notion that a single element was indeed
the source of all things, and that element he deemed to be air (actually the Greek word "aer" also
denotes "mist" or "vapour" as well as the normal air we breathe). He held that, at one time, everything
was air, and that, even now, everything is air at different degrees of density. Since air is infinite and
perpetually in motion, it can produce all things without being actually produced by anything.

Under the influence of heat (which expands it) and of cold (which contracts it), and the associated
processes of rarefaction (air separating) and condensation (air coming together), air gradually gives
rise to the several phases of existence and all the materials of the organized world. Anaximenes
believed that air came in threads which came together by a process called "felting", analogous to the
process by which wool is compressed to make felt. Thus, very close air was a solid, less close a liquid,
etc.

In this way, therefore, Anaximenes used natural processes familiar from everyday experience to
account for material change and, in this respect at least, his theory was an advance over those of Thales
and Anaximander.

According to Anaximenes, the earth is a broad disk, floating on the circumambient air. The sun and
stars, he held, were formed by the same processes of condensation and rarefaction, and the flaming
nature of these bodies is merely due to the velocity of their motions. He also used his principles to
account for various natural phenomena: thunder and lightning result from wind breaking out of clouds;
rainbows are the result of the rays of the sun falling on clouds; earthquakes are caused by the cracking
of the earth when it dries out after being moistened by rains; hail is a result of frozen rainwater; etc.

Anaximenes also equated the first material principle with the divine, so that effectively "air is God", both
being infinite and eternal. Thus, the pantheon of Greek gods were merely derivations of the truly divine,
air. Similarly, the souls of individuals were also composed of air (or breath), and hold us together in the
same way as air encompasses the entire world.

HERACLITUS

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 - 475 B.C.) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Ephesus, on the
Ionian coast of modern-day Turkey. He is sometimes mentioned in connection the Ephesian School of
philosophy, although he was really the only prominent member of that school (which, along with the
Milesian School, is often considered part of the Ionian School).

He was perhaps the first Western philosopher to go beyond physical theory in search of metaphysical
foundations and moral applications, and some consider him, along with Parmenides, the most
significant of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. His idea of a universe in constant change but with an
underlying order or reason (which he called Logos) forms the essential foundation of the European
worldview.

Many subsequent philosophers, from Plato to Aristotle, from the Stoics to the Church Fathers, from
Georg Hegel to Alfred North Whitehead, have claimed to have been influenced by the ideas of
Heraclitus.

According to the "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" of Diogenes Laërtius (the 3rd
Century historian of the ancient Greek philsophers), Heraclitus flourished in the 69th Olympiad (which
would be 504 - 501 B.C.), but the dates of his birth and death are just guesswork based on that. So, all
we can say it is it is likely that he was born around 535 B.C. We do know that he was born to an
aristocratic family in Ephesus, an important city on the Ionian coast of modern-day Turkey.

His father was named either Bloson or Herakon, and was a powerful figure in the city. But, according to
Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus abdicated the kingship (probably just an honorific title) in favour of his
brother, and had no interest in politics or power. As a youth, he was a prodigious intellect, and he
claimed to have taught himself everything he knew by a process of self-questioning. Some sources
also say that he was a pupil of Xenophanes (570 - 480 B.C.), but that is disputed.

He was sometimes known as "the Obscure" (or "the Dark") for the deliberate difficulty and unclearness
of his teachings. He was also known as the "Weeping Philosopher", and it is speculated that he was
prone to melancholia or depression, which prevented him from finishing some of his works. There is no
record of his having travelled, even as far as the nearby learning centre of Miletus, although he seems
to have been familiar with the ideas of the Milesian School.

He was apparently something of a misanthrope and a loner, and he cultivated an aristocratic disdain
for the masses and favoured the rule of a few wise men. He was not afraid to scorn and denigrate (in
no uncertain terms, and in a characteristic shrill voice) almost everyone from the Ephesians to the
Athenians to the Persian leader, Darius. He believed that the poet Hesiod and Pythagoras "lacked
understanding", and claimed that Homer and Archilochus deserved to be beaten. Diogenes Laërtius
reported that, later in life, he wandered the mountains, eating only grass and herbs.

His years of wandering in the wilderness, resulted in an oedema (dropsy) and impairment of vision.
After 24 hours of his own idiosyncratic treatment (a liniment of cow manure and baking in the sun), he
died and was interred in the marketplace of Ephesus.Heraclitus is recorded as having written a single
book, "On Nature", divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics and a third
on theology. The book was deposited or stored in the great Temple of Artemis in Ephesus (as were
many other treasures and books of the time) and made available to visitors for several centuries after
Heraclitus' death. However, his writings only survive today in fragments quoted by other later authors.

In his work, he used puns, paradoxes, antitheses, parallels and various rhetorical and literary devices to
construct expressions that have meanings beyond the obvious. The reader must therefore solve verbal
puzzles (he was also nicknamed "The Riddler"), and, by so doing, learn to read the signs of the world.
In fact, he deliberately made his philosophical work obscure, so that none but the already competent
would be able to understand it.

Unlike many of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers, Heraclitus believed that the world is not to be
identified with any particular substance, but rather consists of a law-like interchange of elements, an
ongoing process governed by a law of perpetual change, or Logos, which he symbolized by fire.
According to Heraclitus, fire provides a kind of standard of value for other stuffs, but it is not identical to
them, and is not the unique source of all things, because all stuffs are equivalent and one thing is
transformed into another in a cycle of changes.

According to Heraclitus, the world is in an eternal state of "becoming", and all changes arise from the
dynamic and cyclic interplay of opposites. Opposites are necessary for life, he believed, but they are
unified in a system of balanced exchanges, with pairs of opposites making up a unity. Thus, one road
carries some travellers out of a city, while it brings others back in; the way up is also the way down;
earth changes to fire and fire changes to earth, etc. In this, he posits an equal and opposite reaction to
every change and, in his theory of the equivalence of matter, a primitive law of conservation.

The most famous aphorism often attributed to Heraclitus, that "everything is in a state of flux",
probably comes in reality from the much later Neo-Platonist Simplicius of Cilicia (490 - 560 A.D.),
although other similar quotes are attributable to him, and it remains a pithy summary of his views on the
recurrent Pre-Socratic problem of change. Similarly, he is often quoted as saying that one cannot step
twice into the same river, although this is based on a simplistic paraphrasing of Plato's. What he was
really suggesting is that rivers can stay the same over time even though (or indeed because) the waters
in it change.

Thus, contrary to the contentions of both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus did not hold the extreme (and
logically incoherent) views that everything is constantly changing, that opposite things are identical,
and that everything is and is not at the same time. But he did recognize a lawlike flux of elements, with
fire changing into water and then into earth, and earth changing into water and then into fire. While parts
of the world are being consumed by fire at any given time, the whole remains. Heraclitus does, to be
sure, make paradoxical statements, but his views are no more self-contradictory than some of the
claims of Socrates.

Heraclitus saw the theory of nature and the human condition as intimately connected, and he was one
of the first philosophers to make human values a central concern. He viewed the soul as fiery in nature,
generated out of other substances, just as fire is, but limitless in dimension. Thus, drunkenness, for
example, damages the soul by causing it to be moist, while a virtuous life keeps the soul dry and
intelligent.

He further believed that the laws of a city-state are an important principle of order, and that they derive
their force from a divine law. In this way, he introduced the notion of a law of nature that informs human
society as well as nature, and this idea of an inherent moral law greatly influenced the later Stoicism
movement.

He saw Divinity as present in the world, but not as a conventional anthropomorphic being such as the
Greeks worshipped. For Heraclitus, the world itself either is God, or is a manifestation of the activity of
God, which is somehow to be identified with the underlying order of things.
PYTHAGORAS

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) was an early Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher and
mathematician from the Greek island of Samos.

He was the founder of the influential philosophical and religious movement or cult called
Pythagoreanism, and he was probably the first man to actually call himself a philosopher (or lover of
wisdom). Pythagoras (or in a broader sense the Pythagoreans), allegedly exercised an important
influence on the work of Plato.

As a mathematician, he is known as the "father of numbers" or as the first pure mathematician, and
is best known for his Pythagorean Theorem on the relation between the sides of a right triangle, the
concept of square numbers and square roots, and the discovery of the golden ratio.

Unfortunately, little is known for sure about him, (none of his original writings have survived, and his
followers usually published their own works in his name) and he remains something of a mysterious
figure. His secret society or brotherhood had a great effect on later esoteric traditions such as
Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, in the eastern Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey,
some time between 580 and 572 B.C. His father was Mnesarchus, a Phoenician merchant from Tyre; his
mother was Pythais, a native of Samos. He spent his early years in Samos, but also travelled widely
with his father.

According to some reports, as a young man he met Thales, who was impressed with his abilities and
advised him to head to Memphis in Egypt and study mathematics and astronomy with the priests there,
which he soon had the opportunity of. He also travelled to study at the temples of Tyre and Byblos in
Phoenicia, as well as in Babylon. At some point he was also a student of Pherecydes of Syros and of
Anaximander (who himself had been a student of Thales).While still quite a young man, he left his native
city for Croton in southern Italy in order to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates, the Tyrant of
Samos (or possibly to escape political problems related to an Egyptian-style school called the
"semicircle" which he had founded on Samos).

In Croton, Pythagoras established a secret religious society very similar to (and possibly influenced by)
the earlier Orphic cult, in an attempt to reform the cultural life of Croton. He formed an elite circle of
followers around himself, called Pythagoreans or the Mathematikoi ("learners"), subject to very strict
rules of conduct, owning no personal possessions and assuming a largely vegetarian diet. They
followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, music, poetry recitations,
reading and philosophical study (very similar to later monastic life). The school (unusually for the time)
was open to both male and female students uniformly (women were held to be different from men, but
not necessarily inferior). The Mathematikoi extended and developed the more mathematical and
scientific work Pythagoras began.

Other students, who lived in neighbouring areas, were also permitted to attend some of Pythagoras'
lectures, although they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. They were known as the
Akousmatikoi ("listeners"), and they focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of
Pythagoras' teachings (and were permitted to eat meat and own personal belongings).

Among his more prominent students were the philosopher Empedocles, Brontinus (who may have
been Pythagoras' successor as head of the school), Philolaus (c. 480 - 385 B.C., who has been credited
with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe), Lysis of Taras (who is
sometimes credited with many of the works usually attributed to Pythagoras himself), Cercops (an
Orphic poet), Hippasus of Metapontum (who is sometimes attributed with the discovery of irrational
numbers), Zamolxis (who later amassed great wealth and a cult following as a god among the Thracian
Dacians) and Theano (born c. 546 B.C., a mathematician, student, and possibly wife or daughter, of
Pythagoras).

Towards the end of his life, Pythagoras fled to Metapontum (further north in the Gulf of Tarentum)
because of a plot against him and his followers by a noble of Croton named Cylon. He died in
Metapontum from unknown causes some time between 500 and 490 B.C., between 80 and 90 years old.

Because of the secretive nature of his school and the custom of its students to attribute everything to
Pythagoras himself, it is difficult today to determine who actually did which work. To further confuse
matters, some forgeries under his name (a few of which still exist) circulated in antiquity. Some of his
biographers clearly aimed to present him as a god-like figure, and he became the subject of elaborate
legends surrounding his historical persona.

The school that Pythagoras established at Croton was in some ways more of a secret brotherhood or
monastery. It was based on his religious teachings and was highly concerned with the morality of
society. Members were required to live ethically, love one another, share political beliefs, practice
pacifism, and devote themselves to the mathematics of nature. They also abstained from meat,
abjured personal property and observed a rule of silence (called "echemythia"), the breaking of which
was punishable by death, based on the belief that if someone was in any doubt as to what to say, they
should remain silent.

Pythagoras saw his religious and scientific views as inseparably interconnected. He believed in the
theory of metempsychosis or the transmigration of the soul and its reincarnation again and again
after death into the bodies of humans, animals or vegetables until it became moral (a belief he may have
learned from his one-time teacher Pherecydes of Syros, who is usually credited as the first Greek to
teach the transmigration of souls). He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the
soul were located in the brain and not the heart.

Another of Pythagoras' central beliefs was that the essence of being (and the stability of all things that
create the universe) can be found in the form of numbers, and that it can be encountered through the
study of mathematics. For instance, he believed that things like health relied on a stable proportion of
elements, with too much or too little of one thing causing an imbalance that makes a person unhealthy.

In mathematics, Pythagoras is commonly given credit for discovering what is now know as the
Pythagorean Theorem (or Pythagoras' Theorem), a theorem in geometry that states that, in a right-
angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of
the squares of the other two sides. Although this had been known and utilized previously by the
Babylonians and Indians, he (or perhaps one of his students) is thought to have constructed the first
proof.

He believed that the number system (and therefore the universe system) was based on the sum of the
numbers one to four (i.e. ten), and that odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were
feminine. He discovered the theory of mathematical proportions, constructed from three to five
geometrical solids, and also discovered square numbers and square roots. The discovery of the
golden ratio (referring to the ratio of two quantities such that the sum of those quantities and the larger
one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller, approximately 1.618) is also usually
attributed to Pythagoras, or possibly to his student, Theano.

He was one of the first to think that the Earth was round, that all planets have an axis, and that all the
planets travel around one central point (which he originally identified as the Earth, but later renounced it
for the idea that the planets revolve around a central “fire”, although he never identified it as the Sun).
He also believed that the Moon was another planet that he called a “counter-Earth".
Pythagoras was also very interested in music, and wanted to improve the music of his day, which he
believed was not harmonious enough and was too hectic. According to legend, he discovered that
musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations by listening to blacksmiths at work.
"Pythagorean tuning" is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency relationships of all
intervals are based on the ratio 3:2 (a stack of perfect fifths), a system which has been documented as
long ago as 3500 B.C. in Babylonian texts, but which is nevertheless often attributed to Pythagoras. He
also believed in the "musica universalis" (or the "harmony of the spheres"), the idea that the planets
and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus
produced a kind of symphony.

PARMENIDES

Parmenides of Elea (c. 515 - 450 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and founder and
chief representative of the Eleatic School of ancient Greek philosophy.

He is one of the most significant and influential (as well as the most difficult and obscure) of the Pre-
Socratic philosophers, and he is sometimes referred to as the father of Metaphysics. He particularly
influenced Plato (and, through him, the whole of Western Philosophy), who always spoke of him with
veneration. Perhaps his greatest contribution to philosophy was his method of reasoned proof for
assertions.

In denying the reality (or even the possibility) of change as part of his Monist philosophy, Parmenides
presented a turning point in the history of Western Philosophy, and sparked a philosophical challenge
that determined the course of enquiries of subsequent philosophers such as Empedocles, Anaxagoras
and Democritus, and an intellectual revolution that still echoes today.

Parmenides (pronounced par-MEN-i-dees) was born in the Greek colony of Elea (southern Italy). His
birth date is uncertain and the evidence of Diogenes Laërtius and Plato is contradictory, but it is likely
that he was born some time between 540 and 510 B.C., with 515 B.C. as a "best guess".

He is said to have been a student of Xenophanes of Colophon (570 - 480 B.C.), and what we know of
Xenophanes' philosophy seems to be an influence on Parmenides. Diogenes Laërtius also describes
Parmenides as a disciple of the Pythagorean philosopher Aminias, although there are few Pythagorean
elements in his thought.

He was the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Melissus of Samos and the young Zeno
of Elea (who was about 25 years younger than Parmenides and may also have been his eromenos or
adolescent lover, a common tradition of ancient Greece).

He was held in high esteem by his fellow-citizens for his excellent legislation, to which they ascribed the
prosperity and wealth of the town, and it is suggested that he had written the laws of the city, which had
been founded shortly before 535 B.C. He was also admired for his exemplary life (a "Parmenidean life"
was proverbial among the Greeks).

Little more is known of his biography than that he stopped at Athens on a journey in his sixty-fifth year
(around the middle of the 5th Century B.C.) and there became acquainted with the youthful Socrates
(Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were all strongly inspired by Parmenides). His death is assumed to have
taken place around 440 or 450 B.C.

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Work
Parmenides' only known work, a poem written in hexameter verse around 475 B.C. and entitled "On
Nature", has only survived in fragmentary form, with approximately 150 of the original 3,000 lines of text
remaining today. It is divided into two main sections, describing the two ways or two views of reality,
"The Way of Truth" (which accounts for most of the surviving lines) and "The Way of
Appearance/Opinion", along with an introduction. Parmenides argued in favour of the Way of Truth and
against The Way of Appearance.

In the poem, Parmenides argued that the every-day perception of the reality of the physical world is
mistaken, and that the reality of the world is "the One", an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible
whole. Likewise, the phenomena of movement and change are simply appearances of the real static,
eternal reality. He further asserted that the truth cannot be known through sensory perception, only
through pure reason ("Logos").

Parmenides set out the heart of his case in a worldview that (even by the standards of philosophy) is,
according to Aristotle, "near to madness". He argued as follows: "What-is-not" does not exist. Since
anything that comes into being must arise out of "what-is-not", objects cannot come into being.
Likewise, they cannot pass away, because in order to do so they would have to enter the realm of "what-
is-not". Since it does not exist, "what-is-not" cannot be the womb of generation, or the tomb of that
which perishes. The "no-longer" and the "not-yet" are therefore variants of "what-is-not", and so the
past and future do not exist either. Change, then, is impossible.

Equally, his argument continued, multiplicity is unreal, because the empty space necessary to separate
one object from another would be another example of "what-is-not". And since things cannot be anything
to a greater or lesser degree (which would require "what-is" to be mixed with the diluting effect of "what-
is-not"), the universe must be homogeneous, a single, undifferentiated, unchanging unity. Also, it must
be finite and spherical, for it cannot be in one direction any more than in another (and the sphere is the
only figure of which this can be said).

Thus, by a strictly deductive argument, Parmenides asserted that change is impossible, and that
coming-into-existence or ceasing-to-exist are likewise impossible, so that everything that exists is
permanent, ungenerated, indestructible and unchanging. His argument refutes all accounts of the
origin of the world, and represents an early type of Monism.

Parmenides therefore made the ontological argument against nothingness, essentially denying the
possible existence of a void, which led Leucippus and Democritus to propose their theory of Atomism
(that everything in the universe is either atoms or voids) specifically to contradict his argument.

ZENO

Zeno of Elea (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) was an important Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from the Greek colony
of Elea in southern Italy. He was a prominent member of the Eleatic School of ancient Greek
philosophy, which had been founded by Parmenides, and he subscribed to and defended the Monist
beliefs of Parmenides.

Arguably he did not really attempt to add anything positive to the teachings of his master, Parmenides,
and he is best known today for his paradoxes of motion. But Aristotle has called him the inventor of the
dialectic, and no less a logician and historian than Bertrand Russell has credited him with having laid the
foundations of modern Logic.

Zeno was born around 490 B.C. in the Greek colony of Elea in southern Italy. The date is an estimate
based on Plato's report of a visit to Athens by Zeno and his teacher Parmenides when Socrates was "a
very young man", and Zeno being about 25 years younger than Parmenides.

Little is known for certain about Zeno's life. The 3rd Century A.D. biographer of the ancient Greek
philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius, reported that Zeno was the son of Teleutagoras, but was adopted by
Parmenides. Plato tells us that Zeno was "tall and fair to look upon" and was reported to have been
"beloved" by Parmenides in his youth, so he may have been Parmenides' eromenos (or adolescent
lover, a common tradition of ancient Greece).

He was around forty years old when he accompanied Parmenides to Athens and met the young
Socrates. He appears to have lived for at least some time at Athens, and to have explained his doctrines
to prominent Athenian statesmen like Pericles (c. 495 - 429 B.C.) and Callias. He was praised as a
"universal critic", skilled in arguing both sides of any question. He devoted all his energies to
explaining and developing Parmenides' philosophical system.

According to some reports, Zeno was arrested and perhaps killed at the hands of a tyrant of Elea.
According to the historian Plutarch (c. A.D. 46 - 120), Zeno attempted to kill the tyrant Demylus, and
having failed to do so, he bit off his tongue and spit it in the tyrant's face. However, these details may
well be pure inventions, and we can only assume that he died around 430 B.C., although with little or no
evidence.

Although several ancient writers refer to the "writings" of Zeno, none of his them have survive intact,
and the few fragments of his philosophy we do have mainly come down to us through Aristotle (who was
a major detractor of Zeno's ideas). He did not really add anything positive to the teachings of
Parmenides, but devoted himself to refuting the views of his opponents.

Like Parmenides, he taught that the world of sense, with its apparent motion (or change) and plurality
(or multiplicity), is merely an illusion. The "true being" behind the illusion is absolutely one and has no
plurality (Monism), and furthermore it is static and unchangeable. However, because common sense
tells us that there is both motion and plurality (as in the Pythagorean notion of reality), Zeno developed
arguments to show that the common sense notion of reality leads to consequences at least as
paradoxical as those of Parmenides.underlying intention was to affirm that everything was One (as
Monism asserted), that all belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is
nothing but an illusion. To do this he considered what would happen if something was divided into
infinitely small amounts, showing that this inevitably resulted in a situation which made no sense, and
so must be wrong.

Zeno's paradoxes were one of the first examples of a method of proof called reductio ad absurdum (or
epicheirema in Greek), a kind of dialectical syllogism or proof by contradiction. Although Parmenides
himself may actually have been the first to use this style of argument, Zeno became the most famous.
He devised arguments against both multiplicity and against motion, although both are really variations
of one argument that applies equally to space or time. Essentially, he argued that any quantity of space
(or time) must either be composed of ultimate indivisible units or it must be divisible ad infinitum. If it
is composed of indivisible units, then these must have magnitude and we are faced with the
contradiction of a magnitude which cannot be divided. If, however, it is divisible ad infinitum, then we
are faced with the different contradiction of supposing that an infinite number of parts can be added
up to make a merely finite sum.

Of Zeno's original 40 versions of the paradox (of which 8 have come down to us through Aristotle), three
in particular have become quite well known:

 The Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: If Achilles allows the tortoise a head start in a race,
then by the time Achilles has arrived at the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has already run on
a shorter distance. By the time Achilles reaches that second point, the tortoise has moved on
again, etc, etc. So Achilles can never catch the tortoise.
 The Arrow Paradox: If an arrow is fired from a bow, then at any moment in time, the arrow either
is where it is, or it is where it is not. If it moves where it is, then it must be standing still, and if it
moves where it is not, then it cannot be there. Thus, it cannot move at all.
 The Dichotomy Paradox: Before a moving object can travel a certain distance (e.g. a person
crossing a room), it must get halfway there. Before it can get halfway there, it must get a quarter
 of the way there. Before travelling a quarter, it must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-
sixteenth; and so on. As this sequence goes on forever, an infinite number of points must be
crossed, which is logically impossible in a finite period of time, so the distance will never be
covered (the room crossed, etc).

Aristotle vehemently disagreed with Zeno's ideas, calling them fallacies, and claiming to have
disproved them by pointing out that, as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover those
distances also decreases, becoming increasingly small. Various other possible solutions have been
offered to the paradoxes over the centuries, ranging from Kant, Hume and Hegel, to Newton and Leibniz
(who invented mathematical calculus as a method of handling infinite sequences). It is generally held
nowadays that the paradox stems from the false assumption that it is impossible to complete an infinite
number of discrete tasks in a finite time, but Zeno's paradoxes have continued to tease and stimulate
thinkers, and there is still some debate over whether they hve ben fully disproved even today.

EMPEDOCLES

Empedocles (c. 490 - 430 B.C.) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, usually considered a member of
the poorly-defined Pluralist school in that he was eclectic in his thinking and combined much that had
been suggested by others.

He is perhaps best known as the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements of
the ancient world: earth, air, fire and water, which became the standard dogma for much of the next
two thousand years. He is also credited with several prescient ideas in physics which have since proved
quite prophetic.

The details of his life have mainly passed into myth, and he has been regarded variously as a materialist
physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a gifted healer, a democratic politician, a
living god and a fraud and charlatan.

Empedocles (pronounced em-PED-o-clees) was born around 490 B.C. or 492 B.C. at Acragas
(Agrigentum in Latin), a Greek colony in Sicily, to a distinguished and aristocratic family. His father,
Meto or Meton, seems to have been instrumental in overthrowing Thrasydaeus, the tyrant of Agrigentum
in 470 B.C.

Very little is known of Empedocles' life. He is said to have been very wealthy and was magnanimous in
his support of the poor, but severe in persecuting the overbearing conduct of the aristocrats. Some
sources mention his travels to southern Italy, the Peloponnese and Athens, and some even further afield,
far to the east. He cultivated a regal public persona, with a grave manner and flamboyant clothes.

Despite his airs, he was obviously a popular politician and champion of democracy and equality. He
began his political career with the prosecution of two state officials for their arrogant behaviour towards
foreign guests (which was seen as a sign of incipient tyrannical tendencies), and is credited with
activities against other anti-democratic citizens. He continued his father's democratic tradition by
helping to overthrow the succeeding oligarchic government and instituting a democracy at Acragas.
At one point, he was offered effective rule of the city, but he declined.

He was a brilliant orator (Aristotle credited him with the invention of rhetoric itself), and his knowledge
of natural phenomena and medical conditions earned him the reputation of marvellous, even magical,
powers. Empedocles himself apparently did little to dispel such ideas, and he is reported as claiming
seemingly god-like powers (including the ability to revive the dead and to control the winds and rains),
and as claiming to be a daimon (a divine, or potentially divine, being).

He was acquainted with the eminent Acragas physicians Acron and Pausanias (the latter was his
eromenos or youth lover), with various Pythagoreans (some of the whom had come to Acragas after
being attacked in their centre at Croton) and possibly Parmenides and Anaxagoras. The Sophist and
rhetorician Gorgias is mentioned as a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few
years younger.

According to Aristotle, Empedocles died at the age of sixty, in 430 B.C. or 432 B.C., although other writers
have him living up to the age of 109. The manner of his death is likewise uncertain (reflecting his myth-
like status), including his having been "removed" from the earth, or perishing in the volcanic flames of
the Mount Etna. Other more prosaic reports include drowning, a fall from a carriage and suicide by
hanging.

Empedocles' work survives only in fragments, but fragments in a far greater number than any of the
other Pre-Socratics. His major work, "On Nature" (and possibly parts of a second work, "Purifications"),
written in hexameter verse, exists in more than 150 fragments. He was a poet of outstanding ability,
and of great influence on later poets such as Lucretius (99 - 55 B.C.)

Empedocles was very familiar with the work of the Eleatic School and the Pythagoreans, and particularly
of Parmenides. Like Pythagoras, Empedocles believed in the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation
between humans, animals and even plants), and that all living things were on the same spiritual plane,
like links in a chain. He therefore urged a vegetarian lifestyle, believing that the bodies of animals are the
dwelling places of punished souls. He believed that wise people, who have learned the secret of life,
are next to the divine and that their souls, free from the cycle of reincarnations, are able to rest in
happiness for eternity.

Like many of the other Pre-Socratics, he found Parmenides' claim that change is impossible
unacceptable, and tried to find the basis of all change. Starting from the assumption (passed down
from the Eleatics) that existence cannot pass into non-existence (or vice versa), Empedocles held that
change, including what we call coming into existence and death, is only the mixture and separation of
the four indestructible and unchangeable elements (or "roots" as he called them): earth, air, fire and
water.

He posited two divine powers, Love and Strife, which pervade the universe and act as the moving
powers which bring about these mixtures and separations (Love explains the attraction of different
forms of matter, and Strife accounts for their separation). He further taught that there was a time when
the pure elements and the two powers co-existed in a condition of rest and inertness, without mixture
and separation, in the form of a sphere (representative of God). The uniting power of Love then
predominated in the sphere, and the separating power of Strife guarded the extreme edges of the
sphere. Since that time, however, Strife has gained more sway, and the actual world is full of contrasts
and oppositions, due to the combined action of both principles.

Empedocles believed that the organic universe sprang from spontaneous aggregations of parts, and
only in those rare cases where the parts were found to be adapted to each other, did the complex
structures last (arguably a crude anticipation of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection). He
assumed a cyclical universe, whereby the elements would return to the harmony of the sphere in
preparation for the next period of the universe.

Empedocles is also credited with other prescient ideas, such as that light travels with a finite velocity,
a form of the law of conservation of energy and a theory of constant proportions in chemical
reactions. These theories (arrived at simply through reasoning, rather than through any experimental
evidence, of course) had little influence on the development of science, stated as they were within an
insufficient theoretical framework, but in retrospect were remarkably prophetic.
ANAXOGORAS

Anaxagoras (c. 500 - 428 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Ionia, although he was
one of the first philosophers to move to Athens as a base.

He is sometimes considered to be part of the poorly-defined school of Pluralism, and some of his ideas
also influenced the later development of Atomism. Many of his ideas in the physical sciences were
quite revolutionary in their day, and quite insightful in retrospect.

Anaxagoras (pronounced an-ax-AG-or-as) was born around 500 B.C. to an aristocratic and landed family
in the city of Clazomenae (or Klazomenai) in the Greek colony of Ionia (on the west coast of present-
day Turkey). As a young man, he became the first of the major Pre-Socratic philosophers to move to
Athens (which was then rapidly becoming the centre of Greek culture), where he remained for about
thirty years.

During this time he became a favourite (and possibly a teacher) of the prominent and influential
statesman, orator and general Pericles (c. 495 – 429 B.C.), one of the architects of Athens' primacy during
the Golden Age. Although it seems that Anaxagoras and the young Socrates never actually met, one of
Socrates' teachers, Archelaus, studied under Anaxagoras for some time. His work was also known to the
major writers of the day, including Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus and Aristophanes.

In about 450 B.C., however, Anaxagoras was arrested by Pericles' political opponents on a charge of
contravening the established religion by his teachings on origins of the universe, the first philosopher
before Socrates to be brought to trial for impiety. With Pericles' influence he was released, but he was
forced to retire from Athens to exile in Lampsacus in Ionia, where he died around the year 428 B.C.

Anaxagoras wrote at least one book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have
survived in work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the 6th Century A.D.

He is best known for his cosmological theory of the origins and structure of the universe. He maintained
that the original state of the cosmos was a thorough mixture of all its ingredients, although this mixture
was not entirely uniform, and some ingredients are present in higher concentrations than others and
varied from place to place. At some point in time, this primordial mixture was set in motion by the action
of nous ("mind"), and the whirling motion shifted and separated out the ingredients, ultimately producing
the cosmos of separate material objects (with differential properties) that we perceive today.

For Anaxagoras, this was a purely mechanistic and naturalistic process, with no need for gods or any
theological repercussions. However, he did not elucidate on the precise nature of Mind, which he
appears to consider material, but distinguished from the rest of matter in that it is finer, purer and able to
act freely. It is also present in some way in everything, a kind of Dualism.

Anaxagoras developed his metaphysical theories from his cosmological theory. He accepted the ideas of
Parmenides and the Eleatics that the senses cannot be trusted and that any apparent change is merely
a rearrangement of the unchanging, timeless and indestructible ingredients of the universe. Not only
then is it impossible for things to come into being (or to cease to be), he also held that there is a share of
everything in everything, and that the original ingredients of the cosmos are effectively omnipresent
(e.g. he argued that the food an animal eats turns into bone, hair, flesh, etc, so it must already contain
all of those constituents within it). He denied that there is any limit to the smallness or largeness of the
particles of the original cosmic ingredients, so that infinitesimally small fragments of all other
ingredients can still be present within an object which appears to consist entirely of just one material
(presaging to some extent the ideas of Atomism).
In the physical sciences, Anaxagoras was the first to give the correct explanation of eclipses, and was
both famous and notorious for his scientific theories, including his claims that the sun is a mass of red-
hot metal, that the moon is earthy, and that the stars are fiery stones.

DEMOCRITUS

Democritus (c. 460 - 370 B.C.), sometimes known as the "Laughing Philosopher", was a Pre-Socratic
Greek philosopher from Thrace in northern Greece. Along with his teacher, Leucippus, he was the
founder of the Greek philosophical school of Atomism and developed a Materialist account of the natural
world.

Although he was a contemporary of Socrates, he usually considered Pre-Socratic in that his philosophy
and his approach were more similar to other Pre-Socratic thinkers than to Socrates and Plato.

Democritus was born in Abdera, a town in Thrace in northern Greece, which had originally been settled
by Greek colonists from the Ionian city of Teos in present-day Turkey). His date of birth is usually given
as 460 B.C., although some authorities argue for upto ten years earlier, and some for a few years later.

His father was very wealthy, and had even received the Persian king Xerxes on his march through
Abdera. According to some accounts, Democritus studied astronomy and theology from some of the
magi (wise men) Xerxes left in Abdera in gratitude.

On his father's death, Democritus spent his inheritance on extensive travels to distant countries, to
satisfy his thirst for knowledge. He is reputed to have travelled to Persia, Babylon (modern-day Iraq),
Asia (as far as India), Ethopia and Egypt (where he lived for five years, being particularly impressed by
the Egyptian mathematicians). He also travelled throughout Greece to acquire a knowledge of its
culture and meet Greek philosophers (he may have met the physician Hippocrates (c. 460 B.C.) and
Socrates, and possibly also Anaxagoras, whom he praises in his own work), and his wealth enabled him
to purchase their writings. He was known as one of the most travelled scholars of his time.

On returning to his native land, (now with no means of subsistence), he settled with his brother
Damosis, and occupied himself with natural philosophy and gave public lectures in order to pay his
way. His greatest influence was certainly Leucippus, with whom he is credited as co-founding Atomism.
In around 440 B.C. or 430 B.C., Leucippus had founded a school at Abdera, and Democritus became his
star pupil. There are no existing writings which can be positively attributed to Leucippus, and so it is
virtually impossible to identify which ideas were unique to Democritus and which are Leucippus', or any
views about which they disagreed.

From anecdotal evidence, Democritus was known for his disinterestedness, modesty and simplicity,
and appeared to live solely for his studies, declining the public honours he was offered. One story has
him deliberately blinding himself in order to be less disturbed in his pursuits, although it is more likely that
he lost his sight in old age. He was always cheerful and ready to see the comical side of life, and he
was affectionately known as the "Laughing Philosopher" (although some writers maintain that he
laughed at the foolishness of other people and was also known as "The Mocker"). His knowledge of
natural phenomena (such as diagnosing illnesses and predicting the weather) gave him the reputation of
being something of a prophet or soothsayer.

It is believed that he died at the age of 90, in about 370 B.C., although some writers have him living to
over a hundred years of age.
Diogenes Laertius, the 3rd Century historian of the early Greek philosophers, lists a large number of
works by Democritus, covering Ethics, physics, mathematics, music and cosmology, including two works
called the "Great World System" and the "Little World System". However, his works have survived
only in secondhand reports, sometimes unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best evidence comes
from Aristotle, who was perhaps the chief critic of Atomism, although he nevertheless praised
Democritus for arguing from sound considerations, and considered Democrtius an important rival in
natural philosophy.

Like many other Pre-Socratic philosophies, the Atomism of Leucippus and Democritus was largely a
response to the unacceptable claim of Parmenides that change was impossible without something
coming from nothing (which is itself impossible), and thus any perceived change or movement was
merely illusory.

In the Atomist version, there are multiple unchanging material principles which constantly rearrange
themselves in order to effect what we see as changes. These principles are very small, indivisible and
indestructible building blocks known as atoms (from the Greek "atomos", meaning "uncuttable"). All of
reality and all the objects in the universe are composed of different arrangements of these eternal
atoms and an infinite void, in which they form different combinations and shapes.

There is no room in this theory for the concept of a God, and essentially Atomism is a type of Materialism
or Physicalism, as well as being atheistic and deterministic in its outlook. However, Democritus did allow
for the existence of the human soul, which he saw as composed of a special kind of spherical atom, in
constant motion, and he explained the senses in a similar manner.

In Epistemology, Democritus distinguished two types of knowledge: "bastard" (subjective and

In the field of Ethics, Democritus pursued a type of early Hedonism or Epicureanism. He was one of the
earliest thinkers to explicit posit a supreme good or goal, which he called cheerfulness or well-being
(see the section on Eudaimonism) and identified with the untroubled enjoyment of life. He saw this as
achievable through moderation in the pursuit of pleasure, through distinguishing useful pleasures from
harmful ones, and through conforming to conventional morality. He is quoted as saying, "The brave
man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures".

Democritus was also a pioneer of mathematics and geometry, and produced works entitled "On
Numbers", "On Geometrics", "On Tangencies", "On Mapping" and "On Irrationals", although these
works have not survived. We do know that he was among the first to observe that a cone or pyramid has
one-third the volume of a cylinder or prism respectively with the same base and height.

He was also the first philosopher we know who realized that the celestial body we call the Milky Way is
actually formed from the light of distant stars, even though many later philosophers (including Aristotle)
argued against this. He was also among the first to propose that the universe contains many worlds,
some of which may be inhabited. He devoted many of the later years of his life to researches into the
properties of minerals and plants, although we have no record of any conclusions he may have drawn.