Episode #002 - Transcript

Hello, everyone. It’s Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

What is philosophy? You know, there’s always a little bit of irony when you ask that question because it’s the exact type of question that philosophers ask that’s impossible to answer. I mean, they do it all the time. Philosophers pick some arbitrary thing that nobody really cares about and try to get to the bottom of it. And it always seems like they’re trying to sound like Professor Snape’s really pretentious brother, like, “What…is…a…photograph, Potter? Is it a representation of the world or merely a representation of a representation of the world?” They ruin philosophy for the masses, you know.

Trust me, I completely understand the value of asking questions like that. In fact, I actually like talking about that kind of stuff. And philosophy is full of developments that have only been come to because of questions like that. But it just completely ignores all the amazing, fascinating stuff they could be talking about when it comes to philosophy. I mean, why not talk about how different the world would be if philosophy never existed?

People never realize how much of the world they live in has been shaped by the thoughts and doctrines of previous philosophers. And it’s because of the fact that the thousands of times philosophers have had massive breakthroughs, people always look back on it, and they don’t think about it as philosophy. They think about it as a massive breakthrough in the field that it benefited. Like, when Aristotle organizes all living things into different phylums and groups, gives us a practical way to classify animals based on certain traits that they have—that’s seen as a triumph of the natural sciences, not philosophy.

So, what is philosophy, Professor Snape? Philosophy is a word, a combination of two ancient Greek words, actually. One is philo, which means to love or to befriend. And the other is sophia, which means wisdom. To love wisdom. And the guy that first coined the term “philosopher” is the first guy we’re going to talk about today. His name is Pythagoras.

So, if you’re like me, when you hear the name Pythagoras, you probably think of the Pythagorean theorem, right? You probably have post-traumatic stress flashbacks to the seventh grade in pre-algebra class and all the nightmares you had back then. You know, A2+B2 = C2.  But as it turns out, as I’ll explain in a second, you may have been mad at the wrong guy all along. Like all of these early philosophers, not much about their lives is known for sure. Most of the information we have is hearsay from future philosophers. And most of the time those future philosophers are just two guys, Plato and Aristotle.

But in the case of Pythagoras, this lack of hard facts and general ambiguity is at an extreme. To history, Pythagoras is known almost as a mythical figure. I mean, we know he existed. We know for sure he believed in reincarnation and that he had a thing for numbers. But it’s speculation as far as everything else Pythagoras did. See, most of the stuff we know about him was written down by his followers, followers that were vowed to secrecy and saw him as an exalted figure like a messiah. And all that secrecy fueled a ton of speculation from people that weren’t his followers, which no doubt contributed to this mythical-figure status that he had.

But why would his followers see him as a messiah? Uh, because he named himself a messiah. And this is how I remember Pythagoras. I think of him as the crazed cult leader from ancient Greek philosophy. Now, cult leader is probably a little unfair, but only because of the modern connotation associated with the term “cult leader,” because he definitely was at the helm of a religious cult back then.

Let me explain. Pythagoras had a love of math and astronomy that probably began when he was young and he was visiting Egypt and Miletus. It’s not farfetched to think that he would have studied under the Milesian school of thought. Remember, that’s where Thales and Anaximander came from that we talked about last episode. I mean, he grew up right next to them. He certainly would have heard about them. And he was born into the kind of social standing that would have allowed him the luxury to travel and study.

But regardless of whether he studied with them or not, right around the age of 40 he started gathering together these followers who saw him as a religious sage. And he set up a commune in a town called Croton in southern Italy. A few different sources say when he first started up he had around 300 members of this commune. And everything he’s known for comes from the work he did when he was inside of this commune. But because of how unclear it is whether he himself came up with any one theory or whether it was just one of his followers that was attributing it to his master, the brains behind the operation, historians just kind of lump everything under this one umbrella of Pythagoreanism and call it a day. And this applies to everything, even the famous Pythagorean theorem itself.

Now, Pythagoras wouldn’t have been offended by all this. He wasn’t doing all this stuff to become famous or to leave some legacy. He was doing it simply for the love of wisdom. Now, all of his followers may have called themselves Pythagoreans, but they definitely were philosophers. Imagine being one of these cult members. Imagine Pythagoras convincing you that it’s a great idea for you to join this commune he’s starting up in southern Italy. It really speaks to how likable and authoritative Pythagoras must have been.

Like, you know how there’s IQ which is your intelligence quotient, and then there’s NQ which is your networking quotient or your ability to interact socially and influence people? Pythagoras’ NQ must have been something like Stephen Hawking’s IQ. I mean, how do you convince 300 people to come worship you? This commune wasn’t like, hey, guys, let’s live in a village and study math every once in a while. This was a complete lifestyle overhaul, a restrictive overhaul at that. Not only was it dedicating your entire life to the pursuit of math, music, and astronomy. That was only half of it. The other half was the whole religious side of the cult and all the behavioral restrictions.

So, you may be asking, how can Pythagoras go from such a nice young boy that’s just generally fascinated with the way the Egyptians did math to actually thinking he’s Jesus with a protractor? I think the best way to understand is to put yourself in the shoes of someone studying math at the time. You know when you’re in math or science class and you sign your name at the front of the textbook, and you can look back at all the people that had the book before you for generations? You can actually see this is the same book Abe Lincoln used when he was a kid. They didn’t have that thick textbook, let alone one that had been around for hundreds of years. Math was done completely differently back then.

When these people thought about a number, like the number 4, for example, it wasn’t the number 4 as we would think about it today. It was the essence behind the number 4. Like, the number 4 is just a representation of a quantity of 4 things, right? Also, when these people drew a right triangle on the ground and were thinking about the squares of the different sides of it, they actually drew a square, with the side of the triangle being one side of the square, and then counted the units. Math to them consisted of little things, little experiments they could repeat and try to understand what the world was in a world that was nowhere near being understood.

We take so many things for granted today that are explained in modern physics and chemistry that they had no idea about. So, to realize that adding together the squares of two sides of a right triangle was equal to the square of the hypotenuse—yeah, that was pretty cool. But to realize that that applies to all right triangles, and there are no exceptions to that rule, and to feel that you really understand something about the essence of that triangle and the laws that govern the sides of that right triangle or pretty much any right triangle in the entire universe—that must have been mind-numbing. I mean, here’s this giant universe with tons of mystery we know nothing about. And here’s a formula we arrived at to explain one little part of it.

They saw these mathematical proofs as the way the universe could be understood. Or as they put it, number is the ruler of all forms. So, in that sense, they kind of jumped to a conclusion. But it’s really easy to see how back then these proofs must have seemed like magic or God-given wisdom, right? I mean, not only that, but it’s also easy to see how a man like Pythagoras, the messenger boy arriving at all these conclusions, could have seemed like a demigod himself. The difference between Pythagoras and what we think of as a modern cult leader is that these modern cult leaders start these things up so they can have money, power, or influence over people. It’s not crazy to think that Pythagoras actually thought of himself as relaying some sacred information.

Whenever I think of this concept, I love to contrast it with the fact that the exact same information that was so powerful it made a man believe he was a messiah in a religious movement 2,500 years ago is literally the midterm for 7th grade pre-algebra students in today’s world. It really is a testament to human progress and just how far we’ve come as a species. And how about a testament to how far we’re capable of going?

It must have been easy to jump to a conclusion like they did, I mean, given the fact that there were other conclusions they arrived at in complete other areas of study that reinforced this concept of numbers being the rulers of all forms. They saw math, music, and astronomy as three areas of study that were completely interrelated. And understanding them was the key to understanding the universe. Pythagoras is said to have stumbled across much of the basis for his understanding of ratios and proportions as they relate to numbers when he was actually studying the relationship between musical intervals and harmonies. It kind of makes sense too, because when you understand the difference between two musical notes, it’s very similar to understanding the difference between two numbers.

Now, in every single source about Pythagoras that I’ve read, there’s this same exact story about him having a revelation about musical intervals while listening to two blacksmiths work. So, there has to be some merit to the story. It basically went like this. So, one day Pythagoras is just sitting around, listening to a couple blacksmiths do their work. I don’t know exactly why he was sitting around just listening to people work. This was probably the Two Guys Beating Stuff with a Hammer podcast for Pythagoras. He had to entertain himself some way, right?

And the two blacksmiths were hammering on their anvils. And one of the anvils was exactly twice the size of the other anvil. So, when their hammers beat on the anvils, it made the same note just one octave apart. And in the world of music, one octave is the same note just eight intervals up or down. So, for example—wow, I apologize for this in advance, guys—[singing] La, [singing octave lower] la, [high octave] la, [low octave] la. It’s the same note. Remind me to never sing in a podcast again.

It wasn’t just the eight-note difference between octaves of each other. Pythagoras found that harmonies that we hear all the time even in music today were just simple mathematical ratios. Numbers governing acoustic relationships—it just reinforced the idea that numbers could explain everything in the universe. And just for the record, in 1865, John Newlands used these exact same relationships that Pythagoras found and used it as the basis for his discovery that the chemical elements are arranged according to atomic weight and that those with similar properties occurred every eighth element like notes of a music scale. This became known as the law of octaves, and it led to the development of how the periodic table of elements is organized even today.

So, again, you can see how finding constants when explaining things with numbers could reinforce the idea that everything can be understood through numbers. We can’t really blame them though, right? I mean, it’s scary to live in a world without explanation. And in a world without explanation, it’s easy to try to apply meaning to things that really might not have that much significance. But as long as we understand what could have led them to think this way, I think it’s really interesting to hear what the Pythagoreans thought the best way to live life was.

If you lived in this Pythagorean cult, you couldn’t eat meat. You were a vegetarian. It was forbidden. The reasoning behind this was because Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation—more specifically, the transmigration of souls to different species. They thought that by eating other animals, you were essentially eating your grandma who just died and was reincarnated into the body of a chicken or something. They based this on a story that Pythagoras told about—one day he was hanging around some guys that were inexplicably beating a dog, and it was crying out in pain. And he told them to stop because he swore he heard the voice of his friend crying out in the dog’s yelp. That dog, to Pythagoras, had to be his friend just reincarnated into the body of the dog. Now, I’m not sure about the reincarnation part, but when did we get the revelation that we shouldn’t be beating animals? What kind of sick people did he hang out with anyway?

When it came to reincarnation, the Pythagoreans believed that this cycle of constantly dying and being reincarnated into a new body was some sort of punishment and that the goal of life was to end the cycle of reincarnation and finally be set free to live eternally in the blessed realm. Which for them, the blessed realm consisted of either the sun or the moon. I guess you get to take your pick. For the record, I pick the moon.

Only by adhering to a strict regimen of behavioral restrictions and thought can you end the cycle of reincarnation. But where did they get this idea? Historians say they may have gotten it from an old, mystic, ancient Greek religion called Orphism. There’s a story in Orphism that basically conveys the exact same idea. It’s the story of Dionysus. Basically, Zeus has sex with his mom, and then they have a beautiful baby girl. And then Zeus has sex with her, and then they have a kid named Dionysus. Actually, you know what, long story short, man is part evil because of some bad, bad stuff the gods did one night.

But the concept that man is part evil and the only way to cure himself of this evil is to live a life of restriction and thought—that was an Orphic concept. And for Pythagoras, the thought portion of that life of restriction and thought was studying math, music, and astronomy. He picked these three topics because he believed that understanding those topics led to the understanding of the laws that govern the universe, laws that are eternal and unchanging. It’s pretty awesome to think about it the way they did. They thought that the closest thing a person can achieve to immortality is to understand these eternal truths and to try to live in harmony with them. By understanding concepts that are eternal, that’s the closest man will ever get to being immortal.

A couple other interesting facts about the Pythagoreans—Pythagoreans were the first ones to make the statement that arriving to conclusions through reason was greatly superior to evidence gathered through the senses. This idea would go on to influence hundreds of philosophers, even Plato himself, surrounding one of the most famous theories in all of philosophy, his theory of forms.

Lastly, a lot of people claim Pythagoreans established the idea of deductive reasoning. But if you look at the sources where these people get their information, there isn’t anything particularly conclusive. I mean, you can kind of say they had a rudimentary version of it. But the most you could say with complete honesty is that they may have influenced the next guy we’re going to talk about and all the great things he did with deductive reasoning. That guy’s name is Parmenides.

So, when I think of Parmenides, I think of him as the dark, dark cloud of deductive reasoning. To the Presocratic philosophers, Parmenides represented this dark cloud on the horizon because all these great ideas that thinkers had before him that they were so sure of—his ideas threatened to destroy all the things that they thought they knew. People like Thales and Anaximander, they tried to explain the process of how the cosmos came into existence. Parmenides tried to explain how it could never have come into existence in the first place. Philosophers before Parmenides tried to explain the phenomena we saw in the changing world like lightning or earthquakes. Parmenides seemed to be able to prove that nothing ever changed, these phenomena didn’t even exist, and that true reality was that everything was one, single, unchanging blob.

Nobody saw this coming. He came completely out of left field with this. One day he just tells everyone a story about taking a chariot ride in the clouds and coming across a goddess who for some reason decides to let him in on the secret that—oh, so, all these philosophers that came before you, yeah, they’re all completely wrong. And here, let me give you all the real answers, Parmenides. I mean, who was this guy Parmenides? Just completely out of the blue he comes up with a single theory that calls into question all the things that everybody had ever thought they’d known previously?

It must have seemed somewhat believable that it was given to him by a goddess, though. Because it’s not like he was building on the ideas of any previous thinker. This was the first time that anyone had ever brought deductive reasoning to the table in any real sense. And it was huge. I mean, just imagine being the first person to discover some other really effective way of doing something. And the way that you discovered of doing that something changed the way the whole world thought about it.

Like, imagine if you were the first guy in history to tie your shoes with the two bunny ears method. Old people would be looking at your perfectly tied shoes, resenting you. You’d cast doubt into the hearts of all the loop, swoop, and pullers that lived alongside of you. You’d shake things up in the shoe-tying community, that’s for certain. And Parmenides did exactly that with his deductive reasoning in the philosophical world.

The only surviving poem, and thus all we know about Parmenides, is actually really difficult to read because he was one of only two Presocratic philosophers that wrote all of his thoughts down in something called hexameter verse. It’s a structured poetic style of writing that was actually pretty common at the time. Famous poets like Homer and Hesiod wrote in it. But philosophers knew at some level that talking about the nature of the cosmos and the nature of existence wasn’t the most entertaining concept to the average person. It was by no means a Broadway musical. So, to try to make it more digestible to people, he wrote it down in an entertaining and poetic way, so people would not only be able to enjoy the poem but also be exposed to his heady concepts. It’s actually a pretty brilliant idea.

Parmenides in this way reminds me of C. S. Lewis, how he wrote that masterpiece of literature The Chronicles of Narnia. I mean, people deeply enjoy that on its own just as a story. And it turns out it was like an allegory for Christianity the whole time. Like, Jesus was that weird talking lion, and Moses was that snaggle-toothed rabbit, or whoever he was. Don’t quote me on anything specific, by the way. So, anyway, onto his deductive reasoning and how it changed philosophy.

His idea was actually pretty simple, but he phrases it in a way that makes it a little difficult to follow. He says, “What is is, and what is not is not.” So, in other words, if something exists, it exists. If something does not exist, it does not exist. And it’s impossible for something to exist and not exist at the same time, right? He says that because of this, a point in time where the universe was in a state of nothing existing is impossible because things exist now. And nothing can come into existence from a place where nothing exists. So, in other words, something cannot come from nothing. We’ve all heard that before. And the universe must have always existed in some form and is eternal.

He used to ask questions like, if the universe came into existence, what caused it to come into existence in the first place? What made it start then as opposed to earlier or later? Philosophers hadn’t really thought of this before. I mean, before Parmenides, they were content with accepting that they were here, the universe did exist, and everything has a beginning. So, let’s just try to think of some interesting explanations for how it happened that don’t involve a supernatural god.

He also thought that we can’t speak of what is not or something that doesn’t exist. For example, to think about a unicorn is to essentially think about nothing because it doesn’t exist. To talk about a unicorn, to Parmenides, is just to be making meaningless sound, because it doesn’t exist. The way Parmenides sees it, if change was possible, it would first have to be one way and then change into another way that it’s not right now. But we can’t speak of what is not, so we can’t speak of change. Therefore, change is impossible. Ah.

He uses this same logic to say that nothing actually moves either. Because it would have had to be in one place first and then not in that place later, etc. You get it. Parmenides thought the universe was one eternal, unchanging, massive blob with no empty space inside that is like a sphere. And at the time, Greeks saw the sphere as the most perfect and divine of all the geometric forms.

So, if any part of you is annoyed with Parmenides for coming to all these confusing conclusions, take some solace in the fact that he lived his entire life walking around in a world that he logically concluded to be a complete illusion—a world where change and movement is impossible. So doing anything as far as he saw it was absolutely pointless.

The picture Parmenides paints begins to look familiar, right? There seems to be a common thread among most of the Presocratics we’ve covered where they use this amazing ability to think that they’ve developed to arrive at one profound, fundamental conclusion about all the stuff around them. And then they spend the rest of their time trying really, really hard to apply that one concept to as many things as possible, sometimes even the entire universe. With Democritus and Leucippus that we talked about last time, it was their theory of atoms. They just applied atoms to everything. With the Pythagoreans, it was numbers and harmony.

But in the case of Parmenides, it’s actually pretty extreme. He basically is saying that although we see motion, change, birth, and death, that none of it is actually happening, which completely contradicts what we see. Not to mention, he’s saying we can’t speak of what is not. But by talking about the fact that birth, death, change, and motion don’t exist, he is speaking of what is not. And that just doesn’t make any sense, Parmenides.

His response would have been, yeah, you think you’re speaking of something that doesn’t exist, but really you’re just talking about nothing. You should abandon these common-sense prejudices that you have. See, the fact you think you’re talking about something that doesn’t exist—that’s based on evidence you’ve gathered through the sense organs. And if what you think you see with your senses and what reason tells you contradicts each other, reason should always be held in higher regard because the senses are deceptive and can’t be trusted.

He definitely was a weird guy, but he certainly wasn’t a dumb guy. The idea that he’s talking about is, in my opinion, his greatest contribution to philosophy. It was the fact that all the thinkers that came before him and all these ideas that they were so sure off—all of their perceptions were actually full of contradictions. We use our senses and think that we’re seeing changes happening all around us. But reason, at least as far as he saw it, tells us change is impossible.

Not only was this a strong victory for proponents of using reason to arrive at conclusions as opposed to the senses, but it gave credence to the idea of accepting the outcome of an experiment despite what might immediately appear to be rational or irrational through the senses. In other words, you have to trust the science, not what you think the outcome of the experiment should be.

This idea that Parmenides had about the ordinary world that we see just not existing—that contrast with common sense was just too difficult for anyone to swallow. Future philosophers wanted to agree with him, but they just couldn’t accept the fact that everything they see isn’t real. So, what you see is a lot of philosophers taking his brilliant idea and then trying to tack onto it an explanation for the seemingly changing world we perceive. If you remember, atomism was one of these.

One of the most notable of these philosophers that came up with one of these theories was the guy we’re going to talk about next. He thought the whole world was made up of four elements that were in themselves eternal and unchanging. But added, they had the ability to combine with each other to make up the changing world we see. His name was Empedocles.

So, according to Empedocles, he was in an immortal god among men who had been given his divine status because of all the knowledge he’d gained through extensive thought during his life. He’d walk around everywhere in this ridiculous outfit: a purple robe, a giant golden belt, bronze shoes, and a wreath around his head like he was the Delphic oracle. And he did it on purpose. He said when he walks through a new town, he wants people to see him and wonder what he’s all about and follow him around in the thousands. And it worked. If someone didn’t agree with him or questioned him, they were complete fools.

You see, apparently, he was a god, you guys. And he knew of a time a long time ago when man experienced a golden age when all men lived happily together and there was no turmoil in the world at all. The bad news was, all men at first were gods. They just lost their immortal status and were put here on earth. The good news was, they all had the ability to become gods again. Conveniently for them, all they had to do was follow Empedocles around and think really hard about stuff. Like I said before, he agreed with Parmenides that the universe is eternal and that nothing is ever created or destroyed. He just tried to find a compromise that would account for the seemingly changing world we see every day with our sense organs.

He claimed there were four elements—air, water, fire, and earth—and that all things are just different recipes of different quantities of these four elements. Combine his ridiculous, superhero-like getup with his earth, fire, air, and water, with his views on the forces of love and strife that I’ll talk about later, and it begins to sound pretty familiar. [Captain Planet and the Planeteers soundbite] Empedocles is Captain Planet. At least that’s one way to remember him.

For anyone that’s incredibly confused right now, let me explain. Captain Planet was a cartoon from the early 90s where a group of teenagers all had the power to summon a superhero named Captain Planet. Each one of them had a ring; each one of them was assigned an element. And if they all looked up into the sky and called out the five elements—earth, fire, wind, water, heart—a magical double rainbow of life would shoot out all the way across the sky out of their rings, and Captain Planet appeared and saved the world from evil corporations that weren’t recycling enough.

Now, if Captain Planet has any emotional context for you, it really is an extremely effective way to remember Empedocles. It sums up the most important parts of what he was—like I said, the crazy, superhero-like getup; his views of earth, fire, air, and water; and then heart symbolizing his thoughts on the forces of love and strife that we’ll talk about in a little. Now, if Captain Planet holds no significance to you, I humbly apologize for wasting 30 seconds of your life. And maybe consider checking out a few episodes just for comedic value. You just don’t see cartoons that deliver a positive message like that to kids anymore.

Empedocles thought the elements earth, fire, air, and water themselves do not change. They just intermingle and move around and combine with each other. This was the compromise Empedocles made to Parmenides’ extreme idea that change and movement is impossible. Empedocles said that the process of these eternal elements intermingling and moving around, that’s what man calls birth or death. Birth and death exist. They’re just human constructs, words.

And this has a lot of similarities with the ideas of atomism that we were talking about last episode. Remember, the atoms themselves do not change, just the configuration of atoms. He saw the mixing of the different elements as similar to the mixing of colors of paint that an artist would have. When you look at a cup, you’re really just looking at nature’s masterful combination of these four elements. And this applied to anything you can see around you, like metals too. What about metals? I mean, he had bronze shoes after all, right? All metals were actually seen as water to the Greeks because they could be melted down and combined with other metals.

Here’s a quote of how Empedocles put it. “As painters, men well taught by wisdom in the practice of their art, decorate temple offerings when they take in their hands pigments of various colors, and after fitting them in close combination—more of some and less of others—they produce from them shapes resembling all things, creating trees and men and women, and animals and birds and even water-nourished fish, and long-lived gods too, highest in honor; so let not error convince you in your mind that there is any other source for the countless perishables that are seen, but know this clearly, since the discourse you have heard is from a god.” I love how just for good measure at the end he adds on—oh yeah, by the way, I’m a god, so you have to trust me, just in case you guys didn’t like the mixing-of-paint analogy I just made.

As you’ve probably noticed, he was pretty similar to Pythagoras in several ways. He was a Pythagorean. He believed in reincarnation. He believed that there were two forces in the universe that were constantly at battle with one another. One of them was love, which not only is responsible for bringing the elements together to make up everyday items that we see, but love is responsible for human emotions too. Like, this force of love to Empedocles is actually what causes humans to feel sexual attraction to each other. The other force that was competing with it was strife. Strife constantly seeks to drive the elements apart and break them down. And in the case of human emotions, it’s what drives people away from each other and creates problems.

Love and strife are constantly at battle with one another. And the result of this constant battle is the changing world that we perceive. See, he thought a long time ago there was a time when love reigned supreme. It had triumphed over strife completely, and all the elements were in one happy little sphere in the middle of the universe with love protecting them, surrounding them. But then strife started attacking love, and the elements got out of this protective sphere and were scattered everywhere around the universe. And then love fought back and started grouping the elements back together.

In the process, as these small quantities of elements are drawn together by love, the everyday things that we see like mountains and trees and chairs were assembled. But in the current state of the world, love and strife are constantly battling one another. Love combines the elements into a human or a dog, and strife tears it apart and decomposes us. Eventually, a long time from now, Empedocles says that one of them, either love or strife, will reign supreme again, and the entire process will start over.

Well, I mean, it’s a wonderful story and all, but the thing that makes it important to philosophy is that it was the first time anyone had thought of the idea that there’s an intangible force responsible for the actions of the elements. Like, before, if the whole world was made up of something, like varying different forms of water as Thales thought—I mean, water itself doesn’t move, right? How do you explain the fact that water somehow manifested itself into all this stuff? The idea of a force being behind it was revolutionary and incredibly insightful and similar to what we know of forces in modern physics.

He also seemed to have accurately arrived at the idea of natural selection as being the way animals survived and adapted. They owe the features that allow them to survive to the fact that there used to be many different species of creatures. And the ones with characteristics that didn’t behoove them died off before they were able to propagate, leaving only the strongest and best adapted. Empedocles explained his ideas this way: “Here sprang up from many faces without necks, arms wandered without shoulders, unattached, and eyes strayed alone in need of foreheads.” So, he wasn’t exactly on point with evolution, but he was exactly on point if he was trying to predict the Saw franchise. I mean, this stuff is scary—eyes rolling around on the ground without a head, a rogue arm just laying there.

One last way you can think of Empedocles as Captain Planet is that he was a huge proponent of recycling, but not recycling cans and bottles; he recycled ideas. He really was a giant conglomeration of several ideas that were successful for previous philosophers in their own time. He was like Pythagoras, being the crazy demigod. And he also had the whole religious message to his philosophy that was similar to Pythagoras. Basically, it was a positive message about living with the ways of love as opposed to strife and that all men are being punished in their current form because they sacrificed animals and ate meat—so, very similar to Pythagoras. His constant battling spectrum of love and strife is a lot like the flux theory of Heraclitus. His compromise on Parmenides and his idea of the universe being eternal. His theory of the four elements is actually very similar to Democritus’ and Leucippus’ theory on atoms, although he was a contemporary of Democritus.

Anyway, legend has it that eventually Empedocles jumped into a volcano to prove that he was immortal to his followers. I don’t think I got to tell you guys how that one worked out for him. But he left the world an accomplished man, an accomplished man who came up with a theory of what everything around us is made of that was so successful that Aristotle himself heavily endorsed it with only a few corrections. And his theory was widely seen as the truth until the 18th century.

So, we started out by talking about the word “philosophy,” to love wisdom. Pythagoras always talked about studying things and seeking knowledge not for the practical benefits of that knowledge. Like, he thought you shouldn’t learn geometry just so you can build houses better or learn music just so you can play the guitar and get a girlfriend. You should pursue knowledge for the wisdom and the wisdom alone. And there’s a certain nobility to that.

For me, it reminds me of this podcast. I mean, I do it to bring others happiness and maybe to spread ideas in a world that needs them. But what about you? Philosophize this: is there anything you do that isn’t for the return you get, whether that’s working for money or loving someone just so they’ll treat you nicely back? Is there anything that matters to you so much you’d do it for free indefinitely?