CLASSICAL GREECE

Daniel N. Robinson (1995) An Intellectual History Of Psychology, 3rd ed., pp. 
14-15:
	This span of time, a period covering roughly the appearance of the school 
or sect of the Pythagoreans in 530 B.C. to the flowering of Aristotle's 
scholarship two centuries later, comprises the Hellenic epoch of classical 
Greece, an epoch not anticipated by any prior age... For the historian, 
therefore, and especially the historian of ideas, an understanding of that 
particular civlization must be a central project, and one without any 
alternatives of equal consequence. At the very core of this central project is 
the appearance of philosophy and the immense range of issues and subjects it 
would spawn. We are repaid by devoting attention to... this incomparably 
productive civilzation. 

Thales (625-545 BC)
- physis = water: "all things are made of water"
- matter = animate: "everything is full of gods" (panpsychism)
- initiated and encouraged speculation and criticism
- replaced SUPERNATURAL with NATURAL explanation
- cornered market on  olive oil (using weather patterns, not astrology); 
predicted eclipse on May 23, 585 BC 

Robert S. Brumbaugh (1964/1981) The Philosophers of Greece, p.11:
	The Greeks thought of Thales as a great inventor, because of his 
achievements as an engineer. How much they underrated him can be seen from the 
fact that Thales could, with some right, have claimed the ideas of matter, of 
physics, of science, and of philosophy as his inventions. However strange this 
may seem, all of these ideas had to be discovered.

Anaximander (610-540 BC)
- physis = "the boundless": something more fundamental than water or anything 
else we're familiar with
- "laws" of nature paralleled laws of human society (vs. Thales's "gods" in all 
things) - not vice versa!
- used models of phenomena, e.g., an early map of the Greek world
- evolution: hot water plus earth = fish, who birthed us (so don't eat them!)
- studied fossils to conclude this!: fossil sea creatures in hills showed hills 
were once under water, thus all life emerged from water
- speculated that fragile humans must have been protected during emergence, by 
rough skin of shark mothers 

Heraclitus (540-480 BC) vs. Parmenides (515-430 BC)
- Becoming (Heraclitus)
    - physis = fire
    - all is change: no stepping into the same river twice
    - empiricist problem of reliable knowledge
    - empirical world is unknowable, so the knower must choose the 
undetectable/insensible real (e.g., numbers, atoms) or the ideal (mind, soul)
- Being (Parmenides)
    - no change really occurs: rationalist emphasis on stability of thought, 
concepts, language, logic...
    - Zeno of Elea (495-430 BC) demonstrated illusory nature of change
    - they preferred reason to the senses (though this could have been a satire 
of reason)

Pythagoras (580-500 BC)
- mathematics
    - Pythagorean Theorem: discovered, not invented
    - music and cosmos both generated and governed by ratios:
"The discovery of the direct relationship between the pitch of a note and the 
length of string or pipe that produces it remains the oldest mathematically 
expressed law of nature." (Thomas Levenson (1994), Measure For Measure)
    - discovery of irrational numbers pointed to realm beyond experience; logos 
and ratio
- number as physis: all things are number
    - figurate numbers (geometric representation of number, not Arabic numerals: 
dots, constellations, on to infinity)
    - representations of concepts (female = 2, male = 3, marriage = 5)
    - ratios (proportions, harmonic balance in world and in body)
- science
    - Galileo and Kepler inspired by idea of Creator as Mathematician
    - science emphasizes measurement, proportion, numerical relationships, 
equations -- and simplicity!
    - rational numbers still preferred to irrational today: rounding in 
computers

- dualism: two interacting worlds
    - degrading bodily prison and changing earthly approximations, vs.eternal 
soul that perceived eternal, abstract, perfect realm of number
    - no perfect lines, triangles, circles on earth - but there are in our 
minds!
- religious cult behavior
    - white robes, 5-pointed blue star tattoos on palm; admittance of women; 
secrecy about activities and findings; silent listening for 5 years; against 
distraction of sensory experience in general; various prohibitions
    - transmigration of souls, from Hinduism and Dionysian/Orphic religion; 
vegetarianism
    - purification through study, not ritual; math as main route to perfection
    - most famous adherent: Plato! (and Christianity took ideas from him)

Empedocles(495-435 BC)
- no single physis, but 4 elements: Earth, Air, Fire Water
    - elements mix and separate by principles of Love and Strife, creating the 
physical as well as the human world
    - [ANAXAGORAS ( 500-428 BC) - vast number of elements (seeds) combine in 
different proportions in everything; ancestor of current inventory of elements]
- Theory of Perception:
    - all objects emanate (or throw off) tiny copies of themselves called 
"eidola"
    - eidola enter body through pores, NOT sense organs
    - heart combines eidola with 4 elements present in blood to reconstruct the 
object
    - thus, perception is building an inner simulation or copy of the 
environment: ancestor of mental representation!

Democritus (460-370 BC)
- ATOMISM - the first completely naturalistic world view
    - a-tom = un-cuttable unit (a philosophical hypothesis!)
    - atoms differ only in shape & size (round, pointy, etc.)
    - objects differ due to the type, number, location, and arrangement of their 
atoms
    - everything that exists is composed of atoms, including the mind or soul
    - atoms are unchanging, but objects change: resolves Heraclitus and 
Parmenides

- ATOMS IN MODERN PHYSICS:
    - Dalton (1803): 1) all matter is tiny particles; 2) they're indestructible; 
3) they differ only in mass; 4) they combine in whole-number ratios
    - Boltzmann (late 1800's) reduced gas laws to behavior of atoms
    - Einstein (1905) estimated size based on Brownian movement
    - Rutherford (1912) proposed solar system model to explain density
    - Bohr (1916) proposed electron cloud model to explain quantum behavior

- materialism - "all that exists are atoms and the void"; soul could not survive 
disassembly of its atoms
- determinism - lawful explanations for every event in terms of antecedent 
causes (namely interactions of atoms)
- elementism - separating a phenomenon or entity into component parts
- reductionism - mapping one level of explanation onto a more fundamental level

- ATOMISM IN PSYCHOLOGY:
    - mind as collection of interacting components (neural, cognitive)
    - current view based on division of mind into faculties, starting from 
Aristotle into Middle Ages
    - strategy for studying behavior: isolate simpler behaviors, build complex 
from those (e.g., unconditioned reflexes, conditioned reflexes, response chains 
and hierarchies, behavioral repertoires)
    - language: divide sentences into phrases, into words, into phonemes

- Theory of Perception (elaboration of Empedocles)
    - eidola are atoms - literally pieces of objects that they throw off (still 
accurate in the case of smell and taste!)
    - eidola enter body through 5 senses (not pores) and go to brain (not 
heart!)
    - in brain, these atoms are forged into COPIES of the object they came from
    - this process may go wrong, and the environment may be MISperceived

- atomistic view of colors
    - all colors derive from combination of black, white, red, and green
    - similar to Thomas Young's (1801) trichromatic theory of combinations of 
blue, green, and red
    - note: Dalton was missing his red and green "color atoms" (cone cells) - 
provided first detailed description of colorblindess