The purest form of reductionism was propounded by the famed atomist Democritus (c. The overall distribution of the elements, which were themselves eternal and unchangeable, was controlled by “love and strife” in a grand cyclically dynamic universe. All qualities were to be explicated in terms of ratios of these elements. On the other hand, Empedocles, an almost exact contemporary of Anaxagoras, favored a reductionist account based upon the famous doctrine of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Perhaps this can be interpreted as the assertion that mind is ontologically fundamental in a special way Anaxagoras did seem to believe that everything has some portion of mind in it while refraining from the assertion that everything has a mind (even this is controversial, see Barnes 1982: 405 ff.). However, Anaxagoras’s views on mind are complex since he apparently regarded mind as uniquely not containing any measure of other things and thus not fully complying with his mixing principles. Anaxagoras explained the appearance to the contrary in terms of a “principle of dominance and latency” (see Mourelatos 1986), which asserted that some qualities were dominant in their contribution to the behavior and appearance of things. 500–425 BCE) flatly denied that novel elements can emerge from more basic features of reality and instead advanced the view that “everything is in everything” (there are interesting parallels between this and much more recent arguments for panpsychism by Thomas Nagel and Galen Strawson, discussed below). On the other hand, if one opts for the panpsychist view that mind is an elemental feature of the world, then one must account for the apparent lack of mental features at the fundamental level. If one opts for reductionism, it is incumbent upon one to explain how the reduction happens. The Presocratics were struck by a dilemma: either mind is an elemental feature of the world, or mind can somehow be reduced to more fundamental elements. While Barnes disputes the pantheistic reading of Thales, he allows that Thales believed in the “ubiquity of animation”.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD IDEOLOGY FULL
For example, as reported by Barnes (1982: 96–7), Diogenes claimed that Thales believed that “the universe is alive and full of spirits”, but this remark is derived from an earlier claim of Aristotle: “some say a soul is mingled in the whole universe-which is perhaps why Thales thought that everything is full of gods”. It is claimed that Thales went much beyond such particular attributions and endorsed a true panpsychism and pantheism. Thales notes that magnets and, under certain circumstances, amber, can move themselves and concludes that they therefore possess minds. The argument depends upon the idea that enminded beings are self-movers. 624–545 BCE) deployed an analogical argument for the attribution of mind that tends towards panpsychism. One of the first Presocratic philosophers of ancient Greece, Thales (c. Panpsychism in the History of Western PhilosophyĬlear indications of panpsychist doctrines are evident in early Greek thought.
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