HIPS Response 2

This is my second response for my HIPS course. This time, it's regarding science and religion in ancient Greek philosophy. I didn't get any special recognition for my deconstruction last week, so I'm a bit miffed, but I understand, as the University of Chicago really likes its New Criticism paradigm.

Response 2: Separating Practices

The aphorisms of early Greek sages are without doubt eloquent—“Numbers constitute the whole universe” [1], “Just as our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so do breath and air surround the whole cosmos” [2], “Anaximander says that the stars are borne by the circles and spheres on which each one goes” [3]. Each of these ideas show seeds of the Western Thought, reaching out on natural, mystical, and philosophical motifs, but given the current divisions in science, religion, and philosophy, how exactly have these different areas diverged from a common source? Obviously, rigor, cosmological conviction, and speculation are all intricately intertwined in ancient Greek philosophy, so to explain science and religion independently is futile—science and religion can only be explained in relation to each other.

If we examine the Milesians and Pythagoreans, we see an elegant cosmology based on some sort of monism—be it Thales’s primordial water [4], Anaximene’s air [5], or Pythagoras’s numbers [1]. Although these are somewhat “natural” cosmologies as opposed to theistic origins (but this does not mean that there is not a place for a creator or creators), they are merely speculations that even Thales’s student Anaximander has labeled only as “stuff” [6]. These arguments are not “scientific” in a Popperian sense since they lack falsifiability, but they provide an important function to the early Greek philosophers: an origin of sorts, a design that allows individuals to find some sort of position in the vast universe. This was especially dear to the religious division of the Pythagoreans, the akousmatikoi—despite the fact that some of the teachings of Pythagoras, such as his white rooster superstition [7], are “unproved” [8].
The teleology of the universe is what drives religious speculation, but the Greeks also demanded justification, as per the rigor of the mathematikoi group of the Pythagoreans [9]. This justification provided was proto-scientific—for instance, Pythagoras experimented with mathematical proportions and wave vibrations and discovered the relation between harmony and number [10]. In fact, the term mathematikoi stems from mathema, meaning “study” or “learning,” and the mathematikoi applied the utmost rigor in their knowledge pursuits [9].

Once again, it must be stressed that these knowledge pursuits were religious in the end, as even the mathematikoi searched for further examples of their maxims regarding “the One” and “numbers consisting the universe” [11], but it is clear that there is a fundamental relationship between science and religion that cannot be severed to create separate disciplines in early Greek philosophy—religion provides a motivation for science, as science explains religion. Even though mixing these two disciplines in contemporary discourse is nothing short of controversial (cf. “Creation ‘Science’” and “Quantum Mysticism”), there is an eloquence in early Greek philosophy that stems from this combined pursuit of truth.

References
[1] Attributed to Pythagoras, quoted in Aristotle’s Metaphysics in pg 18 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[2] Attributed to Anaximenes, quoted by Aetius in pg 12 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[3] Quoted by Aetius in pg 11 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[4] Cohen et al. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 9
[5] Cohen et al. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 12
[6] Cohen et al. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 10
[7] Quoted by Aristotle in pg 18 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[8] Quoted by Iamblichus in pg 17 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[9] Cohen et al. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy, 15
[10] Quoted by Stobaeus in pg 20 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy
[11] Quoted by Aristotle in pg 18 of Cohen’s Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy

Text: Cohen, Curd, and Reeve (Eds). Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy. 3rd Ed. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 2005.