Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

substances and phenomena. A division of the universe into different substances began first, perhaps, with Empedocles of Acragas. In his Purifications he identified the four elements of air, earth, fire and water and suggested they combined and mixed through the influence of love and strife. He saw love as a principle at work throughout the universe.

Heraclitus, following from Empedocles, saw substance as the four elements — earth, air (or breath), fire and water. Soul is still seen as a ‘substance’ within this scheme however — and is sometimes thought to be made of fire and sometimes of breath (‘pneuma’). For Hippon of Samos, soul is made of seed. For Critas of Athens, soul is made of blood. Democritus of Abdera seemed to believe soul to be made of fire, but in fact (in line with the particle theory of matter, for which he is most famous) he thought fire, and hence soul, to be the smallest particles of matter.

Eventually things seemed to settle out such that there is substance as particles in empty space. But the idea of ‘atoms’ or lumps of substance sat in ‘empty’ space (Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus) was especially taxing for ancient philosophers. Conceiving of a ‘nothing’ rather than a category or a substance does not come about easily. If it should be settled that there are particles, what are the particles contained in? Particles in a void? But isn’t the void made of something? Aether? And if made of something then doesn’t that give us two types of stuff? ‘Empty’ space got filled back up again by Descartes, with the idea of the ‘aether’, or ‘ether’. (Aether was sometimes equated with

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