From the Beginning to Plato

EMPEDOCLES 163
a complex scientific philosophy explained to a particular individual with public
exhortations to a moral and religious life-style that appears to be incompatible
with it. In Empedocles’ case the problems of compatibility and consistency are
increased by the the fact that he expounded his ideas in the form of epic poetry
rather than through the medium of prose, which had first been developed by the
Ionians in the sixth century BC as a medium more appropriate than verse for
philosophical exposition. The exotic vocabulary and complex style that
characterize Empedocles’ talent often make his work ambiguous and obscure,
especially when contrasted with the simpler language and more direct argument
of Parmenides’ poem, but they also add to its fascination.
As with later figures in the history of ideas, it is not necessary to assume a
‘conversion’ from science to religion or a disillusioned rejection of religious
principles in favour of the rigours of science, since obviously a common issue
may be approached from different points of view, appropriate to the immediate
context and level of understanding assumed. Nor is it as obvious now as formerly
appeared that there is such a great divide between science and theology that the
two cannot be expected to engage the same mind at the same time. Few ancient
Greek philosophers would have recognized such a division, and now once more
the distinctions are blurring. The last sentence of God and the New Physics
(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984), for example, by the contemporary
cosmologist Paul Davies shows an innate sympathy with the comprehensive
approach found two thousand years earlier in Empedocles:
It is my deep conviction that only by understanding the world in its many
aspects—reductionist and holistic, mathematical and poetical, through
forces, fields and particles as well as through good and evil—that we will
come to understand ourselves and the meaning behind this universe.
(Davies, 1984:229)
In some recent developments which are likely to dominate scientific studies into
the next millennium it is possible to view Empedocles as a distant precursor. First
the combined study of physics, chemistry and biology is apparently unlocking
the secret of life itself as the mapping of the sequences of the DNA molecule
progresses. These rest on the myriad variations of a genetic alphabet of just the
four letters A, T, G and C (the initials of adenine, thymine, guanine and
cytosine), the basic building blocks of protein being in principle something like
Empedocles’ four ‘roots’. As with Empedocles the results cover the whole
spectrum of life, from the simplest plant forms to humans, and show large areas
of overlap in genetic material between what were thought to be widely differing
species. It is expected that there will be great rewards in improved understanding
of disease, in new cures and in the manipulation of the limits of life in birth and
death; those who work in these areas are given Nobel prizes, the modern
equivalent of being ‘crowned with ribbons and garlands, honoured by all’. Then
the latest theories in cosmology also have great popular appeal, and books on the