Austin, Scott_Scepticism and Dogmatism in the Presocratics_Apeiron, 33, 3_2000_239-246.pdf

8/9/2019 Austin, Scott_Scepticism and Dogmatism in the Presocratics_Apeiron, 33, 3_2000_239-246.pdf

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Scepticism and ogmatismin the P resocratics

ott ustin

The World of Parmenides is a collection of writings by Karl Popper, somepreviously published, some complete but not previously published,together with material from Nachlass (For a comment on the editorialprocedure, see below.) The general claims are that the Presocratics,particularly Xenophanes and Parmenides, have a determining influenceon Western reason and science up to the beginning of the Romantic era,and (particularly in the case of Xenophanes) that they anticipate and,indeed, embody Popper's own effort to revive 'Enlightenment' methodsof rational inquiry through 'conjecture' and 'refutation' in the face ofpost-Romantic tyrannies, 'enemies' of 'the open society'. Yet the volumeis not just the extension of Popperian views into pre-Aristotelian Greece,or their discovery there, but also a distinctive contribution of its own,full of interesting imaginative pictures and speculations together withattempts to substantiate them argumentatively and textually. Thus T heWorld o Parmenides is valuable for scholars of Popper's thought and forthose interested in Western form s of reason themselves historically andgenerally (indeed, up to and including twentieth-century science).

Popper's specific 'conjecture' about the Greeks is, roughly, this: theIonian cosmologists were not naive blunderers, interestingly wanderingabout in the dark, but genuine scientists, indeed, the inventors of scienceas we now know it. Xenophanes marks the arrival in the West of the

1 A Review of Karl R. Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the PresocraticEnlightenmentEdited by Arne F. Petersen, w ith the assistance o f Jergen Mejer. NewYork: Routledge 1998. Cdn 75.00: US 50.00. IS N 0-415-17301-9.

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self-critical attitude that one must view one s own hypotheses as alwaysprovisional, perhaps in general approximating the truth more closelyover time, but always subject to correction or even falsification through

disconfirming evidence. Xenophanes s student Parmenides (aboutwhose specific indebtedness to his teacher Popper advances a conjec-ture) comes, through the enlightening effect of his discovery that themoon, in all of its phases, derives its illumination from the sun, to theview that dark matter, embodying the primary qualities, alone is cos-mologically real, and that the play of light on surfaces is illusion, oxa(for an argument against this view, see below). The Atomists attempt torefute Parmenides s idea by arguing for the reality of a void separatingplural material entities, and so are responsible, not only for the firstscientific refutation , but also for the perdurance even up through partsof the twentieth century of the important atomic theory, a genuinelyscientific attitude. Meanwhile Parmenides s own invention of the axi-omatic method passes to Plato, a tyrant in politics but not in epistemol-ogy; it is only Aristotle s mistaken emphasis on an intuitive,non-self-critical, apprehension of essential definitions which both makes

questionable the foundation of his own metaphysics and brings to atemporary close the genuine, Xenophanean attitude of in-principle-cor-rectible critical inquiry, an attitude not to be revived until Galileo.

Indeed, this conjecture appears to have certain advantages: it redeemsthe Presocratics from overly romantic or historicist interpretations bygiving them what in Popper s terms is genuine intellectual respectabilityand the decisive role, not only in the discovery of Western rationalmethod, but also in the establishment of particular cosmological views

which have been crucial in science. The central historical claim in thisgroup of essays, however, is a claim about Parmenides: it is essential toattempt to refute it.

For Popper (who, in this regard, is too heavily indebted to Burner2),Parmenides is a materialist who holds that light is an illusion. (Theconjecture that Parmenides himself may have been color-blind or had ablind sister, as important as a goddess in the childhood evolution of hissense of justice in explanation, cannot be verified or refuted.) The stimu-lus, indeed the shocking vision, behind this materialism is in Popper smind one of Parmenides most important cosmological discoveries: the

2 John Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy (4th edition London: A. C. Black, 1930)Brought to you by | West Virginia UniversityAuthenticated | 157 182 150 22



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Scepticism and ogmatism 241

moon shines only with reflected light; consequently the changes of phaseare not real but only illusions produced by the movement of light acrossher surface; taken just by itself, the moon is a dark sphere without any

illumination at all. Thus, by analogy but also by argument, the cosmosas a whole, surrounded by the impenetrable vault of heaven, is a dark,unchanging, spherical body, and the deluded, double-headed mortalsare mistaken in thinking it to be a group of moving objects each of whichgoes through different conditions of illumination. Thus an imaginativepicture, occasioned by a single cosmological discovery, gets generalizedand argued for as it becomes a whole cosmology/ontology. Popperwrites beautifully in Essays 3-6 as he puts forward this account of thepsychology of Parmenides here and of discovery in general.

Against Popper s con jecture it must be said, first, that no Parmenideanbeing could essentially be either light or dark, occupied by either mem-ber of a pair of contraries; second, that Parmenidean being cannot be amaterial body; third, that the discovery that the morning star and theevening star are one may have played a more decisive role than thediscovery about the moon; fourth, that the major Parmenidean demon

is non-identity (if this is so, then the Atomists, rather than correctingParmenides in a demonstrable way, simply misunderstood him). I mustpoint out that the first and second of these claims are more generallyaccepted than the last two.

First, even on Popper s own thought-experiment, the moon could notbe really either light or dark; if darkness is the contrary opposite of light,then neither contrary can be an essential feature of any body. It wouldbe more correct to say that the moon (or its generalization, Being) has no

color, indeed is not characterized by either member of any pair ofcontraries. (See, however, 207 n. 21, where Popper does seem to say this.)Parmenides, when describing Truth, always rejects both members ofsuch pairs B8.3-5, 17-18, 22-27, 32-33, 42), though he wiU argue forbeing s possession of one member of a pair of contradictories (but seePopper s criticism of Lloyd, 209 n. 42). Light and darkness are bothPresocratic positive opposite terms, like Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman inZoroastrianism, and not, as in Aristotle, a positive and a privative withina single genus. It is only in Parmenides s Opinion section, whichdescribes the false mortal cosmology, that any contraries are accepted(B8.51-61, B9-19).

Second, Parmenidean being is eternal (or, at least, atemporal): earlierand later do not apply to it B8.10); it is not divisible B8.22), notbecause it is a solid body (no solid body, however tightly packed, is inprinciple [according to Necessity, Ananke B8.30-2] indivisible), but be-rought to you by | West Virginia University

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cause it is not a spatial entity at all. Popper s discussion of time in Essay7 does not help the situation; a cosmological universe without an invarianttemporal direction is, first of all, not Parmenidean Being could not be

subject to earlier or later in either or any direction) and, second, notsubject to spatial inhomogeneities or contraries either B8.22-5). Butperhaps Popper wants to declare spatial plurality also illusory; in thatcase, the Atomists, too, would be dealing in Doxa not really coming togrips with Parmenides s challenge in the refutational manner Poppersuggests they did. Finally, as is often claimed, the ball of Being at the endof Parmenides s section on Truth B8.42-9) is again in principle incapableof having holes (void spaces, divisibility) as well as projections andindentations (notice the modal language in B8.45-8). But a merely mate-rial ball, however tightly packed and dark , is not immune to undergo-ing such things unless matter itself has necessary properties that Popperdoes not discuss; Parmenides himself, even on Popper s view, would seem ... insane to every sane person 69), in holding such a view. Thenecessary freedom of Being from temporal and spatial contraries, voids,and inhomogeneities means that it cannot be even a dark, invariant

physical cosmos. Parmenidean Being, like Plato s Forms and as Platohimself takes Parmenides to be, is transcendent, and Parmenides is a cosmologist only in an account of mortal views which he himself, alsoaccording to Popper, has already declared illusory. Thus Parmenides isnot a Xenophanean employer of self-critical hypotheses about a spa-tiotemporal world, but a metaphysician who uses very skillful argu-ments in favor of a picture of reality which is not subject to empiricalpr or disproof.

Third, Parmenides is also credited with another astronomical discov-ery: the morning star and the evening star, the light-bringer and thetwilight star, are one. Here two entities, apparently rendered non-iden-tical by their respective possession of contraries (note again that dark-ness is viewed, not as the absence of light, but as the positive oppositeof light), are one and the same thing which really possesses neithercontrary, just as Being itself constantly rejects both members of pairs ofcontraries. Here, one might suggest, we have another discovery at leastas potentially important as the discovery about the moon in the genera-tion of the full picture of being. And it might lead us to reinterpret eventhe latter discovery. Could not the point be simply that the moon isindifferent both to darkness and to light as they alternate along its surface,particularly if the source of light is external and not part of the moon sintrinsic nature? But in that case even the moon-picture would not leadus to interpret Being as essentially dark matter, nor, for that matter, asrought to you by | West Virginia University




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possessed of physical location (involving spatial contraries) at all; onceagain, being is in principle outside of cosmological space and time. I amnot, of course, suggesting that either of these discoveries or pictures

alone determined the full amplitude of Parmenidean thought; bu t Pop-per's moon-picture could be interpreted differently, particularly whencompared with the picture of Aphrodite.

Fourth, one can see partly from the third point that the real Par-menidean enemy is non-identity, in particular non-identity as suppos-edly established by the possession of opposite contraries. We are toldthat the mortals established Fire, 'in every way the same with itself andwith the other Night) not the same' (B8.57-8). As Popper and manyothers have correctly observed, Fire and Night are given contrary prop-erties, and affirmed pairs of opposites dominate the Doxfl-section of thepoem, in which these lines occur, jus t as rejected contraries dominate the Truth'-section. The clear inference — contra Popper and also contramany analysts of the textual crux in the immediately preceding lines —is that both Fire and Night are wrong, doubleheaded conjectures aboutBeing, not just Fire (light) as Popper suggests (see above, p. 214). But in

that case non-identity ('with the other not the same ) is also wrong becausein some sense contradictory ('the same ... not the same'). 3 This, however,would rule out Popper's claim that the pluralistic Atomists really under-stood Parmenides and were coming to grips with it in a genuine clash ofconjectures. (For much better non-Platonic readings of Parmenides, inwhich Presocratic thinkers after him do attack his core, see the path-breaking book by Mourelatos 4 and the recent excellent study by Curd. 5)

I regret that in making these points I have had to pass over manyinteresting textual and other conjectures both vivid and provocative.Issues include: why Anaximander's picture of the earth at the center ofthe cosmos might be said to anticipate the Newtonian theory of actionat a distance (Essay 1); the interesting theory that Parmenides' goddesswas really Dike, 'Justice', herself (77 n. 2, 268-9 n. 4); the proposal for an

3 Scott Au stin, P armenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven an d London: YaleUniversity Press, 1986)

4 Alexander P.D. Mou relatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Y ale UniversityPress, 1970)

5 Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic M onism and Later Presocratic Thought Princeton: Princeton Un iversity Press, 1998) Brought to you by | West Virginia University




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emendation apateton fo r apatelori) in B8.52 94), intended to show thatthe Parmenidean Doxa was seriously conjectural and not merely false o rdeceitful (but see also 152, where Popper advances the opposite view);

criticisms of Kahn and Mourelatos on veridical, characterizing, andexistential uses of the Greek verb to be (129 n. 47); the idea that thereare similarities between Parmenides block universe on Popper s inter-pretation and Einstein s idea of the universe as a non-discontinuousfour-dimensional field (134 n.77,166); the theory that the Platonic axi-omatic-deductive method was geometrical because of the breakdownof a previous, Pythagorean arithmetical system which could not handleirrationals (Essay 9); and a diagrammatic interpretation o f an Aristote-lian geometrical remark Nachlass appendix, 296-302).

My two final points: first, on whether Popper s philosophy, as dis-played in this volume, hangs together; second, on editorial matters.

Popper s attempt to revive Enlightenment (and, for him, also Xeno-phanean, Socratic, and Platonic) reason needs to distinguish itself rightoff the bat f rom familiar Protagorean and more recent fo rms o f relativ-ism. For, it might be asked, if all we have are human conjectures, and not

the truth that the divine knows (the Xenophanean/Platonic view, ac-cording to Popper), then what prevents all our conjectures f rom beingon the same low level, pitiable as far as the real truth goes? Why shouldwe prefer one to another, or, if there is a reason fo r such a preference,how can this reason, too, avoid being only human and so itself (appar-ently) relative with respect to the knowledge possessed by the divine?For Popper, even Plato does not claim the certainty of provable defini-tions, the knowledge that Socrates had denied to himself; it is only

Aristotle who replaces falsifiable axioms with (supposedly) intuitivelycertain definitions and then inauthentically attributes the search fordefinitions to Socrates. This claim, however, seems false in view of thedefinitions of virtues actually given in the Republic, not to mention therole of dialectic as what leads us f rom hypothetical axioms to the Goodand back down again.

Popper s recourse is to a notion of correspondence which he appar-ently does not view as being itself a conjecture. Instead, conjectures aretested out often in critically determining experiments) against the truth;they can be refuted, not conclusively verified, but there is always abackdrop of truths, whether o f argument o r of experience, against whichpossible improvement in conjectures over time can be measured. Onehas no quarrel about the imperative nature of self-criticism in the ad-vancement of hypotheses, and one wishes, with Popper and Socrates,that human politics, too, could be conducted in such a rigorously humblerought to you by | West Virginia University




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way. Yet or, perhaps, consequently) one attempts to refute it: whatmight be arguments for and against a view of truth which, as Popperpoints out, dates from the Eleatic revolution? Why does argumentative

or experiential evidence play a role in the determination of such truth,and how would one show, using rational argument, that truth is bestapproached by means of such argument? These are, one thinks, notnaively relativistic questions, but instead serious metasystematic ones.And yet the volume does not face them. Instead, the picture is drawn:there is Eleatic truth, but we, as mortals , approach it only through aseries of conjectural experiments; we cannot determine it or know forcertain what it is like. Yet (contra Popper) Parmenides, at least, and Zeno(arguing negatively for the same conclusion), not to mention Plato, offerreasons for why the truth has to be this way and use a method (essen-tially, dialectic in some sense, though not in the Hegelian sense) fordetermining its basic features. But for Popper these, too, would have tobe conjectures, not to mention his own view? How could conjecturesabout truth be checked against truth if the nature and existence of truthare themselves open to conjecture? Yet Popper in this volume seems only

to assume the truth of a fairly simple ontology, an assumption which,however, underlies his entire picture of the Presocratic invention ofrational inquiry generally. How does one know that one does not know?Without something like a Platonic dialectic in which the answers to evensuch questions could be ascertained, Popper s overall view looks like afairly naive empiricism paradoxically based on a firm, traditionalistontology. Yet it is precisely this combination of narrowness and hiddendogmatism which invites the Romantic reaction against whose ultimatepolitical consequences Popper rightly fights with all his claws.

Finally, a word on the procedure of the editors. The volume containsan introduction by Popper himself apologizing for repetitiveness, pre-sumably especially in the Parmenides essays: Essay 3 is an improvedand expanded version of a paper in Classical Quarterly; Essay 4, how-ever, is an earlier draft 1989) and Essay 5 is still earlier (1988), whileEssay 6 is a public lecture delivered in 1973. It seems to have been

Popper s own intention to print these essays in reverse chronologicalorder (?). But what is not clear from the introduction, which seems togive Popper s blessing to the volume as printed, is that a portion was in

6 Classical Quarterly n.s. 42 (1992) 12-19 Brought to you by | West Virginia UniversityAuthenticated | 157 182 150 22



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fact reconstructed from Nachlass even using tables of contents which a rethemselves part of Nachlass (which is the case in Essay 2; the editorialacknowledgement is on pp. 65-7). The addendum to Essay 6 is leased

on correspondence to the editor, i.e., is at least not positively declaredby the latter to have been part of a Popperian plan for revising the lecture.The section headings in Essay 7 are not Popper s own (146) and thereseems to have been stylistic improvement throughout the collection(146) (where, exac tly?). The compilation of Essay 9 is Popper s (251). ButSection VIII in Essay 10 (this essay was originally a printed article) isitself from a printed speech (271), while the appendix is made up ofNachlass which the editors say was not complete and final' (280; was theother Nachlass material considered complete and final'? If so, why?).Here, in an appendix containing material presented as real fragments,not material sewn into an essay, is where all the relevant Nachlass reallybelong. The editors are open about these procedures in the appropriateplaces, but one could have wished for more information about reasons,as well as fo r some indication at the beginning that some of the compiling(especially in Essay 2) was done after Popper s death (was it, or was itnot, at his direction?). This suggestion is not meant to impugn thehonesty or candor of the editors, nor their obvious careful and friendlyattention to Popper and his work.

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Austin, Scott_Scepticism and Dogmatism in the Presocratics_Apeiron, 33, 3_2000_239-246.pdf