84 RICHARD MCKEON 



Epicurus, reports the arguments of Plato, and finds support 

 in the phenomena of the world — the courses of the stars, 

 meteorological occurrences, vegetable, animal, and human struc- 

 tures and functions. 



critus fire, water, and earth; the school of Empedocles and the Stoics fire, air, water, 

 and earth; the school of Aristotle fire, air, water, earth, and the revolving {kyklo- 

 phoretikon) body; Democritus and Epicurus atoms; Anaxagoras homeomeries; 

 Diodorus Cronos minima (elachista) and incomposite (amere) bodies; Heracleides 

 Ponticus and Asclepiades the Bithynian irregular masses or molecules (anarmoi 

 onkoi) ; the school of Pythagoras numbers; Strato qualities. Some of the compexities 

 of the problem of elements become apparent in the interpretation of these lists. 

 Thus, Sextus elaborates the Pythagorean doctrine that numbers are the principles 

 and elements of all things by observing that the Pythagoreans held that the method 

 of philosophizing was the same as the m.ethod of linguistic analysis. Language is 

 composed of words, words of syllables, syllables of letters or elements (stoicheia) ; 

 in the same fashion the true physicist investigates the universe by seeking the 

 elements (stoicheia) into which it can be resolved. The advocates of numbers 

 (arithmos) as principles (stoicheion) of all things agree with the advocates of atoms 

 (atomos) , homoeomeries (homoiomereia) , molecules (onkos) , minima (elachiston) , 

 and incomposites {amere) , recognizing that principles must be non-phenomenal, 

 non-sensible, intelligible bodies. YAdversus Mathematicos, X, 248-57; cf. Pyrr. Hyp., 

 Ill, 151-55, where numbers in turn are generated from the monad (monas) and the 

 indeterminate dyad (aoristos duas)]. In the same fashion, Galen emphasizes, in his 

 medical writings, the affinity of the atoms of Democritus and Epicurus and the 

 molecular masses (onkos) of Heracleides and Asclepiades, even to the extent of 

 reducing the differences in the case of Asclepiades to a difference of terms, the sub- 

 stitution of onkos for atomos and of poros for kenon. (De Theriaca ad Pisonem, 

 cap. 11, Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. C. G. Kiihn [Leipzig, 1827], vol. XIV, 

 p. 250.) Yet the molecules of Heracleides and Asclepiades were frangible or divisible, 

 and possessed qualities, and the terms " molecules " and " pore " have an Aristotelian 

 derivation which is clearer than their Democritean analogy, for they are terms used 

 in the discussion of homogeneous bodies in the Meteorology. Or again, Strato of 

 Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus as head of the Lyceum, is said to have 

 shown tendencies to atomism, yet he is also said to have treated elements as 

 " qualities "; this seems to be another case of the assimilation of a philosophy of 

 of elements to a philosophy of atoms, for it is clear that in his opposition to 

 Platonism, Strato based his analysis on " ultimate components " which he treated 

 quantitatively and qualitatively. Doctrines of elements tended to be likened to 

 atomism if the operations ascribed to the elements are naturalistic and mechanical; 

 elements may be incorporeal and qualitative and still be presented as atomic; if they 

 undergo qualitative changes and transmutations, exhibit purposive or teleologicaJ 

 orderings, or show effects attributable to God or the world-soul, they are not atomic. 

 It is relevant to this transformation of the characterization of elements that Galen 

 claimed to have added a fifth instrumental cause (di'hou) to the formal, final, 

 efficient and material causes of Aristotle. 



