212 i Flora Unveiled
Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos and studied with Thales and Anaximander.
According to tradition, Pythagoras, a talented young mathematician with a mystical bent,
traveled to Egypt to learn geometry and to be initiated into the secret religious societies of
the Egyptian priestly caste. Eventually, he moved to Croton, Italy, and set up a community
based on the study of mathematics, the observance of a simple lifestyle, and the practice of
secret religious rites involving “divine” numbers.^5
Among other things, the Pythagoreans studied the physics of musical instruments, such
as the lyre, and discovered that musical harmonies are determined by numerical ratios.
Pythagoras applied the notion of harmony to cosmology, proposing that the concentric
spheres of celestial bodies rotated harmonically to produce the “music of the spheres.” In
the Pythagorean system, earth was not at the center, but occupied the innermost sphere,
circling around a mysterious sacred fire. Aristarchus modified this scheme by substituting
the sun for the Pythagorean “sacred fire” at the center of the universe, thus arriving at the
first heliocentric model of the solar system.
The pre- Socratic philosophers concerned themselves with the microcosm as well as the
macrocosm. Leucippus of Miletus, who taught during the first half of the fifth century
bce, is credited with the theory that all matter is composed of tiny indivisible particles
called “atoms.” His student, Democritus, elaborated a theory in which the properties of
solids and liquids are determined by the shapes and densities of their component atoms,
anticipating modern chemical ideas about the shapes of molecules and their chemical
interactions.
Empedocles’s Epic Poem, On NatureEmpedocles was one of the most inf luential of the pre- Socratic philosophers. As noted
earlier, all that remains of his writings are fragments of his epic poem, On Nature,
which we know only from quotations in the writings of later Greek authors. Aristotle
states in Metaphysics that Empedocles was the first to formalize the principle of the
four material “roots,” or elements: water, air, fire, and earth. Like Heraclitus, he
believed that matter was in constant motion, driven by attractive and repulsive forces.
But instead of crime and punishment Empedocles called the forces love (ema nat i ng
from the goddess Aphrodite) and strife (from the god Ares). At first, love dominated
and drew all matter unto itself, forming a perfect divine sphere, “rejoicing in its joy-
ous solitude.” However, strife gradually gained in strength, shattering the sphere and
forming the universe.
Empedocles proposed that life evolved on earth by a process akin to natural selection.
However, rather than new organisms evolving from more ancient ones, as in Darwinian
evolution, Empedocles proposed that new species, including humans and other animals,
arose from novel combinations of free- living body parts. These isolated body parts (arms,
legs, feet, noses, ears, foreheads, eyeballs, etc.) had originally sprouted from the ground by
spontaneous generation:
as many heads without necks sprouted up
and arms wandered naked, bereft of shoulders,
and eyes roamed alone, impoverished of foreheads.^6