Empedocles Quotes (-490--430)

“These [Elements] never cease changing place continually, now being all united by Love into one, now each borne apart by the hatred engendered of Strife, until they are brought together in the unity of the all, and become subject to it.”

“Just as when painters are elaborating temple-offerings, men whom wisdom hath well taught their art,—they, when they have taken pigments of many colours with their hands, mix them in due proportion, more of some and less of others, and from them produce shapes like unto all things, making trees and men and women, beasts and birds and fishes that dwell in the waters, yea, and gods, that live long lives, and are exalted in honour,—so let not the error prevail over thy mind, that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers. Know this for sure, for thou hast heard the tale from a goddess.”

“But there was among them a man of prodigious knowledge who acquired the profoundest wealth of understanding and was the greatest master of skilled arts of every kind; for, whenever he willed with his whole heart, he could with ease discern each and every truth in his ten—nay, twenty—men's lives.”

“Alcmaeon was, says [J.] Wachtler, the first who attempted to explain the phenomenon of sound and our perception of it by reference to the structure of the ear itself. Empedocles to some extent follows or agrees with him. ...Empedocles teaches that hearing is caused by the impact of the air-wave against the cartilage which is suspended within the ear, oscillating as it is struck, like a gong.”

“The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object.”

“He tried to address the problem of change by saying that there is not one fundamental arche but four—earth, water, air, and fire—which generate all the material substances in nature by mixing together in various ways under the influence of forces he called Love and Strife.”

“Empedocles... changed... [Greek philosophy] from monism to a kind of pluralism. To avoid the difficulty that one primary substance cannot explain the variety of things and events, he assumed four basic elements, earth, water, air and fire.... mixed... and separated by... Love and Strife. Therefore, these latter two... are responsible for the imperishable change. Empedocles describes the formation of the world... First, ...the infinite Sphere of the One, as in the philosophy of Parmenides. But in the primary substance all the four "roots" are mixed... by Love. Then, when Love is passing out and Strife coming in, the elements are partially separated and partially combined. After that the elements are completely separated and Love is outside the World. Finally, Love is bringing the elements together again and Strife is passing out, so... we return to the original Sphere. This doctrine... represents... a more materialistic view... Here for the first time... a few [fundamentally different] substances... explains the infinite variety of things and events. Pluralism never appeals to those who are wont to think in fundamental principles. But it is a reasonable... compromise, which avoids the difficulty of monism and allows... some order.”

“His teachings formed a series of poems some five thousand verses in length. Only a hundred and fifty verses have survived from... On Nature yet, the relics are more substantial than those from any other Greek philosopher. From them we can extract a theory which... tackles all three problems of Greek science. ...(a) What are the stable principles behind the flux? (b) What process is responsible for the changes in the flux? (c) What agencies control this process? To these questions Empedokles replied... (a) The enduring principles in the natural world are the four basic types of matter—solid, liquid, fiery and aeriform. ...they are conserved in all material transformations. (b) Change comes about through the mingling and separation of these... which unite in different proportions to produce... familiar objects... (c) The agents responsible... are the two universal powers acting in opposition, which he called allegorically, Love and Strife. ...[T]his [as an explicit theory] was the first appearance in our scientific tradition of an important intellectual model. ...[A]ll material things are organized mixtures of different elementary substances ...And, as developed by his contemporary Anaxagoras, and later by the atomists, this type of matter-theory has been in circulation ever since.”