Born in 492 BC in Agrigentum, Empedocles became known as a physician, physicist, philosopher and poet. As a scientist, he was well-informed about the views of many predecessors, but he himself is said to have discovered the centrifugal force through experiments. As a physicist, he shared with the philosophers of Ionia a great curiosity about the origin of the cosmos. He assumed that the basic substances - fire, water, air and earth - had first clumped together by chance and disorder, but that over time only those combinations had remained that had a good composition. A 'theory of evolution' avant la lettre, as it were. And he saw the entire process of changes in nature not influenced by a world of gods, but by two forces: love and struggle. As a poet, Empedocles was highly respected. He was particularly fascinated by the theories of Heraclitus on the theme of continuous 'becoming'. With his creative mind, for example, he describes death as 'disappearing into the lonely and blind night'.
ImplicationOverReason 0 points 9 months ago
a) Struggle implies needing to resist wanted (love) and not wanted (hate) temptations.
b) Temptations attract consent; resistance reacts (re) to pulse (puls) of action (ion) aka reacts (matter) to pulse (momentum) of action (motion).
Pulse (inception towards death) generates reacting beats (life)