Aside
from the customary six senses, that is, five plus ESP, there is also a seventh
sense, which is the sense of purpose. This entry addresses all these senses, in
the light of the atomistic teachings.
Let
us start with the sixth sense, by simply acknowledging that the mind-bogglingly
modernistic theories of the atomists, like all genius, can only be attributed
to such ESP, or intuition, or whatever other exceptional name this sense is
known under; and it will further suffice to say that among the citizens of the
republic of geniuses, Leucippus and Democritus must have been allotted more
than an equal share.
Having
dispensed with the sixth sense, we now move to the first five, which, according
to the atomists, are not to be completely trusted, yet neither discarded
out-of-hand. In fact, there is a physicality in perception, some of this
residing in the object of perception, thus being objective, whereas other
features depending on the subject, thus being subjective.
In
fact, there is no reality in the things of the world. Only the atoms and the
void are real. The atoms move in the void, sometimes interlocking, when their
shapes are compatible for it. But mostly atoms collide with each other,
producing vortices in the process, and the vortices lead to the emergence of
bodies and worlds, the latter being many, some on the ascendance, others in
degeneration.
Now,
the atomists claim that there are always thin layers of atoms shedding from the
surfaces of the bodies and traveling through the air. Some of these eidola, or
images, as they are called, impact our sense organs allowing us to
perceive the bodies themselves. The reason why we ought not to trust our senses
completely for a faithful perception of reality is that the eidola tend
to become distorted, as they travel through the air, colliding with the atoms
of the air.
The
very first impression of this theory of perception is that it is designed to
address just one of our senses, namely, vision, but the atomists try to go
beyond one sense to embrace all five. The theory of taste, for one, asserts
that taste sensations are produced in the tongue by the different shapes of the
atoms. Some scratch the tongue, producing the impression of bitterness, others,
being smooth, pleasantly roll over it, producing the impression of sweetness,
etc.
As
I said before, perception differs, in that it is twofold, objective and
subjective. Such qualities as weight, density, and hardness are objective,
whereas warmth, taste, and color are subjective. The former qualities, which
are in the object, are open to our understanding, and are therefore more
reliable than the qualities of the latter sort, which are not immanent in the
object, but rely exclusively on our frequently faulty sensory perception, or on
convention. In Democritus’ own words Sweet exists
by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention; but in reality, atoms
and the void alone exist. As for the two kinds of knowledge, that
is, objective and subjective, Democritus says this: There
are two forms of knowledge: one legitimate, one bastard. To the bastard sort
belong all the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch. The legitimate
is quite distinct from this. When the bastard form cannot see more minutely,
nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor perceive through the touch, then another,
finer form must be employed. (Fragment
11, The Symmetry of Life.) This finer
form is obviously deduction, or reasoning, and by no means induction.
How Greek!
We
are now left with the seventh sense, as I put it, that is, the sense of
purpose, and confronting us here is a sea of controversy, or rather confusion
of the later critics. To discuss this, I am again inviting Russell, in an
abridged but still lengthy string of excerpts from The Atomists chapter
in his History of Western Philosophy. (As the reader may remember from a
number of previous similar cases, such quotations serve the purpose of ready
reference, and thus are placed somewhat outside my original comments, at least
until I am eventually able to sort these things out.)
“It was common in antiquity to reproach the atomists with
attributing everything to chance. But they were, on the contrary, strict
determinists, who believed that everything happens in accordance with natural
laws. Democritus explicitly denied that anything can happen by chance. Leucippus
(although his existence has been questioned), is known to have said one thing:
“Naught happens for nothing, but everything happens from a ground and of
necessity.” It is true that he gave no reason why the world should
originally have been as it was; this, perhaps, might have been attributed to
chance. But when, once the world existed, its further development was unalterably
fixed by mechanical principles. Aristotle and others reproached [Leucippus] and
Democritus for not accounting for the original motion of the atoms, but in this
the atomists were more scientific than their critics. Causation must start from
something, and, wherever it starts, no cause can be assigned for the initial
datum… The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, sought to explain
the world without introducing the notion of purpose, or final cause.
The “final cause” of an occurrence is an event in the future, for the
sake of which the occurrence takes place. When we ask “Why?” concerning
an event, we may mean either “What purpose did the event serve?” (requires
a teleological explanation), or “What earlier circumstances caused this
event?” (which requires a mechanistic explanation). Experience has shown
that the mechanistic question leads to scientific knowledge, while the
teleological one does not. The atomists asked the mechanistic question, and
they gave a mechanistic answer. Their successors, until the Renaissance, were
more interested in the teleological question, and this led science up a blind
alley.
Bertrand
Russell was a great man, but in this instance he is displaying a mixture of
narrowness, bias, and even naiveté. Teleology is an essential part of
scientific inquiry in several key fields, most significantly in modern
politics, as I have been able to demonstrate elsewhere. It is therefore
essential to any credible kind of philosophical inquiry, and apparently,
Democritus, for one, realized that, but was unable to provide any credible
teleological foundation for the atomistic theory, which is his demonstrable
weakness. It does not, however, in any way diminish his and Leucippus’ dazzling
achievement in developing all other aspects of the atomistic theory, and, in
that sense, Russell is perfectly right. He is also right regarding the
teleological obsession of science and philosophy until the Renaissance, but he
ought not to extend his criticism beyond the reasonable deficiency of any
obsession into the legitimate domain of teleology as such, and his eagerly
promoted implication that teleology as such leads nowhere is patently
wrong.
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