Zeno of Elea Zeno was concerned to show that our understandings of time, motion, change, posi tion, magnitude,

unity, singleness, and plurality are incoherent; or that they r esult in contradictions. Many writers have supposed that Zeno tried to prove (or thought he did prove) that there is no motion, that there are not multiple thin gs, and so on. In fact, that is how Aristotle presents Zeno's work, and Aristotl e and his school are our main sources on Zeno. Some of these writers then critic ize Zeno, saying that he failed to prove those things. But a careful look at what Aristotle presents of Zeno suggests that Zeno may not have intended to prove that there is no motion, etc. Instead, Zeno may have bee n trying to show that what people in his time (and perhaps even now) mean by "mo tion" does not make sense, i.e. that whatever is going on when we say that a thi ng is moving could not possibly be what we think we mean when we say that a thin g is moving. If in fact Zeno meant only to show that our accounts of motion, mul tiplicity, and so on are incoherent and inconsistent (result in contradictions), then his arguments can be seen to make more sense, and to be more effective, th an they would if he meant to show that there is no motion or multiplicity, etc. At very least, then, Zeno felt that our analysis or understanding of what is goi ng on when we say there is motion (or multiple things, or different positions in space, etc.) leads to inconsistencies no matter which way we turn. Zeno's method was to try to show that accepting motion or multiplicity etc. as a quality of what exists leads to two possible alternatives. These alternatives w ould each lead to a contradiction or impossible consequence, and would also cont radict one another. Let us take the first of Zeno's paradoxes(2) quoted in your text (McKirahan p. 1 84, 12.3 and 12.4) as an example. It can be applied to time or change as well as to space or magnitude, as we will see, but let us start with magnitude.(3) Consider the things that are supposed to exist in space. We, like people in Zeno 's time, generally say that there are spatial things, things that "take up space " or "exist in space". Maybe not all things that we say exist "take up space", b ut we generally say that at least some things do. We suppose that these things h ave sizes, or spatial magnitudes, or dimensions; each such thing is supposed to take up a certain amount of space, i.e. to have a certain size or magnitude. An unspoken assumption that the Greeks held (and that we generally do too(4)) is that each thing that exists in space has a definite size or magnitude, a defini te beginning and end. After all, if we are going to claim that multiple things e xist in space, we must have some idea of where one thing "A" ends and where the next thing "B" starts - otherwise, we would not be justified in claiming that th ere are these two distinct things A and B. (And if they're not distinct from eac h other, how are they two?) Zeno will argue that if we can't tell where any one thing A ends and the next thing B begins, we would seem to lack justification (c ertainly we would lack the traditional justification) for asserting that there a re multiple things at all. If we consider the things that we suppose to have spatial magnitude, we note tha t each such thing can be divided into parts, at least conceptually. Even when we can't actually break a particular thing, we may speak of the right and left sid es of it, or the top five inches of it, etc. We tend to agree, that is, that eac h thing has parts or units: a six-inch-long piece of wood is longer than a fiveinch piece by a "unit" of one inch. Consider, then, the parts or units of the things that we say have size or spatia l magnitude. Either the smallest units or parts of which those things are composed have no (t hat is, zero) magnitude, or they have some (positive) magnitude. Or, so goes the common Greek and modern conception of these matters. Let us see what the conseq uences of each of these possibilities are. (a) Suppose that the smallest units or parts of spatial things have zero magnitu de. Then if you add one of these units to a thing "C", then that thing would not get any larger - that is, the sum of the two would be no larger than C alone. T

hen it would be impossible for there to be anything that had positive magnitude, since all magnitudes would be multiples of the smallest magnitude. Thus all mag nitudes would be constituted of many units of the smallest magnitude. But we just saw that on supposition (a), adding the smallest magnitude to someth ing will not make that thing larger. So adding up lots of smallest-magnitude uni ts gives you a sum or aggregate that is no larger than one smallest-magnitude un it - which is zero magnitude. Put another way, if all magnitudes are multiples o f that smallest unit, they are all zero. Yet we say that there are things with p ositive magnitude, things that have size greater than zero. We even claim to see such things. So the smallest parts of things should have some positive magnitud e -- which contradicts premise (a). (b) So, let's suppose instead the other possibility given above: Suppose that th e smallest units or parts of spatial things have some positive magnitude. In tha t case, says Zeno, let's look harder at those things that we say have definite ( limited, finite) sizes. If you examined a very small end piece of one of those t hings, you'd notice that that end piece had an end piece with a magnitude. Then you'd notice that that end piece had an outermost piece (or area or section) wit h a magnitude. Every time you would come to what you thought was the end of what you thought was the smallest piece, you would notice that this end itself was a n even smaller piece with magnitude. Or, to look at it another way, imagine that you are trying to get an exact measu rement of something that is supposed to exist in space. You hold the thing up ag ainst a ruler, and you notice that the end of the thing falls in between two of the smallest markings on the ruler. So you get a ruler with even smaller divisio ns, and it happens again: the end of the object falls in between two of the smal lest markings on the new ruler. You now have a somewhat more accurate measuremen t than you originally had, but it's still not an exact measurement. So you get r ulers with smaller and smaller divisions, and finally the end of the object does come out right on a ruler marking. But then you look at the object and the rule r under a magnifier, and you notice that the ruler marking line has some thickne ss. You can see that the end of the object falls somewhere in the middle of the thickness of one of the ruler marking lines. Where exactly does it fall? You nee d even a more finely-divided ruler in order to find out, it seems. Since all rul er markings must have a thickness and since any two ruler markings must have a d istance between them, the end of the object will always fall in something that c an be divided further.(5) No smallest positive magnitude will be found. Further, there will not be determinable endpoints to things. These conclusions undermine hypothesis (b). So now we are stuck: either we can't find the smallest piece of a thing or the s mallest magnitude with which we can measure; or there must be things or units th at have zero magnitude. If we choose the first, we can't find exactly where a th ing ends, so things are unlimited or indefinite(6) in size; there are always mor e divisions of the measuring device or of the thing. Each thing could be seen as indefinitely large (if we tried to measure it outward from its center or other internal point); and each thing could be seen as indefinitely small (if we tried to measure the outermost extents of the things that were supposed to surround i t). The exact number of spatial objects might be indeterminate too, for we might not be able to tell where one supposed spatial object left off and the next beg an, so we could not with support the claim that there were in fact two distinct spatial objects. Moreover, if we cannot find the smallest piece of a spatial thi ng, we cannot express spatial magnitudes as multiples of some smallest unit. Tha t conflict with our usual belief that there are things that have definite magnit udes. (Again, to be sure that there are multiple spatial things, it seems we wou ld have to be able to distinguish them clearly from one another, i.e. find clear distinctions between them -- exactly what we have seen we cannot do if we assum e that there is a smallest positive magnitude.) So it would seem that we would have to choose the second alternative from the pr eceding paragraph, that is, choose to say that there is a smallest magnitude, an d that this smallest magnitude is equal to zero. But we have seen in our examina

tion of hypothesis (a) above that we cannot coherently (i.e. without contradicti on) suppose that there is a unit of zero magnitude. Thus it seems that if we suppose that there are distinct things with finite magn itudes then we must suppose that there is a smallest magnitude; and we must also suppose that there cannot be a smallest magnitude. If we suppose that there are distinct things of finite magnitude, we must also hold either that there are no things of positive magnitude, or that there are no things of finite or determin ate positive magnitude. Thus it would seem to be impossible to hold (without con tradicting oneself) that there are multiple distinct things in space. (Again, in order for us to say with justification that there are multiple things, we must be able to find clear distinctions between those things; but if the limits of sp atial things are unclear we could not with certainty tell one from another, nor tell with certainty that there were indeed multiple different things.) Similarly, according to Zeno we cannot identify exactly when a process starts be cause we could not find a smallest interval of time, an interval that is not mad e up of smaller (non-zero) ones -- for if an interval is made up of smaller ones , during which smaller one did the process start; and during which division of t he smaller one, etc.?--. So we cannot according to Zeno have a coherent account of change.

Democritus and Atomism Democritus (460-360 BCE) is usually classified as a Presocratic philosopher, but he was actually a contemporary of Socrates. Following his teacher, Leucippus, h e agreed with Parmenides that there is an ultimate reality that is not visible t o the senses, and also agreed that it possessed the properties of being eternal, indestructible, and indivisible. This ultimate reality he called atoms, and his very modern sounding view is called atomism. Here is how Aristotle, who had muc h to say about Democritus, described his theory. According to the theory of Democritus it is the nature of the eternal objects to be tiny substances infinite in number. Accordingly, he postulates also a place f or them that is infinite in magnitude, which he designates by these namesthe void , the nothing and the infinite; whereas he speaks of each individual atom as the yes-thing, the dense, and being. He conceives them as so small as to elude our senses, but as having all sorts of forms, shapes, and different sizes. Treating these as elements, he conceives of them as combining to produce visible and othe rwise perceptible objects.10 For Democritus, the material objects evident to our senses were all composed of atoms, each of which possessed the Parmenidean properties of Being. They were et ernal, uncreated entities. They could never be destroyed, only recombined in a d ifferent manner. The material objects that they formed could be destroyed; they could be broken up into parts. But atoms could not be destroyed. Finally, and co ntrary to what we know about atoms today, his atoms were indivisible, they could not be split. He thought of these atoms as material objects that were so small as to be imperceptible, and as having different sizes and shapes. The difference s in their shapes and sizes allowed them to join with similar atoms, in order to form the bulkier objects that are visible to our senses. Besides agreeing with Parmenides that reality is eternal, indivisible, and indes tructible, he also agreed with Parmenides that reality is one. At least it is on e insofar as everything that we observe, the material objects that seem so diffe rent from each other, are really just different forms or collections of atoms. I n another way he disagreed with Parmenides that Being was One, because there wer e many different kinds of atoms. Parmenides had been willing to discount dramatically the testimony of his senses , even to the point of denying all forms of change, especially motion. Along wit h his denial of change came a denial of timesince change happens over time, and a denial of spacesince space was considered to be a form of not-being. It was a pl ace where being is not and therefore it is considered a nothing. This point abou t space is important. Space was called the void by some of the Greek philosophers

and was considered to be a nothingness in which things moved. Because he denied Being to any form of not-being, or nothingness, Parmenides had to deny space. Democritus, on the other hand, unwilling to deny the reality of change, would ha ve none of this denial of space. For him, the void was not just nothingness, but had its own kind of being, what might be called emptiness. So reality consisted o f two fundamental types of being, atoms and the void. These were the basic entit ies of the real world, at least as conceived of by Democritus. With the acceptance of the reality of space, atoms now had room to move, and thu s change could be accepted as occurring in the real world. It was no longer to b e thought of as an illusion of the senses. What made things change was the movem ent of atoms, as balls on a pool table make other balls move when they are struc k. Think of the universe as a collection of an infinite number of atoms moving a bout, eternally crashing into each other. When they do, they sometimes join toge ther to form visible material objects, objects whose atoms eventually break apar t again and recombine into other objects. This process of combining and dissolvi ng and recombining atoms is the engine that makes motion and change. It is a pro cess that has been going on eternally and one that will last forever. But what started this motion to begin with? This is a question that Democritus l eaves unanswered. What directs or regulates this motion? Is there any purpose to it, or a rational plan that it follows? He does answer this question. For Democ ritus, there is no plan in the universe that the motion of atoms follows. There is no plan created by divine intelligence, nor is there a plan of nature itself, such as the Logos of Heraclitus. The previous motion of atoms determines how th ings move or change. Just as the eight-ball moves when struck by the cue-ball, s o the movement of atoms is to be thought of in the same rigid, mechanical way. T his sort of view is sometimes called mechanism. It holds that the universe is li ke a machine, one part moving as it does because of the motion of previous parts . In such a mechanistic world, where everything happens in machine-like fashion, t here is no room for the exercise of free will. This view is called determinism. Determinism is the belief that every event has a cause. Free choices are thought of as choices that are not rigidly caused, as choices that could have been diff erent. In a mechanistic world, however, everything that happens is determined by previous causes to happen in precisely the way that it does, and in no other wa y. My choices are not free because, like everything else, they are brought about by the prior movements of atoms, movements which were themselves determined by the prior movement of atoms, and so on, infinitely back in time. Besides being a mechanist and a determinist, Democritus is also a materialist. H e has often been called the first materialist. Materialism is the view that all reality, including the human mind, is composed solely of physical entities. In t ruth, most of the Presocratic philosophers were materialists. In fact, the conce pt of nonphysical being seems not to have been clearly articulated by this point in history. Even the soul, when referred to at all, had usually been thought of as a sort of thin matterlike air or fire, and not as a different type of being alt ogether. So the materialism of the Presocratics was present more as an unarticul ated assumption than a deliberately held theory of reality. Democritus, however, adopted materialism in a much more conscious manner than ha d his predecessors. This can be seen especially by his insistence that the worki ngs of the soul be explained in the same manner as the rest of naturein a rigidly mechanistic way. Even human knowledge is to be explained as a causal process of atoms crashing into each other. In his attempt to explain how knowledge of the world is acquired by appealing to nothing but the movement of atoms, Democritus strikes a chord with contemporary accounts of knowledge. Focusing on perception, his explanation of how we come to know the world by forming inner representatio ns of it will strike a sympathetic chord with the modern accounts of perception to be examined in Parts Four and Five. At the time of Democritus not much was known about how human sense organs worked . Democritus considered them to be merely pathways to the soul. He thought of th e soul itself as a pattern of atoms that functioned as an inner receptacle of in formation. Material objects, for Democritus, constantly give off atoms, and thes

e atoms, upon striking the sense organs, work their way into the soul and someho w form an internal image of the external object. Unfortunately, our senses give us no accurate information about the deeper structure of reality. The inner repr esentations that we form correspond to no real qualities of atoms or collections of atoms. Our sensory experiences are merely the way that the real world of ato ms appears to us. In particular, all the colors, sounds, odors, tastes, and smel ls that we experience exist only in our minds. They are subjective reactions of ours to a world of atoms that have none of these properties. As Democritus puts it: The truth is that what we meet with perceptually is nothing reliable, for it shif ts its character according to the bodys dispositions, influences, and confrontati ons.11 So it is only in reason, only in knowledge through the intellect, not the senses , that the true account of reality is to be found. But what of reason as a mode of knowledge? It cannot be a different kind of thing from sense knowledge since, for Democritus, everything is reducible to the movement of atoms. But it must b e different in some sense, since he believes that reason alone delivers knowledg e of reality, while the senses inform us merely of appearances. Unfortunately, h e never adequately explains how such mechanical motion produces the sublime theo ries of reality that Democritus and other Presocratics present for our considera tion. Because of this, some commentators interpret him as being skeptical of dis covering the true nature of reality. Democritus himself hints at this difficulty when he says, in an imaginary dialogue between the senses and the intellect: INTELLECT: It is by convention that color exists, by convention sweet, by convent ion bitter. SENSES: Ah, wretched intellect, you get your evidence only as we give it to you, and yet you try to overthrow us. That overthrow will be your downfall.12 In addition to these unanswered questions, Democritus also needs to explain bett er than he does how moral choices are possible in a world where all behavior, in cluding human behavior, is determined by the prior movements of atoms. If we can not choose our actions freely, if they just happen to us, then there seems to be l ittle sense to ethics, to pretending that there are choices about living one way rather than another. Advising us, as Democritus does, to choose the pleasures o f the soul over those of the body, seems to be inconsistent with his materialist ic determinism. The inconsistency seems not to have been lost on Democritus, but he appeared to ignore it and wrote a great deal about ethical concerns. Instead of admonishing Democritus for these omissions and inconsistencies, howev er, we ought to praise him for his grand attempt at explaining human knowledge a nd moral conduct in natural terms. Gratitude was not the reaction of Socrates, h owever. As we will see in a moment, this legendary figure insisted that human na ture is quite distinct from the rest of nature. Before turning to Socrates it wi ll be helpful to summarize briefly the major contributions of the Presocratic ph ilosophers. THE LEGACY OF THE PRESOCRATICS The Presocratics have all offered solutions to our problem, What is the nature o f reality? Let us summarize what we have learned from their attempts to question the ordinary concept of reality, to go beyond the common sense knowledge of the ir day, and to unlock the secrets of reality. We will focus not so much on their conclusions but upon the new way of thinking which they invented. This is a way of thinking which we continue to employ today in both philosophy and science, a s we continue the journey they began some twenty-six hundred years ago to unders tand what really exist. Several points are worthy of mention, especially as they contribute to the solution of our problem. First, their explanations of the world were free from reference to gods and spir its and other personal forces. The Presocratics demythologized nature. They expl ained what existed and how it worked by appealing only to natural forces. They i nvented the concept of nature as an impersonal place, a concept that we all take for granted today. Second, because it was seen as impersonal, nature could be studied in an objecti ve manner. The behavior of persons, whether they are gods or humans, is not orde

rly and predictable. We act on whim, on emotion and the passion of the moment. I n the same circumstances our behavior may vary considerably. Now, with nature no longer thought of as filled with personal forces, it became possible to conceiv e of a natural structure and order to its workings, and to attempt to discover w hat this order might be. Third, since such an order was not readily apparent to the senses, the idea was introduced that there was a deeper reality to existence, one that was different from the way that the world appeared to us in our daily lives. The common sense world was not the real world after all; there was something deeper to reality th an there appeared to be. All the Presocratics had some notion that the reality t hey were after was not simply the world as it appeared. Some of them started wit h appearances, as did Thales, for example, and Anaximenes and Democritus. Others , especially Parmenides, seemed to ignore the way things seemed to be altogether . All of them went some distance beyond appearances in their speculations about the nature of what was real. Fourth, if reality could be known it was not known in the same manner as appeara nces. Sense knowledgeperception, gives us knowledge of appearances, our good old familiar common sense world. But perception gives us no knowledge of the deeper reality beneath these appearances. Instead, this was to be arrived at through in tellectual knowledge, through reason. The way that reason operates is by intuiti on and deduction. Someone following reason begins with some truth about which th ere is much confidence, and then attempts to figure out what else follows from i ts being true. Some of the Presocratics followed reason rather rigorously, like Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Democritus. The reasoning of others appeared to bow less to the demands of logic. In all cases, however, the speculations of the Pre socratics went well beyond what the senses told them was true. There was a confidence in reason shared by the Presocratics that is absent today . We may use reason to form scientific hypotheses and to deduce some of their im plications, but we have confidence that our hypotheses are true only if they are confirmed by observation. For the Presocratics, however, knowledge through the senses alone distorts reality. They believed that the deeper reality that metaph ysics is after lies beyond the observable. They also believed that the human min d (reason) is powerful enough to grasp this reality. They were confident that re ason could reflect within itself the true nature of reality, because the mind wa s made for truth. Fifth, reality was always conceived of as One, while appearances were made up of many different sorts of things. Sometimes the One was a common substance that w as thought of as the basis of all else, as that out of which all else was formed . Water, fire, and air are examples of these. At other times the One was less co ncrete, less tangible. It was the Logos, or Number, or the Unlimited or Being. S ometimes the One was not one at all, as was the case with the account of reality presented by Democritus. But even the many atoms were one, insofar as they were a ll atoms with the same sorts of properties. Sixth, in addition to the general framework of thinking and its basic concepts a nd assumptions, the early philosopher-scientists that we call the Presocratics a lso introduced particular notions that were influential within both philosophy a nd later science. Particular theories, for example, were precursors to their lat er scientific cousins. Theories, albeit primitive theories, of evolution and ato mism were developed. The very idea of a natural law also arose from their specul ations, as did the very useful notion that qualitative changes may be brought ab out by quantitative ones, as when air gets compressed to a significant enough de gree to form earth. The Presocratic philosophers helped to build the common sense concept of reality that we accept today in many significant ways. They invented the notion of a ma terial object, for example, and the idea of causality. But they also challenged common sense ideas of reality as well, especially with their identification of t he everyday with appearances, and with the outright denial (Parmenides) of space , time, and causality. They ignored, for the most part, the concept of persons a s an important part of their theory building, especially the subjective side of personstheir thoughts and feelings and values.

Ultimately, they were unable to solve satisfactorily the central problem generat ed by their metaphysical systemsthe problem of the One and the many. First, they were unable to come to any agreement about what this One basic reality is. Secon d, they could not account for how their individual conceptions of the One relate d to the many sorts of things that we observe around us in our daily lives. Ther e was so much disagreement among the Presocratics that it eventually bred skepti cism, a belief that the One was unknowable, that reason was not an avenue to rea lity, that truth was ever to elude even the brightest minds. So Greek philosophy , for a time at least, turned from the question of the ultimate nature of the wo rld, and instead began to focus on the person. Onto the stage of philosophical h istory now walks one of the truly great Ancient philosophers, someone who helped to build the concept of a person that has become so much a part of our common u nderstanding of the world.