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The Hot and the Cold, the Dry and the Wet in Greek Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. E. R. Lloyd
G. E. R. Lloyd
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
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Extract

In a previous article (JHS lxxxii (1962) 56 ff.) I examined some of the theories and explanations which appear in Greek philosophy and medicine in the period down to Aristotle, in which reference is made to right and left or certain other pairs of opposites (light and darkness, male and female, up and down, front and back), and I argued that several of these theories are influenced by the symbolic associations which these opposites possessed for the ancient Greeks. In the present paper I wish to consider the use of the two pairs of opposites which are most prominent of all in early Greek speculative thought, the hot and the cold, and the dry and the wet. My discussion is divided into two parts. In the first I shall examine the question of the origin of the use of these opposites in Greek philosophy. How far back can we trace their use in various fields of speculative thought, and what was the significance of their introduction into cosmology in particular? And then in the second part of my paper I shall consider to what extent theories based on these opposites may have been influenced by assumptions concerning the values of the opposed terms. Are these opposites, too, like right and left, or male and female, sometimes conceived as consisting of on the one hand a positive, or superior pole, and on the other a negative, or inferior one? How far do we find that arbitrary correlations were made between these and other pairs of terms, that is to say correlations that correspond to preconceived notions of value, rather than to any empirically verifiable data?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 84 , November 1964 , pp. 92 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1964

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References

1 The reference to Melissus in ch. 1 (346) provides a terminus post quern for chs. 1–8 of this composite treatise, and to judge from the report in Anon. Lond., xix 1 ff., its author was Polybus, the son-in-law of Hippocrates (the theory of veins in ch. 11, 58 1 ff., may also be ascribed to Polybus on the authority of Aristotle, , HA 512b 12 ff.Google Scholar). While most scholars date this work in the second half of the fifth century (e.g. Bourgey, L., Observation et Expérience chez les médecins de la collection Hippocratique, Paris, 1953, 31 f.Google Scholar), Heinimann, F. for one (Nomos und Physis, Basel, 1945, 158 ff.)Google Scholar puts it at the very end of that century or the beginning of the fourth, on the grounds that the antithesis between νόμος and φύσις is already drawn quite sharply in chs. 2 and 5.

2 In ch. 4 (38 19 ff.) the writer describes the components of the body in terms of the four humours, blood, phlegm, bile and black bile, but these are in turn correlated both with the opposites and with the four seasons in ch. 7 (46 9 ff.): e.g. blood, like the season spring, is said to be wet and hot.

3 ‘Sun’ (i.e. fire) is undoubtedly described as bright and hot in verse 3 and ‘rain’ (i.e., water) as dark and cold in verse 5 and when Aristotle quotes these lines at GC 314b 20 ff., he adds that Empedocles ‘characterises the other elements too in a similar way’. But in the more complete version of the fragment quoted by Simplicius (in Ph. 159.13 fr.) the interpretation of the lines which refer to the other two elements is far from clear. Verse 6 seems to associate earth with solidity, particularly (but not, apparently, with hot or cold): Aristotle, at least, took Empedocles' theory to have been that earth is heavy and hard (GC 315a 10 f.). Verse 4 is even more obscure: If we take this to refer to air (though this has been doubted by some scholars), it seems to imply that this element, too, like fire apparently, is warm and bright.

4 Kahn, C. H., Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, New York, 1960, 127Google Scholar, has suggested that ‘if the complete poem of Empedocles had survived, we might see that his theory was as fully articulated as that of Aristotle’ (in which each of the four simple bodies is constituted by two of the four primary opposites, hot, cold, dry, wet, e.g. fire by the hot and the dry), but this is a very doubtful conjecture. Kahn points out that ‘other fragments permit us to catch a glimpse of the causal roles ascribed to the hot and cold, the dense and rare, and to the qualities of taste—bitter, sweet and others', and he instances frs. 65, 67, 75, 90 and 104. But there is nothing in these fragments to suggest that these opposites are associated with specific ’roots’. Empedocles' theory of these associations survives in fr. 21 alone, and there the doctrine seems to be still in quite a rudimentary form.

5 On the date of this treatise, see Deichgräber, K., Hippokrates, über Entstehung und Aufbau des menschlichen Körpers, Leipzig, 1935, 27 n. 4Google Scholar, who concludes that it belongs to the end of the fifth century. It should be remembered, however, that the date of this, as of almost every other, Hippocratic treatise cannot be determined with any degree of precision.

6 This treatise is now generally agreed to be more probably a fourth- than a fifth-century work (see, e.g., Kühn, J.-H., System- und Methodenprobleme im Corpus Hippocraticum, Hermes Einzelschriften n, 1956, 80 n. 1Google Scholar).

7 Anon. Lond. xx 25 ff. attributes a neat schema of elements and ‘powers’ to Philistion: there are four elements and each of these has its own ‘power’, fire hot, air cold, water wet and earth dry. The dates of On Fleshes and of Philistion are, of course, known only very imprecisely, but it seems possible that the theories of Empedocles, On Fleshes, Philistion and Aristotle represent a gradual and continuous progress towards a doctrine of elements and opposites that is at once simple and comprehensive.

8 We should also note theories of the type found in Diogenes of Apollonia in which there is a single primary element (in his case Ἀήρ) but hot and cold, dry and wet and so on are mentioned as its differentia tions (see fr. 5: (sc. )

9 Heidel, W. A., ‘Qualitative Change in Presocratic Philosophy’, Archiv f. Gesch. d. Philos., xix (1906) 333 ff.Google Scholar

10 Cherniss, H., Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy, Baltimore, 1935.Google Scholar

11 McDiarmid, J. B., ‘Theophrastus on the Preso cratic Causes’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology lxi (1953) 85 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Hölscher, U., ‘Anaximander und die Anfänge der Philosophie’, Hermes, lxxxi (1953) 266.Google Scholar

13 Op. cit., especially ch. 2, 119 ff.

14 Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy i, Cambridge, 1962.Google Scholar See also Guthrie, 's article, ‘Aristotle as a Historian of Philosophy’, JHS lxxvii (part 1) (1957) 35 fr.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 It may be noted that in this instance later writers refer to Parmenides' principles more often as fire and earth than as hot and cold, e.g. Theophr. Phys. Op. fr. 6 (Alex, in Metaph. 984b 3, p. 31, 7 Hayd., DK A 7), Hip. Ref. i 11.1, DK A 23, Diog. L. ix 21, DK A 1, but contrast τὸ θερμὸν καὶ τὸ ψυχρόν in Diog. L. ix 22, and at Aet. ii 20.8a, DK A 43, what is ‘rarer’ is described as hot, and what is ‘denser’ as cold. Aristotle's reference to Parmenides' second principle (Νύξ) as ‘earth’ has been taken as a typical misinterpretation (McDiarmid, op. cit., 120 f.), but it seems probable enough, to judge from the description of night as ‘dense’ and ‘heavy’ (fr. 8 59), that this principle was associated with earth, if not actually identified with it.

16 Contrast the testimony of Plutarch (de prim. frig. 7 947F, DK 13 B 1) which suggests that Anaximenes reduced differences of temperature to differences of density (and this accords with the frequent mention of ‘the rare’ and ‘the dense’ in other reports on Anaximenes, e.g. Theophr. Phys. Op. fr. 2, Simpl. in Ph. 24.26 ff., DK A 5). Kahn, however, apparently takes the evidence of Plutarch in precisely the contrary sense, as if Anaximenes reduced differences of density to differences of temperature, for he comments (op. cit., 160) ‘Anaximenes seems in fact to have made use of these two (viz., Hot and Cold) in their classic function, as powers of rarefaction and condensation (B 1, A 7.3).’

17 Four times in all (Ph. 187a 20 ff., 203b 14, Cael. 295b 12, Metaph. 1069b 22), excluding the valueless reference in the spurious de Melisso (975b 22). On the passages which refer to unnamed philosophers who postulated an element intermediate between fire and air, or between air and water, see the full discussion in Kirk, G. S., ‘Some problems in Anaxi-mander’, CQ N.S. v (1955) 24 ff.Google Scholar

18 See above, n. 3, on fr. 21 3 ff. The main opposition referred to there is that between fire and water, and this is an obvious fact of experience. As Kahn points out, op. cit., 160, the enmity between these two was proverbial, e.g. Theognis 1245 f., Aesch. Ag. 650 f. and cf. the fight between Hephaestus and the river Xanthus at Il. xxi 342 ff.

19 This text occurs in a passage in which Simplicius first quotes Anaximander's fragment and then goes on to conjecture the motives which may have led him to postulate and while this conjecture is plausible enough (cf. also Arist. Ph. 204b 22 ff.), it is obvious that Anaximander cannot have argued in precisely the way in which Simplicius suggests since this argument depends on the anachronistic doctrine of the four elements.

20 Diels (Doxographi, 579 note ad loc.) suggested τι as a possible alternative, and this is preferred by Kahn. DK and Kirk and Raven retain τό, however.

21 Hölscher, Kahn and Guthrie understand the term γόνιμον (rightly, I believe) on the analogy of the similar expression γόνιμος καὶ ζῴων καὶ φυτῶν which is used of the heat of the sun in Theophrastus, de Igne 44.Google Scholar

22 The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge, 1957, 133.

23 Hölscher (op. cit., 266) refers tentatively to ‘Feuer und Luft’, but stresses that the question must remain open.

24 E.g. Xenophanes frs. 29 and 33, though neither of these fragments necessarily implies a general physical theory (see Guthrie, , HGP i 383 ff.Google Scholar).

25 These opposites are, however, mentioned in Heraclitus fr. 126. But this simply refers (like many other fragments in Heraclitus) to the interconnection between these opposites (we might compare the mention of day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger in fr. 67, for example), and does not suggest that these opposites have any special role in Heraclitus' physical or cosmological theory. To judge from frs. 31 and 36 that theory was stated in terms of fire, earth and sea (water), and not in terms of the opposites as such themselves.

26 Der Ursprung der griechischen Philosophie, Basel, 1945. 75.

27 This is not to say, of course, that in choosing Light and Night as his principles in the Way of Seeming Parmenides may not have been influenced by other philosophers besides Anaximander. It has often been remarked that this pair figures in the Pythagorean συστοιχία given by Aristotle at Metaph. 986a 22 ff., though we cannot be certain whether this represents a pre- or a post-Parmenidean theory. It may be added that the question of whether, or in what sense, the cosmology of the Way of Seeming represents Parmenides' own beliefs is irrelevant to the present issue in that whatever view we adopt on that problem, the cosmology in question may exhibit resemblances to Anaximander's system.

28 There is a full discussion of Parmenides' highly obscure theory in Heath, , Aristarchus of Samos, London, 1913, 66 ff.Google Scholar, who notes that it ‘seems to be directly adapted from Anaximander's theory of hoops or wheels’. Yet Parmenides' theory was clearly an adaptation, rather than simply a copy, of Anaximander's, for while each of Anaximander's wheels consisted of fire enclosed in mist, Parmenides apparently distinguished between three different kinds of rings, one sort made of ‘the rare’ (light) alone, a second made of ‘the dense’ (darkness) alone, and a third composed of both elements combined.

29 A similar doctrine of the interaction between opposed substances of various sorts can be traced not only in the fragment and in the theory of the formation of the world reported by pseudo-Plutarch where (hot) flame and (cold) mist separate off from the Boundless, but also in several of the biological and geophysical theories attributed to Anaximander. Thus according to Hip. Ref. i 6, 6 (DK A 11) he held that living creatures arose from the wet acted upon by the sun (cf. Aet. v 19.4, DK A 30), and according to the theory described in Arist. Mete. 353b 6 ff. and attributed to Anaximander by Alexander and Aetius (DK A 27) he may have represented the sea as what is left of the original moisture in the region round the earth, after this had been dried by the sun.

30 Hes. Op. 60 ff. Il. vii 99 is also usually mentioned in this context, though its interpretation is, to my mind, quite doubtful.

31 Op. cit., 134 ff. cf. also Stokes, M. C., ‘Hesiodic and Milesian Cosmogonies’, pt. 1, Phronesis vii (1962) 1 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 See Vlastos', G. article, ‘Isonomia’, AJP lxxiv (1953) 337 ff.Google Scholar

33 Hot and cold, dry and wet are, however, described as being ἰσόμοιρα in the world in the cosmology reported to have been found by Alexander Polyhistor in certain ‘Pythagorean notebooks’ (Diog. L. viii 24 ff., DK 58 B 1a) though the value of this evidence is disputed (see most recently Guthrie, HGP i 201 n. 3). As Kahn notes (op. cit., 190) the doctrine of the equality of hot, cold, dry and wet resembles that which is found in, for example, On the Nature of Man ch. 7 (L vi 48 20 ff.). The conception of the special importance of the hot, and its connection with life, in chs. 27 f., may also be paralleled elsewhere, e.g. in the theory attributed to Philolaus in Anon. Lond. xviii 8 ff., and On Fleshes ch. 2, L viii 584 9 ff.

34 Thus the basic meaning of ἰαίνω seems to be to warm (e.g. Od. x 359, cf. melt, Od. xii 175), but when applied to the θυμός, for example, it comes to mean ‘comfort’, e.g. Od. xv 379, Il. xxiv 119, cf. ἰαίνομαι, Od. xix 537.

35 Among the objects to which the epithets κρυερός and κρυόεις are applied in Homer or Hesiod are Hades (Op. 153), fear (Il. ix 2), war (Th. 936) and γόος (Il. xxiv 524).

36 Cf. Onians, Origins of European Thought, Cambridge, 1951, 254 ff. Onians (ch. 6, 200 ff.) also discusses the expression κατείβετο δὲ γλυκὺς αἰών (e.g., Od. v 152) and collects certain evidence which suggests that sexual love and desire may have been associated with moisture by the ancient Greeks (e.g., Hes. Th. 910, Alcman 59 Page, Anacreon 114 Page, h. Hom., xix 33 f.).

37 Cf., Aesch. fr. 229 which speaks of the dead in whom there is no moisture (ἰκμάς). In the Orphic fragment 32 (a) and (b) (in DK as 1 B 17 and 17a) the dead man who speaks describes himself as αὖος, and the belief that the dead are thirsty evidently underlies the widespread Greek practice of offering them libations.

38 Cf. e.g. Soph. El. 819 where Electra, foreseeing her old age, says αὐανῶ βίον.

39 It is to be noted, however, that there is no sign in Hesiod, or anywhere else in pre-philosophical literature, of any schematic correlation between the four seasons and the four opposites, such as we later find in, for example, On the Nature of Man, ch. 7 (L vi 46 9 ff.) where winter is wet and cold, spring wet and hot, summer dry and hot and autumn dry and cold.

40 The idea that living creatures originated in the wet when acted upon by the sun is attributed to Anaximander at Hip. Ref. i 6.6 (DK 12 A 11) and a similar theory occurs in the cosmology reported in Diodorus (i 7.3 ff., DK 68 B 5.1) (cf. also the view mentioned by Aristotle when he discusses the possible reasons which may have led Thales to make water the principle, namely that ‘the hot itself comes to be from this and lives by this’, Metaph. 983b 23 f.). On Regimen i chs. 32 f. (L vi 506 14 ff.) develops the theory that generation takes place from an interaction between the hot and the wet (or Fire and Water) and the connection between humidity and vital heat is also pointed out in On Fleshes ch. 9 (L viii 596 9 ff.).

41 There is an obscure comparison with the production of fruit at GA 765b 28 ff. (‘the nutriment in its first stage is abundant, but the useful product derived from it is small’). The idea seems to be that as a plant turns its food first into leaves, then into fruit, so animals turn theirs first into blood, and then (in males) into semen (see Platt's note in the Oxford Trans, ad loc.).

42 E.g. GA 737a 27 ff. Cf. further Lesky, E., Die Zeugungs- und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken, Wiesbaden, 1951, 151f.Google Scholar

43 Thus there is an elaborate schema in which the four ages of man are correlated with pairs of opposites in On Regimen i ch. 33 (L vi 510 24 ff.), the first age being hot and wet, the second hot and dry, the third cold and dry, and old men cold and wet. But this schema seems dictated in part, at least, by the author's desire to associate the second age, that of the young man, with the male sex and the superior element Fire, and old age with the inferior element Water (cold and wet): his view that the old are cold and wet in particular runs counter to the generally accepted Greek notions (see above, p. 101) though it also appears in On Regimen in Health ch. 2 (L vi 74 19 ff.).

44 One of the facts which he has in mind when making this latter suggestion is that some bloodless animals (e.g. bees) are more intelligent than many sanguineous animals which are hotter than them (PA 648a 5 ff).

45 He goes on to suggest that the upper parts of the body are distinguished in this respect (i.e. in the heat and purity of their blood) from the lower, as also are males from females, and the right side of the body from the left (PA 648a 11 ff).

46 The view that men are dry and hot, and women wet and cold is also often expressed in the pseudo- Aristotelian Problemata (e.g. 879a 33 ff.).

47 At Cael. 286a 26 ff. ‘heavy’ is said to be the privation of ‘light’, and at Ph. 217b 17 ff, and Cael. 288b 7 ff. ‘heavy’ and ‘dense’ are associated together, and so too ‘light’ and ‘rare’ (for this reason, perhaps, as well as because of the association between ‘thin’ and ‘clear’, the blood of males is said to be ‘thinner’ than that of females, PA 648a 11 ff.). Yet with such a pair as ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ we find different types of correlation proposed in different contexts: on the one hand ‘hard’ is associated with ‘dense’ (e.g. Ph. 217b 17), but on the other it is assimilated to ‘dry’ at GC B 2 330a 8 ff. in a chapter in which he reduces various types of opposites to ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ or ‘dry’ and ‘wet’ while at the same time pointing out some of the ambiguities of these terms. From other passages (e.g. Ph. 259a 6 ff.) it would appear that like the Pythagoreans, Aristotle thought ‘one’ superior to ‘many’ and ‘limited’ to ‘unlimited’.

48 E.g. the dispute as to whether land-animals are hotter or colder than water-animals, and the disagreement about which ‘humours’ are hot and which cold. Cf. also the opposite views about the nature of the ψνχή mentioned at de An. 405b 24 ff. We know little about the arguments used on each side in these controversies, but it seems unlikely that a priori considerations affected the discussion to any great extent. Thus Philolaus seems to have held that the phlegm is hot (as opposed to the generally accepted view that it is cold) simply on the grounds of a suggested etymology of the word φλέγμα from φλέγειν (see Anon. Lond. xviii 41 ff.).

49 It is strange that the fact of menstruation was taken by both sides in this dispute to be significant of a difference in the temperature of the two sexes (though they disagreed about how this evidence was to be interpreted). Yet while the temperature of the female certainly rises and falls according to the menstrual cycle, the fact of menstruation provides no evidence concerning the relative temperature of males and females at all.

50 The writer of On Ancient Medicine provides something of an exception to this general rule, for he notices the difficulties which arose concerning the application of the doctrine of the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet to problems of diagnosis and cure (ch. 13, CMG i. 1 44.8 ff.) and then suggests that hot and cold are the least important of the δυνάμεις in the body (ch. 16, 47.12 ff.).

51 I must express my thanks to Mr G. S. Kirk for reading and criticising an earlier draft of this paper. The faults that remain are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.