AGENDA  Natural Phil – final thoughts  Democritus  Pumpkin Carving  Art Choice – try and decide  Signups Monday ANNOUNCEMENTS  No homework!  Have a fun Homecoming!

Why is there something rather than nothing?

 These “protoscientists” –  Curious!  Wondered about the physical world!  They posed scientific questions prematurely!  Mean?  Hint: (This is why philosophy still matters!)

 Only fragments survived. Mostly known through Aristotle’s writings about them.  Nothing can come from nothing. Assumed that something had always existed.  Interested in the natural world. Observed nature – they were philosophers and scientists (one and the same).  Turned away from religious/mythological explanations of the world. The world could be understood by man. (Later, Sophocles would swing the pendulum back to the gods.)  Noticed that nature was in a constant state of transformation.

Given this constant change, how to answer these two basic questions? The first major question/problem: 1. What is the basic substance at the root of all change? What is that one thing from which all things come and to which all things return? All the earliest philosophers shared this belief in a basic substance. The question was, what was it? They observed nature – science! – to try and find out.

 First known philosopher  Traveled to Egypt; observed pyramids; crops  Predicted a solar eclipse in 585 B.C.E.  Thought that the source of all things was water  What did he mean? Hard to know…Ice/Vapor/Water? Floods of the Nile  crops growing?

 B.C.E.  Thought the source of all things was air or vapor  Familiar with Thales…but thought that water was simply condensed air.  Condensed even more, water became earth.  Thought fire was rarefied (thin) air  Thus, air was the origin of earth, water, and fire – air was the source of all natural change

The second major question/problem: 2. The problem of change  We perceive with our senses that all things change, but is that really true?

 c. 540 – 480 B.C.E.  Believed that, in fact, nothing changes  Sensory perceptions lie – give an incorrect, unreliable picture of the world  A rationalist – he believed that reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world

 c. 540 – 480 B.C.E.  Sensory perceptions are reliable  “All things flow”  “Cannot step into the same river twice” – neither you nor the river will be the same  Believed in a “God” or “logos” (a “universal reason” guiding everything that happens in nature, the source of everything)

 c. 490 – 430 B.C.E.  Rejected the idea of a single basic substance  Instead, four elements or “roots”: earth, air, fire, & water  All things are a mixture of all four elements, in varying proportions  The four elements combine and separate and combine again  Also believed in two forces: love (which binds) and strife (which separates) -- just like modern science (both elements and natural forces)  Thus, everything changes and nothing changes. Voila!

1. Intuitively thought that nature is made up fundamental “stuff” that makes up everything. 2. Intuitively thought that nature was governed by a small number of fundamental laws which account for all the vast complexity that we observe in the physical universe. This came to be known as the IONIAN ENCHANTMENT

 BCE  Agreed with Heraclitus: everything in nature "flows" or changes.  But behind everything that flowed there were eternal and immutable things that did not flow. Democritus called them "atoms."  “Atoms” mean:  Eternal  Immutable  Indivisible  “Barbs” “Hooks”  Soul Atoms  Round, smooth  Died/disintegrated – flew different directions ▪ Became part of new formation ▪ No immortal soul

 Why are Legos such a cool toy?  What physical properties are found in Legos?  What could they possibly have to do with The Natural Philosophers?

 From the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder Thales sipped cheap wine And in this did divine: “Why it’s nothing at all but pure water!”