Chapter 1 - When Did Kosmos Become the Kosmos?

Summary

When did kosmos come to mean ‘world-order’? This chapter ventures a new answer by examining evidence in late doxographies and commentaries often underutilized or dismissed by scholars. Two late doxographical accounts in which Pythagoras is said to be first to call the heavens kosmos (in the anonymous Life of Pythagoras and the fragments of Favorinus) exhibit heurematographical tendencies that place their claims in a dialectic with the early Peripatetics about the first discoverers of the mathematical structure of the universe. Xenophon and Plato refer to ‘wise men’ who nominate kosmos as the object of scientific inquiry into nature as a whole and the cosmic ‘communion’ (koinônia) between all living beings, respectively. But Empedocles is the earliest surviving source to use kosmos to refer to a harmonic ‘world-order’ and to illustrate cosmic ‘communities’ between oppositional pairs, realizing the mutual correspondence in the cycle of love and strife. Thus, if later figures posited Pythagoras as the first to refer to the universal ‘world-order’ as the kosmos, they did so because they believed Empedocles to have been a Pythagorean natural scientist, whose combined focus on cosmology and ethics was thought to exemplify a distinctively Pythagorean approach to philosophy.

When did kosmos come to mean ‘the kosmos’, in the sense of finite ‘world’ or ‘world-order’? This question fascinated historians of philosophy both in antiquity and throughout the last century, from Walther Kranz in the early 1930s to Jaap Mansfeld in the early 1970s. During that period, it was treated by many eminent scholars, most of whom, it will be of no surprise, reached divergent conclusions. Charles Kahn, adapting arguments by Reinhardt, Kranz and Gigon, believed that Anaximander was the first person whom we know to have referred to multiple kosmoi, in the sense of sub-orders of the world; it is thereby understood that kosmos seems to offer some traction to Ionian science, despite the troubling fact that there is not a single surviving reference to kosmos meaning ‘world-order’ unambiguously among the fragments of the Ionian physikoi until Diogenes of Apollonia (fl. after 440 bce).¹ Geoffrey Kirk argued that prior to Empedocles, Diogenes and possibly Philolaus of Croton, various senses of ‘order’ are implied in the use of the term kosmos, but only with these mid- to late fifth-century bce figures does the sense of ‘world-order’ come to be dominant.² Jaap Mansfeld followed Kerschensteiner in rejecting the links to Anaximander, but he also excused himself from the debate concerning who first spoke of the world-order as a kosmos, suggesting without further argument that ‘it may have been Pythagoras or one of his early followers’.³ With the exception of two scholars, Carl Huffman and Aryeh Finkelberg, nobody to my knowledge since Mansfeld in the early 1970s has developed a detailed analysis of this fascinating question.⁴ Huffman has cautiously suggested that Heraclitus’ use of the term ‘seems to mark the transition’ to the sense of ‘ordered whole’ but that it is with Empedocles that we get the meaning ‘world’, and with Philolaus the meaning becomes ‘world-order’;⁵ alternatively, Finkelberg argues that the ‘kosmos’-fragments of Philolaus are likely to be a post-Platonic forgery, and that it is with the later Platonic dialogues, especially Timaeus, Statesman and Philebus, that the word kosmos first comes to mean ‘world-order’.⁶

So at one end, we have Charles Kahn’s influential argument – still accepted by some scholars today⁷ – that it is with Anaximander, at the fountainhead of Milesian scientific inquiry sometime in the mid sixth century bce, that we have the first use of the term kosmos to refer to a ‘world-order’, or, to be more precise, multiple ‘world-orders’ (kosmoi); and at the other end, we have Aryeh Finkelberg, who believes that such a distinction should be associated in the first with the dialogues Plato penned in his advanced age, in the 360s–50s bce. Two hundred years of philosophical history separate these two possible termini. Clearly, then, a debate is still to be had. In this chapter, I would like to make my own contribution by focusing on an aspect of the question that has tended to fall by the wayside, generally speaking, namely the evidence to be found in the doxography concerning the term kosmos and its meanings. One might dismiss doxographical reports that relate to the topic of the origins of the concept of the kosmos on the grounds that they are simply ‘late’, or Platonising or coloured by Peripatetic or Stoic modes of classification. Such a dismissal of the doxography, in my opinion, would be born out of a hyper-scepticism concerning the reliability of the doxographical traditions or of a distrust of the programmatic intentions of the authors who sought to provide classifications of the ideas they found associated with major philosophers who came before.⁸ Scholarship since the early 1990s has sought to obtain a more nuanced approach to the study of doxography, and the study of Aristotle and other early historians of philosophy and science within the Lyceum, such as Theophrastus, Eudemus and Aristoxenus, has seen significant advances in the past twenty years with the advent of new critical editions, commentaries and discussions.⁹ Moreover, especially within the past decade, the field has seen a similar growth in study of the relevant areas of Platonic philosophy and Pythagoreanism, with scholars seeking to revive the critical discussion of what to us seem to be relatively obscure figures whose imprint upon the traditions of Platonic and Pythagorean thought bears the signs of sophistication and intellectual value.¹⁰ Given the state of the history of philosophy today, it would be uncharitable at best, and out of touch at worst, to consign later doxographical reports to the dusty shelves of mere antiquarianism.

Now the most decisive report from antiquity which expressly associates the first use of the term kosmos with some sort of order within the universe comes from the sceptic philosopher Favorinus of Arles, a rough contemporary of Plutarch who was also critiqued by Galen; hence his activities can be dated to the late first or early second century ce.¹¹ In a work titled History of All Sorts, he appears to have devoted at least one book (Book 8) to heurematography, that is, to the recording of ‘first discoveries’ in philosophy and science:¹²

Favorinus says that he [sc. Pythagoras] (was the first) to employ definitions in the subject of mathematics; and Socrates and his disciples extended this, and afterwards Aristotle and the Stoics; moreover, he [sc. Pythagoras] was the first to call the heavens ‘kosmos’ [τὸν οὐρανὸν πρῶτον ὀνομάσαι κόσμον], and the earth round; according to Theophrastus, however, it was Parmenides; and according to Zeno¹³, it was Hesiod.

(Favorinus Fragment 99 Amato = Diogenes Laertius 8.48)

This testimony has received very little commentary, and its content is almost universally rejected.¹⁴ But I think it deserves a closer look. When scholars tend to cite this fragment of Favorinus, they unfortunately tend to leave out the first portion, which actually bridges the section of relevance for our study, namely the claim that Pythagoras ‘was the first to call the heavens “kosmos”’, with other useful information concerning Pythagoras’ proposed intellectual activities. Pythagoras is there credited with being an innovator in the use of definitions in mathematics, followed interestingly by Socrates and the Socratics, and then Aristotle and the Stoics. So Favorinus’ doxographical source, whoever it was, appears to have established a philosophical lineage from Pythagoras to the Stoics based on the use of definitions in mathematics; and somewhere (perhaps nearby in his source?), Favorinus found Pythagoras being credited with ‘first discoverer’ (prôtos heuretês) of the use of the term kosmos to refer to the heavens.¹⁵ Are these two aspects connected? We have evidence from other works that Favorinus devoted some energy to the history of mathematics: he appears to have claimed that Plato was the discoverer of the method of analysis in mathematics and that he was an innovator in the development of mathematical terminology.¹⁶

With the focus on Pythagoras’ innovations in mathematics and cosmology, Favorinus reflects what seem to have been commonplaces by, at the latest, the beginning of the second century ce, especially in doxographical accounts that show themselves to be under the influence of Stoic, Middle Platonist and Neo-Pythagorean conventions. It is also the case in other, roughly contemporary and earlier reports of Middle Platonists that testify to Pythagoras’ innovations in mathematics and cosmology.¹⁷ For example, there is the account from the anonymous Life of Pythagoras, likely composed in the first century bce (perhaps by Eudorus of Alexandria, or someone in his philosophical circle there), which features explanation through etymologisation, a familiar trope from Stoic and later Neopythagorean philosophy: ‘Pythagoras was the first to call the heavens “kosmos”, because it is perfect and adorned with all the living beings [stars?] and the fineries [πρῶτος Πυθαγόρας τὸν οὐρανὸν κόσμον προσηγόρευσε διὰ τὸ τέλειον εἶναι καὶ πᾶσι κεκοσμῆσθαι τοῖς τε ζῴοις καὶ τοῖς καλοῖς]’.¹⁸ Given the complexities that attend Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic Pythagorean doxography, it is difficult to know with confidence what Favorinus’ immediate sources might have been; but it is important to note that his information differs quite substantially from, for example, that employed by another sceptic (of a more distinctly Pyrrhonian variety), Sextus Empiricus, when he sought to describe ‘Pythagorean’ arithmetic.¹⁹ The attribution of specific scientific discoveries in mathematics to Pythagoras, to be sure, antedates the Post-Hellenistic period, as it has its origins in the writings of Aristotle, the Early Peripatetics and the Early Academy in the fourth century bce.²⁰ For example, Aristotle argued that the Pythagoreans were the first philosophers to employ crude definitions, followed by Socrates, who also employed definitions in ethics (Arist. Metaph. 1.5.987a13–27; cf. Arist. Fr. 203 Rose³);²¹ and Aristotle more explicitly associated Pythagoras himself with definition (of some sort) as well as observation of the heavens as a θεωρὸς τῆς φύσεως in his lost, but very influential and well-distributed, dialogue Protrepticus.²² Similarly, Aristotle’s junior associate Aristoxenus claimed that Pythagoras invented weights and measures, identified the Evening and Morning Stars with Venus (Fr. 24 Wehrli) and advanced the subject of mathematics, which had originally been discovered by the Egyptian god Thoth (Fr. 23 Wehrli).²³ Aristotle’s contemporary Heraclides of Pontus, who was in antiquity associated with both the Academy and the Lyceum, portrayed Pythagoras in a dialogue as the prôtos heuretês of the actual term philosophy (philosophia), which Heraclides himself also seems to have associated with an Aristotelian notion of theoretical or first philosophy;²⁴ Xenocrates, the second successor in the Academy to Plato who was a direct competitor of Aristotle, attributed the discovery of harmonic intervals to Pythagoras;²⁵ and Aëtius, whose chief source concerning first discoveries may have been Aristotle’s successor Theophrastus, claimed that ‘Pythagoras was the first to call the enclosure of totality [τὴν τῶν ὅλων περιοχὴν] “kosmos” because of its inherent arrangement’.²⁶

In this way, then, the account of Favorinus concerning Pythagoras’ innovations, especially in referring to the heavens as the kosmos, appears to be of a piece with earlier heurematographical accounts of Pythagoreanism from the middle of the fourth century bce. Hence, we would be in danger of oversimplifying, and perhaps be simply mistaken, if we were to say of Favorinus’ account that it has ‘no historical value’ whatsoever.²⁷ Of historical value to whom, and when? Favorinus is participating in a heurematographical tradition that associates ‘discoveries’ in mathematics and astronomy to Pythagoras which traces back at least to Aristotle and the Early Academy.²⁸ In fact, this raises the possibility that Favorinus’ heurematographical account, like those accounts of the anonymous first-century bce author of the Life of Pythagoras preserved by Photius and of Aëtius, is reacting (in some way – perhaps dialectically, as Sextus did) to earlier doxographical statements concerning the cosmological or ouranological use of the term kosmos.

We can only speculate about what the sophists, such as Hippias of Elis, said about Pythagoras or what role they played in the development of the doxography concerning cosmology. Both Xenophon and Plato, writing in the first half of the fourth century bce, lay the groundwork for a later aporia over who, in particular, was first in using the term kosmos to refer to the ordered universe. The account of Xenophon explicitly pits Socratic philosophy against speculation in natural science and by appeal to the peculiarity of the latter’s inquiry into the ‘kosmos’:

But no one ever heard or saw Socrates say or do anything profane or impious. For he didn’t even discuss the nature of all things after the manner of most of the others, that is, by inquiring into how the ‘kosmos’, as it is called by the professors, is, and by what laws each of the heavenly objects came into existence [περὶ τῆς τῶν πάντων φύσεως ᾗπερ τῶν ἄλλων οἱ πλεῖστοι διελέγετο, σκοπῶν ὅπως ὁ καλούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν σοφιστῶν κόσμος ἔφυ καὶ τίσιν ἀνάγκαις ἕκαστα γίγνεται τῶν οὐρανίων]; instead, he demonstrated how those who pondered such subjects were engaged in sheer folly. In the first place, he would inquire regarding them whether they really thought that they had sufficient enough knowledge of human affairs to proceed onto speculation concerning these topics, or whether they believed that they were doing their duty by ignoring human affairs and investigating divine ones.

(Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.11–12)

Here, Xenophon contrasts the investigative activities of the ‘professors’ (οἱ σοφισταί), whose approach to natural science focuses on the way in which the ‘kosmos’ came into existence and the laws in accordance with which the heavenly bodies were generated, with Socrates’ ethics. Xenophon emphatically marks the term kosmos as ‘called by’ (καλούμενος) the professors, thus differentiating their investigative approach to cosmology from a more general (τῶν ἄλλων οἱ πλεῖστοι) investigative approach to the nature of the universe, or, as he puts it, ‘the nature of all things’ (ἡ τῶν πάντων φύσις). Xenophon himself does not explicitly tell us who these ‘professors’ are. Just after this passage (Mem. 1.1.14), Xenophon differentiates, from among those who investigate the nature of the universe, the monists, who believe that there is ‘only one Being’, that ‘nothing is ever put into motion’ and ‘nothing is ever generated or corrupted’, from pluralists, who ascribe to nature ‘an infinity, the many’, as well as the notions that ‘all things are constantly in motion’ and ‘all things are generated and corrupted’. There is a clear differentiation being drawn between two types of philosopher who commit to diverse metaphysical positions, and the information appears to have had doxographical value.²⁹ The later explicit appearance of the name ‘Anaxagoras’ in the context of the sort of astronomy Socrates rejects (Mem. 4.7.6) might suggest the natural scientist from Clazomenae, and the obvious comparison with the famous passage of Plato’s Phaedo (96a ff.) might also recommend Anaximenes, Alcmaeon and Diogenes of Apollonia, as well as Philolaus and Empedocles.³⁰ Indeed, as I’ve argued elsewhere, the mathematical Pythagoreans Philolaus and Empedocles are likely to be in Plato’s crosshairs when he criticises those who engage in what Socrates calls περὶ φύσεως ἱστορία in the Phaedo.³¹ Generally, then, we might admit a plethora of possible intellectuals, and it seems unlikely that Xenophon would be interested in the question we’re interested in, namely who, precisely, these ‘professors’ are who commit to using the term kosmos and investigate the natural laws that brought it into existence.

An article by Aryeh Finkelberg (1998) has provocatively argued that those ‘professors’ who speak about the kosmos are, specifically, Plato and his associates in the Academy. He bases this positive claim on several arguments. First, he argues that uses of the term kosmos to refer to ‘world’ or ‘world-order’ in Plato’s dialogues occur only in the late works, Timaeus, Statesman and Philebus.³² Earlier usages in Gorgias and Phaedrus, he contends, refer to ‘heaven’ rather than to a ‘world’ that is structured according to some rules or principles.³³ Second, he suggests that the Memorabilia ‘cannot be earlier, or at least much earlier’, than the Timaeus, which, in his estimation, was the first dialogue to use the term kosmos to mean ‘world’ or ‘world-order’ unambiguously.³⁴ Third, he notes – and I do think this is an important point – that Plato seems to highlight the terminological invention in the Timaeus (28b), through marked elaboration upon the more common word for ‘heaven’, οὐρανός, as well as in Philebus (29e), where Socrates speaks of ‘that very thing which we call “kosmos”’ (περὶ τοῦδε ὃν κόσμον λέγομεν).³⁵ Hence, so the argument goes, Plato exhibits propriety over the term and its particular usage.

Now Finkelberg’s three arguments vary in terms of quality and all are problematic. The first argument is speculative and depends a lot on dating of the works of Plato, a notoriously difficult project. If, however, we accept the notion that the earlier dialogues (it’s not at all self-evident that Phaedrus is earlier than Timaeus or Statesman, I should note) all assume that kosmos means ‘heaven’, then his first argument is weakened if, and when, we find an example that bucks the trend. The second is equally speculative, and more problematic, because it depends on the first argument: nobody, to my mind, has been able to prove that Xenophon’s Memorabilia is earlier, later or contemporary with any dialogue of Plato; we simply cannot know. Finally, the argument that Plato shows proprietary usage over the term kosmos to refer to ‘world-order’ is worth testing by reference to one of Plato’s ‘early’ dialogues (that much is agreed by most scholars), discussed extensively by many scholars both ancient and modern, in which Socrates expressly associates use of the term kosmos with ‘wise’ people other than himself:

Yes, Callicles, the wise men claim that partnership [κοινωνία], friendship and orderliness, temperance and justice [φιλία καὶ κοσμιότης καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ δικαιότης], hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call the totality a ‘kosmos’, my friend, and not a ‘un-kosmos’, nor even ‘intemperance’ [καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦτο διὰ ταῦτα κόσμον καλοῦσιν, ὦ ἑταῖρε, οὐκ ἀκοσμίαν οὐδὲ ἀκολασίαν]. I believe that you don’t pay attention to these facts, even though you’re a wise man in these matters. You’ve failed to notice that the geometrical equality has great power among both gods and men, and you suppose that you ought to practice getting the greater share. That’s because you neglect geometry.

(Plato, Gorgias 507e6–508a8)

Two things leap out of this remarkable passage. First, it is pretty clear that Socrates is not avowing proprietary use of the term kosmos but rather is using it within a broader explanation of why ‘partnership’ (κοινωνία), which is glossed as ‘friendship and orderliness, temperance and justice’ (φιλία καὶ κοσμιότης καὶ σωφροσύνη καὶ δικαιότης), binds the representative aspects of the divine and the mortal, i.e. the divine and mortal regions (heaven and earth), and the divine and mortal occupants of those regions (gods and men).³⁶ Second, in order to explain to Callicles why he fails to understand what the ‘wise men’ say, namely that the right partnership between heaven and earth, gods and men, is a ‘world-order’ and not its opposite, Socrates appeals, perhaps surprisingly, to mathematics. Specifically, he refers to the ‘geometrical equality’ (ἡ ἰσότης ἡ γεωμετρική), which is said to hold powerful sway (μέγα δύναται)³⁷ over both gods and men; from this perspective, the geometric proportion is to be considered something like the means by which gods and men achieve the partnership (κοινωνία) they hold. The geometric proportion, as cited here, has been thought to be the equivalent to what the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws (757b–c) calls the ‘judgment of Zeus’ (Διὸς κρίσις), the proportion that ‘distributes more to the greater and a smaller amount to the lesser’ and is the principle of distributive justice in the fourth century bce.³⁸

To whom, then, is Socrates referring when he describes the saying of the ‘wise men’? Many scholars have followed Dodds in assuming that the Pythagoreans are intended referents.³⁹ Dodds gained his insight from the Scholiast to Plato’s Gorgias (Proclus?), who said of these ‘wise men’, ‘he is speaking of wise Pythagoreans here, especially Empedocles, who declared that friendship unifies the sphere, and that it is the unifier [σοφοὺς ἐνταῦθα τοὺς Πυθαγορίους φησί, καὶ διαφερόντως τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέα, φάσκοντα τὴν φιλίαν ἑνοῦν τὸν σφαῖρον, ἑνοποιὸν εἶναι]’.⁴⁰ I will turn to consider Empedocles below, but let us begin by examining the surviving fragments of the early Pythagoreans, in order to test Dodds’s hypothesis. Carl Huffman has argued that Plato has Archytas of Tarentum in mind when he refers to the ‘geometrical equality’ (but also others), and Fragment 3 of Archytas holds special relevance to our discussion:⁴¹

Once calculation was discovered, it put a stop to discord and increased concord. For there is no ‘wanting more than one’s share’ [πλεονεξία τε γὰρ οὐκ ἔστι], and equality exists, once this [sc. calculation] has come into being. For by means of it [sc. calculation] we will seek reconciliation in our dealings with one another. Through this, then, the poor receive from the powerful, and the wealthy give to the needy, both in the confidence that they will have what is far on account of this [sc. calculation].

(Archytas of Tarentum DK 47 B 3 = Stobaeus 4.1.139, pp. 88.13–89.3 Hense)⁴²

It is true that a loose relationship obtains between Plato’s account and Archytas’ B 3, but there are at least three problems with determining too strong an association. First, Archytas does not expressly refer to the entity which eradicates pleonexia and promotes concord among the various groups as the ‘geometrical equality’ but rather calls that entity ‘calculation’ (λογισμός), which might be thought to produce a type of equality but is not itself an equality. Second, Archytas does not in his political thought describe ‘calculation’ as bringing gods and men together, but instead he refers to the wealthy and the poor. Indeed, references to divinity are notably absent in Archytas’ fragments, with the exception of one testimonium from Aristoxenus’ Life of Archytas which might be thought to reflect the ideas of Archytas in a debate against the ‘voluptuary’ Polyarchus (A 9), in which Archytas may have said that the law-givers of old deified Temperance (Σωφροσύνη), Self-Control (Ἐγκράτεια) and Justice (Δίκη) and erected altars to them. Unfortunately, the content of that testimonium is in negative relief, since we are learning the voluptuary Polyarchus’ arguments against Archytas’ moral philosophy; in the absence of other direct testimony, Archytas’ specific positive arguments for ethical moderation here remain undisclosed. Finally, and most importantly, the surviving fragments and testimonia of Archytas make no reference to kosmos at all; in fact, the only reference to Archytas’ cosmology comes in a questionable testimonium from ps.-Plutarch’s On Music (A 19 c), in which the author associates Archytas’ cosmological theories of motion according to harmony not only with those of Pythagoras but also with those of Plato and ‘the rest of the ancient philosophers’. This can hardly be accepted as reliable evidence for Archytas’ cosmology.

Other natural scientists associated with early Pythagoreanism, such as Hippasus, Ecphantus and Alcmaeon, might recommend themselves as the referents for the ‘wise men’ in the account of Plato, but the scarcity of evidence makes it impossible to evaluate this proposition.⁴³ There is of course one exception, Philolaus of Croton (DK 44), who unquestionably uses ‘kosmos’ to refer to contraries arranged in an order in a number of fragments.⁴⁴ Philolaus is familiar to most scholars as the absent teacher of Simmias and Cebes in Plato’s Phaedo. In the fragments of Philolaus, we see something more similar to the κοινωνία between oppositional described by Socrates in the Gorgias. In Fragments B 1 and 6, this ‘kosmos’ is forged from the fitting together of the oppositional principles, the limiters and unlimiteds, which are understood to come into relation with one another through the supervenience of harmony.⁴⁵ As Huffman has noted, kosmos in the fragments of Philolaus ranges in meaning from ‘world’ (B 1 and B 2), ‘organised system’ (B 1, B 2, and B 6) or simply ‘order’ (B 6), and to ‘whole world’ (B 17), if we accept B 17 fragment as authentic (and I have some doubts about this).⁴⁶ What is clearly missing in Philolaus’ fragments, however, is the particular focus on the establishment of an actual partnership (κοινωνία) between the divine and the human aspects of the kosmos, which is explicit in Plato, and is implicit in the account of Xenophon.⁴⁷ Indeed, it is Socrates’ extension of the notion of the kosmos to ‘partnership’ that is peculiar in Plato’s account and warrants further analysis.

We will recall that Socrates raises the notion of the ‘kosmos’ with Callicles in order to lay stress on the importance of the κοινωνία, a word that has significance not only for Plato’s political philosophy, but also for his metaphysics.⁴⁸ The concept of ‘community/communion’ (κοινωνία) takes us back to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, once again. It is a key notion in Aristotle’s criticisms of Pythagorean soul–body relationships in On the Soul (1.3.407b13-24 = DK 58 B 39), especially in their ill-expressed notion of how transmigration of the soul works.⁴⁹ Much later in the Pythagorean tradition, Iamblichus, who is probably deriving his information from Nicomachus via Porphyry, describes the ‘partnership’ (μετοχή) that obtains between all living beings, with special reference to humans and non-human animals:

And he [sc. Pythagoras] ordered law-givers of communities to abstain from living beings; for since they wished to act completely in justice, it was necessary, surely, not to injure kindred animals, since how could they persuade others to behave justly if they themselves be caught in the pursuit of a greater share [ἐπεὶ πῶς ἂν ἔπεισαν δίκαια πράττειν τοὺς ἄλλους αὐτοὶ ἁλισκόμενοι ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ]? The partnership among living beings is congenital [συγγενικὴ ἡ τῶν ζῷων μετοχή], since, through the communion of life and the same elements and the mixture arising from these [διὰ τὴν τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τῶν στοιχείων τῶν αὐτῶν κοινωνίαν καὶ τῆς ἀπὸ τούτων συνισταμένης συγκράσεως], they are yoked together with us by brotherhood [ὡσανεὶ ἀδελφότητι], as it were.

(Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life 108)

We see the elements of Socrates’ speech in the Gorgias being adapted to a debate concerning doing injustice towards other animals, in particular, with regard to sacrificing and eating them. Humans are considered ‘kindred’ to other animals (τῶν συγγενῶν ζῴων), and it is this kinship that provides the justification for not doing them harm.⁵⁰ The ‘congenital partnership’ (συγγενικὴ ἡ μετοχή) between all living beings, which arises out of the ‘communion’ (κοινωνία) of life and elements in the universal mixture (σύγκρασις), is elicited in order to show us that pleonexia is contrary to justice and just behaviour. The law-givers, if they are to act justly, must therefore abstain from eating other animals, which would constitute a type of pleonexia (a ‘wanting beyond one’s share’). We have seen above that Archytas explicitly criticises pleonexia and encourages unity within the polity by way of distribution according to what he calls ‘calculation’; and it is possible that, in his debate with Polyarchus as preserved by Aristoxenus, he expressly discussed the positive benefits of the ‘law-givers’ to society, in particular, through deification of Temperance, Self-Control and Justice. But Archytas focused explicitly on the eradication of stasis within the polis, and among its constituents; there is no evidence that he was more broadly concerned with the ‘cosmic’ society that comprises, for example, divine and human, or living beings regardless of their status within the scala naturae.⁵¹ Moreover, there is no evidence of Archytas recommending abstention from eating animals, or even of espousing theories of metempsychosis, as described by Aristotle. If Archytas was indeed a Pythagorean, and if he was developing his own philosophical approaches to the problems of equity and fairness, he seems not to have concerned himself with anything beyond the immediate political environment.⁵² Iamblichus’ information concerning the Pythagorean ‘congenital partnership’ of animals is suggestive, but it cannot be considered definitive for our study of the early usages of kosmos: since it is impossible from a historiographical perspective to evaluate the material concerning Pythagoras’ purported discussion of κοινωνία, we might wish to press more on Plato’s playful reference to the ‘wise men’s’ co-implication of ‘kosmos’ and ‘partnership’ – but with Iamblichus’ information as a possible heuristic tool.

If we return for a moment to the Scholiast’s gloss on the ‘wise men’ of Gorgias 507e–508a, however, we will see that the Scholiast’s source (Proclus?) refers to the ‘wise’ Pythagoreans, and then goes on to describe Empedocles, ‘who declared that friendship unifies the sphere, and that it is the unifier [σοφοὺς ἐνταῦθα τοὺς Πυθαγορίους φησί, καὶ διαφερόντως τὸν Ἐμπεδοκλέα, φάσκοντα τὴν φιλίαν ἑνοῦν τὸν σφαῖρον, ἑνοποιὸν εἶναι]’. The Scholiast’s source seems to focus on the ‘friendship’ attribute (φιλία) of the ‘community/communion’ that he found in the text of Plato, which might explain why he was reminded of Empedocles at all. But, I think, this cannot be the whole story. Here, we need to consider another important, but often understudied part, of the doxography, this time from Sextus Empiricus:

Well then, the followers of Pythagoras and Empedocles and the remaining lot of Italians declare not only that there is a community between us men and one another and with the gods, but also with the irrational animals [μὴ μὸνον ἡμῖν πρὸς ἀλλήλους καὶ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς εἶναί τινα κοινωνίαν, ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς τὰ ἄλογα τῶν ζώιων]. For, they say, there is one pneuma which pervades the entire kosmos, in the manner of a soul, which also unifies us with them. This is why if we kill them and feed on their flesh, we will be committing an injustice and acting impiously, on the grounds that we are destroying our kin. Hence, too, these philosophers recommended abstinence from animal food, and they declared impious those people who ‘reddened the altar of the blessed ones with warm blood’. And Empedocles somewhere says:

Will you not desist from harsh-sounding bloodshed? Do you not see

That you are devouring one another in the heedlessness of your understanding?⁵³

(Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians 9.127)

We can see three of the elements found in the arguments attributed by Socrates to the ‘wise men’ in the Gorgias in this passage: the ‘community’ of gods and men, the unity of the ‘kosmos’, and justice; and we also see the elements of the account of Iamblichus, namely the argument for the abstinence from animal food as a consequence of the sharing of kinship with irrational animals, an argument associated with Pythagoras in some form as early as Eudoxus of Cnidus.⁵⁴ There is the intrusion, if we can call it that, of what looks to be the Stoic pneuma (πνεῦμα) here, as well (perhaps standing in for something like aether). Now, typically, scholars have speculated that Sextus’ source for his information on Pythagoreanism was Posidonius.⁵⁵ I have my doubts about this, especially given our evidence that neither Chrysippus nor Posidonius believed that justice extended from humans to other animals, on the grounds that other animals simply did not share of rationality.⁵⁶ And it is clear that the source isn’t Alexander Polyhistor either, since he underscores the importance of all living beings, including the sun and stars, as well as gods and men, sharing in ‘heat’ (τὸ θερμόν) as a modality of aether.⁵⁷

Still, the appearance of the extension of the πνεῦμα through all things looks Stoic, which would place the source of this testimony at the earliest in the late fourth century bce, when Zeno of Citium apparently wrote a work on the Pythagoreans, of which nothing survives except a title (Pythagorica).⁵⁸ Indeed, the association of Pythagoreanism and ‘kosmos’ in the terms discussed here points us to Zeno in particular. Zeno appears to have argued in the Republic that all individuals within the kosmos were unified under a common law (συννόμου νόμῳ κοινῷ),⁵⁹ and it is relatively common in the doxography to see that breath (πνεῦμα) is extended throughout all parts of the kosmos and holds them in place through relationships of tension.⁶⁰ But Zeno did not appear to hold that ‘kinship’ or ‘participation’ unified all creatures within the kosmos: others criticised Zeno for arguing that only the virtuous, and not the inferior, could obtain real friendship and were truly akin to one another.⁶¹ Either Sextus preserves a Stoic doxographical record of the communal cosmology of the Pythagoreans and Empedocles that was dialectical – in which case it would be difficult to see what the Stoic source thought was wrong with the Pythagorean-Empedoclean account of the human–beast partnership⁶² – or we will need to reconsider the apparent Stoicism of the Pythagoreanism/Empedocleanism described in this passage of Sextus.

One solution to our puzzle about Sextus’ passage, I suggest, arises if we take our cue from both the Scholiast and from Sextus, and from the somewhat surprising reference in Iamblichus’ account to the ‘mixture arising out of these elements’ (τῶν στοιχείων … τῆς ἀπὸ τούτων … συγκράσεως), and focus our attention on Empedocles. It is clear, first of all, that Empedocles was considered a natural philosopher by Aristotle, and one who is to be credited with philosophical innovations (especially in developing a nuanced approach to the efficient cause and proposing four elements, rather than one).⁶³ In particular, Aristotle indicates the extent to which Empedocles was concerned with describing the constitution of the kosmos, even referring to a portion of his work as the ‘making-of-the-kosmos’ (κοσμοποιία).⁶⁴ But he was concerned with ethics and proper moral conduct as well. In fact, he is the earliest Greek we know of who unquestionably rejected the eating of flesh – the evidence for Pythagoras before him is inconsistent, at best.⁶⁵ Empedocles also dedicated a surprising amount of his poem to illustrating the consequences of the fact that all animals breathe, as several of his fragments attest⁶⁶, and moreover he associated the aether with a part of the soul.⁶⁷ He also claimed of the divine (possibly the godhead Apollo?) that it ‘is only a sacred and ineffable thought organ / Darting through the entire kosmos with swift thoughts’ (ἀλλὰ φρὴν ἱερὴ καὶ ἀθέσφατος ἔπλετο μοῦνον, / φροντίσι κόσμον ἅπαντα καταΐσσουσα θοῃισιν).⁶⁸ It is not hard to imagine the source of Sextus’ passage attempting to Stoicize Empedocles’ lines by assuming that he was actually referring to the pneuma when he spoke of the divine rational force in its modality as a thought organ (φρήν).⁶⁹ Moreover, Empedocles believed that the kosmos was unified, shaped like an egg,⁷⁰ and, most importantly, was constituted by friendship (φιλία), as we see in fragment B 26:

And, in turn, they dominate as the cycle rolls around,

And they dwindle and grow into one another in the turn of fate,

For these things are the same, and running through one another

They become men and the races of other beasts,

And at one time coming together by Love into one kosmos,

And at another time again each being borne apart by Strife’s enmity,

Until, all of them grown together into one, the universe is subsumed.

Thus insofar as they learned to grow as one from many,

And they finish up many as the one again grows apart,

In this respect they come to be and have no constant life;

But insofar as they never cease from continually interchanging,

In this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle.

ἐν δὲ μέρει κρατέουσι περιπλομένοιο κύκλοιο,

καὶ φθίνει εἰς ἄλληλα καὶ αὔξεται ἐν μέρει αἴσης.

αὐτὰ γὰρ ἔστιν ταὐτά, δι’ἀλλήλων δὲ θέοντα

γίγνοντ’ ἄνθρωποί τε καὶ ἄλλων ἔθνεα θηρῶν,

ἄλλοτε μὲν φιλότητι συνερχόμεν’ εἰς ἕνα κόσμον,

ἀλλοτε δ’αὖ δίχ’ ἕκαστα φορούμενα νείκεος ἔχθει,

εἰσόκεν ἓν συμφύντα τὸ πᾶν ὑπένερθε γένηται.

οὕτως ᾗ μὲν ἓν ἐκ πλεόνων μεμάθηκε φύεσθαι,

ἡδὲ πάλιν διαφύντος ἑνὸς πλέον’ ἐκτελέθουσι,

τῇ μὲν γίγνονταί τε καὶ οὔ σφίσιν ἔμπεδος αἰών˙

ᾗ δὲ τάδ’ ἀλλάσσοντα διαμπερὲς οὐδαμὰ λήγει,

ταύτῃ δ’ αἰὲν ἔασιν ἀκίνητοι κατὰ κύκλον.

(Empedocles, DK 31 B 26)

What exactly Empedocles’ kosmos is, and perhaps more importantly when and how it comes into existence, remains a topic of debate among scholars.⁷¹ Yet there can be no doubt that when he mentions the kosmos, Empedocles is speaking of a ‘world’ made up of many diverse objects, and given order in accordance with the cycles of fate, which impose alternation upon them.⁷² And elsewhere (B 115), Empedocles is explicit not only in attributing a causal role to the ‘oracle of necessity, ancient decrees of the gods, sealed with broad oaths’ (ἀνάγκης χρῆμα, θεῶν ψήφισμα παλαιόν, / ἀίδιον, πλατέεσι κατεσφρηγισμένον ὅρκοις) to growth, alteration and locomotion of the individual through the cycle of strife, but he also associates this process with the sins that accrue when one sacrifices improperly or swears false oaths.⁷³ Indeed, Plutarch’s interesting description of the cycles of Strife and Love helps us to fill in the gaps left from an incomplete text of Empedocles’ poem, and it also links Empedocles’ cosmology to Plato’s in the Timaeus by way of the critical importance of ‘partnership’ (κοινωνία). In mocking the Stoics’ approach to cosmology, Plutarch elaborates a vision of the ἀκοσμία that obtains in Empedocles’ cycle of Strife:

Earth had no share of warmth, nor water any share of breath; none of the heavy things was up nor any of the light things down; but the principles of the universe were unblended, unloving, solitary, not desiring combination or communion with one another [μὴ προσιέμεναι σύγκρισιν ἑτέρου πρὸς ἕτερον μηδὲ κοινωνίαν]; fleeing and not admitting of blending or communion with one another, turning away and executing their separate and self-willed movements, they were in the condition which Plato [Ti. 53a–b] attributed to everything from which god is absent, i.e. in the condition of bodies when deserted by mind and soul. They were in that condition until by providence desire came into their nature [ἄχρι οὗ τὸ ἱμερτὸν ἧκεν ἐπὶ τὴν φύσιν ἐκ προνοίας] because of the presence of love and Aphrodite and Eros, as Empedocles, Parmenides, and Hesiod say, so that [the elements] by changing places and sharing their powers amongst each other, some being bound by the necessities of movement, some of rest, [all] being forced to give in and move from their natural state towards the better, they might create the harmony and communion of the universe [ἁρμονίαν καὶ κοινωνίαν ἀπεργάσηται τοῦ παντός].

(Plutarch, Concerning the Face that Appears in the Orb of the Moon 926e–927a; tr. after Inwood)

It is difficult, as always, to extract the genuine Presocratic substrate from the Middle Platonist dressings. Surely the appearance of providence is dialectical, and functions within the broader criticism of Stoic physics and ethics.⁷⁴ Be that as it may, it is clear that Empedoclean cosmology and Pythagorean κοινωνία came to be so deeply intertwined that ancient historians of thought and doxographers found it difficult to separate the strands out; it may have been unnecessary, or even unfruitful, for them to do so. Empedocles’ place within the history of Pythagoreanism was fixed sometime in the early Hellenistic period – in the writings of Neanthes of Cyzicus and Timaeus of Tauromenium, at the very latest (late fourth to mid third centuries bce).⁷⁵ This is a terminus ante quem. But it is possible that such associations originated in the Socratic dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, through their typically elusive method of describing the positive contributions made to their own respective philosophies.

Now I would like to offer some concluding remarks. Our study has attempted to work backwards chronologically from the Hellenistic and Post-Hellenistic testimonies concerning the first discovery and usage of the term ‘kosmos’ to refer to the ‘world-order’ to the Classical period, in order to sketch out a reception-history of the heurematographical tradition. Our analysis suggested that the most extensive account that makes Pythagoras the first person to refer to the heavens as the ‘kosmos’, that of the sceptic philosopher and historian Favorinus of Arles, seems to represent the continuation of a tradition that associated Pythagoras with various discoveries and innovations in mathematics and cosmology in the mid fourth century bce, both in the Academy and in the Lyceum. Consequently, we sought to examine whether sources prior to Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Theophrastus, as well as the Early Platonists, might also hint at similar associations. This led us to the puzzle of solving the identity of some anonymous ‘professors’ (οἱ σοφισταί) in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, as well as some anonymous ‘wise men’ (οἱ σοφοί) in Plato’s Gorgias, whose marked use of the term ‘kosmos’ was associated with, respectively, natural science and its laws, and ‘partnership’ (κοινωνία) between the various divine and mortal aspects of the universe. The likeliest candidates to identify with these figures were Pythagoreans, in particular, Archytas of Tarentum, whose focus on mathematical proportions, especially ‘calculation’ (λογισμός), as a means to eradicate stasis within the community, parallels Socrates’ description of the ‘geometrical equality’ in the Gorgias; Philolaus of Croton, whose marked use of ‘kosmos’ and cosmological theory of the harmonisation of oppositional limiters and unlimiteds reflected the basic tenor of Plato’s account, while also retaining Xenophon’s concern with astronomy and the generation of the heavens; and Empedocles of Agrigentum, who is directly associated with the ‘wise men’ of Plato’s account by the Scholiast to Plato’s Gorgias, and whose implication of the generation of the ‘kosmos’ within the universe and the objects that constitute it through the influence of Love strikes closest to both accounts, while retaining the all-important association between ‘partnership’ and ‘kosmos’ that distinguished Plato’s version.

In the end, however, none of these figures can be directly paralleled with both the earliest dialectical accounts – that of Xenophon and that of Plato – of those clever people who used ‘kosmos’ in a marked way to refer to the world-order. But this should not surprise us: neither Plato nor Xenophon wrote their dialogues primarily in order to entertain our curiosities about the history of philosophy; they sought to develop and promote their own philosophical agendas through their peculiar preservations of the memory of Socrates. No single piece of the evidence presented here can be considered the smoking gun that solves our question, ‘when did ‘kosmos’ become the kosmos?’; it is clear that the concept of ‘kosmos’ came to mean ‘world’ or ‘world-order’ by, at the latest, the first few decades of the fifth century bce.⁷⁶ But the evidence presented here does suggest that early Pythagoreans of the experimental sort, the ‘exoterics’ who were often considered ‘outsiders’ or ‘scientific’ Pythagoreans by later traditions, adopted the term kosmos and in order to explain the relationship that obtains between the recurrent modes of alteration and change within the observable universe and the balance that is meant to undergird systems of justice and fairness between the living participants of that universe. The indications from the later doxographical traditions, combined with the surviving fragments of the second- and third-generation ‘Pythagoreans’ themselves, all point in the same direction, back to the enigmatic and elusive Pythagoras of Samos. It’s the usual problem with Pythagoras: no smoking gun, and all smoke and mirrors.