Induction in Ancient Greek Thought

This post is one in a series on the History of Epistemological Thought.  

Previously in this series: The Worldview of the Metaphysical Dualist

I have written of three major schools of thought in the ancient world.

 

• The Theologi
• The Physiologi
• The Metaphysical Dualists

 

As divergent as these three schools were in worldview, they were very similar in their methodology and implied epistemology.  They all used induction.

The theologi saw that (B) orderly human affairs was generally the work of (A) purposive action.  They noticed that (C) certain aspects of the universe were, like human affairs, also orderly (for example the cycles of the heavens.  Based on that similarity, they inductively concluded that (C) orderly aspects of the universe was also the work of (A) purposive action.

The physiologi on the other hand focused on the simple fact that (B) everyday terrestrial motion was the generally the work of (A) mechanistic forces.  They noticed that (C) heavenly bodies also moved.  Based on that similarity, they inductively concluded that (C) motion in the heavens was also the work of (A) mechanistic forces.

The Metaphysical Dualist Pythagoreans found orderly commensurability in geometry and music, and inductively concluded that there must be orderly commensurability in the heavens as well.  They saw the alleged order and commensurability of the heavens to be associated with eternity and divinity.  So they inductively concluded that if they only concerned themselves with pure order and commensurability, they could become eternal and divine as well.

Next in this series: The Ontological Revolution: The Proto-Skepticism of Heraclitus

The Ontological Revolution: The Proto-Skepticism of Heraclitus

This post is one in a series on the History of Epistemological Thought.  Previously in this series: Induction in Ancient Greek Thought.

A key element of the cosmologies of the Milesian physiologi is the phenomenon of change.  Each Milesian believed the entire universe was once composed of a single kind of matter.  This primordial substance was called arche.  For Thales it was water; for Anaximander it was an underlying substance he called Te Apeiron.  For Anaximander's student Anaximines it was air.  This arche then underwent change, becoming the diverse forms of matter we are familiar with today.

Change fascinated a later thinker name Heraclitus.  Heracltius noticed things that were in a constant state of change.  One of his many examples of this was a certain kind of potion.  It consisted of barley mixed with wine.  The barley, if left alone, always settles to the bottom.  Thus separated out, the potion is no more, since its existence depends on a mixing of the two ingredients.  Therefore, for the potion to persist, it must be stirred constantly.  The potion is in the motion, as it were.  The existence of the potion depends on ever-occurring change (stirring).

Heraclitus's most famous saying was, "You cannot step into the same river twice."  This is because waters are constantly both leaving (from the mouth) and entering (from the sources) the river.  So the second time you place your foot into a river, you are placing it into a different mass of water than you did before.

Heraclitus believed that the whole universe was like his potion and like rivers: in a constant state of flux.  Presumably Heraclitus would not have been surprised at the modern understanding that the human body is constantly sloughing off cells and generating new ones, such that one's body is comprised of almost completely different individual cells from one decade to the next.  If the whole universe is in flux what do we really mean when we refer to, for example, the Colorado River or Kevin Bacon?  If we think we are referring to distinct material objects, then both the Colorado River and Kevin Bacon cease to be the moment after designating them as such.  The Colorado River instantly becomes an assemblage of different water molecules from before, and Kevin Bacon instantly becomes an assemblage of different cells than before.

If all things are constantly in flux, what can it mean to "be" at all?  Can we really know what anything "is" if all things are constantly changing?

Such questions, of the very meaning of being, are what comprise the philosophical field of ontology; and Heraclitus seems to have been the earliest known philosopher to have asked them.  This began a long tradition whose latest inglorious highlight was President Bill Clinton musing over what the "definition of 'is' is."  These questions would prove revolutionary in western philosophy.  The Milesians and the Pythagoreans seemed to promise knowledge regarding the most fundamental workings of the universe itself.  Heraclitus's conception of a world in constant flux threatened to take away not only that knowledge, but knowledge of even the most everyday facts of life.  In this way, Heraclitus was something of a proto-skeptic.  One of Heraclitus's followers, according to a rather defamatory story written by Plato, was so averse to saying anything certain, that he was reduced to saying nothing, and merely moving his finger back and forth.

Next in this series: The Ontological Counterrevolution: Parmenides, the First Extreme Rationalist

From Watery Chaos

 

Cosmologies, like Hesiod's Theogony, are accounts of the beginnings of the universe, and they generally also, through the course of telling the universe’s origins, tell of the universe’s workings: i.e., why the sun rises every day. Cosmology most likely antedates the written language, since non-literate peoples during historical times had cosmologies (like the Amerindian Coyote myths).

The earliest written cosmologies were, like Hesiod's, “theogonies” (stories of the origins of the gods) because the creators of various elements of the universe, and oftentimes the elements themselves, were thought to be gods: super-human rational beings.

The earliest surviving written cosmology is the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which is thought to have descended from Sumerian sources. According to this work, the primal state of the world (which of course to an ancient was the whole universe) was a water mass in which salt water (Tiamat), fresh water (Apsu), and clouds (Mummu) were all intermingled. But these inter-mingled entities were not lifeless masses. They were characters, with personalities and rationality. Neither were they merely gods of the various forms of water: over-grown humans with command over their respective elements. Tiamat had a distinct personality, but she was also literally salt water itself (”tiamat” literally meant “salt water”).

Given that the Sumerians lived near the mouth of two great rivers, on can understand their preoccupation with water. The antiquarian Georges Roux, in his excellent work Ancient Iraq, mused on how the ancient poet might have envisioned such a primeval scene:

“If we stand on a misty morning near the present Iraqi sea-shore…what do we see? Low banks of clouds hang over the horizon; large pools of sweet water…mingle freely with salty waters of the Persian Gulf…all around us sea, sky and earth are mixed in a nebulous, watery chaos.”

“Creation” happened when this watery chaos began to un-mingle. First arose silt islands, like the ones which can be found where the Tigris and Euphrates pour into the Persian Gulf (personified as the gods Lahmu and Lahamu) Then came the horizon (personified as the gods Anshar and Kishar). 

This evolution in the story evinces a greater sophistication than myth-makers are often given credit for. Aristotle called myth-makers theologi, because they explained the mysteries of the universe by invoking personal forces (gods, or theoi), in marked contrast to those he called phusici, the later philosopher-cosmologists who explained those same mysteries by theorizing impersonal forces (nature, or phusis). But as I shall attempt to show below, many ancient myth-makers seemed to be trying to make rational cosmic theories within the bounds of the god-myth format.

Myths are also often derided for “just being stories”. But really compelling stories are often compelling for their plausibility. Thus, stories that survive the test of time are often the most plausible ones, and evince an author’s good grasp the plausible.

Let us examine the first two generations of gods in Enuma Elish, ignoring for the time being the proper-noun treatment given to the cosmic entities, and keeping an eye out for plausibility.

Firstly, let us imagine the three water gods as simply dumb masses of water, and that the poet is merely postulating that the earliest state of the world was a single, indiscernible foamy blob of fresh water, salt water, and mist. The notion that all discernible things arose from a single mass is not inherently fanciful. In fact it is quite plausible. There are only two possibilities regarding the primal state of the universe: either (1) things were distinct, various and discernible, as they are now or (2) they were indistinct, single and indiscernible. The Enuma Elish authors simply chose option number 2, as did many of the Greek philosophers of the 6th century¹, and chose water as that single thing.

Once the primal state is established, a cosmologist must decide which cosmic entity would arise out of the primal state first. The Enuma Elish authors chose silt islands, which is a very plausible choice for a Mesopotamian, given that silt islands occur right where the waters above (cloud and mist) and the waters below (salt and fresh waters) still mingle (as described in the Roux’s colorful quote above).

Then, if the clouds and the waters continued to separate out, the first discernible things one could see would be the bottom of the sky flush with the top of the earth: in other words, the horizon.

This account, arrived at from a sense of plausibility arrived at via induction, given the lack of scientific instruments at the time, is a perfectly adequate theory for how the world that ancient man saw around him could have come to be. Scientists even today use their sense of plausibility to construct theories. Of course they have much more powerful techniques for testing those theories, but other than that, there is not as much difference between ancient and modern cosmologists as might be supposed.

¹In fact, Thales, regarded as the first Greek philosopher, is thought to have traveled to Babylon and may have been directly influenced by Enuma Elish in his assertion that the world was created out of water, and that everything fundamentally is water. He, as Carl Sagan said, told the Babylonian story, but “took the gods out of it.” Sagan used the comparison to exemplify how different the mythmakers and early philosophers were. I think it exemplifies how surprisingly similar they were.

 

The Worldview of the Metaphysical Dualist

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.

Previously in this series: The Worldview of the Physiologos

The physiologos explained all phenomena in the universe according to the interplay of individual objects moving about according to their varying natures (which, in the Aristotelean sense, is an endogenous drive for change or rest).  Any arrangement in the universe was simply the end result of these movements.  Any kind of apparent order in the universe was bottom-up, or emergent: not imposed from above by gods.  Man was alone in a swirling profusion of matter.  And there was no higher purpose than his own.  And obviously there is no room for an afterlife in such a materialist conception of things.

The notion of this kind of a universe terrifies some men, and it must have been especially terrifying to the first people who ever gave ear to it: the auditors of Thales, Anaximander, and their followers in the 6th century before Christ.  One such auditor, Pythagoras of Samos, was every bit as brilliant as the physiologi.  But he rejected the universe of the physiologi.  Instead he constructed his own, with overarching purpose reinstalled on its throne in the universe, but with a more sophisticated logos (account) of things than that of the theologi.

Like Thales and Anaximander, Pythagoras was a geometer.  Like many geometers to follow, Pythagoras was fascinated, and perhaps even stirred, by the internally consistent truths of geometry.  He was particularly fascinated with proportionality. 

So it was probably a life-changing experience when, as is supposed by some, Pythagoras discovered proportionality in nature.  Pythagoras may have noticed that strings on a lyre which created beautiful harmonies together were commensurable.  For example the musical harmony called the perfect fifth is created by plucking strings whose lengths have the ratio of 3:2.  Why should that be?  Why are pleasant sounding harmonies only made by strings of lengths with commensurable ratios?  The relationship could have just as easily been incommensurable, like a ratio of the value of pi to 1.  But it's not.  And man does not choose to find those harmonies pleasant; they just are.  This may have indicated to Pythagoras that there was an overarching and meaningful pattern and order to the universe after all: a method to the madness discoverable by the mind of man.  This must have been infinitely comforting.

So Pythagoras and his followers built a cult of commensurability.  They tried to find commensurability in the stars and even in human nature.  Any discovery of incommensurability was terrifying to them.  So irrational numbers, like pi (the ratio of a circle's diameter to its circumference, which cannot be expressed as a ratio of whole numbers) were actually considered a religious secret, which was only allowed to be discussed by the inner circle of Pythagoreans!

Of course, outside of pure math and music, the place he found the most order was in the heavens.  He allegedly learned astronomy from the Babylonians, who for centuries had diligently tracked the orderly motions of the heavenly bodies.  He believed the stars emitted sounds (inaudible to us mortals, of course) of particular pitches according to their orbits, and he believed that these notes were in perfect harmony with each other.  What seemed to strike Pythagoras about the stars was not only their order, but their eternity.

Order, the reasoning power of man to discern order, and eternity all combined in the Pythagorean doctrine of metaphysical dualism.

One myth latched onto by the Pythagoreans is that of Dionysus.  Dionysus was the son of Zeus.  When he was a baby, he was eaten by the evil Titans.  The baby's heart was saved, and used to resurrect him.  And Zeus retaliated against the Titans by incinerating them with his lightning.  The race of man was then created out of the mixed ashes of the Titans and the ingested Dionysus.  Man therefore has a dual nature: an evil body, derived from the Titans, and a divine, perfect soul, derived Dionysus.  For Pythagoreans, the soul was not just an animating force: it was the seat of consciousness and reason, somewhat analogous to our conception of "mind".

Pythagoreans derived from this myth that our divine souls are sullied by our wretched bodies.  When our bodies die, our soul passes on to other bodies, perhaps even to the bodies of beasts.  Of course not all bodies are created equal.  The goal is to be reincarnated as a higher being (a body in which the soul is more dominant) than before.  The great chain of being ascends from dumb beasts whose souls are simply matters of sensation, up toward higher animals capable of reason, and finally up to true divinity.  How does one ascend this great chain of being?  By focusing one's life on affairs of the soul, and not on affairs of the body.  A sex-addled frat boy, falling out a window in a drunken stupor would probably be reincarnated as a slug or cuttlefish.  The life of an architect who applies geometry to his craft might end up as a wash, and he will be reincarnated as another future architect, since although he used his powers of reason, he did so for mundane purposes.  But a mathematician who studies numbers and geometry purely for their own sake might have a shot at attaining divinity in the next life.

Pythagoras created a doctrine that mixed matter with mind, order with chaos, randomness with purpose, and mumbojumbo with sound observation.  In doing so he created a distinctive compromise between the worldviews of the physiologos and the theologos, and started a strand of thought which extends to the present day.

Next in this series: Induction in Ancient Greek Thought

The Worldview of the Physiologos

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.

Previously in this series: The Worldview of the Theologos

As I discussed previously, Aristotle distinguished between thinkers who were theologi and thinkers who were physiologi.  I discussed the former in my previous post, and now I shall discuss the latter.

"Logos" means "account" and "physis" means "nature".  So while the theologi (poets, prophets, and priests) accounted for things with reference to gods, the physiologi accounted for things with reference to nature.  

Many belief systems claim that god created nature.  And Cicero wrote a treatise called "On The Nature of the Gods."   So why would Aristotle consider these two approaches to be mutually exclusive?  To answer that, one must understand Aristotle's conception of "nature."

Aristotelean nature is an endogenous drive of change or rest (or as many Aristotelean scholars say, an "inherent principle of change or rest").  The notion of the sun being driven by Helios and his divine horses does not account for the nature of the sun, because the drive moving the sun is exogenous; that is, it is driven by an outside force (that of the god and horses).  Conceivably a study of the drives within Helios and his horses themselves would be both theologia and physiologia, since they concern the nature of the gods.  However, Aristotle's clear-cut distinction probably comes from a recognition that most theologi say, "the gods did it," and stop there, without advancing to the explanation of how or why gods do things in the first place.  Again, Aristotle seems to think of Hesiod as an honorable exception, because he seems to think of Hesiod's Eros as qualifying as an endogenous drive within the gods.  So Aristotle might have considered Hesiod to be a member of both camps.

Still, it was Thales who Aristotle gave the honor of being called the first physiologos.  Thales is often looked down upon by modern scholars for having said that all things have soul.  This derision stems from a misunderstanding of what Greeks meant by soul (psuche).  A soul was not necessarily the seat of consciousness (although it sometimes was).  Psuche was the animating force within a body (as indicated by the fact that the Latin word for soul is anima).  Taken thus, soul (psuche) is a particular type of  nature (physis), since nature is an endogenous drive for change or rest, and soul is an endogenous drive for a particular species of change (animation).  What Thales seems to have meant when he said that all things have soul is that things move according to their own natures (endogenous drives), and not according to the exogenous actions of mysterious gods.

For Thales and the theologi who followed him, the universe was full of things moving about according to their own natures.  The interplay of these movements brought about mechanisms which explain the phenomena of the universe.  For example, according to Anaximander (a student of Thales), thunder and lightning was not Zeus giving vent to his wrath; rather it was the heat and sound resulting from the collision of massive clouds.

With Thales and his followers, the cosmic praxeology of the theologi gave way to the mechanistic naturalism of the physiologi.

Next in this series: The Worldview of the Metaphysical Dualist

The Worldview of the Theologos

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Thales and Deductive Geometry.

Aristotle distinguished between two kinds of thinkers.  There were the theologi and the physiologi.  Logos means "account".  So the two types of thinkers had different ways of accounting for the universe.

Theo means "god".  So the theologi accounted for phenomena with reference to gods.  The ranks of the theologi were filled with poets (traveling bards like Homer) and priests (sacramental priests like the Iliad's Chryses,  oracular seers like the Pythian priestesses,  and peripatetic diviners like Calchas).

For Homer, a plague that decimated the ranks of the Achaeans besieging Troy was caused, not by the unwholesome conditions of a war camp, but by the god Apollo shooting invisible arrows into the army as punishment for King Agamemnon having disrespected his priest.  For the ancient Greek theologos, the sun is a blazing chariot being driven by the god Helios, earthquakes are either caused when Poseidon is angry or when Zeus is nodding his head in making a promise, agricultural seasons come and go according to the mood of Demeter, and the souls of the dead are escorted by Hermes into the underworld kingdom of Hades and Persephone.  Even human emotional states are explained by the influence of gods like Aphrodite and Eris, goddess of strife.

Sometimes such individual acts of god are constituent parts of a greater plan.  The events leading up to the fall of Troy are said, by Homer, to all be toward the fulfillment of the will of Zeus.

 Dios d' eteleieto boulê

(thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfillment)

But, even Zeus is said to be bound by the Moirae (the apportioners, or Fates) and their mother Ananke (Destiny or Necessity).

Thus, according to the most complete theologos, all phenomena are at bottom actions in the Misesian sense: purposeful behavior, products of will.  Therefore, to the theologos, all the sciences are praxeology.

Next in this series: The Worldview of the Physiologos.

Human Nature in the Theogony

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: History in the Theogony.

The anthropomorphic aspects of Hesiod's gods also give the Theogony some interesting insights into human nature.  We have male striving: an eternal quest for women and power, and a perennial resentment of the son toward the father.  The nature of women according to Hesiod is outlined in my post History in the Theogony.  A further aspect of womankind is represented by Gaia and Rhea caring ultimately more for their children than for their husbands.  We also have an analysis of the virtues of the basileus (king or magistrate).  The basileus is said to be blessed by the Muses, and to engender justice (dike).

And an over-riding message is that the actions of man are impelled by qualities that are embodied in gods: Love, Strife, Jealousy, Hatred, etc.  The fates of mankind are decided by Zeus's agents such as the Fates and the Furies.

Next in this series: Ethics in the Theogony.

History in the Theogony

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: The Cosmology of Hesiod.

The anthropomorphic aspects of Hesiod's cosmology are interesting in their own right as possible mythological tellings of actual events.  (Herodotus and Plutarch took several myths to be as such)  For example, Zeus's accession to the throne, establishing a new world order can be taken to represent mankind's shift from savagery to civilization and the state.  After defeating Chronos, Zeus couples with Themis.  Thus authority (of the state) is married to natural order, whose literal children are lawfulness (Eunomia), Justice (Dike), and Peace (Eirene).  And through his coupling with Msemonye, he begets the Muses (who can be thought of as the arts themselves).  Thus the supposed boons of civilization and the state are born, after generations of savagery.  Of course another of Zeus's children is Ares: war.

Did the accession of the state really bring these things about?  Was life before the state, represented by Zeus, like the world of the earlier gods, where the only justice was revenge?  In spite of Thomas Hobbes' contention that before the state, the life of man was nasty, brutish and short, there is strong evidence that that is not true.  In fact, there is strong evidence that the first city-states to arise in Mesopotamia created a marked increase in violence.  Was there no justice or lawfulness outside of the state?  Medieval Ireland would be evidence that this was not the case.  And the oral tradition represented by the Muses also pre-dated the state.

With Ouranos's shoving the cyclopes and hecatonshires into Gaia, we have an "orginal sin".

Another interesting "historical" event of the Theogony is the Prometheus "contract".  Prometheus brokers a "settlement" between the gods and man.  He puts before Zeus two piles of the body parts of an ox, and tricks him into choosing the one that was naught but bones and fat.  Thus, was the law established that sacrifices to the gods would be burnt offerings of bones and fat, whereas the good meat was reserved for man (or at least the priests).

Zeus in revenge tried to keep the technology of fire away from mankind.  Prometheus however managed to steal it away for them.  This is one instance in a theme throughout world literature of the gods wanting to hold mankind back in their abilities and technology.

Then in revenge for the theft of fire, Zeus arranges for Pandora, the first woman to be created.  Out of her, the "race" of women was created.  This is perhaps the earliest recorded instance of the "can't live with them, can't live without them" maxim: Hesiod says that women drive men to poverty (as man's eternal foil, a parallel with Biblical Eve), and yet without them, there will be no children to care for men in their old age.

Next in this series: Human Nature in the Theogony.

The Cosmology of Hesiod

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Introducing the Theogony.

A traditional synopsis of the Theogony might go as follows.  The gods Khaos, Gaia, and Eros "come to be".  Then Khaos gives birth to Nyx and Erebos, who in turn give birth to Hemera and Aether.  Gaia gives birth to Ouranos and Pontus.  Ouranos and Gaia beget the twelve titans, as well as the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Giants.  Ouranos entraps the latter two within Gaia.  Gaia is enraged, and has Khronos, the youngest Titan, castrate his father (thereby separating earth from sky, after which he becomes master of the world.  The Titans have their own children.  To forestall a prophecy of his overthrow from coming true, Khronos devours each of his children, except Zeus, who Khronos's sister-wife saves by feeding her husband a rock in swaddling clothes.  When Zeus comes to maturity, he forces Khronos to vomit out his siblings.  Zeus and his siblings then go to war with the Titans.  With the aid of the Cyclopes and Hundred-handers, Zeus overthrows the Titans and entraps them in the underworld realm of Tartarus.  Zeus later has a final duel with Typhoes.

In Hesiod's Theogony, as in much creation mythology, inanimate objects (like earth), forces (like love), and phenomena (like night) are presented to a large degree as acting beings: they are anthropomorphized.  Thus, the story Hesiod tells might seem to be dismissed as a superhuman soap opera: an interpersonal saga, in which the characters happen to have outlandish powers.  However, the Theogony can also be viewed in a vastly different way.

The great philosopher Aristotle, who wrote some 400 years after Hesiod wrote his Theogony, made a sharp distinction between two classes of thinkers: theologi and physici.  Thetheologi impute the causes of phenomena to personal, mysterious gods, the knowledge of whom is only accessible through divine revelation.  In stark contrast, the physici look to impersonal, discernible forces which can only be detected through careful observation and reasoning.  The ranks of the theologi were supposed to be filled with poets, priests and prophets.  The ranks of physici were populated by proper philosophers.  However Aristotle made a possible exception for Hesiod.  He surmised that the great poet showed his truephysicoi colors in his cosmological formulations.

When Greek myths are translated into English, the names of the gods are left in a transliterated version of the original Greek.  Thus it can be easy to miss the fact that many (if not all) of Hesiod's gods in the Theogony are anthropomorphized representations of observable objects, forces, and phenomena.  For example, Gaia is not simply the name of "the goddess of the Earth".  "Gaia" literally means "earth" in Greek (it is the origin of our "geo-" prefixes in our words "geology" and "geography"), and Gaia was thought of as the earth itself.  Thus, if you ignore the proper noun treatment Hesiod gives to his objects, forces, and phenomena, what at first might seem like a fairy tale of love and strife between gods begetting children and blood will seem more like an impersonal account of attraction and repulsion between natural objects begetting generation and dissolution.

So, a "naturalistic" telling of the Theogony might be as follows.  First there was invisible air (Khaos).  Then earth (Gaia) and attractive/generative force (Eros) came to be.  Then out of air came a dark gas (Erebos) charged with its own motive energy (Nyx).  Out of that came a bright gas (Aether) charged with its own motive energy (Hemera).  A starry firmament (Ouranos) springs up out of the Earth, as well as salt water (Pontus).  The firmament holds the earth down, and matter from the former is compelled by the attractive force to come down upon the latter.  This process generates twelve entities, including: time (Khronos) and its motive force (Rhea), fresh water (Okeanos) and its motive force (Tethys), inquiry (Koios), intelligence (Phoebe), mortality (Iapteus), natural order (Themis), memory (Mnesomyne), and sight (Theia). The same process later generated storms (Cyclopes being the lightning and thunder and Hecatonshires being the winds), which became entrapped within the earth.  Time itself brought a halt to this process.  The twelve entities, as well as the motive energy of the dark gas (Nyx) then engendered further entities.  Some were abstract forms which would later be actualized in human affairs, such as strife, rumor, etc.  Some were material beings such as rivers and mountains.

Taken thus, Hesiod's Theogony exemplifies many important strands in the history of thought regarding "natural history".  In the Theogony, there is no one special creator, and no single instance of creation.  Instead there is a gradual process of generation and change.

Of course for all his systematic and rational presentation, Hesiod still had his "Time" entity literally castrate his "Sky" entity with a flint sickle.  His audience expected the interpersonal saga of epic poetry, and this necessitated that his cosmic powers have distinctly human characteristics.

Next  in this series: History in the Theogony.

Introducing the Theogony

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: The Inspiration of Hesiod.

The Theogony is likely the work of poetry which made Hesiod's name.  In his later poem Works and Days, Hesiod tells of how he won a prominent prize for poetry, and it is likely that he won by singing his Theogony.  This performance must have been quite stunning.  In the Theogony, Hesiod discloses the history of the cosmos, telling of the birth of each cosmic entity in its turn.  He traces the passing of cosmic ages, characterizing them as a successive usurpations of divine royalty.  The tale culminates in the ultimate holy order under the reign of Zeus, the final usurper, in which mankind finds itself.  It will be necessary to summarize and briefly analyze the Theogony in order to glean from it any insights into Hesiod's epistemology.

Next in this series: The Cosmology of Hesiod.

Epistemology in (Western) History: From Hesiod to Hoppe

This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Epistemology in History.

In the forthcoming series of posts on the history of epistemological thought, I won't start with the first thinkers to consider epistemology explicitly (like the Sophists and Plato, thinkers who flourished in the 5th and 4th centuries before Christ).  Before discussing them, I will discuss earlier philosophers (like  6th century thinkers Thales and Anaximander), considering the implicit epistemologies that underlie their doctrines.  But the point at which I will truly initiate this study will predate even them.  I will start, not with philosophers, but with poets: many of whom had world-views consistent and thoughtful enough to be characterized as doctrines (especially Hesiod and Homer).  I will attempt to discover and discuss the implicit epistemologies that underlie their beliefs.  In all of this I will focus on the western tradition: the path of intellectual influence that winds from the ancient Greek poets, to the ancient Greek philosophers, to the ancient Roman writers, to the fathers of the Catholic church, to the medieval scholastics, to the Renaissance, to the Age of Reason, to the Enlightenment and finally to the post Industrial era.

Next in this series: The Inspiration of Hesiod

Epistemology in History

This post is the first in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History

Assertions and arguments regarding particular topics (for example, ethics, economics, physics, etc) all rest on an epistemology (whether explicitly or implicitly): that is, a theory of knowledge, truth, and falsity.  Therefore, the first task of a thorough scholar is to make the case for his own epistemology.  In a series of posts that will follow, I will work towards doing that.  But I will do so in a roundabout way: through writing a brief history of epistemological thought.  I will cover the most prominent schools of epistemology and their foremost thinkers: evaluating their doctrines as I go, and picking out the choicest bits to construct my own epistemology.

Next in this series: Epistemology in (Western) History: From Hesiod to Hoppe

Adam Smith and Hesiod

One does not need be a philosopher to have a working theory of morality. Nor need one be an economist to have a working theory of value. One can find implicit theories in the writings of any thoughtful person; and the ancient Greek poet Hesiod was a very thoughtful man.

Conversely, one can be a philosopher or an economist and still have their prejudices corrupt their lofty theories One can find such prejudices in the writings of any biased person; and Adam Smith was a very biased man.

Or at least it can be argued he was. Murray N. Rothbard, to my mind, has convincingly made the case¹ that Adam Smith's labor theory of value was largely based on a Calvinist bias for work (for its own sake) and against consumption (except as a requirement to sustain work).

At first glance, one might see a similar ethic in Hesiod's Works and Days: particularly in the admonishments he gives his brother Perses to work. This would be a poor and shallow understanding of Hesiod's credo. Hesiod does not make a fetish of labor: far from it. In fact, he longs for the Age of Gold in which, as he believes, men were, "entirely free from toil."²

They had all good things: the grain-giving field bore crops of its own accord, much and unstinting³

And Hesiod sorrowfully regrets being born in the Age of Iron in which man must toil miserably all day stooped over the ground. For Hesiod, work is valued only by virtue of its role in satisfying needs: satiating hunger, keeping out the cold, and even enjoying a drink now and then.

It might seem strange to find religion in the Wealth of Nations and a subjective utility theory of value in a 2,700 year old poem which also discusses Zeus and Hephaestus; but it should not. Much folly can be found in the twisted sophistries of intellectuals, and much wisdom can be found in the simple beliefs of honest men.

¹Murray N. Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 1: Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 457
²Hesiod, Works and Days, verse 109-126
³ibid

The Methodenstreit

This post is part of a series exploring Principles of Economics by Carl Menger.  The following explores content from the Introduction.

Previously in this series: The Mathematical Marginalists

When Menger's Principles of Economics was published, its brilliance and tremendous insight was undeniable to most who read it. In Germany, however, it was subject to an academic blackout, conducted by Gustav von Schmoller, "who, from his throne at the University of Berlin, ruled the German academic world in the latter part of the 19th Century."¹ As mentioned in a previous post, the German intelligentsia at the time was extremely beholden to the state: and the University of Berlin was the nerve center for state apologia (scholars there called themselves the "intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern"). Schmoller and his cronies were also hard-core anti-theory members of the Historical School (also mentioned previously). The following funny story exemplifies just how anti-theory Schmoller was:

At a conference in Geneva where [Vilfredo] Pareto was presenting a paper, Gustav von Schmoller was in the audience and kept noisily interrupting Pareto's talk by shouting "There are no laws in economics!" The next day, when Pareto spotted Schmoller in the streets of Geneva. Pareto approached Schmoller and hid his face, pretending to be a beggar (which was not too difficult since Pareto was a shabby dresser). "Please, Sir," Pareto said, "Can you tell me where I can find a restaurant where you can eat for nothing?" Schmoller replied, "My dear man, there are no such restaurants, but there is a place around the corner where you can have a good meal very cheaply." "Ah," said Pareto triumphantly, unveiling himself, "so there are laws in economics!"²

To such an avid foe of economic theory and and a disbeliever in economics laws, Menger, who so thoroughly established the former and brilliantly discovered the latter, must have seemed like the ultimate nemesis. But Schmoller didn't deign to debate Menger. Being at the top of the heap, he had the luxury of attacking Menger by snubbing him...

The crowning offence from the Austrian point of view was given by Schmoller himself who, on the appearance of Menger’s pamphlet, took the probably unprecedented step of announcing in his journal that, although he had received a copy of the book for review, he was unable to review it because he had immediately returned it to the author

...and by blacklisting him and his students...

Schmoller, indeed, went so far as to declare publicly that members of the “abstract” school were unfit to fill a teaching position in a German university, and his influence was quite sufficient to make this equivalent to a complete exclusion of all adherents to Menger’s doctrines from academic positions in Germany.

Schmoller, for all his power and arrogance, could not stop the Marginal Revolution, as it swept his profession in spite of him. The real damage he did, however, was to preoccupy Menger in a methodological debate (famously known as the Methodenstreit) for almost the rest of his career. Menger wrote tract after tract defending his methodology. This seems a waste of his brilliance, when contemplating how much he might have accomplished had he been able to focus on further developing actual economic theory.

---

¹The History of Economic Thought Web Site, http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/schmoller.htm
²Ibid.

Next in this series: Menger's Axioms

The Mathematical Marginalists

This post is part of a series exploring Principles of Economics by Carl Menger.  The following explores content from the Introduction.

Previously in this series: The Contribution of Menger

It has been curious phenomenon in the history of thought that a key discovery will often be simultaneously and independently made by two thinkers. In this way was calculus developed along different lines by Newton and Leibniz, and the principles of natural selection in evolution discovered by both Darwin and Wallace. Even stranger is the case of the "Marginal Revolution" in economics. The formulation of subjective marginal utility as the basis of value theory was independently discovered by three economists: Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Léon Walras. Compounding the strangeness are the drastically different routes taken by Menger and his fellow marginalists to the same destination. Menger's analysis, as will be discussed in future posts, was logico-philosophical and deductive. Like most of political and economic theory up to that time, he started from clear, almost self-evident insights, and reasoned out their implications. Jevons and Walras, on the other hand tried to make economics a mathematical science. Instead of carefully revealing the causal chains that lie behind economic phenomena, Jevons and Walras tried to reduce the behavior of markets to functional equations. This would ultimately prove a tragedy for the science. Had Menger swept the field alone , all economics might have developed as Austrian economics. Instead, Jevons' and Walras' admittedly pivotal roles in the Marginal Revolution set the stage for the profession's fruitless obsession with mathematics (Rothbard calls it "quantiphrenia") and the aping of physics (Hayek calls it "scientism") that continues to this day. Ever since, economists have been dutifully mining data, pursuing the chimeric ambition of evaluating their precious equations. Why do economists continue down this path that has perpetually led them astray? I believe most of them cherish the exclusivity and mystique that mathematics lends to their profession.

A churlish mathematical economist might retort that Menger (and Austrians in general) simply aren't good at or don't care for math, and that their epistemological objections are just a fog to obscure their innumeracy. Regarding later Austrians, one need only point to Rothbard himself who held a degree in mathematics, and other quant-jocks like Robert Murphy to refute that point. In his introduction to the Principles, Hayek addressed Menger in particular regarding this question:

It is a curious fact that, so far as I am aware, he has nowhere commented on the value of mathematics as a tool of economic analysis. There is no reason to assume that he lacked either the technical equipment or the inclination. On the contrary, his interest in the natural sciences is beyond doubt, and a strong bias in favour of their methods is evident throughout his work. And the fact that his brothers, particularly Anton, are known to have been intensely interested in mathematics, and that his son Karl became a noted mathematician, may probably be taken as evidence of a definite mathematical strain in the family. But although he knew later not only the work of Jevons and Walras, but also that of his compatriots Auspitz and Lieben, he does not even refer to the mathematical method in any of his writings on methodology. Must we conclude that he felt rather sceptical about its usefulness?

In my next post, I'll cover Hayek's discussion of the life of Carl Menger.

Next in this series: The Methodenstreit