Love to Sophia

Curd, Patricia. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia. Hackett Publishing, 2011.

Astrology had a very important place in the theoretical system of these ancient philosophers. Their philosophical ideas, however, were in a state of infantile speculation about natural phenomena during the period of human civilization’s exploration of the unknown. Although it is said that the three Milesians were wrong about the world because basic chemistry and physics were not developed at that time, and even mathematics was in an embryonic stage. But that does not mean that there is nothing to learn from their ideas.

For example, say, in subsection 15 on page 18, Hippolytus discusses the physical properties of the earth and the sun, that is, using the physical laws he summarizes for the earth to make derivations for astronomy. Frankly I really didn’t get his point in this paragraph, perhaps because my basic knowledge as a modern human being hardly allows me to visualize the astronomical principles he describes. I think it’s irrelevant to dwell on whether their knowledge of physics was factually incorrect at all. Why did they form such ideas, why did they think the world consisted of certain elements, why did they think there was some kind of primordial matter (perhaps the same inertia of thought that led to the formulation of the atomic theory or even the theory of the Higgs boson)? What mode of thinking guided them?

Philosophy, from its ancient Greek etymology, is love Sophia, the love of wisdom. Here is the phrase: “Men who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things indeed” (36, p. 45). It is not that the study of philosophy brings one any didactic ability, eloquent speech or anything (indeed, many people say this about philosophy students). Nor do I think that studying philosophy makes one overman, understand everything, become enlightened. Love to Sophia is about embracing a mode of thinking, a spirit of inquiry. And this spirit is common to the research attitude of positivist science. The study of philosophy necessarily requires the researcher to constantly inquire, to explore. In the constant movement of theories, let theories spiral upward. I don’t expect a big Other to suddenly jump out and tell me what the truth of the world is, or that it simply doesn’t matter whether truth exists or not.

In the chapter on Parmenides, there is a quote that runs through Western philosophy, " . . . for the same thing is for thinking and for being" (3, p. 58). From this, I would argue, the entire lineage of philosophical history up to the post-Critique of Pure Reason era is threaded with this thought. It is (if I may paraphrase) something more than Platonist Idealism, and what it says about the sameness of the two, thinking and being, does not mean that we always have to look to the dichotomy of subject and object. Rather, fundamentally they are the same thing, not two. And the great thing about this statement is that it is necessarily uttered by thinking. Or whether it is uttered by thinking or by being, the latter becomes the former. The process has proven itself. Beautiful thinking.

In paragraph 3 on page 102, Anaxagoras brings up the discussion of the small and the large. It reminds me of Heraclitus’ words on page 45, paragraph 40: “It is not possible to step twice into the same river”. It touches on the dialectical approach in a metaphysical way. Was thinking about pure formal logic really the secret of the ancient philosophers?