From the Beginning to Plato

172 FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO
springs, and hardened lumps of earth into rocks; as it moved upwards to join its
counterparts it also created the conditions of warm, moist clay which would be
capable of engendering life, first in the form of trees and plants, and then of animals
and humans.
This imaginative narrative, pieced together from direct quotations and indirect
report, was in the tradition of the early pre-Socratics, but treated with much more
acumen and sophistication. The use of a swirl in the original mixture to start the
separation, the outward movement of the lighter air and fire, and what looks
something like an early theory of gravity, when the bulk of earth at the centre
drew parts of earth elsewhere towards itself, show a remarkable mind at work.
Further evidence of Empedocles’ achievements comes in the wealth of insight
preserved on many of the individual aspects of the subsequent phenomena.
Starting with the initial formation of the elemental masses—‘earth and swelling
sea, moist air and Titan sky’ (fr. 38.4)—Empedocles included explanations for
the spherical shape of the earth, volcanoes beneath the earth’s surface and the
salinity of the sea. Of particular interest in this section was the recognition that
the moon is a satellite of earth reflecting the sun’s brightness (‘a circle of
borrowed light moves swiftly round the earth’, fr. 45), and that solar eclipses are
caused by the moon coming directly between sun and earth; and when
Empedocles says that ‘earth causes night by coming under the sun’s rays’ (fr. 42)
it is tempting to assume that he realized that this meant that night on the upper
surface of a spherical earth would be complemented by day in the antipodes.
THE NATURAL WORLD
At some time into the present era, once the main bulk of the elements were
separated out into the distinct masses of earth, sea and air, with fire visible in the
sky as sun and stars and as volcanoes erupting from the earth, then living
creatures began to emerge. Empedocles described this genesis, in a typical blend
of poetry and science, as derived from amorphous lumps which bubble up from
the earth’s surface during the separating process:
And now hear this—how fire, as it was being separated, brought up by
night the growths of men and pitiable women, for the account is to the
point and well-informed. First whole-nature forms, having a share of both
water and heat, emerged from the earth; fire as it tended to reach its like,
kept sending them up, when they did not yet show the lovely shape of limbs,
or voice, or language native to men.
(fr. 62)
With the passage of time the forms were further articulated until they become
recognizable as the human race, able then to reproduce sexually and
communicate by language.