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From Science To Metaphysics and Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Joseph Lalumia
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Extract

Most historians of science and historians of philosophy have advanced the doctrine that philosophy preceded science, the so-called Pre-socratics from Thales to Democritus being the philosophers who provided the stimulus for science to begin.

There are a few historians who see the Pre-socratics as scientists. However, these historians seem without exception to be uncertain about two of the Pre-socratics: Parmenides, who appears to them to be essentially a philosopher or a logician, and Zeno, the Eleatic, who excites their attention mainly because of the influence of his paradoxes reflected in the history of mathematics.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 22 , Issue 88 , December 1974, pp. 1 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 B. Farrington, Greek Science, New York, Penguin, 1944, Chapter 1.

2 "Spirits" should be understood here as in "spirits of alcohol." In Galen's physiological theory "natural," "vital," and "animal" spirits stood for venous blood (thick, dark red, and sluggish), arterial blood (thinner, bright red, and faster than venous blood) and air (lighter than arterial blood, colorless, and very swift) which the motor nerves were thought to convey from the brain to the muscles to execute the behavioral decisions of the animal. Vital spirit was considered to be the product of some refinement of natural spirit, and animal spirit the product of a further refinement of vital spirit, all the refine ments amounting to progressive steps in a process of rarefaction that the chemistry of the body accomplished.

3 Diogenes Laertius viii. 25 (Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 58 B la, Berlin, 1954).

4 Cohen and Drabkin, A Source-book in Greek Science, New York, McGraw Hill, 1948, pp. 5-24.

5 J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, London, Adam and Charles Black, 4th Ed., 1948, p. 290.

6 Cohen and Drabkin, op. cit., Footnote 3, p. 70.

7 J. Burnet, op. cit., p. 315.

8 Ibid., pp. 315-320.

9 From J. Burnet, op. cit., pp. 319-320, with some rephrasing for clarity.

10 Cf. R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959, pp. 297-315, and Testability and Meaning, New Haven, Whitlock's Inc., 1954, pp. 428-431.

11 Duhem, P., La Théorie Physique, Paris, Libraire Marcel Rivière, 2nd ed., 1914, Ch. 1.

12 Malinowski, B., Magic, Science, and Religion, Glencoe, Ill., The Free Press, 1948, pp. 1-18.

13 " Let us look back and I think we shall find that the first philosophical phase, properly understood, was not so unlike the last and then that the last, properly understood, is not so unlike the first." — John Wisdom, "The Metamorphosis of Metaphysics," p. 50, Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. XLVII, London, Oxford University Press, Amen House E.C. 4, 1961.