Anaxagoras And The Atomists Following Parmenides Conclusion example essay topic

As I read all the varying accounts of what is, what is not, and what will never be, according to Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists, I am reminded of a fable my mother told me years ago. In this story there are three blind men. In order to understand what an elephant is, they each approach an elephant. The first blind man is feeling all over the leg of the elephant and says to the others, "It is like a strong tree". But the second who is holding the trunk, explains, "It is like an ever-changing vine".

Still the third blind man runs his hands across the large body of the elephant and exclaims, "No! It is endless, like a wide mountain". Each of these men used the same thought process, in which they logically analyzed what was presented to them as fact, and each concluded in their own result. This is much like what occurred in the findings of the Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Atomists, following Parmenides conclusion that, essentially, nothing ever changes.

And therefore, nothing is born into or exits existence. This halting idea paved a very rough road for the other philosophers to wander, yet each used the same basic process Parmenides used, but each resulted in differing conclusions. Empedocles approached where Parmenides left off by breaking down the concept of all things, into what he thought they were made of. Empedocles came to the belief that everything in one way or another was made up of one of the four elements, earth, wind, fire and air. These four elements were brought together in continually interchanging ways by Love, and then were broken apart by Strife. Empedocles continues to then explain how everything continues to alternate change, and once brought together by Love and grown apart from Strife, six elements are thus created.

Through this process, "their life is not lasting, but in that they never cease interchanging continually, in this way they are always unchanging in a cycle". Anaxagoras too approached the next step by defining what "all things" were made of. Unlike Empedocles and his four, or rather six elements. Anaxagoras was not so definitive as to what the little things are that make up all things...

Instead he moved the thinking from something as large and general as the four elements, to the concept that infinitely small things that make up everything, "All things were together, unlimited in both amount and smallness. For the small too was unlimited". For Anaxagoras, he concluded that what brought together, seperated, and defined one thing form another was the Mind, "Mind is unlimited and self-ruled and is mixed with no thing, but is alone and by itself". Finally we come to the Atomists. The Atomists took the objective of defining what everything breaks down into to its fullest extent.

Closer to the truth than they could have possibly ever known, the Atomists declared that the little things regarded to in the past were actually atoms, differing in three points. These points were, "shape, arrangement, and position. For they say that what is differs only in 'rythm,' 'touching,' and 'turning'". The atoms were labeled indivisible. This monumental breakthrough in thought, that touches so closely with scientific truth, went even one step farther by recognizing the existence of a void, therefore explaining how the atoms interact and result in objects of differing definitions. Just as the three blind men all found their own truths derived from a single truth presented to them.

Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Atomists all formed very logical and believable theories based upon their interpretation of Parmenides' final conclusive ideas.