Nate Ward

Précis 6

11/16/14

R. J. Hankinson asserts that the Greeks “invented” the entire concept of a natural world

governed by orderly processes of physical and biological sorts that are inherently capable of

subjection to rational thought (p. 435).1 To frame his discussion, Hankinson discusses the pre-

Socratics in terms of material, dynamical, metaphysical, and formal principles; he also

discusses their use of chance and necessity, sensation and evidence, and their use of natural as

opposed to mythological explanations. Hankinson also deflates some Aristotelian criticisms of

the pre-Socratics throughout his account. Hankinson aims to demonstrate how nearly any

interpretation of the pre-Socratics invariably involves hypotheses of the general “aitiai” or

“causes, explanations, and reasons” for natural phenomena (p. 438).

Towards this end, Hankinson highlights sections of pre-Socratic thought that support his

conjectures about their usage of aitiai. Hankinson begins by broadly outlining how Thales,

Anaximander, and Anaximenes hypothesized the aitiai in terms of “material principles” i.e.

material monism (p. 436-439). Next, Hankinson provides examples of “dynamical principles”

from Heraclitus and the pluralists Anaxagoras and Empedocles to support his claim that the pre-

Socratics did in fact provide dynamic as opposed to strictly static principles, contra Aristotle (p.

445-448).

Further, Hankinson cites apparent examples of the use of the principle of sufficient

reason by certain pre-Socratics like Thales, Anaxagoras, and Parmenides, and the conservative

1 “Reason, Cause, and Explanation in Presocratic Philosophy” by R. J. Hankinson in The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (ed. By Curd and Graham), pp. 434-57.

principles found in Heraclitus’ thought, to support his claim that the pre-Socratics utilized

metaphysical principles to guide their reasoning (p. 445-448). Hankinson disagrees with

Aristotle that the pre-Socratics lacked a “teleological” cause for their explanations, and cites the

notions of chance and necessity in Democritus and Leucippus’ thought, as well as Anaxagoras’

concept of Mind, as evidence of potential teleological explanations (p. 450-452).

Aristotle argued that the pre-Socratics lacked formal causes, i.e. a principle to explain the

structural organization of things, but Hankinson asserts that Heraclitus, Empedocles, and

perhaps even Anaxagoras, all invoked some type of form producing principle and made it a

basic “formal” principle in precisely the sense Aristotle claims they did not (p. 450).

Concerning the pre-Socratics use of sensation and evidence, Hankinson highlights that the

atomists were among the first to discuss the idea of an appearance and reality distinction, and

says “in general the pre-Socratics realistically supposed knowledge to be hard to come by rather

than pessimistically thinking it to be impossible” (p. 453).

In summation, Hankinson says that the pre-Socratics are not important for being correct

or not, rather, “they are important, even crucial, in the history of ideas simply because they tried

to explain things in the way they did” i.e. in terms of reasons causes and explanations (p. 454-

455). The pre-Socratics sought “general, repeatable patterns of physical behavior” to inform

their and support their reductive explanations of phenomena, and despite the apparent lack of

“second-order philosophical scrutiny” on their own parts, Hankinson argues that they were

instrumental in creating the very foundations of natural science and this is their most

noteworthy achievement (p. 454-455).