Читать книгу The Socratic Turn - Dustin Sebell - Страница 11

Chapter 2

What Is Science?

The Young Socrates’ Motives

As a young man, Socrates was merely carrying on a long-standing tradition of reflection. For he was wonderfully desirous of that wisdom called, already, “inquiry concerning nature” (96a5–7, compare Laws 891b8–c9), which is said to go back to Thales.¹ He desired this wisdom² or this natural science, as we may also call it, as wonderfully as he did not for its own sake but because (96a7) of his opinion that it was “magnificent” or “overweening” to possess it, that is, to know the causes of each thing. Still, the young Socrates’ desire to know cannot be reduced altogether to this opinion, which stems from a desire on his part for something other than knowledge.³ His desire to know was indeed, at the outset, complicated or adulterated by the admixture of another desire, a desire for whatever was magnificent in his opinion. But had it not happened to seem magnificent to him to possess it, the young Socrates might still have desired such knowledge (on its own account), only not so wonderfully. That is to say, his unadulterated desire to know would perhaps be unencumbered by wonder. And Socrates’ well-known suggestion in the Theaetetus, that “this experience, wondering, belongs very much to the philosopher,” supports this. “For,” he goes on to say, by way of qualification, “there is no other beginning of philosophy than this” (155d2–4).⁴

The Uncertainty of Natural Science

Socrates goes on to cast light on the sort of things he used to examine as a result of his wonderful desire to acquire natural science by citing three or four examples. Before doing so, however, he gives the first of many indications that natural science is not free from difficulties. For the way in which he “frequently threw himself back and forth” in the course of the examinations he undertook in order to acquire it suggests that the results of those examinations fell somewhat short, at the very least, of complete certainty (compare 96a9–b1 with 90b9–c6). At most, inasmuch as their results evidently fell short of such certainty as would be incompatible with any ongoing vacillation or wavering in their regard, the examinations themselves could well appear Sisyphean. Among other things, the young Socrates vacillated or wavered as to whether it is “blood” or “air” or “fire” by means of which human beings think (96b4), or even whether it is “none of these things, but the brain” from which knowledge comes to be (96b4–5). His wavering or disagreement with himself on these matters as well as others foreshadows the fact that while all natural scientists believe there is “an Atlas”—a fixed and necessary being (108e5–109a2, 99b8) at the bottom of all things, a being they believe they will discover at some time (99c1–6)—they disagree with one another (within certain limits: 99c1–3) about what that being is, for instance, whether it is “vortex” (99b7) or “air” (99b8). For some reason, the natural scientists seem to be unable to reach a consensus. Could it be that the ultimate subject matter of natural science—defined provisionally as the cause or causes of generation and corruption (compare 95e10 with 96a8–9)—cannot in the last analysis be known with complete certainty? And if that knowledge remains uncertain or tentative, could it be that it remains exposed to endless revision or disagreement as well?

However that may be, the young Socrates’ vacillation as to the nature of the body (“blood” or “air” or “fire”) responsible for thought or knowledge in human beings (96b4) was very different from his wavering as to whether what was responsible for this was in fact “none of these things, but the brain” (96b4–5). For his wavering pertained in the first case to the nature of the matter (“blood” or “air” or “fire”) by virtue of which the compounds made out of it (“we [human beings]”) acquire a characteristic or power of their very own (“who are thoughtful”). In the second case, however, he vacillated as to this: whether that matter—whatever its nature or form may be—which gives to the compounds made out of it (human beings) some characteristic or power of their very own (thought or knowledge) is to be regarded as a whole in its own right (as “the brain” is); or whether, insofar as it is the matter (that is, “the blood”) of the very matter in question (“the brain”) that does this, that matter too (“the brain”) is to be regarded as a mere compound.

These examples of the two kinds of vacillation or wavering that Socrates was liable to as a young natural scientist, the only ones he specifies here, have far-reaching implications. Indeed, if they did not have sources embedded in natural science itself they would have no place here. Still, it remains to be seen what those might be. It will have to suffice for now to assert, and as we proceed to bear the possibility in mind, that while the first kind of vacillation will prove to stem from one of the difficulties that eventually made Socrates turn away from natural science, the second will prove to stem from another difficulty.

Natural Science at a Glance

After having cast a shadow of doubt over the possibility of natural science, Socrates gives a brief report of the makeup of the examinations entailed by it. But in keeping with the fact that their results remained uncertain or merely tentative, Socrates presents those examinations in the form of unanswered questions. What he says to begin with is that as a young natural scientist he examined “first” (96b1) the cause or causes through which animals come to be in general (96b2–3), and through which thoughtfulness (96b4) or knowledge (96b5–9) comes to be in human beings in particular. He expected to find the cause or causes which organize the animals, in all their complexity, in a specific blend of nonliving things or bodies (“some putrefaction”), on one hand, and the mindless changes or motions to which they are subject (“the hot and the cold”), on the other. As for how human beings, alone of all animals, come to be thoughtful, he expected to find the cause or causes of this in one or another simple body or matter (“blood” or “air” or “fire”). But as an alternative to this (96b4–5) he wondered whether it was not in fact some other more complex body or matter out of which our thought or knowledge comes into being (“the brain”). Then or “in turn,” after having examined in this manner the coming to be of these things, the young Socrates examined their perishing, too, presumably into the very matter from which they originally came to be (96b9). Finally, as if by the way, he adds that he examined the qualities of heaven and earth too (96b9–c1).

And with that addition, the objects of the young Socrates’ examinations, as he presents them here, fall into a certain order. Animals in general and human beings in particular depend on heaven and earth, which must be there before the former can come to be and which may perhaps remain even after they perish (Laws 889b1–d4). If the young Socrates examined each thing in light of its roots, and the roots of each thing in light of its roots, and so on, he would have been naturally led in the end from the examination of the coming to be and perishing of animals and human beings to the examination of heaven and earth. As the comprehensive and perhaps eternal order within which those transitory things come and go, heaven and earth would have soon become the favored objects of a young natural scientist’s examinations. And yet, precisely if this is so, the fact that Socrates gives to the favored objects of his youthful examinations such slight attention here must come as a surprise. But his reserve is clarified by and it clarifies in turn exactly what it was that, as a young natural scientist, he thought about the roots of (the qualities of) heaven and earth. For reserve would have been called for if Socrates, in his youth, thought such things about the whole or its roots as were at odds with piety.⁵ And had the young Socrates ascribed to the roots of heaven and earth the same soulless, mindless, or “Epimethean” (Protagoras 320c6ff., 361c2–d5) character he evidently ascribed to everything else—including even “soul” itself (96b4, 96b5–9)⁶—would his outlook not have been an impious one?⁷ How can blind necessities (108e5–109a2) such as “vortex” (99b7) or “air” (99b8) truly replace Zeus as “king”?⁸ Now, Socrates has already admitted, in effect, that the impression he gave at his trial, that is, that he was never, “ever” engaged in natural science, was a misleading one (Apology 19a8–d6). But has the report of his engagement with it that he allows himself to give here not also served to corroborate or confirm Meletus’ allegation that at some point in the past, if not also at present, he did not believe that the sun and the moon are gods but rather that the sun is stone and the moon is earth (Apology 26d1–e3)?

Be that as it may, was not the long-standing tradition of reflection, “which they call inquiry concerning nature,” that the young Socrates was, for a time, only carrying on without modification itself vulnerable to this allegation? Socrates himself was fully aware that it was widely believed at any rate that all who philosophize, or who investigate “the things aloft and under the earth,” do not believe in gods (Apology 18b4–c4, 23d2–7, 26d1–9). He even seems to have believed this of “the wise” himself (Phaedrus 229b4–d1, compare Apology 18b4–c4 as well as Phaedo 61b2–7 and Euthyphro 6a7–10)! The Athenian stranger in Plato’s Laws speaks of these matters more openly perhaps but also, to compensate for this, more harshly. To all those engaged in “investigations concerning nature,” he attributes disbelief (Laws 891c7–d3), as well as the conviction that the earth, sun, moon, and stars are not gods and divine things but rather “earth and stones, incapable of thinking about human affairs” (Laws 886d1–e2, 889b1–e5).⁹ He even goes so far as to say that “everything that moves in heaven and that appears to the eyes appeared to [those who philosophize] to be full of stones and earth and many other soulless bodies, which provided the causes of the entire cosmos,” and that these things “caused many varieties of atheism and other disgusting views to infect such men” (Laws 967c2–d7). Whether those who philosophize warrant this objection, assuming that it is in fact an objection, is not yet certain. But, if they do, some light would be cast on Socrates’ earlier remark to the effect that as a young man he was attracted to natural science at least in part because it seemed to him “magnificent” to possess it.¹⁰

The Certainty of Natural Science

It was not because natural science ceased to seem “magnificent” to him that Socrates finally turned away from it. Nor did he turn away from it because the results of his examinations were still compatible with ongoing vacillation or wavering on his part. In the absence of a necessary reason for it, that fact alone is neutral as to whether despair or hope of progressing in natural science is the appropriate response. And as much as he may have vacillated or wavered in regard to the results or findings of natural science, the young Socrates still supposed that what was disclosed by “this (sort of) examination” (96c2, c5) or “this way of proceeding” or “method” (97b5–6) was truly knowledge. For this reason, Socrates’ “sufficient proof” of his incapacity for natural science consists in a demonstration that he was so blinded by “examining” matters in this way that he “unlearned” “what [he] clearly knew,” at least in his opinion and in the opinion of “the others”—but not of “everybody” (contrast 96c8)—“before” (96c3–7).

The character of “what [he] clearly knew before” or “what [he] supposed [he] knew before this” (96c6–7), when he was a young natural scientist, becomes clearer from the sequel. For before being blinded Socrates supposed he knew “both about many other things and about through what a human being grows” (96c7–8). That is to say, he supposed he knew “through what” (dia ti) a human being grows, and he supposed he knew the same thing about many other things as well; namely, “through what” they grow or come to be. And Socrates was not alone in supposing he knew such things. “The others” (96c4) engaged in natural science, such as those who said that the organization of animals was due to the hot and the cold undergoing some putrefaction (96b3), were also of the opinion that they possessed this knowledge (cf. 99b4–c6, 96a5–7, 99b4–c6). It was, then, this examination or the pursuit of this knowledge that blinded Socrates. And it was accordingly this knowledge, which he supposed he possessed “before this,” that he unlearned on account of the blindness brought on by his further pursuit of it.¹¹ In keeping with this, the young Socrates did indeed learn something from this experience. He learned that he did not in the last analysis truly possess the sort of knowledge, knowledge of “through what” things come to be, he formerly supposed he possessed.¹² But the unlearning of false things is a type of learning.

Before being interrupted by Cebes (96e5), Socrates is able to make two statements about the sort of knowledge he formerly supposed he possessed. In both of these statements Socrates gives some account of what, in his youth, he supposed constituted sufficient or genuine knowledge of “through what” things come to be. He does not do so in a general way, however. Rather, he takes up five things or processes in particular—one in his first statement (96c8–d6) and four in his second (96d8–e4)—and he presents what he formerly supposed he knew about them. In this way, Socrates leaves it up to his listeners to gather what he supposed he knew about coming to be as such from what he supposed he knew about the specific examples he permits himself to mention. It is imperative for this reason that we remain attentive to the contribution that the young Socrates’ account of these things or processes is meant to make to our understanding of what he supposed he knew, but did not, about coming to be in general.

The Complex Relation Between Science and Common Sense

Socrates’ first statement (96c8–d7) is devoted to spelling out what, in his youth, he supposed he knew about “through what” a human being grows. This knowledge, which he later unlearned, was preceded by another sort of knowledge. In fact, the account he goes on to supply of human growth (96c8–d6), an account that was perfectly acceptable to the young Socrates and also “to the others” engaged in natural science (96c4), evidently had as its presupposition or starting-point an acceptance of what is clear “to everyone” already (96c8–9). The account of human growth supplied by the natural scientists is presented here as an explanation of what is clear “to everyone” (cf. 97c7, 96a8–9) even prior to a scientific account of it. A human being grows “through” eating and drinking (96c8–9). It is this fact, if it is a fact, which does not need science to become manifest to “everyone,” that the scientific account is primarily intended to explain. In other words, the natural scientists supplement or undergird the prescientific awareness of things—of, in this case, the fact that a human being grows “through” eating and drinking (cf. 96a8–9, 97c7)—with an account of the causes by virtue of which what “everyone” is already, prescientifically aware of, necessarily occurs.

A Scientific Account

The young Socrates explained the fact, of which “everyone” is already aware, that a human being grows “through” eating and drinking as follows. When from out of the food that a human being eats flesh is added to his flesh, bone to his bone, and in this way “by the same account” the “fitting” thing is added to each of his other parts as well, then what was formerly a little heap (bulk) becomes a lot, and so a little human being becomes big (96c9–d5). At the outset, to repeat, “everyone” is aware of the fact that a human being grows “through” eating and drinking. And yet the young Socrates along with the other natural scientists felt a need to explain this, to begin with, by having recourse not merely to “eating” by itself but to the very food a human being eats (96c9–d1). There is a reason for this. In tracing human growth to a mere process or happening, the prescientific view fails to specify or make explicit that from or out of which (96c9) the increased heap or bulk that belongs to the fully grown human being came to be. As a result, it remains open to—at a minimum, it has not eliminated—the possibility that something, the increased heap, came to be out of nothing at all. But this possibility is incompatible with the basic requirement or premise of science (philosophy), recognized as such by all of the first philosophers, that nothing can come to be without a cause (Aristotle Physics 187a27–29, 32–35, On Generation and Corruption 317b29–31).¹³ In order to protect this premise, and science along with it, the young Socrates was forced to begin by making explicit what the prescientific view of human growth had allowed to remain mysterious, that is, that from which the increased heap comes to be. Still, the young Socrates’ recourse to “food,” as that out of which the increased heap comes to be, does not yet serve to make his account of human growth an unimpeachably scientific one. As a matter of fact, precisely because it has recourse to “food” as that from which the bigger human being comes to be the account must grapple again with the same old difficulty. For how exactly does one being, that is, a bigger human being, come to be out of another being, that is, food?

Had the young Socrates come to a stop before the prescientific awareness of things, he would have been compelled to recognize that the bigger human being and the food are or are genuine wholes (cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 1020b6–8, 1022a33–35). And that recognition would have compelled him to concede, in turn, that nothing remains or persists unchanged in the course of human growth. At the same time that the food, in perishing, perishes into the bigger human being, the bigger human being, in coming to be, comes to be out of the food. The very being from which, according to this account, the bigger human being comes to be, therefore perishes or ceases to be altogether. However, if something of the first being out of which the subsequent being comes to be does not somehow remain or persist unchanged within that (subsequent being) which has come to be, then the latter could perhaps have come to be out of nothing. That which is, the food, in perishing, could have perished without qualification (into nothing), and that which is not yet, the bigger human being, in coming to be, could have come to be without qualification (out of nothing).

In an effort to avoid making a concession that would ultimately threaten science or its basic premise or requirement, the young Socrates refused to come to a stop before the prescientific awareness of things. He reduced both the food and the bigger human being to their materials or elements, “flesh” and “bone” and the other body parts, instead (96c9–d1, 98c6–7). And in so doing he refused to recognize what “everyone” is otherwise aware of: that the human being and the food are or are genuine wholes.¹⁴ By reducing in this way all the beings subject to the change in question to their common materials or elements, the young Socrates was able to preclude anything from coming to be or perishing without qualification. Insofar as the materials or elements at least neither come into being nor perish without qualification, they may thereby serve, since they are fixed themselves, to set fixed limits on the quality and the degree of the changes to which the perishable beings are subject.

With this step, Socrates seems to conclude the account of human growth he had accepted in his youth. And yet if in fact the account ends here, is not the basic requirement of science—the requirement it was incumbent on the account to meet—still unmet? For what the young Socrates sought, to repeat, was an account of human growth that would meet the requirement that nothing come to be without a cause. And to ensure that nothing could come to be or perish unqualifiedly during the change from the one to the other, he reduced both “food” and “human being” to their materials or elements. But the appeal to the body parts, as things that remain or persist unchanged in the course of human growth, is not yet an appeal to what is imperishable simply. Flesh and bone are themselves perishable; in death, the body and its parts return to the earth from which they came (80c2–d3, 77e1–3). The very same difficulty that first led the young Socrates to reduce food to flesh and bone therefore reappears on the level of his “solution” to it. The mystery that surrounds flesh and bone, as a result of this difficulty, extends in turn to the perishable things (“food” and “human being”) of which they are said to be the materials or elements, undermining the account as a whole.

Still, does not the difficulty that undermines in this way the young Socrates’ account of human growth have a clear solution? It is, in essence, the very same difficulty the young Socrates faced before, in the case of “food” and “human being.” In that case, though, he sought to resolve it by appealing to their materials or elements. Yet that “solution” did no more than postpone the difficulty. To reapply it here, to reduce flesh and bone and the other body parts to their materials or elements, would likewise serve only as a temporary stopgap. For it would be necessary in the next place to reduce the materials or elements of flesh and bone and the other body parts to their materials or elements, and so on. A genuine solution to the difficulty, as opposed to a mere stopgap, could not allow this to go on ad infinitum. An appeal to the body parts will not do. At the same time, however, exactly what would have to characterize the sort of thing that could supply a genuine solution follows clearly enough from the fact that it is the perishability of flesh and bone and the other body parts that undermines the young Socrates’ account. In other words, would not the difficulty at issue vanish if, after reducing flesh and bone and the other body parts to their materials or elements, the young Socrates did not stop there but continued to reduce those things to their materials or elements,¹⁵ and so on, until he came at last to the truly elemental, altogether simple material (being) underlying everything else? As long as the changes involved in human growth could be traced back to some first, eternal material, the young Socrates’ account of it would seem to be saved.

It would only seem to be saved, however. For an aspect of the original difficulty endures. There remains the possibility that the first, eternal thing is itself capable of radically changing, perhaps through thought or choice, in which case the very thing meant to ensure that Socrates’ account would meet the basic requirement of science would in fact do just the opposite. For, since Socrates and the others engaged in natural science refused to separate cause from necessity (97e2, 99b1–6, compare 108e5–109a2 with 99b8),¹⁶ whatever should freely emerge in this way—and, in principle, anything could—would come to be without necessity and thus, properly speaking, without a cause. A first, eternal thing that is itself free or radically changeable would sink rather than save the young Socrates’ account. What that account requires therefore is a first material that is fixed or necessary, something which, because it is fixed or necessary, is permanent or eternal as well (cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1139b22–24ff.).

The foregoing reflections are confirmed by the fact that Socrates will later refer to the discovery of that very material as the objective of the whole class of accounts to which his own account of human growth belongs. For he goes on to say that all natural scientists believed they would discover, “an Atlas stronger and more deathless and better at holding all things together” (99c3–5) than any thinking or purposive being (99c1–3, 99c5–6).¹⁷ They believed they would discover, to put it less poetically, a “necessity” such as “vortex” or “air” at the bottom of all things (compare 99c3–5 with 99b6–c1 and 108e5–109a2).¹⁸ On reflection, then, the difficulty with the young Socrates’ account has a clear solution, and that solution is, as it turns out, the same as the objective of all such accounts, as Socrates will go on to describe that objective, namely, the discovery of some first, necessary, and thus eternal being (or beings).¹⁹ According to Aristotle, too, the belief or assumption that there was just such a thing was shared by all natural scientists (Physics 187a35–b1, Metaphysics 984a31–33).²⁰

In sum, the young Socrates’ account seems, at first glance, to be undermined by a difficulty that, despite being rather obvious, he appears not to notice. On the other hand, he had only just faced it in another context (in the case of “food” and “human being”). Moreover, as we saw, the difficulty has a clear solution. That solution was, on reflection, actually implied by the thrust of the young Socrates’ account, or by its overarching goal: to meet the basic requirement of science. In addition to this, it was made explicit by Socrates’ later disclosure that what was sought (as a way of meeting that requirement) by his account or by the whole class of accounts to which his own belonged was the fundamental material that underlies and upholds the rest. The difficulty with the young Socrates’ account of human growth has a solution, which Socrates, in his restatement of it to Cebes and the others, merely refuses to state openly, even though he is fully aware of it. If that account in its current state appears deficient, as indeed it does, it is only because Socrates in restating it now refuses to finish it or to draw the conclusion that necessarily follows from it. In particular, he refuses to do more than allude to that account’s ultimate reliance on some first material necessity (anangkē).

Socrates’ Reticence

But what is the reason for this refusal? Although Socrates refuses to speak of that material here—while he is in the midst of conceding that he was, after all, involved in natural science, whose objective is to find it—he is much less reticent in this regard later (99c3–5), after having encouraged his listeners to pardon or to forget his own ties to natural science by critiquing at length those still engaged in it (98b7–99c3). Only after thoroughly dissociating himself from the natural scientists does Socrates permit himself to speak of the sort of thing they seek to discover. Even then, he does not speak of it straightforwardly, but in terms borrowed from poetry or myth, as “an Atlas.”²¹ By speaking of it in this way, he conceals somewhat the very thing that at the same time he allows himself to reveal: that this fundamental material, so far from being thoughtful or purposeful, operates according to necessity alone (compare 99c1–6 with 99b6–c1, 98b7–d8, 96b2–c1, and 108e5–109a2).²² As we saw, in order to meet the basic requirement of science, the natural scientists assumed that there is some first, necessary, and thus eternal material (such as “air” or the atom), or what Socrates calls “an Atlas.”²³ Again, according to Aristotle, all natural scientists made this same assumption. They did not refer to that material as “an Atlas,” however, they called it “nature.”²⁴ And so Aristotle for his part called the first philosophers “those who discoursed on nature.”²⁵

Now, Socrates says that the natural scientists “believe” (99c3) that they will “discover” or “find” (99c5) nature. He implies by this formulation that, as we have already seen, the belief or assumption that there is nature lies at the basis of natural science. At the same time, he implies that another belief or assumption lies at its basis along with it: namely, that nature, insofar as it can be discovered or found at all, is itself intelligible or knowable (cf. 99b2–c1). The natural scientists believe or assume, in other words, that the belief or assumption underlying natural science, that there is nature, can receive confirmation from natural science itself. And the confirmation of that assumption is the objective and also, simultaneously, the condition of natural science. Having said that, perhaps the delicacy with which Socrates speaks of nature follows from what is gradually becoming clear about it, on one hand, together with what was popularly believed about the first thing, on the other.

Indeed, not only is the assumption that there is nature incompatible with the belief in the gods of the city, its confirmation, which is nothing less than the objective and condition of natural science, would amount to a demonstration of the nonexistence of such gods.²⁶ To see this it suffices to consider the assumption of the natural scientists, that there is nature, in light of the basic alternative to it. Hesiod, for instance, claims that, “first of all things, Chaos came to be,” followed by the coming to be of Earth, Tartarus, and Eros. Yet, despite claiming that they “came to be,” Hesiod does not make the claim that these beings came to be out of or from anything else, as he does in the case of the succeeding generations or births.²⁷ Even then, he says of these succeeding beings that, though they need not have come into being, they can never perish, from which it follows that they have not, strictly speaking, come to be out of anything else. And if in fact something can come to be from nothing, as Hesiod suggests, then there are no fixed limits to what can and cannot occur. Anything would be possible, no matter how incredible. A dog might come to be from a horse, out of which, in the next place, a calf might come to be.²⁸ An immortal might even come to be from a (mortal) human being.²⁹ As long as the cause—if it can, properly speaking, be called a cause at all—of coming to be and perishing remains free or unlimited and therefore shrouded in darkness,³⁰ not one of the beings, each of which is contingent on it, could be said to have fixed characteristics and powers of its own, or a nature. Should the assumption that there is nature—in the sense of a first material necessity—be unable to be confirmed, science, being the attempt to know the natures of the beings, would seem to be fatally flawed.³¹ For it would seem to depend in that case on nothing but the belief or assumption that there is nature, and is not such dependence (on mere belief) fatal to science or philosophy (cf. 84a7–b1, Crito 46b4–6)?

By overturning nature in this way, Hesiod’s claim undermines the hope that human beings might obtain by themselves genuine knowledge of the world.³² In doing so, however, it nourishes other hopes. For it makes room for beings whose unlimited freedom in thinking and choosing is not merely derivative from that which, being fixed or necessary, lacks thought and choice. Having come to be without a cause, and thus contingent on nothing, such beings could well be immortal. These immortal beings might, insofar as they think, think about human affairs; and, insofar as they act, choose to perform actions in our regard. Moreover, since they are among the first beings, their power over the beings contingent on them could be such that they can do whatever they choose. In making room for beings such as this, whose unlimited freedom in thinking and choosing comprehends, orders or causes all (other) things, Hesiod’s claim jettisons science, to be sure. Yet it replaces nature or necessity, on which science seems to depend, with such inscrutable darkness as would allow for providential gods or the gods of the city. The world, being unfathomably deep, may be the work of gods who, in minding our business as well as theirs, make it responsive to our hopes or prayers when they wish it, regardless of any supposedly “natural” or “necessary” limits.³³

Thus, to assume as the natural scientists do that the first thing is necessary or fixed, or that it lacks the freedom to act through thought or choice, is to deny the existence of the gods in whom the city believes. For, assuming that there is nature, all freedom and indeterminacy must be merely derivative from it.³⁴ Moreover, given that they are composed of some fundamental material, all other things—including what could otherwise appear to be free or animate, such as “gods” or human beings—must be essentially perishable, since they would have causes (elements of which they are composed) that do not support their being except incidentally.³⁵ Put simply, the philosophers and those who believe in the gods of the city regard the same thing, the first thing (or things), as possessing opposite or mutually exclusive attributes—as, that is, being either necessary (“air”) or purposeful (“Zeus”) (cf. Symposium 195b7–c5).³⁶ Socrates’ reticence with regard to nature, the ultimate subject matter of natural science (96a7), may be attributed to his mindfulness of this difference, and of the reputation for impiety that philosophy is almost bound to acquire as a result of it. That reputation was not harmless. Because of it, “the many” in Athens and even elsewhere (in oligarchic Thebes) believed that philosophers, such as Socrates and Anaxagoras before him, deserved to die (64a4–b8), and the Phaedo makes abundantly clear that they were not unwilling to act on this belief.³⁷ Socrates knew he could not have spoken in plain terms of nature without making the shocking and dangerous admission that philosophers are, as they are widely reputed to be, nonbelievers in the gods of the city. Still, there is another reason why Socrates refuses to acknowledge openly that the account of human growth he accepted in his youth rested ultimately on an appeal to nature. For not only does that refusal protect philosophy’s future in the city, as in fact it did, but it also serves to bring out more fully a crucial feature of the sort of knowledge the young Socrates supposed he possessed.

The Complex Relation Between Science and Common Sense, Revisited

As Socrates put it at the outset, natural science involves knowing the causes “of each thing” (96a8, 97c6–7, 97b4–5). More exactly, according to his elaboration of this remark, it involves knowing “through what” each thing comes to be and perishes and is the way it is (96a8–9). Oddly enough, however, Socrates’ report of his engagement with natural science as a young man does not altogether reflect this. For his report makes clear only this much: that when he was young, he examined “first” (96b1) “through what” things come to be, whereas after this, or “in turn” (96b9), he examined “through what” these same things perish (96b2–c1). He makes no mention, that is, of ever having examined “through what” each thing is the way—or what—it is. There can be no question of the young Socrates’ somehow forgetting to try to acquire knowledge of the very thing, or one of them, that he himself says he sought to know. In any case, even if he did not undertake a separate examination of (the cause of) the way of being of each thing, he was still persuaded, presumably on the basis of his other examinations, that he knew “through what” a thing is the way it is (97b3–6). The young Socrates did not forget to examine “through what” each thing is what it is then. He merely assumed that in or by examining “through what” each thing comes to be and perishes he was also, at the same time, examining “through what” each thing is what, or the way, it is. We are not entirely unprepared to find this assumption here or to grasp its bearing.

We recall that the young Socrates was led to reduce “human being,” for one, to its materials or elements—to those things of which it consists, out of which it comes to be, when it comes to be, and into which it perishes, when it perishes. As it seemed to him, its materials or elements are what somehow cause the coming to be and the perishing of the compound, “human being.” And these materials or elements are for their part ultimately reducible to some fundamental material that somehow causes the coming to be and perishing of all things. Socrates’ search for this first material nature followed from the basic premise or requirement of science. This objective, the discovery of nature, was taken up then insofar as it formed a part—albeit an apparently indispensable part—of another, larger objective or overarching goal. For the young Socrates’ account was intended primarily to grasp the cause of what “everyone” knows in a certain way already. Although it eventually developed into a search for nature in the sense of a first material necessity, the young Socrates’ search for the cause of human growth was from its beginning, and it would remain to its end, a search for the cause responsible for human beings being the way—or what—they are.³⁸ Accordingly, he must have assumed that the materials or elements of each thing, as what each thing consists of, comes from, and perishes into, not only accounted for its coming to be and perishing, but, in so doing, supplied its way of being as well. He must have assumed, in short, that the way of being of each thing—what it is, or what it can do as well as suffer (cf. 98a6–7)—having no distinct existence of its own, could be understood adequately in this way, in terms of the whole process of becoming leading up to it.

This is not an assumption that science can dispense with, at least not without putting itself at risk of being wrecked. Indeed, the young Socrates sought the cause of each thing’s being the way it is and not otherwise in the causes of its coming to be and perishing in response to the need that emerged from the basic premise of science to trace the characteristics and powers of each thing to something that could ensure, by being fixed itself, their own fixity. Each thing’s way of being, if it cannot be traced to such a ground (or to nature, in that sense), cannot necessarily be counted on to possess the fixity that is a prerequisite for full knowledge of it—and, hence, for science or philosophy in the fullest sense—to be possible. Had the young Socrates, together with the others engaged in natural science, refused to make the aforementioned assumption, he would have been compelled to admit that what he primarily seeks to know, what each thing is, cannot be fully known. For in the absence of a ground or cause the characteristics and powers of each thing may admit of being otherwise than they are or appear to be. Inasmuch as this is so, they may not be fixed or necessary (cf. 97e2, 99b1–6). And what is not necessary is not truly knowable.³⁹ If what “everyone” is already, prescientifically aware of concerning human beings cannot be grounded on knowledge of some underlying material, the prescientific awareness of them cannot necessarily be relied on. At any rate, there would not be anything barring human beings from being otherwise than the way they are: a human being could conceivably grow without eating, to say nothing of even more incredible possibilities.

Granted, then, that the assumption in question may well be indispensable to science, it has consequences that even at first blush force one to wonder whether it is not also somehow incompatible with science. By leaving his account of human growth unfinished, Socrates has drawn our attention to these consequences. For natural science relies on nature or some first material necessity. This much we have seen. As we have also seen, however, it appeals to that material both from and for the sake of accounting for what is disclosed by the prescientific awareness of things. And while it appeals to the materials or elements of which each thing consists, and finally to the fundamental material, to account for what (as each thing’s being what, or the way, it is) is disclosed by that awareness, that appeal leads in the end to a decisive break with the prescientific awareness of things. For the necessary consequence of the attempt to understand the way of being of each thing in terms of its materials or elements is a refusal to recognize fully (what “everyone” is aware of) that such perishable things are or are genuine wholes. Likewise, it follows from this assumption that the fundamental material alone can be said to be or to be a genuine whole. In attempting to discover the cause of what is disclosed by the prescientific awareness of things, natural science is therefore led to make an assumption, that the way of being of each thing can be understood in terms of the process leading up to it, which leads in turn to “monism”—that is, to a striking inability to recognize fully the way of being of each thing, the very thing that natural science sought to account for in the first place.

Yet by allowing his account of human growth to remain unfinished Socrates does not make what follows from that assumption explicit. In this way, he stresses the continuity between natural science and the prescientific awareness of things. At the same time, however, precisely because he stresses the continuity between natural science and what “everyone” is already, prescientifically aware of, Socrates ensures that the decisive break with the prescientific awareness of things that natural science culminates in is felt in its full force by those who complete on their own the account that he cut short. And as this break comes to sight, one must wonder whether natural science is even capable of repairing it, as indeed it must if it is not going to fall short of its own overarching goal: to grasp the cause of each thing’s being just the way—or what—it is.

In his first statement about the sort of knowledge he supposed he possessed when he was young Socrates has first of all clarified the need that drives science or philosophy to understand the being of each thing in terms of the process leading up to it, a need to which he vigorously responded in his youth. On the other hand, his statement has, in the second place, forced us to wonder whether that need, however indispensable to science it may be, can be satisfied. For the need natural science has to reduce the way of being of each thing to its materials or elements coexists, uneasily it seems, with the need it also has to reconstitute that same way of being out of them again. There was evidently a time when the young Socrates was not yet disappointed by this situation. But what was the source of his confidence, and why was it not well placed, if indeed it was not? The possibility of reconstituting the way of being (of each thing) out of matter is the very issue raised by Socrates’ second statement about what he supposed, at least, he knew in his youth.