The Faces of Change

From early antiquity, natural philosophers have sought to understand the Universe. ¹ How did it begin? Did it have a beginning? What is it composed of and what makes it "tick"? Not surprisingly, the early theories dealt with cosmology and cosmogony. Many of these ancient quests sought to find the elemental basis for our world. Thales (c. 624-C.546 B.C.E.) proposed water as the single material cause of all earthly things. ² Subsequently, Anaxinlander (611-547 B.C.E.) offered a totally different primordial element as the "stuff' of which all things arc made, namely, the Infinite or άπειρον (apeiron). ³ This was a metaphysical concept that, to this day, is not well understood. The apeiron or eternal, indeterminate, infinite substance was a metaphysical monadic material capable of separating into opposites, such as heavy and light, hot and cold and so on from whence all things emanate. ⁴ Anaximenes (c. 545 B.C.E.) suggested air as the one, infinite cause of the physical world. Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.E.) maintained that fire was the prime element, emphasizing change as the one vital force in the Universe; this best fit his model of conflict and change essential to Nature. ⁵ Empedocles is generally given credit for adding earth to the other three elements, fire, air, and water, thus rounding out a theory of "sublunary" cosmology. ⁶ The Ancients believed that the sublunary world—the Earth and its surrounding air—was made of these four elements, was always in a state of flux and all motion on Earth was "rectilinear," that is, in a straight line. The Moon and all celestial objects beyond it were made of "ether" and moved in circles. Ether, unlike the four earthly elements, was immutable and eternal. We have already been introduced to these early philosophical concepts.