Edward Huntington Williams - A History of Science (Vol. 1-5)

A brief consideration of this summary of the doctrines of Pythagoras will show that it at least outlines a most extraordinary variety of scientific ideas. (1) There is suggested a theory of monads and the conception of the development from simple to more complex bodies, passing through the stages of lines, plain figures, and solids to sensible bodies. (2) The doctrine of the four elements—fire, water, earth, and air—as the basis of all organisms is put forward. (3) The idea, not merely of the sphericity of the earth, but an explicit conception of the antipodes, is expressed. (4) A conception of the sanitary influence of the air is clearly expressed. (5) An idea of the problems of generation and heredity is shown, together with a distinct disavowal of the doctrine of spontaneous generation—a doctrine which, it may be added, remained in vogue, nevertheless, for some twenty-four hundred years after the time of Pythagoras. (6) A remarkable analysis of mind is made, and a distinction between animal minds and the human mind is based on this analysis. The physiological doctrine that the heart is the organ of one department of mind is offset by the clear statement that the remaining factors of mind reside in the brain. This early recognition of brain as the organ of mind must not be forgotten in our later studies. It should be recalled, however, that a Crotonian physician, Alemaean, a younger contemporary of Pythagoras, is also credited with the same theory. (7) A knowledge of anatomy is at least vaguely foreshadowed in the assertion that veins, arteries, and nerves are the links of the soul. In this connection it should be recalled that Pythagoras was a practical physician.

As against these scientific doctrines, however, some of them being at least remarkable guesses at the truth, attention must be called to the concluding paragraph of our quotation, in which the old familiar daemonology is outlined, quite after the Oriental fashion. We shall have occasion to say more as to this phase of the subject later on. Meantime, before leaving Pythagoras, let us note that his practical studies of humanity led him to assert the doctrine that "the property of friends is common, and that friendship is equality." His disciples, we are told, used to put all their possessions together in one store and use them in common. Here, then, seemingly, is the doctrine of communism put to the test of experiment at this early day. If it seem that reference to this carries us beyond the bounds of science, it may be replied that questions such as this will not lie beyond the bounds of the science of the near future.

XENOPHANES AND PARMENIDES

There is a whimsical tale about Pythagoras, according to which the philosopher was wont to declare that in an earlier state he had visited Hades, and had there seen Homer and Hesiod tortured because of the absurd things they had said about the gods. Apocrypbal or otherwise, the tale suggests that Pythagoras was an agnostic as regards the current Greek religion of his time. The same thing is perhaps true of most of the great thinkers of this earliest period. But one among them was remembered in later times as having had a peculiar aversion to the anthropomorphic conceptions of his fellows. This was Xenophanes, who was born at Colophon probably about the year 580 B.C., and who, after a life of wandering, settled finally in Italy and became the founder of the so-called Eleatic School.

A few fragments of the philosophical poem in which Xenophanes expressed his views have come down to us, and these fragments include a tolerably definite avowal of his faith. "God is one supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind," says Xenophanes. Again he asserts that "mortals suppose that the gods are born (as they themselves are), that they wear man's clothing and have human voice and body; but," he continues, "if cattle or lions had hands so as to paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, they would paint their gods and give them bodies in form like their own—horses like horses, cattle like cattle." Elsewhere he says, with great acumen: "There has not been a man, nor will there be, who knows distinctly what I say about the gods or in regard to all things. For even if one chance for the most part to say what is true, still he would not know; but every one thinks that he knows."(6)

In the same spirit Xenophanes speaks of the battles of Titans, of giants, and of centaurs as "fictions of former ages." All this tells of the questioning spirit which distinguishes the scientific investigator. Precisely whither this spirit led him we do not know, but the writers of a later time have preserved a tradition regarding a belief of Xenophanes that perhaps entitles him to be considered the father of geology. Thus Hippolytus records that Xenophanes studied the fossils to be found in quarries, and drew from their observation remarkable conclusions. His words are as follows: "Xenophanes believes that once the earth was mingled with the sea, but in the course of time it became freed from moisture; and his proofs are such as these: that shells are found in the midst of the land and among the mountains, that in the quarries of Syracuse the imprints of a fish and of seals had been found, and in Paros the imprint of an anchovy at some depth in the stone, and in Melite shallow impressions of all sorts of sea products. He says that these imprints were made when everything long ago was covered with mud, and then the imprint dried in the mud. Further, he says that all men will be destroyed when the earth sinks into the sea and becomes mud, and that the race will begin anew from the beginning; and this transformation takes place for all worlds."(7) Here, then, we see this earliest of paleontologists studying the fossil-bearing strata of the earth, and drawing from his observations a marvellously scientific induction. Almost two thousand years later another famous citizen of Italy, Leonardo da Vinci, was independently to think out similar conclusions from like observations. But not until the nineteenth century of our era, some twenty-four hundred years after the time of Xenophanes, was the old Greek's doctrine to be accepted by the scientific world. The ideas of Xenophanes were known to his contemporaries and, as we see, quoted for a few centuries by his successors, then they were ignored or quite forgotten; and if any philosopher of an ensuing age before the time of Leonardo championed a like rational explanation of the fossils, we have no record of the fact. The geological doctrine of Xenophanes, then, must be listed among those remarkable Greek anticipations of nineteenth-century science which suffered almost total eclipse in the intervening centuries.

Among the pupils of Xenophanes was Parmenides, the thinker who was destined to carry on the work of his master along the same scientific lines, though at the same time mingling his scientific conceptions with the mysticism of the poet. We have already had occasion to mention that Parmenides championed the idea that the earth is round; noting also that doubts exist as to whether he or Pythagoras originated this doctrine. No explicit answer to this question can possibly be hoped for. It seems clear, however, that for a long time the Italic School, to which both these philosophers belonged, had a monopoly of the belief in question. Parmenides, like Pythagoras, is credited with having believed in the motion of the earth, though the evidence furnished by the writings of the philosopher himself is not as demonstrative as one could wish. Unfortunately, the copyists of a later age were more concerned with metaphysical speculations than with more tangible things. But as far as the fragmentary references to the ideas of Parmenides may be accepted, they do not support the idea of the earth's motion. Indeed, Parmenides is made to say explicitly, in preserved fragments, that "the world is immovable, limited, and spheroidal in form."(8)