Xenophanes & Heraclitus

Xenophanes’ date is uncertain between c 570 - 475 BCE. He was from Colophon, a city in the region of Lydia, but lived most of his life in southern Italy. He lived in between the times of Pythagoras and Heraclitus. This is concurred as he alludes to Pythagoras and Heraclitus alludes to him.

Xenophanes philosophy shows a streak of skepticism. He satirized the polytheistic beliefs of the Greeks. He believed in one God and considered it as formless. He argued that if Horses and Cows could paint they would paint God as themselves just like Humans give a humanly form to god. The Ethiopian God is black and the Thracian god is blue eyed with red hairs. Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion.

His epistemology held that there exists a truth of reality, but that humans as mortals are unable to know it. Therefore, it is possible to act only on the basis of working hypotheses - we may act as if we knew the truth, as long as we know that this is extremely unlikely. This aspect of Xenophanes is the basis of Critical rationalism. Xenophanes can be considered the first amongst the rationalists.

Xenophanes ridiculed Pythagoras’ theory of transmigration. Xenophanes considered that all things are made up of earth and water.

Heraclitus flourished around 500 B.C. He was citizen of Ephesus in Ionia. Though an Ionian, he didn’t belong to the scientific schools of Miletus. From the solitary and melancholic life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure," and the "Weeping Philosopher." He was a mystic of different type. He regarded fire as the primordial substance. He is famous for his doctrine of flux and doctrine of strife.

Doctrine of Flux: The doctrine that everything is in the state of flux is most famous of Heraclitus.

“This world, which is same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever living fire, with measures kindling and measures going out. The transformed fire are , first of all, sea, and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.”

Such a world, Heraclitus believed, is always in a state of flux.

“You cannot step twice into the same river ; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”

Doctrine of Strife: This doctrine is about mingling of opposites to create harmony. “Men do not know”, he says, “how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is and attunement of opposite tensions, like that of bow and lyre”. His belief in strife is connected with this theory, for in strife opposite combines to produce motion which is in harmony. There is unity in the world, but it is unity resulting from diversity. This doctrine contains the germ of Hegel’s Philosophy, which proceeds by synthesizing of opposites. The metaphysics of Heraclitus, like that of ‘Anaximander’ is dominated by a conception of cosmic justice, which prevents the strife of opposite from ever issuing in the complete victory of either.

Heraclitus’s ethics is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche’s. He regards the soul as a mixture of fire and water, the fire being the noble and the water being ignoble. The soul that has most fire he calls “dry”. “The dry soul is the wisest and the best”. It is pleasure to soul to become moist. It is death to soul to become water.

shab-o-roz tumhari yaad aayi

शब्-ओ-रोज़ तुम्हारी  याद आयी

माह-ओ-साल तुम्हारी याद  आयी

[शब्-ओ-रोज़ = days and nights; माह-ओ-साल = months and years]

आब-ए-अब्र-ए-दैजूर में भींग कर

मुझे तुम्हारी नम आँखें याद आयी

[आब = water; अब्र = cloud; दैजूर = pitch dark; आब-ए-अब्र-ए-दैजूर =rains from dark cloud]

अटखेलती अल्हर दरिया के साहील पे

मुझे तुम्हारी पेच-ओ-ख़म बातें  याद आयी 

[दरिया = river; साहील = riverside; पेच-ओ-ख़म =  twist n turn]

नीम स्याह  रातों के साए में

मुझे तुम्हारी सर-ए-काकुल की याद आयी

[नीम स्याह = dark black; सर-ए-काकुल = curls of hair]

तिफ्ल-ए-शाद के कहकहे सुन

मुझे तुम्हारी मासूमियत  याद आयी

[तिफ्ल-ए-शाद = happy child; कहकहे = laughter]

नूर-ए-माह-ए-कामिल को देखा तो

मुझे तुम्हारी रुख-ए-रौशन  की याद आयी

[नूर = light; माह-ए-कामिल = full moon; रुख-ए-रौशन = bright face]

शम्स-ए-नीमरोज़ की ताब से

मुझे तुम्हारी सर्गारानियाँ याद आयी

[शम्स-ए-नीमरोज़ = midday sun; ताब = heat; सर्गारानियाँ = anger]

पहली बारिश की भीगी हवाओं में

मुझे तुम्हारी खद-ए-मुस्क्बार की याद आयी

[खद-ए-मुस्क्बार = body smelling like musk]

माना की है मजाज़ी ,पर 'मुज़्तरिब' को

जानेमन हर पल तुम्हारी बहुत याद आयी

[मजाज़ी = illusioned; ]

'मुज़्तरिब'

Pythagoras

In 6th century BC, Island of Samos was a commercial rival to Miletus. Polycrates became the tyrant of Samos in around 535 BC. Polycrates was not a man with moral scruples. Since the rival Miletus was destroyed by Persia, Polycrates used his navy primarily for Piracy. To stop the westward expansion of Cambyses, the Persian King, Polycrates aligned himself with Amasis, the king of Egypt. When Cambyses devoted all his energy against Amasis, Polycrates realized that he was part of losing side. Such an unscrupulous man he was, he sent his navy against Egypt. The Navy mutinied and returned to attack Polycrates but mutiny was suppressed. Eventually his avarice got rid of him. He was captured at the Persian Satrap at Sardes and was executed. Despite all his covetousness he was a patron of art and learning. He modernized Samos with public works.

Pythagoras was a citizen of Samos during the time of Polycrates. Pythagoras did not like Polycrates and might have left to Egypt where it is supposed that he learned Egyptian wisdom. But what is certain that Pythagoras established himself at Croton, an important city in southern Italy. At Croton Pythagoras founded a society of disciples, which was influential in the city but eventually the citizen turned against him and he had to move to another southern Italian city of Metapontion, where he died.

Pythagoras is the one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history. He founded a religion whose main tenet was transmigration of soul. He advocated the control of state by religion and rules of saints. Some taboo from Pythagorean religion are listed below:

1) Not to eat from beans
2) Not to pick up what has fallen
3) Not to touch a white cock

4) Not to break bread

5) Not to step over a crossbar

6) Not to stir the fine with iron
7) Not to eat with whole loaf
8) Not to pluck a garland
9) Not to sit on a quart measure
10) Not to eat the heart
11) Not to walk on highway
12) Not to let swallows share one’s roof
13) When the pot is taken of the fire, not to leave the mark of it in the ashes, but to stir them together
14) Do not look in the mirror beside a light
15) When you rise from the bedclothes, roll them together and smooth out the impression of body

Cornford in his book “From Religion to Philosophy” says that
‘ The school of Pythagoras represents the main current of that mystical tradition which we have set in contrast with the scientific tendency”

Conford regards Parmenides, whom he calls “the discoverer of Logic” as “an off shoot of Pythagoreanism”. Pyathgoreanism was a movement to reform Orphism as Orphism was a movement to reform the worship of Dionysus.

Pythagoras believed that the soul is immortal and is transmigrated from one being to another . In a Pythagorean society men and women were admitted on equal terms, property was held in common and there was a common way of life, even the scientific and mathematical discoveries were deemed collective.

When Pythagoras said “all things are numbers”, what he might have intended is that the numbers are there in all aspects of life. He discovered numbers in music, shape, size, everywhere. He presumably thought world as atomic and of bodies as built up of molecules composed of atoms in various shapes. The greatest discovery of Pythagoras was that the sum of square sides of a right angled triangle is equal to the square of hypotenuse (3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2). But unfortunately this led to the discovery of incommensurable. For e.g. in an isosceles right angled triangle of sides 1 inch each let the length of hypotenuse be m/n where there is no common factor between m & n. That means one of them is odd and one even. But m^2/n^2 = 2 or m^2 = 2 n^2. This shows that neither m can be odd or n can be odd. So no fraction m/n will measure hypotenuse. This is a contra hypothesis. But with the help of geometry Euclid explained this proposition of incommensurable. This convinced the Greek mathematicians that geometry must be established independent of Mathematics and geometry remained superior to mathematics till the time of Rene Descartes. 

The influence of geometry upon philosophy and scientific method has been profound. Geometry starts with axioms which are self evident, and proceeds by deductive reasoning, to arrive at theorems that are very far from self evident. It thus appeared to be possible to discover things about the actual world by first noticing what is self evident, and then using deductive reasoning to prove complex phenomena. Theology, in its exact scholastic forms, takes it style from this source. The combination of mathematics and theology which began with Pythagoras characterized religious philosophy in Greece, in middle ages, and in modern time to Kant.