Once Before Time - Martin Bojowald [129]
35. A Mayan calendar in disk shape.
Such myths influenced pre-Socratic philosophy when it launched efforts to develop a logically founded worldview. We already saw the static picture of Parmenides, a view neither linear nor cyclic owing to the complete impossibility of any kind of change. Among the other pre-Socratic philosophers, however, one can find on offer almost every conceivable worldview. Since we are leaving the age of myths here and entering the dawn of the philosophical-scientific occident, we will cover pre-Socratic ideas in the next section.
Occasionally one comes across the comment that differences between primarily linear and cyclic worldviews correlate with the social structure of cultures. Cyclic worldviews are supposed to correspond with a tendency toward fatalism, since a cyclic progress of time would not reward special efforts. This eternal recurrence also worried Nietzsche—for other, gloomier reasons. Linear concepts, by contrast, are sometimes associated with the encouragement of innovation. This interpretation can be seen in news stories, for instance about the Indian software industry, which skillfully uses existing technologies but supposedly does not lend itself easily to new developments. I first heard this notion from a self-critical Indian colleague who, however, can himself serve as a counterexample to this overly broad generalization, easily rebutted with examples suggesting a contrary conclusion. In Europe, for instance, the all-important beginnings of philosophy, which continue to influence intellectual discourse to the present day, were accompanied by primarily cyclic worldviews, while later on the Christian linear tradition was unable to counteract the paralysis of scientific progress in the Middle Ages, having in fact given rise to it in the first place.
36. Kronos (or Saturn), shown with a sickle symbolizing the discrete progress of time. In the background, the cross is part of the astronomical symbol of the planet Saturn, represented by a sickle.
THEORIES:
THE WORLD IN ONE’S HEAD
Awake! (not Greece—She is awake!)
—LORD BYRON
In ancient times, myths can be distinguished from philosophical or scientific theories only with difficulty. With Thales, for instance (about 580 years before the beginning of the Common Era), one finds the idea of water as the fundamental element, distinguishing it from the other three. The importance of this idea lies not so much in its own content but rather in having initiated a long chain of rapidly refined and mutually stimulating hypotheses among later philosophers. In retrospect, one can find surprisingly many ingredients of modern cosmological worldviews in this impressive list of ideas.
PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY: THE BIRTH PAINS OF COSMOLOGY
As early as Anaximander, just a few years after Thales, one recognizes an immense step in abstraction: The origin of the world is founded not in a concrete element but in “the unlimited” (apeiron). Moreover, one can see here concepts of symmetry, for the unlimited as origin is, for Anaximander, also structureless and, by logical consequence, in equilibrium. Only in the course of world events do structures form, but in the end the world returns to its unlimited initial state: “The origin of all things is the unlimited. But wherefrom is their birth, thereto goes their death by necessity.”2 This formulation provides many rough elements of a cyclic worldview as in modern quantum cosmology.
The role of symmetry—realized here by the initial state being structureless—is important as the reason for strong simplifications in solutions of general behavior. Aristotle says about Anaximander’s idea of the structureless: “For a thing sitting in the center (of the universe) with symmetric relations to the outer boundaries has no reason to move upward, downward or (maybe) sideways. And since it cannot move in opposite directions at the same time, it must remain at rest.” This line of reasoning is strongly reminiscent of the symmetry arguments often used