Epicurus' Prolepsis vs Heraclitus' Flux

There is one passage the relevance of which I think is underappreciated in the prolepsis discussion. This below from fragment 5 of Diogenes of Oinoanda gets referenced frequently in regard to Epicurus' canon in general, but I wonder if it not a specific reference to the function of prolepsis:

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Fr. 5
....

Now Aristotle and those who hold the same Peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continually in flux and, on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. We on the other hand acknowledge their flux, but not its being so rapid that the nature of each thing [is] at no time apprehensible by sense-perception. And indeed [in no way would the upholders of] the view under discussion have been able to say (and this is just what they do [maintain] that [at one time] this is [white] and this black, while [at another time] neither this is [white nor] that black, [if] they had not had [previous] knowledge of the nature of both white and black.

When you're living in an age when most every educated person would be aware that Heraclitus has said everything is in such flux and flows so fast that it is impossible to apprehend anything at all, you need a description of the process by which you DO apprehend things and make sense of them.

I wonder if prolepsis then might best be understood as Epicurus' answer not just to Plato and Aristotle, who were themselves apparently responding to Heraclitus by postulating that there are true forms or essences (neither of which exist).

Epicurus' prolepsis provides the foundation of an answer to Heraclitus' flux challenge in a natural faculty, just like pleasure and pain, to how we actually understand the things around us without reliance on forms or esences which do not exist, or on preexisting innate ideas from a time before birth. In providing a theory of understand the assembly of knowledge, it is parallel to atomism in providing a theory of physics.

Even as to the title we generally give to Lucretius' poem, how would we know what a "thing" is, or distinguish one "thing" from another, if we did not have a faculty which continuously organizes the raw data from the senses into something intelligible?

As I understand it there are not many reliable quotations from Heraclitus available, but those that do make it clear that this "flux" problem demanded a real-world answer.

I've moved this over to a new thread so that it will be easier over time to explore this precise relationship. In the meantime pending a better source of quotes, here is what Wikipedia says:

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Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Even in ancient times, his paradoxical philosophy, appreciation for wordplay, and cryptic, oracular epigrams earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure". He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient atomist philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".

The central ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. Heraclitus saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" (Greek: πάντα ῥεῖ, panta rhei) and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This insistence upon change contrasts with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in a reality of static "being".

...

Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus,^[a] which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors.^{[note 5]} The title is unknown,^[20] but many later writers refer to this work, and works by other pre-Socratics, as On Nature.^[21][a]...

The opening lines are quoted by Sextus Empiricus:

Of the logos being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this logos they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.^[x]

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Also:

Diogenes Laërtius relays the story that the playwright Euripides gave Socrates a copy of Heraclitus's work and asked for his opinion. Socrates replied: "The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it."^[38]

There is also a lot of good discussion at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

2. Theory of Knowledge

Heraclitus sees the great majority of human beings as lacking understanding:

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Of this Word’s being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep. (DK22B1)

Most people sleep-walk through life, not understanding what is going on about them. Yet experience of words and deeds can enlighten those who are receptive to their meaning. (The opening sentence is ambiguous: does the ‘forever’ go with the preceding or the following words? Heraclitus prefigures the semantic complexity of his message.)

On the one hand, Heraclitus commends sense experience: “The things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, I prefer” (DK22B55). On the other hand, “Poor witnesses for men are their eyes and ears if they have barbarian souls” (DK22B107). A barbarian is one who does not speak the Greek language. Thus while sense experience seems necessary for understanding, if we do not know the right language, we cannot interpret the information the senses provide. Heraclitus does not give a detailed and systematic account of the respective roles of experience and reason in knowledge. But we can learn something from his manner of expression.

Describing the practice of religious prophets, Heraclitus says, “The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign” (DK22B93). Similarly, Heraclitus does not reveal or conceal, but produces complex expressions that have encoded in them multiple messages for those who can interpret them. He uses puns, paradoxes, antitheses, parallels, and various rhetorical and literary devices to construct expressions that have meanings beyond the obvious. This practice, together with his emphasis on the Word (Logos) as an ordering principle of the world, suggests that he sees his own expressions as imitations of the world with its structural and semantic complexity. To read Heraclitus the reader must solve verbal puzzles, and to learn to solve these puzzles is to learn to read the signs of the world. Heraclitus stresses the inductive rather than the deductive method of grasping the world, a world that is rationally structured, if we can but discern its shape.

For those who can discern it, the Word has an overriding message to impart: “Listening not to me but to the Word it is wise to agree that all things are one” (DK22B50). It is perhaps Heraclitus’s chief project to explain in what sense all things are one.

3. The Doctrine of Flux and the Unity of Opposites

According to both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus held extreme views that led to logical incoherence. For he held that (1) everything is constantly changing and (2) opposite things are identical, so that (3) everything is and is not at the same time. In other words, Universal Flux and the Identity of Opposites entail a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Plato indicates the source of the flux doctrine: “Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things go and nothing stays, and comparing existents to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river” (Cratylus 402a = DK22A6).

What Heraclitus actually says is the following:

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On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. (DK22B12)

There is an antithesis between ‘same’ and ‘other.’ The sentence says that different waters flow in rivers staying the same. In other words, though the waters are always changing, the rivers stay the same. Indeed, it must be precisely because the waters are always changing that there are rivers at all, rather than lakes or ponds. The message is that rivers can stay the same over time even though, or indeed because, the waters change. The point, then, is not that everything is changing, but that the fact that some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things. Perhaps more generally, the change in elements or constituents supports the constancy of higher-level structures.As for the alleged doctrine of the Identity of Opposites, Heraclitus does believe in some kind of unity of opposites. For instance, “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger . . .” (DK22B67). But if we look closer, we see that the unity in question is not identity:

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As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and conversely those having changed around are these. (DK22B88)

The second sentence in B88 gives the explanation for the first. If F is the same as G because F turns into G, then the two are not identical. And Heraclitus insists on the common-sense truth of change: “Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet” (DK22B126). This sort of mutual change presupposes the non-identity of the terms. What Heraclitus wishes to maintain is not the identity of opposites but the fact that they replace each other in a series of transformations: they are interchangeable or transformationally equivalent.

Thus, Heraclitus does not hold Universal Flux, but recognizes a lawlike flux of elements; and he does not hold the Identity of Opposites, but the Transformational Equivalence of Opposites. The views that he does hold do not, jointly or separately, entail a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Heraclitus does, to be sure, make paradoxical statements, but his views are no more self-contradictory than are the paradoxical claims of Socrates. They are, presumably, meant to wake us up from our dogmatic slumbers.

And of course Heraclitus comes in for direct mention in Lucretius:

1-635 (continuing in following sections....)

Wherefore those who have thought that fire is the substance of things, and that the whole sum is composed of fire alone, are seen to fall very far from true reasoning. Heraclitus is their leader who first enters the fray, of bright fame for his dark sayings, yet rather among the empty-headed than among the Greeks of weight, who seek after the truth. For fools laud and love all things more which they can descry hidden beneath twisted sayings, and they set up for true what can tickle the ear with a pretty sound and is tricked out with a smart ring.

From Cicero's Academic Questions we see the same issue of the flux being too fast to be apprehended by the senses developed:

Quote from Cicero's Academic Questions Part 1

VIII.

The third part of philosophy, which is next in order, being conversant about reason and discussion, was thus handled by both schools. They said that, although it originated in the senses, still the power of judging of the truth was not in the senses. They insisted upon it that intellect was the judge of things. They thought that the only thing deserving of belief, because it alone discerned that which was always simple and uniform, and which perceived its real character. This they call idea, having already received this name from Plato; and we properly entitle it species.

But they thought that all the senses were dull and slow, and that they did not by any means perceive those things which appeared subjected to the senses; which were either so small as to be unable to come under the notice of sense, or so moveable and rapid that none of them was ever one consistent thing, nor even the same thing, because everything was in a continual state of transition and disappearance. And therefore they called all this division of things one resting wholly on opinion. But they thought that science had no existence anywhere except in the notions and reasonings of the mind; on which account they approved of the definitions of things, and employed them on everything which was brought under discussion. The explanation of words also was approved of — that is to say, the explanation of the cause why everything was named as it was; and that they called etymology. Afterwards they used arguments, and, as it were, marks of things, for the proof and conclusion of what they wished to have explained; in which the whole system of dialectics — that is to say, of an oration brought to its conclusion by ratiocination, was handed down. And to this there was added, as a kind of second part, the oratorical power of speaking, which consists in developing a continued discourse, composed in a manner adapted to produce conviction.

With the result that the "intellect" is the judge of things.

Quote from Rolf

Fascinating! Does this mean that we as Epicureans would be wise to align ourselves with modern scientific understanding, adopt this view as the most probable explanation, and ditch the Epicurean view on static atoms and void

I don't think Bryan meant to imply that, If following dominant interpretations were always a good idea, Epicurus would have accepted intelligent design for his physics and we would all be Abrahamists today! 😀

Quote from Rolf

My point, however, is less about this specific topic and more about scientific discoveries and consensus potentially being at odds with Epicurus’ physics. Don’s view is a valid one, and probably one I share, but I’m interested in hearing more perspectives on this.

I will look to see if we have prior threads on what happens when philosophy seems to conflict with science. I know the subject has come up regularly, but it tends to get buried with other topics.

But for now and in general, I don't think this apparent conflict is something new, and it existed to a degree even in Epicurus' time, on such issues as the calculations as to the size of the sun. In that case Epicurus can be made to look ridiculous in light of modern telescopes and observations, but he can also be defended as pointing to very reasonable caution about the implications of new methodology which might itself be incomplete. There's also a relationship here with Epicurus' refusal to accept a logical challenge that Metrodorus must be either alive or dead tomorrow.

We have a good thread on the size of the sun here.

And the subforum (which probably does not contain all the threads, some of which are buried in "general," is here:

Explaining Epicurus' Position On The "Size of the Sun" And Related Issues of Speculative Math / Geometry

We didn't end up discussing it very much, but I highly recommend this video of a debate between Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on Krauss' book "Something From Nothing."

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Video Discussion Between Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss on the "Something From Nothing" Question

I have been meaning to make sure that this video was referenced somewhere in the forum. It's been years since I watched it but I recall it being very good on getting to the heart of the "something from nothing question" - with Richard Dawkins defending the traditional point of view identified with Epicurus:

youtube.com/watch?v=gH9UvnrARf8

Cassius

November 14, 2022 at 2:36 PM

In summary, my personal (admittedly untrained) view is that in this case as in others, the point being argued by Krauss is overstated. If I recall correctly, Dawkins does a good job of dragging out of Krauss that the "nothing" in Krauss's sensational book title isn't really "nothing" as a philsopher would mean it. Instead, what appears to us to be empty space contains energy/fields/forces or whatever. The Epicurean point would be that whatever the thing we're describing turns out to be, it is going to be "natural," and it's not going to be evidence of an intelligent-design-god that overturns the "matter and void" system. Just like throwing the spear shows that the universe has no terminating point, if something is proved to exist then that simply shows it has a natural fundamental basis, and it isn't going to be "infinitely divisible" so as to upend the fundamental world-view.

To add to what Bryan says about atoms being too small for machines to detect, that highlights that we need to remember that Epicurus was clear that the atoms are not discernable at all by the senses. Anything we know about them is going to come from deductive reasoning based on what is observable.

For that reason, when Martin says:

Quote from Martin

as hard bodies, which has been refuted by modern physics.

I am not sure that I would agree that Epicurus was really focusing on the bodies as being "hard." That word may very well be used in places, and it is easy to presume that they are hard by analogizing them to the bodies we can observe, but I think we need to look closer and assume nothing that Epicurus himself did not clearly specify.

What I recall is that Epicurus held that the atoms have the three qualities of "size," "shape," and "weight." When I think of "hard," that's something that I identify with touch, and as before we can't touch the atoms to be sure, so any deduction that they are "hard" isn't necessarily required.

Even in terms of size, shape, and weight, what I believe comes through from the texts as necessarily the case was that the "size" of the atoms cannot be infinitely small, nor infinitely large. If they were infinitely small they would not exist, and if infinitely large they would swallow the universe. Within that range what he was focusing on is that the atoms in some way have permanent characteristics that do not change over time. Those permanent characteristics ensure the regularity of the universe and create what we see around us, meaning that there is no requirement for supernatural forces to have created them. Atoms are called "atoms" because the word means indivisible, not because of any other specific assertion about their nature.

These are primarily deductive logical positions, not assertions of specific qualities such as hard or soft, yellow or red, etc. All that is needed is a reasonable explanation of how the universe has a natural, rather than supernatural basis, and for that we look inside of the things we can observe and do our best to deduce conclusions about the smaller parts of which they are composed. As such, it seems to me that virtually any new discovery of actual facts can be fit into this model so long as the new discovery does not constitute a n intelligent supernatural force or the mystical going back and forth to the truly nothing.