VII.φύσις. Now, Ionian science was introduced into Athens by Anaxagoras about the time Euripides was born, and there are sufficient traces of its influence on him.[1] It is, therefore, significant that, in a fragment which portrays the blessedness of a life devoted to scientific research (ἱστορία)[2] he uses the very epithets "ageless and deathless" which Anaximander had applied to the one primary substance, and that he associates them with the term φύσις The passage is so important for our present purpose that I quote it in full:
ὄλβιος ὅστις τῆς ἱστορίας
ἔσχε μάθησιν, μήτε πολιτῶν
ἐπὶ πημοσύνας μήτ' εἰς ἀδίκους
πράξεις ὁρμῶν,
ἀλλ' ἀθανάτου καθορῶν φύσεως
κόσμον ἀγήρω, τίς τε συνέστη
καὶ ὅπη καὶ ὅπως·
τοῖς τοιούτοις οὐδέποτ' αἰσχρῶν
ἔργων μελέτημα προσίζει.[3]
This fragment is clear evidence that, in the fifth century B.C., the name φύσις was given to the everlasting something of which the world was made. That is quite in accordance with the history of the word, so far as we can make it out. Its original meaning appears to be the "stuff" of which
- ↑ See below, § 123.
- ↑ Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 96 a 7 ταύτης τῆς σοφίας ἣν δὴ καλοῦσι περὶ φύσεως ἱστορίαν This is the oldest and most trustworthy statement as to the name originally given to science. I lay no stress on the fact that the books of the early cosmologists are generally quoted under the title Περὶ φύσεως, as such titles are probably of later date.
- ↑ Eur. fr. inc. 910. The word κόσμος here means, of course, "ordering," "arrangement," and ἀγήρω is genitive. The object of research is firstly what is "the ordering of immortal ageless φύσις," and secondly, how it arose. Anaxagoras, who introduced Ionian science to Athens, had belonged to the school of Anaximenes (§ 122). We know from Aristotle (loc. cit. p. 9 n. 1) that not only Anaximander, but most of the φυσιολόγοι, applied epithets like this to the Boundless.
καὶ τοῦτ' εἶναι τὸ ἕν καὶ τὸ πᾶν, κατὰ δὲ τὰ ὀνόματα οὐκ ὁμολογέουσι· λέγει δ' αὐτῶν ὁ μέν τις φάσκων ἀέρα εἶναι τοῦτο τὸ ἓν καὶ τὸ πᾶν, ὁ δὲ πῦρ, ὁ δὲ ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ γῆν, καὶ ἐπιλέγει ἕκαστος τῷ ἑωυτοῦ λόγῳ μαρτύριά τε καὶ τεκμήρια ἅ γε ἔστιν οὐδέν.
