Everything in Everything - Anna Marmodoro
Everything in Everything - Anna Marmodoro
Everything in Everything - Anna Marmodoro
EVERYTHING IN EVERYTHING
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EVERYTHING
IN EVERYTHING
Anaxagoras’s Metaphysics
Anna Marmodoro
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Contents
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Contents
Conclusions 186
Bibliography 191
General Index 199
Index Locorum 213
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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1
Introduction
How did the world come about? What is it made of? Are there ultimate
building blocks to it? If so, what’s their nature? How do they compose
to make up the material objects we causally interact with? Are the
observable changes at the medium-size level of material objects an
illusion of our senses, or are they real? If change is real, what is it
that remains the same and what doesn’t, when things change? This
book investigates the answers that Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (fifth
century BCE) gave to these and similar questions, at the very begin-
ning of the philosophical investigation of nature in Western thought.
Anaxagoras’s views are profoundly original. Despite the scarcity of the
extant texts, the range of philosophical topics on which he advanced
distinctive positions is such that this book can only focus on a few.
These will be the ones where Anaxagoras is most groundbreaking with
respect to the development of metaphysics, as we identify the subject
nowadays. Central to Anaxagoras’s thought is the tenet that there
is a share of everything in everything—a tenet whose philosophical
significance has been much discussed in the scholarly literature, and
which has received some attention from modern metaphysicians.1
Building on the existing literature, this book focuses on that tenet,
1. With reference to the scholarly interest that Anaxagoras’s thought has attracted,
Richard McKirahan, for instance, writes: “The present century has seen a greater num-
ber of radically different interpretations of Anaxagoras than any Presocratic with the
possible exception of Empedocles—a remarkable fact given the small number of frag-
ments on which interpretations can be based” (1994: 231). Among the modern meta-
physicians who have taken an interest in Anaxagoras are, for instance, Theodore Sider
(1993), Ned Markosian (2004), and Hud Hudson (2007).
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2. Mereological wholes are nothing over and above the sum of their parts, where
the parts retain their distinctness and individuality. By contrast, nonmereological
wholes are something more than the sum of their parts. Contrast a bundle of sticks
with a cake and its ingredients: the former is an example of a mereological whole, the
latter of a nonmereological whole. I discuss this distinction with special reference to
Aristotle and neo-Aristotelian metaphysics in Marmodoro (2013).
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Introduction
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6. No full account of what makes it possible for the tropes to be moved spatially
has survived, if Anaxagoras gave one. The action of the vortex is described, for exam-
ple, in B13 (see also B15); the vortex and the workings of the nous will be discussed
in chapter 5.
7. This stance is expressed, for instance, in B15, which will be investigated in
chapter 2, section 2.4.
8. A view of material objects like Anaxagoras’s is to be contrasted with the alter-
native one, held for instance by Aristotle, according to which substances are made
up by a substratum that instantiates universal properties. The reader may want to
refer to Part IV of Laurence and MacDonald (1998) for a helpful and accessible pre-
sentation in modern terms of the two alternative accounts of substance, the substra-
tum-and the bundle-based ones. Of particular relevance to the present discussion is
Peter Simons’s chapter, “Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of
Substance.”
9. Somehow anticipating discussion in power ontology that got started only very
recently, Anaxagoras introduces a metaphysics of degrees of intensity of powers. This
distinctive feature of Anaxagorean powers is presented in c hapter 2. The idea that
causal powers may have differ in degrees of intensity is discussed in contemporary
metaphysics, e.g., in Barbara Vetter (2015) and Manley and Wasserman (2008).
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Introduction
10. Anaxagoras’s system include nous too and the vortex it generates, but they are
causal agents at a cosmic level. The topic will be discussed in c hapter 5.
11. The reader might find it helpful to pursue further readings on causal powers,
for example: Molnar (2003); Mumford (2003); Bird (2007); and Marmodoro (2010).
For present purposes I do not draw any distinction between powers and dispositions;
some metaphysicians do, e.g., Bird (2013).
12. Some metaphysicians cash out such conditions in terms of the presence of
stimuli for the powers (e.g., an appropriate blow for a fragile glass to break); and oth-
ers in terms of the powers interacting with their manifestation partner powers (e.g.,
sugar dissolving in water).
13. Causal powers are contrasted with categorical properties (for instance, the
sphericity of a ball, by contrast with its capacity to roll), which are causally inert and
actual at all times; their definition does not involve reference to any change. That there
are categorical properties at all is, however, a disputed issue in metaphysics, as many
hold that all properties are dispositional. (I argued elsewhere that the latter is also
Aristotle’s view, in Marmodoro 2014a).
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Introduction
15. If the seeds are the origin of structure in the universe, what structures them?
For Anaxagoras it is an irreducibly primitive fact about the universe that the seeds
contained in it are structured. They have eternally existed in the original mixture, and
in this sense they are as fundamental as the opposites and nous. Interestingly, in this,
his ontology is similar to Aristotle’s, for whom species forms have always been and
shall be in the universe.
16. Nous too, as we will see in chapter 5, is a bundle of causal powers (cosmic and
cognitive ones).
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We are now in the position to see that his theory of extreme mixture
follows from the model for causal efficacy that Anaxagoras endorses,
in conjunction with the principle that recombination of the elements
(the opposites) is unrestricted.
If the elements exist in a state of extreme mixture, they must
be everywhere. But how can they be everywhere? On the interpreta-
tion I want to motivate the answer is: by being unlimitedly divided.
That is, not simply endlessly divisible, but by being actually divided
into parts or shares of which there is no smallest. This is the con-
ceptual breakthrough that, on my interpretation, allows Anaxagoras
to meet all his philosophical desiderata. Anaxagoras explicitly offers
the unlimited division of what-is as a justification of his stance on
extreme mixture:
B6: Since it is not possible that there is a least thing, it would not
be possible that [anything] be separated, nor come to be by itself;
but just as in the beginning, now too all things are together.17
17. B6: ὅτε τοὐλάχιστον μὴ ἔστιν εἶναι, οὐκ ἂν δύναιτο χωρισθῆναι, οὐδ’ ἂν
ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ γενέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ὅπωσπερ ἀρχὴν εἶναι καὶ νῦν πάντα ὁμοῦ.
18. The term “gunk” and the derived adjective “gunky” are expressions introduced
in philosophical discourse by David Lewis (1991: 21). Gunk instances are called “hunks
of gunk,” following Ted Sider (1993: 2).
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Introduction
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this view (as Aristotle did, for instance). But the thought that matter is
unlimitedly divided is neither intuitive nor empirically justifiable, and
has very rarely been endorsed in the history of metaphysics; Leibniz
is one of the few exceptions. Yet unlimited division is the keystone of
Anaxagoras’s system—and not only his. There is another ancient meta-
physical system, in many respects different from Anaxagoras’s, that is
built on the same assumption: the Stoics’.22 Both Anaxagoras and the
Stoics posit an unlimitedly divided, physical bedrock of reality. They
take this stance for metaphysical reasons, i.e., because this assumption
does explanatory work that would have otherwise been left undone in
their systems. This explanatory work includes, but is not limited to,
the constitution of material objects, change, and causation. A compari-
son between Anaxagoras and the Stoics gives us a further angle from
which we can understand how Anaxagoras’s metaphysics sits within
its historical philosophical context and what is distinctive about it; the
relevant Stoic views are presented and investigated in chapter 6.
In conclusion, Anaxagoras innovates, not only in relation to the
philosophical context of his time, but also in the less obvious sense
that he has something new to contribute to potentially advance cur-
rent debates in metaphysics, with respect to his conception of an atom-
less universe of powers. This book makes a scholarly contribution to
our understanding of Anaxagoras’s views by offering fresh readings for
the texts in which Anaxagoras’s principle that there is a share of every-
thing in everything is stated. Such new readings allow us a novel inter-
pretation of the principle, and thus shed light, on the one hand, on the
innovative metaphysics Anaxagoras developed, and on the other, on
another ancient ontological system that is in relevant respects similar
to Anaxagoras’s, that of the Stoics. In gaining an understanding of how
the ancients conceived of power gunk, we may also enrich our current
philosophical understanding of the fundamentals in nature.23
22. I am not making here any claim to the effect that Anaxagoras directly influ-
enced the Stoics.
23. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 draw on my article “Anaxagoras’s Qualitative Gunk”
(2015).
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C hapter 1
1. We will see below and more in detail in c hapter 5 that Anaxagoras’s ontol-
ogy includes, in addition to the opposites, a cosmic nous, which is not composed from
opposites; and also seeds, which are primitively structured clusters of opposites.
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Before there was separation off, because all things were together,
there was not even any colour evident; for the mixture of all
things prevented it, of the wet and the dry and of the hot and the
cold and of the bright and the dark, and there was much earth
present and seeds unlimited in number, in no way similar to one
another. Since these things are so, it is right to think that all
things were present in the whole.2
2. This and the following translations of Anaxagoras’s texts are from Curd (2010).
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
Are we to understand that all the items mentioned in (iii) were among
all things that were together as per (i)? Were all these items present
as such in the primordial mixture described by (i), before there was
separation off? These questions are aimed at understanding whether
all these items are ontologically fundamental for Anaxagoras.4
3. I share Sedley’s (2007: 17) view that for Anaxagoras there is more than one
stage in the history of the generation of Anaxagoras’s universe as presented in B4b.
4. Scholars have taken different views on this issue. Curd (2010: 153ff.) offers a
helpful summary of the positions in the debate and of the arguments from all sides.
Those who think the opposites only are fundamental include, for instance Tannery
(1886); Burnet (1892 and 1930); Vlastos (1950); Schofield (1980); Warren (2007b); and
Sedley (2007). I report here some representative quotations. Schofield thinks that sub-
stances and stuffs in Anaxagoras’s system are “logical constructions out of opposites”
(1980: 116). On the same line, Inwood (1986: 25–26, n. 29): “My own view [is] that the
ἔοντα χρήματα (i.e. the elemental entities which alone obey Parmenidean rules of per-
manence) are only the opposites and that everything else, the so-called Empedoclean
elements, and flesh, bone etc. is derivative and disobedient to Parmenidean rules of
permanence” (1986: 25–26, n. 29); such derivative entities “are only ‘virtually’ present
in the mixture … [that is to say] the opposites needed to make them up are present”
(1986: 25). Other views, of variable ontological “generosity,” are held, for instance,
by Guthrie (1965); Barnes (1982: vol. 1, revised); Mourelatos (1987); Furth (1991);
Graham (2004); Curd (2010); and others. Barnes, for instance, writes: “Specific talk of
the opposites may profitably be dropped from the discussion of Anaxagoras’s theory
of nature” (1979: vol. 2, 18). Similarly, Reeve: “Any obsession with opposites we seem
to find in Anaxagoras is the obsession of his predecessors not his own” (1981: 96).
We thus have a full spectrum of views in the literature. In particular, there is a line
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The dense and the wet and the cold and the dark come together
here, where <the> earth is now; but the rare and the hot and the
dry <and the bright> moved out to the far reaches of aether.
of interpretation that considers stuffs irreducible. On this view stuffs such as blood
or gold are not composed out of the opposites, but exist primitively as such (see, e.g.,
Graham 2004). I note here that the interpretation I will present in chapter 4 does not
depend on giving the opposites the particular status of sole type of building block in
Anaxagoras’s ontology; it can be developed also on the view that stuffs are as funda-
mental as the opposites.
5. The issue of “generation” of stuffs is actually more complex than this, because
the mere compresence of the relevant opposites does not suffice for us to discern earth
there, even though it is only their compresence that is needed for the composition
of earth. The difference lies between compresent relevant opposites of low strength
or intensity, and compresent relevant opposites of high strength or intensity, where
“high” means “perceptible.” So it is only when the compresent opposites are intense
enough to be perceptible that we can recognize and classify their aggregative composi-
tion as earth. The challenge for Anaxagoras will be to explain higher and lower inten-
sity of opposites. We will come to this thorny problem in chapter 2.
Patricia Curd asked, in personal correspondence, why Anaxagoras’s respect for
Parmenidean concerns about change would not also apply to the composition (and
decomposition) of stuffs. For example, if according to Anaxagoras flesh cannot be
extracted from nonflesh, how can flesh be generated out of nonflesh in the composi-
tion of flesh out of its opposite constituents, as my interpretation suggests? Or, if heat
is extracted from, say, flesh, which is hot, how can heat come out of what is not heat?
These derivations have the makings of generation, which is outlawed by Parmenides
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For in the same seminal fluid there are hair, nails, veins and arter-
ies, sinew, and bone, and it happens that they are imperceptible
because of the smallness of the parts, but when they grow, they
gradually are separated off. “For how,” he says, “can hair come
from what is not hair and flesh from what is not flesh?”
καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ γονῇ καὶ τρίχας εἶναι καὶ ὄνυχας καὶ φλέβας
καὶ ἀρτηρίας καὶ νεῦρα καὶ ὀστᾶ καὶ τυγχάνειν μὲν ἀφανῆ διὰ
μικρομέρειαν, αὐξανόμενα δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν διακρίνεσθαι. πῶς γὰρ
ἄν, φησίν, ἐκ μὴ τριχὸς γένοιτο θρὶξ καὶ σὰρξ ἐκ μὴ σαρκός;
and should be respected by Anaxagoras, and yet are not, on my interpretation. The way
I see Anaxagoras avoiding such Parmenidean objections is by a sophisticated combina-
tion of epistemological and ontological positions. Anaxagoras is a phenomenological
emergentist, and an ontological mereologist. I develop this interpretation in section 1.4
of this chapter and in section 2.4 of chapter 2. Briefly here, stuffs such as earth or
flesh only appear, phenomenologically, to be of such kinds, while ontologically they
are aggregates of opposites in different densities. Thus when heat comes from flesh,
it in fact comes from heat in the compresence of hot + soft+ heavy + flexible + pale +
etc., which are phenomenologically flesh. When flesh comes to be, this involves only
the displacement of opposites, which phenomenologically appear to be flesh (or would
appear such to an observer). None of these violates Parmenidean strictures that
Anaxagoras respects in his ontology.
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6. In B12, for instance, we read, “Nous … has been mixed with no thing, but
is alone itself by itself” (καὶ μέμεικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μόνος αὐτὸς ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ
ἐστιν).
7. Patricia Curd, in correspondence, objected to the evolutionary account I offered
here, on the basis of syntactical reasons. She thinks that what is said about earth in
B4b does not introduce a second phase in the evolution of the cosmos, but rather
describes the initial state of the primordial mixture. If so, earth, and stuffs more gen-
erally, as well as seeds, were all in the primordial mixture. I want to stress that such a
position is compatible with my interpretation, because, although I hold that stuffs are
reducible to opposites, and composed by the movement brought about by the vortex,
both these claims are compatible with the claim that there were stuff and seeds primi-
tively in the primordial mixture. Stuff and seeds can be reducible; some of these are
primitively present in the cosmos; while some subsequently generated. If so, there are
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
For shortly after the beginning of the first book of his Physics,
Anaxagoras says this, “Since these things are so, it is right to
think that there are many different things present in everything
that is being combined, and seeds of all things, having all sorts of
forms, colours, and flavours, and that human and also the other
animals were compounded, as many as have soul.”
λέγει γὰρ μετ’ ὀλίγα τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ πρώτου Περὶ φύσεως Ἀναξαγόρας
οὕτως· τούτων δὲ οὕτως ἐχόντων χρὴ δοκεῖν ἐνεῖναι πολλά τε
καὶ παντοῖα ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς συγκρινομένοις καὶ σπέρματα πάντων
χρημάτων καὶ ἰδέας παντοίας ἔχοντα καὶ χροιὰς καὶ ἡδονάς. καὶ
ἀνθρώπους τε συμπαγῆναι καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ζῷα ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει.
stuffs and seeds in the primordial mixture, and they are not subject to the everything-
in-everything principle, but only the opposites are mixed in this way.
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
11. This cannot of course be a decisive argument, for Anaxagoras’s work has not
been preserved in its entirety; nevertheless it is a point that deserves due consideration.
12. This is the converse, as it were, of Aristotle’s principle in Physics I.7, that if
there is matter, there can be qualitative change.
13. On this topic see also appendix 1.A at the end of this chapter.
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This section addresses a potential worry the reader might have con-
cerning the status of Anaxagoras’s opposites qua not en-╉mattered.
Are his opposites “ghostly” entities, and is his world so? The answer
in short is no. Anaxagoras’s ontology delivers a universe that is
as concrete as ours, and as concrete as the world of Aristotle, who
first introduced matter in the history of metaphysics. To appreci-
ate this point, it will be helpful to very briefly compare Aristotle’s
and Anaxagoras’s ontologies—╉ both are power ontologies,14 but
one of them makes matter a fundamental principle of things in
nature, while the other does not reify matter. What distinguishes
Anaxagoras’s physical ontology from Aristotle’s material ontology?
Both Anaxagoras and Aristotle talk of earth, water, flesh, etc., though
these result from different types of composition in each of the two
ontologies.15 But to understand the difference between Anaxagoras’s
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where the whole is something over and above the sum of its parts. On the latter see
Marmodoro (2013).
16. In this context the examination of Aristotle’s positions needs to be brief, since
the explanatory target is Anaxagoras’s ontology.
17. The literature on Aristotle’s so-called “stripping away” thought experiment in
Met. is vast. One the latest treatments of it is Lewis (2013).
18. The ultimate substratum is not matter in the sense of body underlying and
constituting some individual, e.g., an animal or a plant. Such matter is an abstract
entity that we individuate by abstracting away the form of an object.
19. See also on this topic Scaltsas (1994) and, among the most recent studies
specifically of the abstract in Aristotle, Bäck (2014).
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
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1.4. PARMENIDEAN CONSTRAINTS
ON CHANGE
24. B4a: “There are cities that have been constructed by humans and works
made, just as with us” (καὶ τοῖς γε ἀνθρώποισιν εἶναι καὶ πόλεις συνημμένας καὶ ἔργα
κατεσκευασμένα, ὥσπερ παρ’ ἡμῖν). I will return to the analysis of this fragment in
chapter 5.
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
25. See for instance Curd (2010: 142) as representative of the state of the field.
Those who think that Anaxagoras was a strict Parmenidean believe that Anaxagoras
would have posited “a multitude of material beings that replicate as far as possible the
attributes of Parmenidean Being” (in Palmer’s words, 2009: 225). For instance, Vlastos
(1950: 327) and Guthrie (1965: 281), among others, think this; the latter writes that
Anaxagoras’s account of the natural world was developed to accommodate the radi-
cal idea that “every natural substance must be assumed to have existence in the full
Parmenidean sense.”
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
26. I will examine these fragments and Anaxagoras’s argument for the necessary
inseparability of the opposites in chapter 3, section 3.1. As to the argument why the
opposites are not constitutionally mixed: on the one hand there is no textual evidence
to the effect that they are; on the other hand, if they were, absurdities would follow (as
Edward Hussey cogently argues; see chapter 4, section 4.2).
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27. This combination and separation is only ever partial, because nothing can be
separate out completely from everything else; see c hapter 3, section 3.1.
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
28. For example, Anaxagoras writes in B1 that in the cosmic mixture “because all
things were together, nothing was evident on account of smallness … when they were
all together, nothing was clear and manifest because of their smallness” (καὶ πάντων
ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος). I return to this topic (and the exist-
ing discussion in the literature) in c hapter 4, and also in chapter 6; see also Schofield
(1980), chapter 4.
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
How does the world and everything else in it come about? And what
explains all that happens within it? Everything, for Anaxagoras, is
due to the opposites, the seeds and the activity of nous. What nous
is and how it operates will be examined in chapter 5; the seeds
will be examined there also. This section addresses specifically the
question of what the opposites are. There is a long-established exe-
getical tradition that takes Anaxagoras’s opposites to be powers.31
Gregory Vlastos is the most significant exponent of that tradition,
writing that
the most important step ever taken toward the true under-
standing of Anaxagoras, was made by Tannery’s suggestion that
the ultimate ingredients … are the hot and the cold, the dry and
the moist, and all the traditional “opposites” of Ionian cosmol-
ogy. These are conceived … as substantial “quality-things” or,
31. See among others Tannery (1886: 280ff.); Burnet (1892: 288–
90, and
1930: 263–64); Vlastos (1950: 41–42); Schofield (1980: 120).
31
32
32. Vlastos adds by way of support of his claim: “That Anaxagoras shared the
traditional view of the ‘powers’ is a reasonable assumption, and this not in spite but
because of the scantiness of our notices on this topic. Had he deviated in any signifi-
cant way, some trace of the innovation would have been left in the record” (1950: 43).
33. The textual evidence that the opposites have causal efficacy in Anaxagoras’s
world will be reviewed below.
34. The word dynamis does not appear in the extant fragments but this should not
be thought of as a difficulty, partly because of the scarcity of the surviving texts, partly
because we cannot expect at this stage of development of the history of philosophy an
already codified terminology for metaphysics. Relatedly, Sedley (2007: 15) argues that
it is too early in the history of philosophy to think that Anaxagoras introduced tech-
nical terms. (Rather, according to Sedley, Anaxagoras tries to “expunge” misleading
expressions from ordinary language. I raise the same points concerning the so-called
seeds, in chapter 5.)
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
33
34
37. This approach does not distinguish between a power’s being exercised and a
power’s being manifested.
38. Mumford and Anjum advocate this position in their Getting Causes from
Powers (2011). See also my contribution to the book symposium on Getting Causes
from Powers (McKitrick et al. 2013).
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
43. The idea that causation happens because of the passing around or transmis-
sion of properties was widespread in antiquity. This is known in the literature as the
Contagion Model of causation. The model was also revived in early modern philoso-
phy; see for reference, e.g., O’Neil (1993: 44). Aristotle too talked of the transmission
of the form of the agent’s power onto the patient’s power. But for Aristotle, this is a
figurative way of speaking; transmission of form is not literal in his system, like the
physical transference of a quantity, e.g., of a book or of heat, but more like the trans-
mission of information. The causal agent’s form comes to be the patient’s form as a
result of changes induced in the patient by the agent. I discuss Aristotle’s account of
causation in Marmodoro (2007, 2014a, 2014b).
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
46. In general, the opposites have local causal efficacy, while nous, via the vortex,
has cosmic causal efficacy, as I argue in c hapter 5.
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
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1.7. CLOSING REMARKS
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
This chapter has already introduced some points of analogy and contrast
between Anaxagoras’s and Aristotle’s metaphysics.48 The purpose of this
appendix is to identify the key fundamental assumption they share, not-
withstanding the profound differences in their philosophical systems. The
assumption is that the building blocks of all there is in the physical world are
powers. Aristotle offers his famous analysis of the simple elements, namely
fire, air, water, and earth, in De Generatione et Corruptione. In allotting the
47. I am currently investigating in other work the extent to which there is broad
consensus on this metaphysical starting point across different thinkers and differ-
ent historical periods in ancient Western thought. My working hypothesis, which
drives my research program “Power Structuralism in Ancient Ontologies,” funded
by the European Research Council (award number 263484) is that nearly all ancient
ontologies posit powers as the sole type of fundamental building block of reality. It is
interesting to note that the powers-only approach appears to be the starting point in
ancient metaphysics, rather than an alternative to mainstream metaphysics, as power
ontology is today.
48. The material presented in this appendix is more extensively discussed in
Marmodoro (2014a, chapter 1; 2016b; and also 2016a).
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44
There will be Air, when the cold of the Water and the dry of the Fire
have passed-away (since the hot of the latter and the moist of the
former are left); whereas, when the hot of the Fire and the moist of
the Water have passed-away, there will be Earth, owing to the sur-
vival of the dry of the Fire and the cold of the Water. (331b14–18)
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T h e F u n da m e n ta l I t e m s i n t h e O n t o l o g y
The difference between this account and how Anaxagoras would describe
the phenomenon is that while Aristotle explains change in terms of physi-
cal continuity and change of form, Anaxagoras would think of it in terms
of a succession of opposites in the same location. It is important to note
that this difference does not entail a difference concerning whether powers
are concrete or not, as argued in section 1.3 of this chapter. The fact that
Anaxagoras’s powers are not en-mattered only entails that we cannot divide
them by abstraction into a form and a substratum; whereas we can divide
Aristotelian powers this way (for instance, when the form of heat comes to be
instantiated where the form of cold was in a pot, as the fire warms the pot up).
Properties, for Aristotle, are not subject to change. This is because abstract
forms explain change; if they could change, a regress would develop, whereby
a further form-type entity would needed to explain the change. Since proper-
ties themselves do not change, when change occurs, it is the entity qualified
by a property that changes, by acquiring a new property in place of the former
one. For Anaxagoras, fundamental properties do not change, either, because
they are simple (that is, not “divisible” into substratum and form); it is this
that blocks change at the fundamental level of reality. Yet entities qualified by
fundamental properties do “change” (e.g., water can warm up), by gaining or
losing simple fundamental properties—the opposites.
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C hapter 2
1. With the caveat that not all Anaxagoras wrote was preserved, so we can only
talk of relative frequency.
2. For example, Anaxagoras could have posited that flesh comes only from flesh;
but he rather thinks flesh may come from gold, and earth from pulp.
3. Only B10 suggests that the development of a complete offspring out of the
seminal fluid of the father might have appeared to Anaxagoras a case in point of unre-
stricted transformation. B10 is discussed below. On the other hand Aristotle reports
that it was an empirical observation that led Anaxagoras (and his followers) to commit
to unrestricted extraction:
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
So they [the Anaxagoreans] assert that everything has been mixed in every-
thing, because they saw [ἑώρων] everything arising out of everything. (Physics,
187b1–2)
I assume that Aristotle did not literally believe the Anaxagoreans saw everything,
but only dissimilars arising from dissimilars. In view of the ancient’s predilection for
the principle that “like causes like,” even a single instance of “unlike causing unlike”
would have sufficed to motivate an alternative account of causation.
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48
48
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
For in the same seminal fluid there are hair, nails, veins and
arteries, sinew, and bone, and it happens that they are impercep-
tible because of the smallness of the parts, but when they grow,
they gradually are separated off.
καὶ γὰρ ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ γονῇ καὶ τρίχας εἶναι καὶ ὄνυχας καὶ φλέβας
καὶ ἀρτηρίας καὶ νεῦρα καὶ ὀστᾶ καὶ τυγχάνειν μὲν ἀφανῆ διὰ
μικρομέρειαν, αὐξανόμενα δὲ κατὰ μικρὸν διακρίνεσθαι.
Since in each existing thing, as well as in the cosmic mixture, there are
all opposites (in different degrees of concentration), and the oppo-
sites can be moved around spatially by the vortex initiated by nous,
and thus scattered or concentrated in space, it follows for Anaxagoras
6. More generally, the terms that Anaxagoras uses for talking about generation as
extraction are forms of the verb κρινεῖν (and compound verbs deriving from it).
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
8. Such speculative alternative accounts would also violate the pivotal principle in
Anaxagoras’s metaphysics that there is a share of everything in everything.
9. The Preponderance Principle is examined below in section 2.4.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
are six cases (among the eight times in total the principle appears
in the extant texts)11 in which Anaxagoras uses different words for
what is mentioned in the first position and what in the second. From
this Sedley concludes that two occurrences of “everything” were not
“part and parcel” of the original formulation of the principle. Finally,
Sedley calls attention to B11, where we read that “in everything
there is a portion (μοῖρα), of everything, and in some there is nous
too.” Now, we know from B12 (as we will discuss in chapter 5) that
Anaxagoras thought that nous resides in human beings. If so, Sedley
reasons, the first occurrence of “everything” in B11 must include liv-
ing beings too, and refer more generally to compound beings (rather
than opposites). But if so, Sedley concludes, “The ‘everything’ that is
in every compound entity cannot itself be every compound entity,
or Anaxagoras would be saying, nonsensically, that every compound
being contains a portion of every compound being” (2007: 30).12
(This corresponds to reading (i) on my classification here above.) The
(indeed challenging) stance that Sedley wants to avoid attributing
to Anaxagoras is not however avoided even on his own preferred
reading of the principle, where the first “everything” refers to all the
opposites and the second to compound beings. The reason is that
compound beings are made of stuff, and stuff is made of opposites.
So if all opposites are in compounds beings, and compound beings
are made of opposites (which do not undergo any qualitative or sub-
stantial transformation), then by transitivity all opposites are in all
opposites.
To fully understand the import of EE-P, I submit, we need to
consider it in conjunction with the inseparability of everything from
11. One needs however to bear in mind that the frequency of occurrences can
only be taken as relative to the small part of Anaxagoras’s work that has been trans-
mitted (in a fragmentary and indirect way) to us.
12. Sedley considers a further hypothesis, which one might think provides an
alternative to his own proposal, but which he finds flawed. Suppose that the two core-
ferential occurrences were to refer not to compounds, but to the opposites. Even in
this case, the result would be, according to Sedley, nonsensical: every bit of hot would
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have in it some cold, some heavy, some sweet, some bright, etc. (2007: 29). I hold
that “everything” refers to the same in both occurrences, namely to the opposites; but
I interpret the way they are “in” everything in a new way in chapter 4.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
55
56
In the first book of the Physics he says at the beginning, “All things
were together, unlimited both in amount and in smallness.”
δηλοῖ διὰ τοῦ πρώτου τῶν Φυσικῶν λέγων ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς· ὁμοῦ χρήματα
πάντα ἦν, ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα.
What does Anaxagoras mean in claiming that the opposites are unlim-
itedly large in amount as well as unlimitedly small? The sense in which
they are unlimitedly large is this: in the original cosmic mixture there is
an unlimited number of kinds of elements and an unlimited amount of
them, and the mixture itself is unlimited in extent. On the other hand,
understanding in which sense they are unlimitedly small has proven
very challenging to the interpreters since antiquity. There exist three
main lines of interpretation in the literature, which will be reviewed
and assessed in terms of their explanatory strengths and fit with the
extant texts in chapter 4. To briefly anticipate that discussion here,
interpreters are traditionally divided on whether the opposites are
present in the extreme mixture of everything in everything as very
small particles, or as very small proportions of each type of thing.16
These are respectively labeled in the literature the “Particulate” and the
14. We will return to the analysis of fragment B3 in chapter 4; and also to the
justification Anaxagoras gives for it, which will bring us to discuss the mutual influ-
ences between Anaxagoras and Zeno. Although the statement that there is no smallest
of the small only indicates the indefinite extension of the magnitude of the opposite
small, it is Anaxagoras’s use of this principle to derive ontological conclusions that is
very innovative, as we will see in c hapter 4.
15. On the difficulty of rendering πλῆθος in English, and the different views dif-
ferent scholars have taken, see Curd (2010: 34); I here follow her translation and the
general line of thinking.
16. Note that both interpretations presuppose that what is thoroughly mixed are
material parts—rather than the fundamental opposites. In this connection, recall the
discussion in chapter 1, sections 1.2 and 1.3.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
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and stuffs (such as wine, flesh, etc.), may be added and divided salva
qualitate, we may say. By contrast, individuals (for instance a human
being or a tree) may be divided in unlimitedly small parts, but unlim-
itedly small parts of an individual are not an individual of the same
kind as the one they are parts of. For instance, the limb of a human
being is not a human being.19 So Anaxagorean opposites are homoeo-
mers; for example, adding brightness to brightness, one gets more
brightness, and subtracting gives less of it. Does small added to small
make up small? Counterintuitive as it might seem, the answer is yes,
it does, because adding opposites intensifies their quality, so add-
ing small to small increases the smallness, making it smaller, and
so, small. By extension, if all opposites are homoeomers, then just
as any part of smallness is smallness, any part of heat will be heat,
and so forth. From the No Least-P and the way Anaxagoras uses it
to derive ontological conclusions, one can now draw two important
considerations. The first is that Anaxagoras’s universe is atomless,
because its building blocks, the instantiated opposites, are infinitely
partitioned into parts. The second consideration, which draws on the
discussion carried out in c hapter 1 as well as in this chapter, is that
in Anaxagoras’s universe power is bottomless. The parts of the end-
lessly divided opposites are like the whole of which they are parts. Any
part of the small is small. But since the opposites are causal powers,
it follows that powerfulness does not “give out” at any level of par-
titioning of a power. More on this in chapter 3. Before concluding
this section, let us turn to the other principle complementing the
No Least-P, which I called the No-Largest Principle, thus formulated:
experience. For example, one learns from experience that adding wine to wine in a
jug results in more wine, whereas adding an apple to an apple does not result in more
apple, but in two apples.
19. Also, the seeds may be divided in unlimitedly small parts, but unlimitedly
small parts of a seed are not seeds of the same kind, because seeds are primitively
structured bundles of opposites, as we will see in c hapter 5.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
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60
for instance, from B12 (to which we will return also in the next sec-
tion of this chapter). Clearly the movement of an opposite in space
determines its presence in specific locations in space, but the nature
of its presence requires more investigation, which will be postponed
to chapter 3.
20. We will see, in chapter 3 especially, that in fact the metaphysics underpinning
it is very sophisticated.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
Nothing else is like anything else, but each one is and was most
manifestly those things of which there are the most in it.
ἕτερον δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ὅμοιον οὐδενί, ἀλλ’ ὅτῳν πλεῖστα ἔνι, ταῦτα
ἐνδηλότατα ἓν ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ ἦν.
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Before there was separation off, because all things were together,
there was not even any colour evident; for the mixture of all
things prevented it.
πρὶν δὲ ἀποκριθῆναι [ταῦτα] πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ
ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία· ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις ἁπάντων χρημάτων.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
On this possible line of thinking one could take the state of the oppo-
sites in the cosmic mixture as a kind of zero-sum, where none of the
opposites “stands out” in comparison to the others. So if πλεῖστος
meant “of greatest intensity,” the intensity of the predominant oppo-
site in a bundle would be greater than its intensity in the primordial
cosmic mixture, which was such that it left the opposite “obscured,”
i.e., nonmanifest, in the mixture with all the other ones. In conclu-
sion, it is possible to develop a reading of P-P in terms of preponder-
ance in intensity, rather than quantity, of an opposite in the bundle.
This alternative is consistent with what Anaxagoras says elsewhere
concerning his metaphysical system. However, I take this reading as
less preferable to the quantitative preponderance one, which is also
consistent with Anaxagoras’s claims and is better grounded in the
extant texts.
We turn now to examine the significance of P-P within the larger
metaphysical picture we are canvassing on the basis of Anaxagoras’s
claims. There are two issues to be teased apart: one is the mechanism
of predominance, and the other is the outcome of predominance. By
the former I mean the question of how predominance comes about in
Anaxagoras’s system. We saw that according to P-P, if an opposite is
preponderant in relation to the other opposites in a bundle (or region
in space), it is most manifest there (recall ἐνδηλότατα in B12), i.e., it
is perceptually evident, and the bundle appears of a kind to us, e.g.,
hot, rough, yellow etc. That is, when an opposite is preponderant,
or when it comes to be preponderant in a bundle, it characterizes
the bundle, contributing to its profile of perceptible properties. Of
course an opposite can be preponderant in relation to other oppo-
sites without reaching the human perceptibility threshold—there
could imperceptible preponderance.23 Anaxagoras gives no indication
23. The perceptibility of the opposite does not itself settle the question just con-
sidered of whether what makes the opposite preponderant is the quantitative abun-
dance of the opposite or the higher intensity of the opposite over the others. Either
of these two cases could have a perceptibility threshold that would explain that an
opposite is considered preponderant if and only if perceptible.
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24. As Eric Lewis among others has noted (2000: 3, n. 7), P-P presupposes that
kinds have some sort of compositional plasticity, in the sense that there is no fixed
threshold the opposites have to reach for earth to be; predominance (modulo percep-
tion) over the other opposites is sufficient. The thought is exemplified by Schofield
thus: “Water for example is in essence nothing but stuff in which the dense, the wet,
the cold and the murky predominate—to a greater extent than they do in clouds, but
less than in earth or stones” (1980: 116, my emphasis).
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So it appears that a type of thing is present, earth, over and above the
opposites, because we perceive it there. Fragment B4b prima facie
challenges this thought, because it mentions that there was earth in
the primordial cosmic mixture and yet it was imperceptible, because
no features were discernible in the mixture:25
Because all things were together, there was not even any colour
evident; for the mixture of all things prevented it, of the wet and
the dry and of the hot and the cold and of the bright and the
dark, and there was much earth present and seeds unlimited in
number, in no way similar to one another. (My emphasis)
25. Even if earth come to be only in the second phase of the generation of the
cosmos (see section 1.1 in chapter 1), it is still mixed and imperceptible.
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26. I take earth to be just an arbitrary placeholder for any and every type of stuff.
27. Graham writes that “advocates of the Tannery-Burnet thesis need to turn P
[that is, my PP] into a qualitative, not a quantitative principle” (2004: 15–16).
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28. As we will see in c hapter 3, the shares exist primitively as unlimitedly small;
they are not the result of a process of division.
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T h e P r i n cip l e s G o v e r n i n g t h e O n t o l o g y
29. This is the reason why Anaxagoras does not face the paradox that Plato raised
in the Phaedo, of how the addition of the small could result in the thing becoming
smaller. In Plato’s words: “ ‘Well, suppose one of us going to have a part of the small.
The small will be larger than that part of it, since the part is a part of it: so the small
itself will be larger! And that to which the part subtracted is added will be smaller, not
larger, than it was before.’—‘That surely couldn’t happen,’ he said” (Ἀλλὰ τοῦ σμικροῦ
μέρος τις ἡμῶν ἕξει, τούτου δὲ αὐτοῦ τὸ σμικρὸν μεῖζον ἔσται ἅτε μέρους ἑαυτοῦ ὄντος,
καὶ οὕτω δὴ αὐτὸ τὸ σμικρὸν μεῖζον ἔσται· ᾧ δ’ ἂν προστεθῇ τὸ ἀφαιρεθέν, τοῦτο
σμικρότερον ἔσται ἀλλ’ οὐ μεῖζον ἢ πρίν. Οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο, φάναι, τοῦτό γε. Τίνα οὖν
τρόπον, εἰπεῖν (131d).
30. If they varied independently, there would be a double mereology in play in
Anaxagoras’s system—a mereology of the size of the shares of opposites, and a mere-
ology of the degrees of the shares of the opposites. As I have argued in this chapter,
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72
32. See Hippias Major, 300d7–301e5 and the relevant discussion in Scaltsas
(2016).
33. See Parmenides 130e–131a: “But tell me this: is it your view that, as you say,
there are certain forms from which these other things, by getting a share of them,
derive their names—as, for instance, they come to be like by getting a share of like-
ness, large by getting a share of largeness, and just and beautiful by getting a share of
justice and beauty?” “It certainly is,” Socrates replied.
34. See Phaedo 71a: “Then if something smaller comes to be, it will come from
something larger before, which became smaller? That is so, he said. And the weaker
comes to be from the stronger, and the swifter from the slower? Certainly. Further, if
something worse comes to be, does it not come from the better, and the juster from
the more unjust? Of course.”
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2.6. CLOSING REMARKS
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C hapter 3
1. With the addition of the seeds and nous, which are also powers; see chapter 5.
2. In c hapter 6 we will investigate the closest variant of this mereology in the his-
tory of metaphysics—that of the Stoics.
3. Equivalently, we could express this as a statement about the intensity of the
instances of the opposite.
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4. Such parts of powers, which are infinite in number, exist as necessarily coinstan-
tiated with each other, in an extreme mixture of everything with everything. Yet, as
we saw in c hapter 2, there can be different concentrations of them in different spatial
regions of the universe, giving rise to stuffs and organisms (which require seeds too).
5. That the unlimitedly many, unlimitedly small instances of each element add up
to an unlimitedly large element echoes, or at least matches, Zeno of Elea’s paradoxes,
where infinite divisibility is taken to add up to endless tasks.
6. The word “gunk” does not appear in Anaxagoras’s or any other ancient philo-
sophical texts, but this is no reason to think that we cannot use the expression, as
defined by David Lewis (1991: 20), as characterizing something whose proper parts
have proper parts. I will provide a definition of Anaxagorean gunk in section 3.2.
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
8. I here quote B3 and B8 in full for ease of reference for the reader:
B3: For in fact Anaxagoras says directly at the beginning of the book that [the
ingredients] were unlimited: “all things were together, unlimited both in amount
and in smallness” [b1], and that there is neither a smallest nor a largest among
the first principles: “Nor of the small is there a smallest, but always a smaller (for
what-is cannot not be)—but also of the large there is always a larger. And [the
large] is equal to the small in extent, but in relation to itself each thing is both
large and small.” For if everything is in everything and if everything is separated
off from everything, then from what seems to be the smallest something yet
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The things in the one kosmos have not been separated from one
another, nor hacked apart with an axe—neither the hot from the
cold nor the cold from the hot.
smaller than that will be separated off, and what seems to be the largest was
separated off from something larger than itself.
καὶ γὰρ ὅτι ἄπειρα ἦν, εὐθὺς ἀρχόμενος λέγει “ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν ἄπειρα καὶ
πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητα.” καὶ ὅτι οὔτε τὸ ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαῖς οὔτε τὸ
μέγιστον, οὔτε γὰρ τοῦ σμικροῦ, φησίν, ἐστὶ τό γε ἐλάχιστον, ἀλλ’ ἔλασσον ἀεί
(τὸ γὰρ ἐὸν οὐκ ἔστι τὸ μὴ οὐκ εἶναι),—ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῦ μεγάλου ἀεί ἐστι μεῖζον. καὶ
ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ σμικρῷ πλῆθος, πρὸς ἑαυτὸ δὲ ἕκαστόν ἐστι καὶ μέγα καὶ σμικρόν. εἰ
γὰρ πᾶν ἐν παντὶ καὶ πᾶν ἐκ παντὸς ἐκκρίνεται, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐλαχίστου δοκοῦντος
ἐκκριθήσεταί τι ἔλασσον ἐκείνου, καὶ τὸ μέγιστον δοκοῦν ἀπό τινος ἐξεκρίθη ἑαυτοῦ
μείζονος.
B8: When Anaxagoras says “nothing is dissociated or separated off one from
another” [B12] because all things are in all things, and elsewhere: “The things
in the one kosmos have not been separated from another, nor hacked apart with
an axe—neither the hot from the cold not the cold from the hot” (for there is
not anything pure by itself), this, Aristotle says, is stated without Anaxagoras’s
full knowledge of what it means; for it is not because everything is in everything
that the dissociation does not occur.
Εἰπόντος τοῦ Ἀναξαγόρου οὐδὲ διακρίνεται οὐδὲ ἀποκρίνεται ἕτερον ἀπὸ τοῦ
ἑτέρου διὰ τὸ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι, καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ οὐ κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων τὰ ἐν
τῷ ἑνὶ κόσμῳ οὐδὲ ἀποκέκοπται πελέκει οὔτε τὸ θερμὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ψυχροῦ οὔτε
τὸ ψυχρὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ θερμοῦ (οὐ γὰρ εἶναί τι εἱλικρινὲς καθ’ αὑτό), τοῦτο, φησίν,
οὐκ εἰδότως μὲν λέγεται· οὐ γὰρ διὰ τὸ πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν εἶναι συμβαίνει τὸ μὴ
διακρίνεσθαι. . .
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
Not of the small is there a smallest, but always a smaller (for what-is
cannot not be)—but also of the large there is always a larger.
9. Treating the opposite small as metaphysically analogous to, e.g., the property
hot or cold may be surprising to us but was not to the ancients; Plato posited Forms of
the Large, the Small, the Hot etc.
10. See also the helpful discussion of the textual issue concerning the clause “for
what-is cannot not be” in Curd (2010: 39–40).
11. See also section 2.3. in c hapter 2.
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12. But note that the necessary inseparability of all opposites is a stronger and
more general claim than this; this is about every instance of an opposite being insepa-
rable from its own opposite, the other is about every instance of an opposite being
inseparable from every instance of every opposite.
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have tried to use NoLeast-P along those lines. One strong reason for
thinking in this direction is Simplicius, who is our source for B8. He
notes that there is a difficulty in the argument, reporting Aristotle’s
objection to it:
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of earth, continuum dense tropes mixed with those, even if they are
not constitutive of the lump of earth, and continuum dense tropes
all around the tropes “in” the lump of earth. The reason why the
shares of the opposites populate everything so densely is NoLeast-
P. What the principle commits Anaxagoras to is a world where the
fundamental elements, the tropes, are unlimited in number and
unlimited in smallness, just as by analogy the constituent parts of an
unlimitedly divisible line are unlimited in number and unlimited in
smallness. As I understand Anaxagoras, he is saying that no instance
of an opposite can be separate by itself, for the same reasons for
which no point of a line can be separate by itself. The reason why a
point cannot be separate by itself is that between the point and what
it would be separate from, there is always a point.13 This is what it
is to be continuum dense—namely, that there is no next point from
which a point can be separate. The same goes analogously in the case
of tropes: that they are continuum dense means that there is always
a trope between two tropes.
One further argument can be made, more Anaxagorean in spirit,
by way of explication and justification of Anaxagoras’s position in B6,
that “since it is not possible that there is a least, it would not be pos-
sible that [anything] be separated nor come to be by itself.” Every
instance of an opposite is many instances of that opposite, because it
always has proper parts that are instances of that opposite. Since the
division is unlimited, every dividee is divisible and divided. Hence,
there can be no atomic tropes: any instantiated trope is coinstanti-
ated with further tropes of the same kind—its parts.
Recall, in connection with both arguments in this subsection, that
the fundamental elements are such that their instances have no small-
est part, as we saw in c hapter 2. Anaxagoras’s example is the oppo-
site small: “Nor of the small is there a smallest, but always a smaller”
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
(B3); but the view generalizes to all opposites, as we know from B1.14
Each opposite is equal to every other opposite in total amount (being
unlimitedly large (B1)) and in the smallness of its shares or instances,
which are unlimitedly small (B1) and the same in number with the
shares of every other opposite (B6). Anaxagoras, who likes to make
paradoxical or at least surprising statements, emphasizes that “the
small, too, was unlimited” (B1) and equal to the large (B3).15 Thus,
I submit that it is the numerosity of the opposites that makes it to
be the case that they are inseparable, as Anaxagoras suggests (with-
out explicitly articulating an argument), for instance in B6, where we
read, in relation to the example of the opposites large and small:
Since the shares of the large and the small are equal in number, in
this way too, all things will be in everything; nor is it possible that
[anything] be separate, but all things have a share of everything.
καὶ ὅτε δὲ ἴσαι μοῖραί εἰσι τοῦ τε μεγάλου καὶ τοῦ σμικροῦ πλῆθος,
καὶ οὕτως ἂν εἴη ἐν παντὶ πάντα· οὐδὲ χωρὶς ἔστιν εἶναι, ἀλλὰ
πάντα παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει.
From what we know from the extant texts, there is no principle by which
to allot shares of opposites to any one thing that one might want to
separate away from the rest (for instance, a lump of earth from the rest
of the mixture). Thus complete separation of the tropes is not possible.
All opposites are unlimited in smallness, unlimited in numerical and
in total amounts, inseparable from one another, and compresent with
one another—and it is in this sense they are all together in everything.
In conclusion, in this section we saw that NoLeast-P underpins the
extreme mixture of all opposites. In the extant texts Anaxagoras does
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3.2. POWER GUNK
16. In the case of a line segment, the points into which it is infinitely divisible
are extensionless; points have no extension in any dimension. It is usually taken to
follow, and is here assumed, that points are simple, and do not have parts. Under
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
this conception, points are the atoms of the line segment, and the line segment is not
gunky. One might on the other hand think of a line segment as not being divisible into
extensionless points, but only into smaller and smaller segments ad infinitum. In that
case, the line segment is gunky. Similarly, if a surface has line or point atoms, it is divis-
ible into lines or points, which are its atoms. If a surface is gunky, if it is divisible into
smaller and smaller surfaces, all of which have surfaces as proper parts.
17. Even when the thought that Anaxagoras might have been an ante litteram
gunk lover was aired in the past, by Theodore Sider (1993) and Hud Hudson (2007),
crucially this was with no supporting argument or textual analysis.
85
86
18. In the case of Anaxagoras’s properties, i.e., the opposites, every proper part of
an instantiated property is an instance of that property. This is so because his proper-
ties are homoeomers, where every part is of the same kind as the whole. But nonho-
moeomeric properties can also be gunky.
19. Anaxagoras assumes directly thoroughly divided elements in the universe,
without positing that any supertask has been performed. On the other hand, modern
metaphysicians when discussing actual gunk describe it as the result of the supertask
of chopping something up, to facilitate our “visualization” of it.
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
opposites are such that their parts are uniform (or homoeomers, to
use Aristotle’s term), i.e. the same in kind as the whole of which they
are parts. For instance, the parts of an instance of, e.g., the hot are
also instances of the hot; and the parts of an instance of the small are
also small (as Anaxagoras reiterates when he formulates NoLeast-P).
This means that the division leaves their nature “intact”—which is
needed to preserve their powerfulness at any level of division.
A final remark before concluding this section. The overall inter-
pretation of Anaxagoras’s extreme mixture in terms of gunk that
I develop in this chapter does not depend on giving the opposites
the particular status in Anaxagoras’s ontology of ultimate building
blocks to which stuffs is reducible. As we saw in c hapter 1, there is a
line of interpretation of Anaxagoras’s ontology that considers stuffs
irreducible and real, rather than derivative and reducible. On this
alternative view stuffs such as blood or gold are not composed out
of the opposites, but are primitive. I will briefly sketch now how my
interpretation can be equally developed on the alternative view, tak-
ing Graham (2004) as its representative. Let us assume per hypothe-
sis that Anaxagoras’s ontology is built on fundamental opposites and
fundamental stuff, instead of opposites only.20 The qualitative gunk
interpretation I am developing in this chapter would then apply to
this ontology as follows. The various kinds of opposites and kinds of
stuff exist in the primordial mixture as gunky, divided into parts of
unlimited smallness. The vortex started by nous moves them around
in the mixture generating preponderances such as of milk, of gold,
of flesh, etc. These preponderances are phenomenally perceptible as
such, i.e., as milk or gold or flesh, etc. Preponderances of the oppo-
sites in the same regions of space result in such stuff being hot, or
cold, or dry, etc. Ceteris paribus, an ontology of only opposites as
fundamental is more economical, as Graham too, for instance, recog-
nizes (2004: 7); and as I argued, I find it a preferable interpretation.
In the following sections I will argue that it is the gunky nature of the
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3.3. DIVIDED GUNK
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
like atoms, which is incompatible with the hypothesis that the oppo-
sites are actually gunky.22 Perhaps thorough division destroys what is
divided? Alexander of Aphrodisias already entertained this thought
and the difficulties associated with it:
22. T. Sider, for example, comments on the difference thus: “A line segment is
infinitely divisible, and yet has atomic parts: the points. A hunk of gunk does not even
have atomic parts ‘at infinity’ ” (1993: 286).
89
90
23. For anything small, there can be something smaller. So division does not lead
to “extinction” of the divided item. Some commentators have read in this position
of Anaxagoras a denial of Zeno’s conclusions about complete divisibility ending into
nothingness. There are also those who doubt or positively argue against this conclu-
sion. Curd (2010: 39), for instance, raises doubts on whether the conclusion is war-
ranted. On the one hand Anaxagoras only states NoLeast-P; he does not argue in
any open critical engagement with Zeno. On the other hand Curd notes that Zeno is
concerned only with extinction of being just by division, while Anaxagoras is stating
that being is not extinguishable in any way. See also the appendix to chapter 4.
24. Aleph-1 is the cardinality of the actually divided gunk, as Hawthorne and
Weatherson argue (2004: 340).
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
of the mixture, no matter how small, contains parts of all its constitu-
ents. How, then, can Anaxagoras’s opposites be so colocated? Recall
that in section 3.3 we established that the status of divided gunk that
Anaxagoras’s opposites exist in means that their shares approximate
nonextension. This is what allows them to overlap with each other in
the same location, and thus be colocated.25 We saw in section 3.1 that
Anaxagoras states in B6,
25. The convergent colocation of the mixants does not entail that the mixants
share parts.
26. In c hapter 6 I will argue for the claim that actual gunk underpins, with signifi-
cant differences, the Stoic stance that bodies exist as thoroughly mixed. That another
group of ancient thinkers put actual gunk thus to use is in a way surprising, but it also
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3.5. THE GRIND MODEL
adds plausibility to the claims I make about Anaxagoras. Actual gunk was a view that
the ancient could entertain.
27. Thus, for instance, Wilbur Knorr: “The interaction of philosophy and math-
ematics is seldom revealed so clearly as in the study of the infinite among the ancient
Greeks. The dialectical puzzles of the fifth-century Eleatics, sharpened by Plato and
Aristotle in the fourth century, are complemented by the invention of precise methods
of limits, as applied by Eudoxus in the fourth century and Euclid and Archimedes in
the third” (1982: 112).
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
mine. It was put forward by Richard Sorabji (1988). I call it the Grind
model, borrowing the expression from Eric Lewis (2000: 6). Sorabji
holds a distinctive reading of EE-P and its metaphysical conse-
quences. As I do, Sorabji focuses on the compresence of Anaxagoras’s
fundamental entities. He writes that
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94
The grind model … comes in two types. [Lewis calls the two ver-
sions the particulate-juxtaposition model and the particulate-
coextensive model]. Either the infinitesimally sized particles are
juxtaposed, or they are completely coextensive. Given the first
option [which is Sorabji’s], we do not strictly have everything
found at every location within a compound thing, only within a
positively sized region. (2000: 12–13)
28. Curd (2010: 183), for instance, groups Sorabji with those holding a particulate
interpretation.
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
The Stoic Blend model that Lewis examines is that of liquids that
are assumed to be (nonatomic and) homogenous. They are blended
together so that “all of the blended ingredients are present at every
location in the blend” (2000: 3). Have we here found one and pos-
sibly even two solutions for Anaxagoras’s extreme mixture puzzle?
I submit the answer is no: neither Sorabji’s Grind model or the
Stoic Blend model as understood by Lewis delivers colocation. The
reason can be more clearly brought out starting from the Blend
model. On this model, two constituents can occupy the same vol-
ume by “being spread throughout the mixture at a lower density,”
as Sorabji notes (1988: 63). I cannot see, however, how a blend of
nonatomic homogenous liquids could spread through a mixture at
lower densities.29 The volume of the blend of two liquids is equal
to the sum of the volumes each liquid occupies on its own. It does
not seem right to call on a model to help us understand a physi-
cal scenario, while requiring the model to behave in ways that do
not comply with its physics. If on the other hand the volume of
the blended liquids is the sum of the volume of the liquids that
were mixed, then it cannot be that the liquids are colocated—
rather, they are juxtaposed. The same problem arises for the Grind
model, if the infinitesimal particles are not sizeless, like points,
but have size. They will not be colocated, but juxtaposed. (I will
offer more sustained arguments in c hapter 4 against the plausibil-
ity of explaining Anaxagoras’s theory of extreme mixture in terms
of juxtaposition.)
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96
96
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
33. B4b: “Before there was separation off, because all things were together, there
was not even any colour evident; for the mixture of all things prevented it, of the
wet and the dry and of the hot and the cold and of the bright and the dark” (πρὶν δὲ
ἀποκριθῆναι [ταῦτα] πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία· ἀπεκώλυε
γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις ἁπάντων χρημάτων, τοῦ τε διεροῦ καὶ τοῦ ξηροῦ καὶ τοῦ θερμοῦ καὶ τοῦ
ψυχροῦ καὶ τοῦ λαμπροῦ καὶ τοῦ ζοφεροῦ, καὶ γῆς πολλῆς ἐνεούσης καὶ σπερμάτων
ἀπείρων πλῆθος οὐδὲν ἐοικότων ἀλλήλοις).
34. This, for Anaxagoras, increases the perceptibility of the opposite in that
region. As we saw in c hapter 2, it is not clear exactly how increased density makes
an opposite more perceptible—by the increased amount of the opposite, or by the
increased degree of intensity of the opposite (or both, which is the view I favor). Both
readings could be supported textually. But what makes crucial difference for our dis-
cussion here, as we will presently see, is that both the amount and the intensity read-
ings require higher density of the opposite in the region.
35. There is some discussion in the literature concerning how early the distinction
between aleph-0 and aleph-1 infinities was made, and in particular concerning the
evidence as to whether Democritus (who was younger than Anaxagoras) distinguished
between the two types of infinity. See Vita (1984).
36. See Oswald Riemenschneider (2007).
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98
37. As a one-meter line and a two-meter line have the same number of parts, aleph-1,
similarly opposites of different extent divide into the same number of parts. Chrysippus,
for instance, already noted in antiquity that a quantity of substance could be spread
through a much greater area by blending with another than it could be spread on its own.
For example, a drop of wine could blend with the entire sea (Long and Sedley 1987: 48B).
Daniel Nolan says in relation to Stoic blending of unequal quantities of mixants:
One interesting thing about this gunky construal of blending is that no conclu-
sions about the volume of the blend follow simply from the assumption that a
blend is created such that, for one infinite division … every one of those parts
of the blend contain parts of the blended substances. (2006: 176)
I present my account for this Stoic view in section 6.1 of chapter 6.
38. Waves like Anaxagoras’s opposites can be gunky. A gunky wave can be thought
of as the distribution of values through gunky space.
39. This can be a possible world that has different physical laws from our
actual world.
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
40. In such a world there would be gunky sources of waves (of different kinds).
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100
3.7. CLOSING REMARKS
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
101
102
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A T h e o r y o f Ex t r e m e Mix t u r e
us. But the atomicity of powers (that is, their internal simplicity and
indivisibility) is a crucial assumption that research in power metaphys-
ics has not examined so far—and yet Anaxagoras did! Anaxagoras did
not have all the answers to the questions that his own ontology raises.
In fact, we have even fewer of his answers, due to the fact that only
fragments of his work remain. But the originality of his thought, and
the uniqueness of his ontology in the history of philosophy, make the
questions it raises worth exploring and pursuing today. Drawing on
Anaxagoras’s insights, this chapter has offered a sketch of what a quali-
tative gunk ontology looks like by exploring what motives it and high-
lighting the differences of qualitative gunk from material gunk. The
following chapter is a critical review of the existing alternative inter-
pretations of Anaxagoras’s theory of extreme mixture which will bring
out from a different angle the merits of the one offered in this chapter.
103
104
104
105
C hapter 4
Compresence versus
Containment of the Opposites
105
106
2. As others have also noted, Anaxagoras does not mention either particles or
proportion anywhere in the extant text; but this is not the only, or even main, textual
difficulty affecting these interpretations.
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
In this and the following section of the present chapter I will review
the Proportionate and Particulate interpretations, in turn. The
Proportionate interpretation, in essence, takes every constituted
thing in Anaxagoras’s world to contain portions of everything else,
where the portions are not present in each thing as distinct parts
(or particles)—rather, they are present as proportions of kinds in a
mixture.3 On this interpretation, Anaxagoras is using small and large
to indicate the quantitative proportion of an item within the local or
global mixture in which it is present. For instance, “The ‘smallness’
of, say, gold [in the global mixture] consists not in its being divided
into minute particles, but rather in the simple fact that there is very
little gold in the world” (thus Barnes 1982 [vol. 1, revised]: 23). It
follows on this reading that when in B1 things are said to be “not
visible ‘on account of smallness’ it means something like ‘on account
of the small proportion of most substances relative to the propor-
tions of air and aether in the total mixture’; whereas ‘unlimited in
smallness’ means something like ‘without limit on how small they
[the substances] may be divided up’ ” (thus Schofield 1980: 77).4 The
last explanatory remark made by Schofield amounts to the claim
3. There exist many formulations of this interpretation in the literature; for
instance, Schofield describes the Proportionate interpretation thus: “The ingredient
portions of every sort of thing which are contained in each object or stretch of stuff of
a given kind need not themselves take the form of parts individuated in the same gen-
eral fashion as objects or stretches, nor need they be distributed among such parts …
they are to be thought of simply as proportions” (1980: 75).
4. By “substances” Schofield means the opposites. On the use of the term “sub-
stance” in relation to Anaxagoras, I share Curd’s concern voiced in (2010: 158, n. 11).
107
108
108
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
these two main difficulties, and also on account of the absence of any
explicit supportive textual evidence. We turn next to investigate the
prospects of the Particulate interpretation.
109
110
6. The remainder piece will be a proper part of the original S piece, according to
the weak Supplementation Principle of mereology (see, e.g., Simons 1987; Casati and
Varzi 1999).
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
111
112
Hussey’s point is that if shares of each kind of stuff were within every
share of every kind of stuff, the resulting configuration would lead to
such a degree of structural complexity that, he concludes, we would
lose track of the very notion of “contained unit.” If to this we add
Anaxagoras’s proviso that each kind is unlimitedly small, with each
unlimitedly small part containing a proper part of every kind of oppo-
site, then the structure defies representation: each of the infinitely
112
113
C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
4.3. THE LIQUIDS MODEL
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114
The ingredients are like pastes or liquids; they are all mixed or
smeared together such that all the ingredients are in every pos-
sible place in some concentration or other. Even though every-
thing is unlimitedly small, and the mixture a thorough one, the
mix need not be uniform; the concentrations of the various
ingredients can vary in density or intensity in different places,
but all of them have some non-zero density at every place… . We
should think of the basic things as like liquids or pastes that flow
together and occupy the same volume of space. (2010: 181, 184)
Note that liquids do not mix like salt and pepper, or like salt and
water, or water and wine. Rightly, Curd is not appealing to the special
way that we know liquids mix—which Anaxagoras would not have
known—by dissolving one another’s molecular bonds. Anaxagoras’s
fundamental elements cannot change one another, and they do not
change, apart from their location. Rather, Curd finds in liquids a
familiar example of how masses mix, which allows that the ingredi-
ents in the mix retain their own individuality (so they are not in the
mixture only as potential entities), and yet that they can occupy the
same space (so Barnes’s Saturation Argument does not apply here).
So on Curd’s interpretation, what is it to be unlimitedly small, when
recast in terms of masses? If their unlimited smallness facilitates the
thoroughness of the mixture (as we know from Anaxagoras’s line of
10. As we will see in chapter 6, the Stoics give water and wine as one of their
examples of colocation.
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
11. B6: “Since it is not possible that there is a least, it would not be possible that
anything be separated, not come to be by itself, but just as in the beginning, now too
all things are together” (ὅτε τοὐλάχιστον μὴ ἔστιν εἲναι, οὐκ ἂν δύναιτο χωρισθῆναι,
οὐδ᾽ἂν ἐφ᾽ἑαυτοῦ γενέσθαι, ἀλλ᾽ὅπωσπερ ἀρχὴν εἶναι καὶ νῦν πάντα ὁμοῦ).
12. Curd adds that her interpretation is close to Inwood’s, who defines “smallness”
as “the characteristic of being mixed and so not distinguishable from other stuffs”
(1986: 22). See also Curd (2010: 187): “I am not suggesting that by ‘large’ and ‘small’
Anaxagoras means ‘emergent’ or ‘submerged.’ … Rather, in certain cases we should
understand that what it is for something to be small just is for it to be of such density
115
116
116
117
C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
which the oil is submerged. The oil is not in the mixture in very small
droplets, or bits, or pieces, as we know from Curd (quoted above).14
Extrapolating from Curd’s pastes simile (2010: 181), we could per-
haps think of the liquids as being in the mixture as malleable bodies.
The problem is that the differences in the oil and the water cannot
be that here the oil is more dense than there, since liquids or pastes
cannot vary in their densities in the proposed model; a mixture can
contain more or less of one of them, but it would accordingly displace
another liquid or paste. So the submergence of an ingredient could
not be achieved by reducing its density in the mix.
I admit that I find it difficult to put together all the metaphori-
cal descriptions of the Liquids interpretation given by Curd into an
account that accommodates Anaxagoras’s claims about the ingre-
dients in the mixture. I also find it difficult to understand how the
liquids can supposedly occupy the same volume of space in the mix-
ture. We need to bear in mind that they do not dissolve one another,
because then they would exist only potentially in the mixture.
Similarly, pastes (that do not dissolve each other, thereby remain-
ing only potentially in the mixture) do not occupy the same volume
of space. Typically, when pastes or liquids get mixed together, they
come to occupy together a volume that is the sum of the volumes that
each of them occupied separately. If the pastes do not dissolve each
other, then when mixed they must displace one another (rather than
occupy the same space), and end up being juxtaposed (even if not
in the same way as salt and pepper, because we are thinking here in
terms of masses). In sum, I cannot see how one can derive the coloca-
tion of ingredients in the mixture through the Liquids interpretation.
A further difficulty I find with the Liquids interpretation is in
its understanding of Anaxagoras’s claim in B1. Given Curd’s pro-
posed understanding of “small,” it follows that she would explain
Anaxagoras’s claim that in the original mixtures all things were
14. Strictly, Curd does not say that they are not in droplets, etc., but that by
“small,” Anaxagoras does not mean the size of droplets, etc.
117
118
[1] ὁμοῦ πάντα χρήματα ἦν, ἄπειρα καὶ πλῆθος καὶ σμικρότητακαὶ
γὰρ τὸ σμικρὸν ἄπειρον ἦν. [2] καὶ πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲν
ἔνδηλον ἦν ὑπὸ σμικρότητος
Claim [2]says that the ingredients are small and hence not evident.
But claim [1] says that the ingredients are unlimitedly small, not qua
nonevident, but because there is no limit to smallness. I submit that
it is difficult to explain claim [1] on the submergence interpretation,
because Anaxagoras explicitly holds in claim [2] that the smallness
of the ingredients is sufficient for their nonevidence. So one has to
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
My watch chain is “most plainly” gold if, and only if, my watch
chain contains more pure gold than anything else it contains.
But, if [on account of EE-P] there is no such thing as pure gold,
my watch chain will not contain more of that than anything else,
there being no such thing as that. (2002: 1)
Note that Matthews does not assume that it is part of the nature of
each ingredient of the mixture to contain other stuff as part of its con-
stitution, as it was assumed in the Containment Regress argument
in section 4.2. Rather, on Matthews’s reading, other kinds of stuff
are mixed, as impurities, with each kind of stuff. On this assumption,
Matthews proposes that we can, in Anaxagoras’s system, form the
conception of a pure kind of stuff from the recognition that impure
stuff can be purified, even if not completely, at least approximately.
Thus, although it will never be the case that we will reach pure, e.g.,
gold, there can be purer and purer gold—refined gold. For example,
15. I am not here concerned with settling who was the first to put forward the
mass logic approach to Anaxagoras’s ontology; it is interesting to note that Curd does
not engage with Matthews’s views although her translation (2007) follows the publica-
tion of Matthews’s articles.
119
120
16. Matthews’s proposal is also compatible with either the particulate or the pro-
portionate model of explanation of the mixture. My discussion of his position here will
not address either of these two versions one could develop of Matthews’s arguments,
since both the particulate and the proportionate interpretations have been found
problematic in the scholarly literature, as reviewed in sections 4.1 and 4.2 above.
17. This is of course only an analogy, since points are not parts of a line; the
important aspect of the analogy is the numerosity of the points, rather than their
ontological status.
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
if a mixture of r and g is like the overlap of a red and a green line, the
notion of refining the red line by filtering most of the green points out
of it would not be applicable—there would always remain as many
green points in it as we started with. Explaining the preponderance
of elements in a mixture in view of their unlimited smallness may
be more Anaxagoras’s problem than Matthews’s, but it follows that,
given the unlimited smallness of the mixants, Matthews’s recursive
refinement cannot explain the preponderance of Anaxagorean (con-
tinuum dense) mixants.
121
122
Separation does not make what they are separated from less, since
it is unlimited, or make their totality less, since the totality remains
the same. Importantly, increasing their number by the separation
does not make them more, since the total amount remains the same.
122
123
C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
123
124
Each one is always equal to itself, being neither less nor greater
than it is. It is better to see this as repeating the main point of
fragment 3, that each χρῆμα has equal bigness and smallness,
rather than to take it as merely saying tautologically that there
are as many kinds of χρηματα as there are. (1986: 30–31)
124
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
4.5. CLOSING REMARKS
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126
126
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C o m p r e s e n c e v e r s u s C o n t ai n m e n t o f t h e Opp o s i t e s
If there are many things, entities are unlimited; for there are always
other entities between entities, and again others between those.
And thus entities are unlimited.20
εἰ πολλά ἐστιν, ἄπειρα τὰ ὄντα ἐστίν· ἀεὶ γὰρ ἕτερα μεταξὺ τῶν ὄντων
ἐστί, καὶ πάλιν ἐκείνων ἕτερα μεταξύ. καὶ οὕτως ἄπειρα τὰ ὄντα ἐστί.
19. There is evidence that Anaxagoras had an even more sophisticated under-
standing of the infinite than Zeno, insofar as Zeno believed, but Anaxagoras rightly did
not believe, that if the many things are just as many as they are, they are finitely many.
Many things can be just as many as they are and be infinitely many, since being infi-
nitely many is not the outcome of change, e.g., of increase in number, as Zeno thought.
See, for instance, Palmer (2009: 245–46). For more on the issue of Anaxagoras’s dates
as such see Mansfeld (1990).
20. Fragment 3, in Palmer’s (2009) translation.
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128
It is here not possible to pay justice to the argument as such and the impor-
tant scholarly discussion that centers on it. Palmer (2009: 243 ff.) suggests
that Anaxagoras was influenced by this Zenonean argument, and thinks it
makes sense to suppose that Anaxagoras would have conceived of EE-P in
terms of a containment relation among elements, precisely in reply to Zeno’s
argument. Palmer explains, in support of this interpretation, that if each
element contained parts of every element, this would avoid commitment to
the separateness and distinctness of each element from the others. If the
elements are neither separate nor distinct from one another, they are not
vulnerable to the Zenonean regress above, because they are not many; hence,
there are no in “between” entities, since the elements are not separate and
distinct. By contrast, on my interpretation of Anaxagoras, his physical sys-
tem can resist the Zenonean regress on account of the compresence of the
elements, rather than on account of their mutual containment.
In thinking about whether the containment or the compresence inter-
pretation avoids the Zenonean regress, my concern is with the density of
the continuum. One can distinguish a point, and individuate it, as we do in
mathematics, but can the point be separate from other points? I gave reasons
to doubt that it can (in section 3.1.2). One can think of a part that is distinct
and separate in a whole, e.g., a student in a class; and an entity can be distinct
and separate from another entity it overlaps with; e.g., the neutrinos that go
through us all the time are distinct from us, even while they momentarily
overlap with us. But in neither case is there an assumption of continuum
density. Zeno’s argument does not explicitly specify either distinctness or
separateness, but only the multitude of the entities. Furthermore, there is
no conclusive historical and/or textual evidence that Anaxagoras was devel-
oping his ontology as an answer to Zeno’s argument from multitude quoted
above. It suffices to note here that even if Anaxagoras was responding to
Zeno’s argument from multitude with his cosmic mixture of elements, we
have found no reason to assume that this led him to favor the containment
over the compresence interpretation, or even vice versa.
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129
130
3. This is a conception that we find in Plato, and frequently after Plato, but not
in Anaxagoras.
4. Sedley writes: “Nous is a farmer. Its creation of worlds is its way of setting up
environments which will enable seeds to germinate, with plant and animal life the
outcome” (2007: 23).
5. We saw in chapter 1 that the opposites are a secondary or local source of power
in the universe; we see them in action, for instance, in B16, where the cold is said to
compact earth into stones. They could be thought of as being the sources of physical
necessity in Anaxagoras’s system.
6. Individual organisms are even able even to procreate other individuals of the
same species; this feature adds further complexity to the way they are structured.
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7. For even the primordial mixture, which includes all opposites, is not character-
ized by any of the opposites, due to their equipotent mixture. For instance, in B4b we
read, “Before there was separation off, because all things were together, there was not
even any colour evident; for the mixture of all things prevented it, of the wet and the
dry” (πρὶν δὲ ἀποκριθῆναι [ταῦτα] πάντων ὁμοῦ ἐόντων οὐδὲ χροιὴ ἔνδηλος ἦν οὐδεμία·
ἀπεκώλυε γὰρ ἡ σύμμιξις πάντων χρημάτων, τοῦ τε διεροῦ καὶ τοῦ ξηροῦ).
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132
8. If the features that characterize Nous were of the same type, being mixed with
them would bring all other opposites into the constitution of nous because of the
inseparability of opposites; thus Anaxagoras holds in B12 that nous cannot be mixed
with anything, for reasons that we will examine below.
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9. B14: “Nous, which always is, most assuredly is even now where all the other
things also are, in the surrounding multitude, and in the things that were joined
together and in the things that have been separated off.” I will return to a detailed
discussion of this passage in section 5.2.
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134
The other things have a share of everything, but Nous … has been
mixed with no thing, but is alone itself by itself. For if it were not
by itself but had been mixed with anything else, then it would
partake of all things, if it had been mixed with anything …;
and the things mixed together with it would thwart it, so that it
would control none of the things in the way that it in fact does,
being alone by itself.
10. On Anaxagoras’s account of perception, to which I cannot pay full justice here,
see among others Warren (2007a) and Curd (2010: 225–29).
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11. If being different in nature is what allows nous to know and control everything
else, one might think that this condition prevents nous on the one hand from knowing
itself and being self-ruling (see B12); and on the other from knowing and control-
ling animate beings where small portions of nous are present (B12). These would be
undesirable consequences for Anaxagoras. These difficulties however arise only if we
presuppose that the way nous causally interacts with itself is the same as the way it
interacts with the opposites, through the vortex. We have no reason, and it is in fact
implausible, to think that this is the case. As Sedley emphasizes, nous cannot be taken
to be on a par with other kinds of physical stuffs for Anaxagoras:
To call intelligence [nous] unmixed is his [Anaxagoras’s] way of saying that it is
free of physical properties. Anaxagoras is never reported as distinguishing mind
or intelligence from body as the “incorporeal” from the corporeal, and indeed
he betrays just the opposite assumption when he calls the nous “the finest and
purest of all things,” and when, later in B12, he speaks of it in quantitative terms
(“nous is all alike, both the larger and the smaller”). He thus treats it as if it were
a physical stuff, albeit a very special one. (2007: 12)
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136
12. The conception of the pure nature of nous, unmixed with any of the opposites,
enabling it (as a necessary condition) to control everything suggests a physical power
whose characterlessness empowers it.
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137
138
Nous, which always is, most assuredly is even now where all the
other things also are, in the surrounding multitude, and in the
things that were joined together and in the things that have been
separated off.
ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστί, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα
πάντα, ἐν τῷ πολλῷ περιέχοντι καὶ ἐν τοῖς προσκριθεῖσι καὶ ἐν
τοῖς ἀποκεκριμένοις.
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over all things that have soul?14 Clearly, the control nous has over
things with soul is of a different kind than the control it has over
everything else. In fact, it must be not only of a different kind, but
also additional to the control it has over everything. But we are not
told anything more on the nature of this control in the extant texts.15
In conclusion, the extant evidence indicates that Anaxagoras
thinks that physical considerations are at play in the operations of
nous in nature. Yet what is missing is a mechanism for such opera-
tions. It may be that the “mechanics” of thinking, deciding, or
carrying out decisions was not something that Anaxagoras, or phi-
losophers of his time (prior to Aristotle), conceived as a metaphysical
problem to address. Yet, interestingly, it seems to be the case that for
Anaxagoras there are changes taking place in nous. For instance, when
nous “began to move” things, and “moved” things (B13); when nous
started the vortex (B12); or when nous “set [things] in order” (B12);
and nous “has control” over animate things (B12).16 What is it that
happens when these changes occur in nous? In view of Anaxagoras’s
general stance regarding change, we would not expect any change in
nous to be qualitative, but only perhaps a change involving move-
ment. Such movement could not have been caused by anything other
than nous itself in his ontology, since Anaxagoras describes nous as
“self-ruling” (B12). We can therefore conclude that the mechanism of
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140
In section 5.1 I reconstructed from the extant texts the reason why
Anaxagoras might have held that a precondition for nous’s being
powerful is that its nature is the most rarefied and pure. In this and
the following sections I will turn to examining what nous has the
power to do, looking first at its cosmic powers and then at its cog-
nitive powers. As I examine nous’s cosmic power, I will investigate
its nature, the conditions for its exercise, how it gets exercised, and
whether Anaxagoras’s system has built into it any kind of teleology
or not. Nous is the generator of spatial movement in the universe, as
Simplicius, for instance, reports Anaxagoras claiming in B13: “Nous
is the cause of motion” (τῆς δὲ κινήσεως αἴτιον εἶναι τὸν νοῦν). This
generic causal statement can be clarified and qualified in the light
of a pattern that emerges from Anaxagoras’s extant texts. When he
explains the role and impact of the cosmic vortex nous generates in
nature, he uses the verb ποεῖν (make, cause) to refer to its operation.
Thus he says: “The revolution caused [ἐποίησεν] them [sc. things]
to separate off” (B12); and “the revolution made [ἐποίει] them [sc.
things] dissociate much more” (B13). Additionally, Anaxagoras talks
in other places of the role and impact of nous in nature in terms of
κρατεῖν (control). He writes, “Nous has control [νοῦς κρατεῖ] over all
things” and “Nous controlled [νοῦς ἐκράτησεν] the whole revolution”
(B12).17 Notable also is Anaxagoras’s use of the verb διακοσμεῖν in
17. I acknowledge that at one point in B13 Anaxagoras uses a more evidently
physical verb, and says “whatever Nous moved (ἐκίνησεν),” where movement is to be
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B12: “All these [sc. things] Nous set in order.”18 These textual obser-
vations suggest that Anaxagoras conceived of nous’s causal action on
the universe in anthropomorphic terms—doing, or making things
happen, ruling over them, as a human being would, and not as (or,
not only as) a purely physical cause would. Purely physical causes give
shape, not order. Anaxagoras writes that
ὁποῖα ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι καὶ ὁποῖα ἦν ἃσσα νῦν μή ἐστι, καὶ ὅσα νῦν
ἐστι καὶ ὁποῖα ἔσται, πάντα διεκόσμησε νοῦς, καὶ τὴν περιχώρησιν
ταύτην, ἣν νῦν περιχωρέει τά τε ἄστρα καὶ ὁ ἥλιος καὶ ἡ σελήνη
καὶ ὁ ἀὴρ καὶ ὁ αἰθὴρ οἱ ἀποκρινόμενοι. ἡ δὲ περιχώρησις αὕτη
ἐποίησεν ἀποκρίνεσθαι.
understood as the effect of the nous’s control over things. But this is one occurrence
only in all the extant texts.
18. διακόσμησις indicates the orderly (and beautiful) arrangement of the uni-
verse, especially in the Pythagorean system. See also Hussey (1972: 18) on the use of
the term κόσμος in early Greek philosophy.
19. Even if there are cases attested—in the Hippocratic corpus, for instance—
where the verb κρατεῖν is used to refer to merely physical operations, e.g., to refer to
how an organism assimilates food, there is an overwhelming frequency of uses of it to
refer to human action. Against my considerations, one might want to stress that the
adjectives such as “finest,” “pure,” and “unmixed,” with which Anaxagoras character-
izes nous, refer to physical properties and thus suggest that nous is a physical entity
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142
So far one might nevertheless retain the suspicion that this emer-
gence of life is, as such, a mere accident of the cosmic arrange-
ment, not necessarily an integral part of the intelligence’s plans.
This suspicion will not however survive the following consider-
ation… . There seems absolutely no reason why accident alone
should have ensured that each world [of the ones Anaxagoras
mentions] had precisely one [sun and one moon]. (2007: 21–22)
and acts causally as such. This reading however would require imposing an impover-
ished interpretation on Anaxagoras’s claim that nous sets order in the universe.
20. Nous does not create seeds and opposites out of nothing—they are already
there in the primordial mixture; but by setting them in motion via the vortex, nous
does cause local preponderance of the opposites and thus “create” stuffs and individu-
als. By placing emphasis on the anthropomorphic ways of operation nous has, I simply
want to stress that it is an intelligent causal power, as I will argue in this section of
the present chapter. On this point too I find myself in agreement with Sedley, who
writes that “when intelligence decided to set up a cosmic rotation, the vortex began to
separate the pairs of opposites, so that some regions had more hot than cold and vice
versa… . It is from this intelligently generated set of imbalances that familiar stuffs like
earth and water have been formed” (2007: 9, my emphasis).
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nous’s cosmic plan was for the sake of an end that had value, since he
tells us in B12 that the generation of the universe resulted from the
order that nous sets the world in, through the motion it initiated.21
On the other hand, Anaxagoras does not posit any entity of the kind
of Plato’s Form of the Good in his ontology. One can only speculate
about the reasons why. In general, positing an entity such as “the
good” as a fundamental building block in the universe is far from
being an unproblematic move to make in developing a metaphysical
system. By contrast, the thought that a system may be well designed
is a metaphysically simpler and more economical option. I see
Anaxagoras as assuming that the world’s structure is good, given to it
by its architect, nous, through the cosmic vortex it generates. On my
reading, when Anaxagoras says that nous set in order the vortex and
the things resulting from it, he is explaining exactly where, when,
and how the good enters the design of the world. The goodness of
Anaxagoras’s world does not lie beyond the world, but is in the design
of the world’s structure.22 In this sense, his cosmology is teleological.
What does remain unaccounted for, in Anaxagoras’s system, is the
goodness of the building blocks in the universe, which include not
only the opposites, but also the seeds or powers for life (as we will see
in the second part of the present chapter). I believe this must be the
reason for the complaint Plato registers against Anaxagoras’s teleol-
ogy, which stays at the level of the ordered arrangement, rather than
the design of all there is in the world.
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καὶ γνώμην γε περὶ παντὸς πᾶσαν ἴσχει καὶ ἰσχύει μέγιστον … καὶ
τὰ συμμισγόμενά τε καὶ ἀποκρινόμενα καὶ διακρινόμενα πάντα
ἔγνω νοῦς.
The first question arising for us is: how does nous attain such univer-
sal knowledge? Anaxagoras addresses this question, but only indi-
rectly.23 To understand his position, we need to first appreciate that
for Anaxagoras the cognitive activity of nous is related to its control-
ling activity. In B12 Anaxagoras describes the controlling activity of
nous, explaining that it should be unmixed to be able to control all
the things that it can and it does control, as we saw in section 5.1 of
23. I disagree with Laks’s suggestion that “the process of separation, which
brings about the cosmos, may also be seen as the means by which νοῦς undertakes
to make things as similar as possible to itself, namely [self] identical. For, in distin-
guishing things by means of the rotation νοῦς undertakes to identify them properly”
(1993: 31). See also Lesher’s critique (1994: 128–29) of Laks’s suggestion.
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146
For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and indeed it
maintains all discernment about everything and has the greatest
strength.
This is a list of the conditions that enable nous to have control over
everything. It is fine and pure, so its nature is opposite to all that is
to be controlled; it has judgment about everything, which is based on
its knowledge of everything;24 and ultimately nous has the greatest
power in the cosmos. While these are conditions that we might in
some way expect nous to satisfy, more surprising is what Anaxagoras
says in B14: “Nous, which always is, most assuredly is even now where
all the other things also are” (ὁ δὲ νοῦς, ὃς ἀεί ἐστί, τὸ κάρτα καὶ νῦν
ἐστιν ἵνα καὶ τὰ ἄλλα πάντα). Why is nous where the other things are?
I submit that it is because control, and the presupposed knowledge of
everything, requires contact with everything. This is a physical condi-
tion that nous has to meet: it must be where the other things are, spa-
tially. The reason why it must be there, we are to understand, is not
the specific location things occupy, but the fact that they are there.
To briefly recapitulate the results achieved in the first part of
this chapter: I argued that nous is an intelligent power at work at the
cosmic level in the universe. Its being unmixed allows nous to know
everything and thus control everything. In positing nous’s intelligent
control over the world, Anaxagoras pioneers a teleological approach
that will be critiqued but also in essence endorsed and developed
much further by Plato and Aristotle. In the next section I intro-
duce another type of intelligent power that Anaxagoras posits in his
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ontology: the seeds, which I call life powers. They are powers for the
structural development of living beings.
147
148
ontology, in addition to the opposites and nous. The seeds are not cre-
ated, but have eternally been in the world, as Anaxagoras says in B4b:
Before there was separation off, because all things were together,
there was not even any colour evident; for the mixture of all
things prevented it, of the wet and the dry and of the hot and the
cold and of the bright and the dark, and there was much earth
present and seeds unlimited in number, in no way similar to one
another.
26. If the seeds are the source of structure, what gives structure to them? There
are two hypotheses; that nous has given them structure, or that it is an irreducibly
primitive fact about the universe that the seeds contained in it are structured. Sedley
(2007: 19) briefly discusses these two possibilities and opts for the primitive fact, as
I do too.
27. It is also by and large accepted in the literature that individuals grow out of
the seeds by addition of stuffs (and ultimately, opposites) to the seeds themselves.
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28. On this point Sedley clearly disagrees with Vlastos, who claims that “when
Anaxagoras through the concept of the seed generalizes this principle of germination
from biology to cosmology, extending it to any process of generation whatsoever, he is
seeking to convey a new idea for which none of the traditional terms offered a fitting
vehicle” (1950: 36). According to Vlastos, “No one before Anaxagoras had ever used
‘seeds’ as he did … [he] meant to stretch the word so far beyond its ordinary sense,
applying it to inorganic as well as organic, matter” (1950: 33).
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150
45 ff.);29 and more recently Curd (2010: 171 ff.). I here limit myself to
a brief mention of two positions that are at the two opposite extremes
of the interpretative spectrum, in order to give the reader a sense of
how widely these views differ. On the one hand, there are those who
reify the seeds as an additional entity of a special kind: in Eric Lewis’s
words, “Seeds are, for Anaxagoras, mini homunculi of every individual
organism that ever will be” (2000: 1).30 Lewis reads B4 as saying there
are in the original cosmic mixture “seeds of all the individual organ-
isms that will ever exist. More specifically, these seeds are homunculi of
all individual organisms, and therefore unique” (2000: 18). “The seed
of me is a tiny version of me” (2000: 18). On this interpretation, the
homunculi are taken to be primitively present in the cosmic mixture,
and in appropriate circumstances some of them grow into individu-
als.31 The difficulty with this interpretation is that on the one hand it
includes in the ontology more than is needed, and on the other, such
an addition does too much. What is needed for individuals to develop
are not homunculi, but just structures, since the rest can come from
the opposites in the mixture of its immediate environment, when the
seed is in the appropriate conditions to grow. By saying that if the seeds
were homunculi they would do “too much”, I mean that if they are tiny
versions of ourselves, then we exist long before we are born, having
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Since these things are so, it is right to think that there are many
different things present in everything that is combined, and
seeds of all things having all sorts of forms, colours, and flavours,
and that humans and also the other animals were compounded,
as many as have soul.
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152
Anaxagoras does not explain in the extant fragments what soul is,
or how soul compares, metaphysically, to nous; he only points at a
relation of (direct) control. We saw above that in B11 Anaxagoras
says that “there are some things in which Nous, too, is present.”
Interpreters of Anaxagoras combine this statement with the one in
B12 that “nous has control over all things that have soul, both the
larger and the smaller,” and attribute to Anaxagoras the claim that
the soul in each animate thing is the nous that resides in it. Thus, for
instance, Curd (2010: 61), who takes Aristotle’s complaint below as
supporting the sameness of nous and soul in Anaxagoras:
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has over these entities, different from the overall control it has over
everything in its universe. The difference, in my understanding of
Anaxagoras’s ontology, is constitutional: these entities have soul as
part of their constitution, while the rest of what there is does not.
So, to recapitulate, Anaxagoras thinks that some things have
soul, that nous comes to be present in things with a soul, that the
portions of nous in larger animate things are larger than the por-
tions of nous in smaller animate things, and that all portions of nous
have the same nature as cosmic nous. What things, then, have soul?
Those things that have life, or are alive. And how is life explained in
Anaxagoras’s system? A living being is physically structured, its life
phases are diachronically structured, and it generates offspring with
the same structure as the parent’s. Anaxagoras cannot explain life
with an ontology of opposites and their ratios only, because those
cannot deliver structure. He thus chooses to add seeds to his ontol-
ogy, as the origin of life. Seeds are powers for the dynamic devel-
opment (in the right conditions) of physically and diachronically
structured entities—that is living beings.
5.6. CLOSING REMARKS
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154
33. If counterfactually nous had the power to control the structural development
of seeds, this would defeat the purpose of positing that the seeds exist ab aeterno.
34. We know from B4a that individual human beings have powers of intelligence,
e.g., to construct cities:
There are cities that have been constructed by humans and words made, just as …
the earth grows many different things for them, the most valuable of which they
gather together into their household and use.
καὶ τοῖς γε ἀνθρώποισιν εἶναι καὶ πόλεις συνημμένας καὶ ἔργα κατεσκευασμένα,
ὥσπερ παρ’ ἡμῖν … καὶ τὴν γῆν αὐτοῖσι φύειν πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα, ὧν ἐκεῖνοι
τὰ ὀνήιστα συνενεγκάμενοι εἰς τὴν οἴκησιν χρῶνται.
Clearly these powers of planning and realizing their designs comes from the por-
tion of nous in humans, which is therefore able to have goals and plan their actions
accordingly.
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C hapter 6
Stoic Gunk
This chapter sets out to investigate the only other metaphysical sys-
tem in antiquity that is underpinned by the same core assumption
as Anaxagoras’s—namely, that reality is atomless or gunky.1 A con-
nection between Anaxagoras and the Stoics has rarely been drawn
in the scholarship. Much divides them: to begin with, the fact that
their metaphysical systems were developed respectively before, and
after, the work of Plato and Aristotle and the range of metaphysical
principles they introduced. In taking the two systems together as the
only instances in antiquity of a world built on gunk, I aim to bring out
what is distinctive of each, with respect to motivation, articulation,
and use of the theory. This will enable us to understand Anaxagoras
in greater depth, which is the primary focus of this book, but also
the Stoics, and indirectly our own posture with respect to gunk: we
are discovering it in nature, while the ancients posited it from first
principles.
The most distinctive Stoic stance is their extreme physical-
ism: for them, everything that exists is body. To be closer to their
way of speaking, we can call their view corporealism. Their motiva-
tion for this stance, I submit, is the Eleatic Principle (expressed
1. As other interpreters have done, I will develop my arguments on the assump-
tion that it is legitimate to speak of the Stoics as a whole, at least in relation to some
core views that unify the school, such as the ones this chapter is about. A defense of
this assumption is beyond the scope of this book and would constitute a detour from
its main themes.
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2. Sophist 247e: “I am saying that a thing really is if it has any capacity at all.
Either by nature to do something to something else or to have even the smallest thing
done to it, by even the most trivial thing, even if it only happens once. I’ll take it as a
definition that those which are amount to nothing other than capacity” (translation by
N. P. White).
3. I take my approach to be aligned with Katja Vogt’s, in that we both argue that
the Stoics have a distinctive take in their philosophical explanations of reality, very
different from Plato’s and Aristotle’s, on account of their corporealism. Where Vogt
and I differ, to my mind, is in how we see the Stoics put their corporealism to work. In
this chapter I argue that the Stoics use physical operations, such as division and mixture
of the basic elements in their ontology (which are bodies), to do metaphysical work in
their system. Vogt on the other hand has argued that for the Stoics there is no separa-
tion between physics and metaphysics and that it is physics rather than metaphysics
that delivers for them the most basic account of reality. In this, she identifies the Stoic
philosophical distinctiveness. Vogt (2009) writes that,
Their focus on corporeals … explains why the Stoics do not have the kind of the-
ory that, with respect to Plato and Aristotle, we call metaphysics… . Talk about
“Stoic ontology” is clearly more directly rooted in the texts [than talk of “Stoic
metaphysics”]. But even here, it seems important to keep in mind that we are not
referring to a theory that is separate from particular investigations in physics,
logic, and ethics, or that would offer a deeper understanding of reality than these
disciplines do… . [T]he Stoics are Sons of the Earth in the metaphorical sense
that they look at the earth and think that the most basic account that philosophy
can offer is an account that explains the physical universe. (137, 145, 149)
Also arguing that the Stoics have a worked-out metaphysics (which she char-
acterizes as sophisticated physicalism) is Vanessa de Harven (“Stoic Incorporeals:
A Grounded Account,” unpublished manuscript), who concludes:
Thus there is good reason to extend Brunschwig’s suggestion that the Stoics
were masters of their theoretical domain, leading with their ontology and going
beyond physics to metaphysics.
4. Although the Stoics do not believe universals exist, they hold that ordinary
material objects can each be classified under various concepts (which they reify, in line
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158
6.1. UNLIMITED DIVISION
with their physicalism). This generates for them the explanatory need to account for
why they fall under such concepts.
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S t o ic G u n k
5. I prefer to translate the expression ἔκ τινων as “which parts,” and not as “what
parts,” as L&S do. The English expression “what parts” is ambiguous, and could be
understood either as “what sort of parts” or as “which parts.” But Chrysippus’s concern
here, I argue, is the lack of distinctness of the parts resulting from unlimited division
of body; this concern is more accurately captured by the translation I offer. I also note
that the text from T3 is presented as a word-by-word report of Chrysippus’s views.
159
160
ἥ τε τομὴ εἰς ἄπειρόν ἐστιν (ἣν ἄπειρον, <οὐκ εἰς ἄπειρόν> φησιν
ὁ Χρύσιππος. οὐ γάρ ἐστί τι ἄπειρον, εἰς ὃ γίνεται ἡ τομή. ἀλλ’
ἀκατάληκτός ἐστι).
160
161
S t o ic G u n k
7. We do talk of lines as being infinitely divided into points, but the Stoics
would not allow bodies to consist of extensionless points, since points, as math-
ematical limits, are, according to the Stoics, neither corporeal nor incorporeal.
Infinite division is always division into extended (and so divisible) parts. The same
is true of division of lines and time etc. because these are incorporeals (namely,
physical and dependent on bodies), while points are neither physical incorporeals
nor corporeals.
8. In chapter 3 I argue that divided gunk does not raise special conceptual difficul-
ties if one is willing to accept unlimited divisibility in the first place.
161
162
6.2. COLOCATION
162
163
S t o ic G u n k
9. One may wonder: given that all things exist as divided, why do only some of
them come to be colocated by blending? The Stoics do not address this question in the
texts that have survived. The answer could be simply based on experience: we find out
empirically what does and what does not blend. One can only conjecture whether the
Stoics would have given this answer, or a metaphysical reason.
10. Even if there is no explicit textual evidence that the Stoics thought this way,
in order to allow compresence of material objects such as water and wine they must be
committed to giving up continuity of matter.
163
164
committing the Stoics to saying that two bodies are in the same place,
i.e., compenetrating (which is assumed to be unsound by the Stoics).
Nolan writes,
164
165
S t o ic G u n k
I have my doubts about whether this [i.e., the way Nolan mod-
els metaphysically the blend] is really distinct enough from the
wheat and lentils case to be what the Stoics were after. After all,
on Nolan’s view, there are still parts of the blend that are pure
12. Would the distinction between strict and loose location be a way forward
for Anaxagoras too, to explain how the opposites are compresent with each other?
There are a number of considerations to be made here. First, there is an important
disanalogy to register between the Stoic blend of bodies and Anaxagoras’s extreme
mixture of opposites. They are both mixtures, but in the Stoic one the hunks of
gunk are assumed to causally interact with each other. (Nolan is silent on how on his
account they can causally interact, which isn’t easy to explain when the mixants are
only potentially in the blend). By contrast, Anaxagoras’s hunks of gunk do not (and
cannot, for Parmenidean reasons) affect each other causally, and this facilitates their
being colocated. Second, there is the philosophical rather than interpretative question
of whether the distinction between loose and strict location appealed to by Nolan is
a sound one, which we need to address before determining if one can borrow such
distinction on behalf of Anaxagoras. My conclusion is negative; we can’t borrow it,
and we need not borrow it.
165
166
wine and pure water, rubbing shoulders in the blend just like
grains of wheat and lentils. Unlike grains of wheat, they are not
exactly located anywhere—but they are still parts of the blend,
and they are still unmixed. (2007: 208)
In other words, Nolan holds that as long as the mixants are weakly
located in the mixture, there is no obstacle as it were to their being
thoroughly blended with each other. By contrast Parsons suggests
that, even granting for the sake of argument that something can
have weak but not exact colocation (which he deems impossible),
the retained purity of water and wine in the blend is incompat-
ible with their being thoroughly blended.13 The Stoic fusion thus
become on Nolan’s account a “blurry” case, in between blend and
juxtaposition.14
In conclusion, Nolan argues, as I do, that the Stoics believe in
gunk, but he does not use what I take to be the most relevant feature
of gunk (namely, the convergence of the parts to zero extension) to
explain how the Stoics can account for colocation. Nolan offers for
colocation an interpretation alternative to my own. He thinks the
solution to the question of how blended substances can occupy the
same spatiotemporal location lies in drawing a distinction between
loose and exact or strict location. There are a number of difficulties
with Nolan’s interpretation. The three main issues are the following.
166
167
S t o ic G u n k
First, Nolan treats divided gunk as if the parts “lost” their location;
i.e., as if by having only loose location, the components of the blend
were not in a place at all. There is no evidence in the surviving texts
that the Stoics took this view. Additionally, this is, philosophically,
a view that would need more explication and defense, for it is a puz-
zling one: how can division of body “dislocate” its parts, i.e., deprive
them of their location?15 Second, and as already discussed in the
modern philosophical literature, loose and strict locations are not
definable independently from one another, contrary to what Nolan
implicitly assumes. Finally, Nolan holds that as long as the mixants
are loosely located in the mixture, there is no obstacle, as it were, to
their being thoroughly blended with each other. But the “purity” of
the mixants, which Nolan assumes, entails that they are still meta-
phorically “rubbing shoulders” in the blend, like wheat and lentils
or pepper and salt. I conclude that Nolan does not offer a sound
solution for how the Stoics could have accounted for colocation of
bodies. The next question I want to address is: what does coloca-
tion explain in Stoic metaphysics? I will argue that it accounts for
constitution of material bodies, property possession, and causation.
I start with constitution.
15. Nolan’s account of nonlocated gunk better fits those who believe that actual
division into gunk destroys matter—but Nolan does not commit himself either way
on this issue.
167
168
16. Some scholars (e.g., Cooper 2009) have made the point that the two funda-
mental entities the Stoics posit in their system, pneuma and apoios hylē, are both first
principles but only pneuma is a cause, because it is that which acts. This interpretation
identifies being a cause with being a causal agent. I disagree with it and take both to be
causally powerful, for reasons that I explain in the present chapter.
17. I will use in what follows the transliteration of the Greek terms without trans-
lating them, as I have done with Anaxagoras’s nous.
18. I will not discuss here the phenomenon or ontology of conflagration, about
which I remain skeptical, like other scholars, including, e.g., Vogt. I cannot enter here
into a discussion of the relevant issues.
19. The division between pneuma and hylē is (in the doxography) to some degree
contextual (just as the division of matter and form in Aristotle is to the same degree
contextual). So, for instance,
168
169
S t o ic G u n k
169
170
(i.e., hylē) as an extended causal power. Nevertheless, Plato did think this about the
receptacle (in the Timaeus, which influenced the Stoics); the receptacle can be thought
of as causally powerful empty space. The relevant arguments cannot be developed in
this context.
25. There is some doxographic evidence (e.g., Calcidius 293, LS 44C) that suggests
that the Stoics might have thought that matter is needed in their system, for the same
reasons as Aristotle’s, to address Parmenidean concerns. To my mind this evidence
misrepresents the Stoics’ view.
170
171
S t o ic G u n k
(i.e., god) are ways of being active; they shape, form, qualify prop-
ertyless being; hence, they have an active constitutional- causal
role in being. So the ultimate principle of passivity cannot be quali-
fied.26 There is an interesting comparison of causal roles between
Anaxagoras’s opposites and the Stoic one. As we will see, the Stoic
conception of causation is fundamentally via compresence, namely,
constitutionally. Both accounts are causal constitutionally, by
compresence—of opposites in the one case, and of pneuma/hylē
in the other, or of oppositely qualified objects (e.g., hot and cold
ones).27 Their understanding of causation is to be contrasted to the
Aristotelian conception of a causally interacting passive power suf-
fering change.
We know that for the Stoics all pneuma is colocated or blended
with hylēthroughout nature, and interacts with it.28 For example
we read:
26. See the following section of the chapter for an account of the constitutive
causal role pneuma has on hylē.
27. Both Anaxagoras and the Stoics also allow for causing movement, which is
not constitutional.
28. This is an important point of difference with Anaxagoras’s mixtures, where
the elements do not interact with each other.
171
172
29. The notion of hylē as bare potentiality is Aristotle’s, but such an entity, if there
is one, is not capable of efficient causal interaction. Even if the Stoics made it a body,
they still think of it as dependent on pneuma—e.g., it is not separate and discrete in
virtue of itself; it is always found in composition with pneuma. So its status of being a
body does not ipso facto endow it with causal efficacy qua body.
30. The apoios hylē can be passive only in a receptive sense (à la Plato’s receptacle),
rather than by suffering compromise (à la Aristotle’s patient of change).
172
173
S t o ic G u n k
μεμῖχθαι τῇ ὕλῃ λέγειν τὸν θεόν, διὰ πάσης αὐτῆς διήκοντα καὶ
σχηματίζοντα αὐτήν, καὶ μορφοῦντα καὶ κοσμοποιοῦντα τούτῳ
τῷ τρόπῳ.
So hylē and pneuma are (the only) active and passive bodies in the
universe, and are always interlocked together everywhere in the
31. An oiled sponge dropped into a container of water and wine would be able to
separate these totally.
173
174
6.4. SHARING SUBJECTS
The next question for us to address is: what results from the blend-
ing of two bodies? As we saw, there are two types of blending for
the Stoics: between hylē and pneuma (see, e.g., Alexander, On Mixture
216.14–217.12; LS 48C1) and between blends of hylē and pneuma,
which are the ordinary material objects in nature, e.g., water and
wine (see Alexander, On Mixture 216.14–217.12; LS 48C4–12). Our
sources have preserved a more detailed description of the latter
type of blend, but we can reasonably assume that the two types of
blend are underpinned by the same (physical) mechanism: pneuma
pervades hylē the same way as composites pervade each other when
thoroughly mixed. Let us examine first the case of the pneuma-hylē
32. My interpretation differs from an existing one that many share, represented,
e.g., by A. A. Long and D. Sedley, who argue that
In order to do justice to Stoic intuitions, we should regard the two things that
occupy the same space not as two determinate and independently existing bod-
ies, but as the two bodily functions (breadth and matter) which jointly constitute
every determinate and independently existing body. (1987: 294, my emphasis)
This line of interpretation rightly points out that the Stoics use colocation,
of breath (pneuma) and matter (hylē), to account for the composition of composite
things. It is true that two functions of a body, e.g., elasticity and its malleability, can
be coinstantiated in the same matter. This is unproblematic because functions are not
material bodies, but qualifications of matter. But hylē and pneuma are not qualities; the
Stoics claim they are coextended not as functions, but as bodies.
174
175
S t o ic G u n k
blend. In general terms, we can say, with the Stoics, that in the blend
pneuma endows hylē with properties and causal powers, but in a very
specific way. The blending of propertyless hylē and pneuma results in
the qualification of the composite, not the qualification of hylē itself.
Hylē is by definition propertyless—it is also everlasting. So it cannot
survive acquiring properties. So how can properties be bestowed on
propertyless matter? The Stoics solve this problem with blending:
the propertyless can be colocated with the qualified, and this suffices
for it to be empowered with properties and causal powers. The mech-
anism the Stoics posit is sui generis. For Aristotle, matter instanti-
ates a universal form; for Plato, objects participate in the Forms. For
the Stoics, matter is colocated with, and interlocked with, (indepen-
dently) embodied form(s), i.e., pneuma. Alexander describes in some
detail the Stoic account of blended composite substances, and we
can lean on it to understand their account of the blend of simples
(hylē-pneuma) too:
τὰς δέ τινας γίνεσθαι μίξεις λέγει δι’ ὅλων τινῶν οὐσιῶν τε καὶ
τῶν τούτων ποιοτήτων ἀντιπαρεκτεινομένων ἀλλήλαις μετὰ τοῦ
175
176
176
177
S t o ic G u n k
I argued, in the blend, one of the entities is qualified,35 and the other is
in the presence of the property, so long as the property continues to be
present. The Stoics thus appear to distinguish between what we could
call “owning a property” and “sharing its presence.” How do these rela-
tions differ metaphysically? I explain blends, whether between simple
or composite substances, as a type of plural subject in relation to their
property possession. An example of plural subjecthood, already dis-
cussed by Plato, is that you and I are two (but each of us is one and
neither is two).36 Other instances of plural subjects are William and
Mary reigning over England, or the Romans defeating the Gauls, or
you and I playing a duet, etc. Stoic blends are a special kind of plu-
ral subjects. Typically, in case of plural subjecthood, the two or more
subjects involved equally share one property-instance. By contrast,
blends comprise unequal partners with respect to the ownership of the
properties—one mixant owns it, and the other shares in its presence.
The Stoics are thereby introducing a different model of property pos-
session, which I call sharing subjects, to distinguish them from plural
subjects, allowing for inequality between partners.37
6.5. CAUSATION
In the Stoic system, I submit, that there are two different types of
empowerment resulting from colocation of bodies.38 I call them prop-
erty empowerment and structural empowerment respectively, and they
35. Pneuma strictly does not possess properties but is properties. Otherwise the
Stoics would need a further account of how pneuma comes to possess properties.
36. Plural subjects were known to the ancients, at least since Plato’s Hippias
Major; see Scaltsas (2006).
37. Exploring the potential applicability of the Stoics’ sharing-subjects models
beyond their metaphysics of blends is outside the scope of this chapter. Briefly, the
sharing subjects model might offer to contemporary philosophy an ontology of com-
plex activities where the subjects in the activities have a variety of roles and contribu-
tion, such cases as birth; punishment; etc.
38. One advantage that the Stoic account of blending has, both for instantia-
tion of properties and for causal efficacy, is that it brings the active and the passive in
177
178
6.5.1. Property Empowerment
The example that follows is one that we would readily identify as one
of efficient causation, where one composite substance makes another
“acquire” a new property, in this case being hot. The mechanism is
blending:
ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ πῦρ ὅλον δι’ ὅλου χωρεῖν τοῦ σιδήρου λέγουσι,
σώζοντος αὐτῶν ἑκατέρου τὴν οἰκείαν οὐσίαν.
The interaction between fire and iron does not involve any trans-
fer of a property trope from fire to iron—there is only colocation
of two bodies: it is the fire that is hot, and iron is in the presence
of fire. Iron is a sharing subject with fire, sharing heat through
colocation with fire and thereby becoming empowered with heat
without possessing it.39 When iron and fire (which stands in for
contact everywhere, not only on the surface. This pays justice to our intuitions that the
agent must be present where the effect occurs. This is an Aristotelian intuition (placing
the effect of the action of the mover in the moved), but to which (Aristotle’s) surface
contact in causal interaction does not pay justice.
39. Fire and iron relate to heat in very different ways, even if at the phenomenal
level they both seem hot and we think of both as hot.
178
179
S t o ic G u n k
6.5.2. Structural Empowerment
To fully appreciate the philosophical significance of structural empow-
erment, it will be helpful to preface the discussion of the Stoics’
position with a very brief (and necessarily “gappy” in this context)
excursus on how structure came into play in the history of metaphys-
ics preceding the Stoics. The Milesians tried to account for everything
in nature using (instances of) opposite powers, such as the hot and
cold, wet and dry. On the other hand, the identification and reification
of structure in ontology can be traced as far back as the first genera-
tion of thinkers after the Milesians. Most notably, Parmenides and
40. The Stoics do not distinguish, ontologically, fire from heat. For them there are
no universals. Concepts are just descriptions of objects.
41. In physical terms, the heat of the two bodies, iron and fire, adds up while they
are colocated, so that at the empirical level we find in that location hot iron.
42. The sustaining cause is typically for the Stoics pneuma.
179
180
180
181
S t o ic G u n k
hylē and pneuma, e.g., such as the blend of wine and water. Alexander
gives three such examples: frankincense being burned, gold being
mixed with drugs, and wine being mixed with water.45
In the above passage we read that for the Stoics the blended sub-
stances “preserve their own qualities, whether they are present
45. The first is a case of empowering via an event (burning) involving the other
mixant (fire), while the second two cases are of empowerment by the other mixant’s
structure.
181
182
182
183
S t o ic G u n k
6.6. TYPES OF ONTOLOGICAL UNITY
(i) Hylē-pneuma unity. This is the type of unity that the uni-
verse as a whole enjoys qua composite of hylē and pneuma,
which have always been and will always be inseparably
blended and interlocked together.
(ii) Object unity. This is the type of unity that lumps of
hylē and pneuma enjoy when they are physically unified
and made into discrete material objects in the universe,
through (the physical movements of) pneuma’s sustaining
powers.
(iii) Causal unity. This is the unity that causally interacting
material objects in the world enjoy, which may result
in property empowerment or structural empowerment
(or both).
183
184
τὰς δέ τινας συγχύσει δι’ ὅλων τῶν τε οὐσιῶν αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἐν
αὐταῖς ποιοτήτων συμφθειρομένων ἀλλήλαις, ὡς γίνεσθαί φησιν
ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρικῶν φαρμάκων κατὰ σύμφθαρσιν τῶν μιγνυμένων,
ἄλλου τινὸς ἐξ αὐτῶν γεννωμένου σώματος.
184
185
S t o ic G u n k
6.7. CLOSING REMARKS
185
186
Conclusions
186
187
Conclusions
187
188
188
189
Conclusions
189
190
191
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191
192
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192
193
B ib l i o g r ap h y
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╇ 199
GENERAL INDEX
199
200
Gener al Index
atomists, 38n45. See also Presocratics bundle, 29, 63–64, 66, 68–70,
atoms, 84, 94, 161. See also indivisibles 147, 186–87, 2n2. See also
attributes. See properties mereological sum;
opposites
Barnes, Jonathan, 110–11, 120, 13n4
being, 2, 22, 30, 38, 48, 186–87, causal agents, 3–4, 5n10. See also
90n23; causation;
forms of, 29; opposites;
living, 130; powers
propertyless, 171; causation, 7, 10, 12, 31–38, 70–71, 129,
structural features of, 180. See also 141, 154, 157, 162, 167, 179, 182–86,
entities; 189, 37n44, 46n3, 168n16;
metaphysics; Contagion Model of, 37;
nonbeing; physical, 18;
substance Stoic conception of, 171, 177–82,
biology, 155, 149n28. See also cosmology; 171n26. See also causal agents;
life; interaction;
organisms opposites;
blending, 162–67, 171, 173–75, 177–78, powers
180–83, 185; change, 4, 7, 10–11, 22–32, 54–55, 84,
Stoic, 163–65, 163n9, 177n38. 96, 123, 129–30, 139, 154, 162,
See also colocation; 170, 188, 5n13, 14n5;
composite; in nous, 139;
mixture observable, 73;
blood, 29. See also stuffs problem of, 2, 46;
bodies, 21–23, 45, 157–63, 167, qualitative, 9, 19–20, 23, 33–34, 43, 139;
173–76, 181, 185, 157n3; substantial, 20, 23, 43. See also
active, 172; alteration;
blending of, 183; creation;
causally powerful, 169; generation;
coextension of, 163, 176; metaphysics;
colocation of, 177, 183; movement;
concreteness of, 23; opposites;
division of, 167; transformation
malleable, 117; Chrysippus, 158–62, 171, 184, 98n37,
material, 40; 159n5. See also Stoics
parts of asymmetrical, 180; coextension, 94, 163, 175–76, 176n33.
passive, 172; See also bodies;
primary, 45; colocation
Stoic blend of, 174, 165n12; colocation, 94–95, 100–1, 117, 158,
three-dimensional, 159, 169; 162–67, 174–78, 183, 185, 114n10,
unlimited division of, 158–63, 174n32. See also blending;
159n5. See also composite; coextension;
material objects; composite;
sōmata mixture
Bradley’s regress, 127 colour, 12, 17, 19, 31, 62, 65, 68, 70, 148
200
201
Gener al Index
201
202
Gener al Index
202
203
Gener al Index
203
204
Gener al Index
204
205
Gener al Index
205
206
Gener al Index
206
207
Gener al Index
207
208
Gener al Index
208
209
Gener al Index
209
210
Gener al Index
210
211
Gener al Index
211
212
Gener al Index
212
╇ 213
INDEX LOCORUM
213
214
INDEX LOCORUM
214