Scepticism and Dogmatism

in the Presocratics.
Scott Austin

The World of Parmenides is a collection of writings by Karl Popper, some

previously published, some complete but not previously published,
together with material from Nachlass. (For a comment on the editorial
procedure, see below.) The general claims are that the Presocratics,
particularly Xenophanes and Parmenides, have a determining influence
on Western reason and science up to the beginning of the Romantic era,
and (particularly in the case of Xenophanes) that they anticipate and,
indeed, embody Popper's own effort to revive 'Enlightenment' methods
of rational inquiry through 'conjecture' and 'refutation' in the face of
post-Romantic tyrannies, 'enemies' of 'the open society'. Yet the volume
is not just the extension of Popperian views into pre-Aristotelian Greece,
or their discovery there, but also a distinctive contribution of its own,
full of interesting imaginative pictures and speculations together with
attempts to substantiate them argumentatively and textually. Thus The
World of Parmenides is valuable for scholars of Popper's thought and for
those interested in Western forms of reason themselves historically and
generally (indeed, up to and including twentieth-century science).
Popper's specific 'conjecture' about the Greeks is, roughly, this: the
Ionian cosmologists were not naive blunderers, interestingly wandering
about in the dark, but genuine scientists, indeed, the inventors of science
as we now know it. Xenophanes marks the arrival in the West of the

1 A Review of Karl R. Popper, The World of Parmenides: Essays on the Presocratic

Enlightenment. Edited by Arne F. Petersen, with the assistance of Jergen Mejer. New
York: Routledge 1998. Cdn$75.00: US$50.00. ISBN 0-415-17301-9.

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240 Scott Austin

self-critical attitude that one must view one's own hypotheses as always
provisional, perhaps in general approximating the truth more closely
over time, but always subject to correction or even falsification through
disconfirming evidence. Xenophanes's student Parmenides (about
whose specific indebtedness to his teacher Popper advances a conjecture) comes, through the enlightening effect of his discovery that the
moon, in all of its phases, derives its illumination from the sun, to the
view that 'dark' matter, embodying the primary qualities, alone is cosmologically real, and that the play of light on surfaces is illusion, Doxa
(for an argument against this view, see below). The Atomists attempt to
refute Parmenides's idea by arguing for the reality of a void separating
plural material entities, and so are responsible, not only for the first
scientific 'refutation', but also for the perdurance even up through parts
of the twentieth century of the important atomic theory, a genuinely
scientific attitude. Meanwhile Parmenides's own invention of the axiomatic method passes to Plato, a tyrant in politics but not in epistemology; it is only Aristotle's mistaken emphasis on an intuitive,
non-self-critical, apprehension of essential definitions which both makes
questionable the foundation of his own metaphysics and brings to a
temporary close the genuine, Xenophanean attitude of in-principle-correctible critical inquiry, an attitude not to be revived until Galileo.
Indeed, this conjecture appears to have certain advantages: it redeems
the Presocratics from overly romantic or historicist interpretations by
giving them what in Popper's terms is genuine intellectual respectability
and the decisive role, not only in the discovery of Western rational
method, but also in the establishment of particular cosmological views
which have been crucial in science. The central historical claim in this
group of essays, however, is a claim about Parmenides: it is essential to
attempt to refute it.
For Popper (who, in this regard, is too heavily indebted to Burner2),
Parmenides is a materialist who holds that light is an illusion. (The
conjecture that Parmenides himself may have been color-blind or had a
blind sister, as important as a goddess in the childhood evolution of his
sense of justice in explanation, cannot be verified or refuted.) The stimulus, indeed the shocking vision, behind this materialism is in Popper's
mind one of Parmenides' most important cosmological discoveries: the

2 John Bumet, Early Greek Philosophy (4th edition London: A. & C. Black, 1930)

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Scepticism and Dogmatism 241

moon shines only with reflected light; consequently the changes of phase
are not real but only illusions produced by the movement of light across
her surface; taken just by itself, the moon is a dark sphere without any
illumination at all. Thus, by analogy but also by argument, the cosmos
as a whole, surrounded by the impenetrable vault of heaven, is a dark,
unchanging, spherical body, and the deluded, double-headed mortals
are mistaken in thinking it to be a group of moving objects each of which
goes through different conditions of illumination. Thus an imaginative
picture, occasioned by a single cosmological discovery, gets generalized
and argued for as it becomes a whole cosmology/ontology. Popper
writes beautifully in Essays 3-6 as he puts forward this account of the
psychology of Parmenides here and of discovery in general.
Against Popper's conjecture it must be said, first, that no Parmenidean
being could essentially be either light or dark, occupied by either member of a pair of contraries; second, that Parmenidean being cannot be a
material body; third, that the discovery that the morning star and the
evening star are one may have played a more decisive role than the
discovery about the moon; fourth, that the major Parmenidean demon
is non-identity (if this is so, then the Atomists, rather than correcting
Parmenides in a demonstrable way, simply misunderstood him). I must
point out that the first and second of these claims are more generally
accepted than the last two.
First, even on Popper's own thought-experiment, the moon could not
be 'really' either light or dark; if darkness is the contrary opposite of light,
then neither contrary can be an essential feature of any body. It would
be more correct to say that the moon (or its generalization, Being) has no
color, indeed is not characterized by either member of any pair of
contraries. (See, however, 207 n. 21, where Popper does seem to say this.)
Parmenides, when describing Truth, always rejects both members of
such pairs (B8.3-5, 17-18, 22-27, 32-33, 42), though he wiU argue for
being's possession of one member of a pair of contradictories (but see
Popper's criticism of Lloyd, 209 n. 42). Light and darkness are both
Presocratic positive opposite terms, like Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman in
Zoroastrianism, and not, as in Aristotle, a positive and a privative within
a single genus. It is only in Parmenides's 'Opinion' section, which
describes the false mortal cosmology, that any contraries are accepted
(B8.51-61, B9-19).
Second, Parmenidean being is eternal (or, at least, atemporal): 'earlier'
and 'later' do not apply to it (B8.10); it is not 'divisible' (B8.22), not
because it is a solid body (no solid body, however tightly packed, is in
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242 Scott Austin

cause it is not a spatial entity at all. Popper's discussion of time in Essay

7 does not help the situation; a cosmological universe without an invariant
temporal direction is, first of all, not Parmenidean (Being could not be
subject to 'earlier' or 'later' in either or any direction) and, second, not
subject to spatial inhomogeneities or contraries either (B8.22-5). But
perhaps Popper wants to declare spatial plurality also illusory; in that
case, the Atomists, too, would be dealing in Doxa, not really coming to
grips with Parmenides's challenge in the refutational manner Popper
suggests they did. Finally, as is often claimed, the ball of Being at the end
of Parmenides's section on Truth (B8.42-9) is again in principle incapable
of having holes (void spaces, divisibility) as well as projections and
indentations (notice the modal language in B8.45-8). But a merely material ball, however tightly packed and 'dark', is not immune to undergoing such things unless matter itself has necessary properties that Popper
does not discuss; Parmenides himself, even on Popper's view, would
'seem ... insane' to every sane person (69), in holding such a view. The
necessary freedom of Being from temporal and spatial contraries, voids,
and inhomogeneities means that it cannot be even a dark, invariant
physical cosmos. Parmenidean Being, like Plato's Forms and as Plato
himself takes Parmenides to be, is transcendent, and Parmenides is a
'cosmologist' only in an account of mortal views which he himself, also
according to Popper, has already declared illusory. Thus Parmenides is
not a Xenophanean employer of self-critical hypotheses about a spatiotemporal world, but a metaphysician who uses very skillful arguments in favor of a picture of reality which is not subject to empirical
proof or disproof.
Third, Parmenides is also credited with another astronomical discovery: the morning star and the evening star, the light-bringer and the
twilight star, are one. Here two entities, apparently rendered non-identical by their respective possession of contraries (note again that darkness is viewed, not as the absence of light, but as the positive opposite
of light), are one and the same thing which 'really' possesses neither
contrary, just as Being itself constantly rejects both members of pairs of
contraries. Here, one might suggest, we have another discovery at least
as potentially important as the discovery about the moon in the generation of the full picture of being. And it might lead us to reinterpret even
the latter discovery. Could not the point be simply that the moon is
indifferent both to darkness and to light as they alternate along its surface,
particularly if the source of light is external and not part of the moon's
intrinsic nature? But in that case even the moon-picture would not lead
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Scepticism and Dogmatism 243

possessed of physical location (involving spatial contraries) at all; once

again, being is in principle outside of cosmological space and time. I am
not, of course, suggesting that either of these discoveries or pictures
alone determined the full amplitude of Parmenidean thought; but Popper's moon-picture could be interpreted differently, particularly when
compared with the picture of Aphrodite.
Fourth, one can see partly from the third point that the real Parmenidean enemy is non-identity, in particular non-identity as supposedly established by the possession of opposite contraries. We are told
that the mortals established Fire, 'in every way the same with itself and
with the other (Night) not the same' (B8.57-8). As Popper and many
others have correctly observed, Fire and Night are given contrary properties, and affirmed pairs of opposites dominate the Doxfl-section of the
poem, in which these lines occur, just as rejected contraries dominate the
"Truth'-section. The clear inference contra Popper and also contra
many analysts of the textual crux in the immediately preceding lines
is that both Fire and Night are wrong, doubleheaded conjectures about
Being, not just Fire (light) as Popper suggests (see above, p. 214). But in
that case non-identity ('with the other not the same') is also wrong because
in some sense contradictory ('the same ... not the same').3 This, however,
would rule out Popper's claim that the pluralistic Atomists really understood Parmenides and were coming to grips with it in a genuine clash of
conjectures. (For much better non-Platonic readings of Parmenides, in
which Presocratic thinkers after him do attack his core, see the pathbreaking book by Mourelatos4 and the recent excellent study by Curd.5)
I regret that in making these points I have had to pass over many
interesting textual and other conjectures both vivid and provocative.
Issues include: why Anaximander's picture of the earth at the center of
the cosmos might be said to anticipate the Newtonian theory of action
at a distance (Essay 1); the interesting theory that Parmenides' goddess
was really Dike, 'Justice', herself (77 n. 2, 268-9 n. 4); the proposal for an

3 Scott Austin, Parmenides: Being, Bounds, and Logic (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1986)
4 Alexander P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1970)
5 Patricia Curd, The Legacy of Parmenides: Eleatic Monism and Later Presocratic Thought
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244 Scott Austin

emendation (apateton for apatelori) in B8.52 (94), intended to show that

the Parmenidean Doxa was seriously conjectural and not merely false or
deceitful (but see also 152, where Popper advances the opposite view);
criticisms of Kahn and Mourelatos on veridical, characterizing, and
existential uses of the Greek verb 'to be' (129 n. 47); the idea that there
are similarities between Parmenides' block universe on Popper's interpretation and Einstein's idea of the universe as a non-discontinuous
four-dimensional field (134 n.77,166); the theory that the Platonic axiomatic-deductive method was 'geometrical' because of the breakdown
of a previous, Pythagorean 'arithmetical' system which could not handle
irrationals (Essay 9); and a diagrammatic interpretation of an Aristotelian geometrical remark (Nachlass appendix, 296-302).
My two final points: first, on whether Popper's philosophy, as displayed in this volume, hangs together; second, on editorial matters.
Popper's attempt to revive Enlightenment (and, for him, also Xenophanean, Socratic, and Platonic) reason needs to distinguish itself right
off the bat from familiar Protagorean and more recent forms of relativism. For, it might be asked, if all we have are human conjectures, and not
the truth that the divine knows (the Xenophanean/Platonic view, according to Popper), then what prevents all our conjectures from being
on the same low level, pitiable as far as the real truth goes? Why should
we prefer one to another, or, if there is a reason for such a preference,
how can this reason, too, avoid being only human and so itself (apparently) relative with respect to the knowledge possessed by the divine?
For Popper, even Plato does not claim the certainty of provable definitions, the knowledge that Socrates had denied to himself; it is only
Aristotle who replaces falsifiable axioms with (supposedly) intuitively
certain definitions and then inauthentically attributes the search for
definitions to Socrates. This claim, however, seems false in view of the
definitions of virtues actually given in the Republic, not to mention the
role of dialectic as what leads us from hypothetical axioms to the Good
and back down again.
Popper's recourse is to a notion of correspondence which he apparently does not view as being itself a conjecture. Instead, conjectures are
tested out (often in critically determining experiments) against the truth;
they can be refuted, not conclusively verified, but there is always a
backdrop of truths, whether of argument or of experience, against which
possible improvement in conjectures over time can be measured. One
has no quarrel about the imperative nature of self-criticism in the advancement of hypotheses, and one wishes, with Popper and Socrates,
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Scepticism and Dogmatism 245

way. Yet (or, perhaps, consequently) one attempts to refute it: what
might be arguments for and against a view of truth which, as Popper
points out, dates from the Eleatic revolution? Why does argumentative
or experiential evidence play a role in the determination of such truth,
and how would one show, using rational argument, that truth is best
approached by means of such argument? These are, one thinks, not
naively relativistic questions, but instead serious metasystematic ones.
And yet the volume does not face them. Instead, the picture is drawn:
there is Eleatic truth, but we, as 'mortals', approach it only through a
series of conjectural experiments; we cannot determine it or know for
certain what it is like. Yet (contra Popper) Parmenides, at least, and Zeno
(arguing negatively for the same conclusion), not to mention Plato, offer
reasons for why the truth has to be this way and use a method (essentially, dialectic in some sense, though not in the Hegelian sense) for
determining its basic features. But for Popper these, too, would have to
be conjectures, not to mention his own view? How could conjectures
about truth be checked against truth if the nature and existence of truth
are themselves open to conjecture? Yet Popper in this volume seems only
to assume the truth of a fairly simple ontology, an assumption which,
however, underlies his entire picture of the Presocratic invention of
rational inquiry generally. How does one know that one does not know?
Without something like a Platonic dialectic in which the answers to even
such questions could be ascertained, Popper's overall view looks like a
fairly naive empiricism paradoxically based on a firm, traditionalist
ontology. Yet it is precisely this combination of narrowness and hidden
dogmatism which invites the Romantic reaction against whose ultimate
political consequences Popper rightly fights with all his claws.
Finally, a word on the procedure of the editors. The volume contains
an introduction by Popper himself apologizing for repetitiveness, presumably especially in the Parmenides essays: Essay 3 is an 'improved
and expanded' version of a paper in Classical Quarterly;6 Essay 4, however, is an earlier draft (1989) and Essay 5 is still earlier (1988), while
Essay 6 is a public lecture delivered in 1973. It seems to have been
Popper's own intention to print these essays in reverse chronological
order (?). But what is not clear from the introduction, which seems to
give Popper's blessing to the volume as printed, is that a portion was in

6 Classical Quarterly n.s. 42 (1992) 12-19

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246 Scott Austin

fact reconstructed from Nachlass, even using tables of contents which are
themselves part of Nachlass (which is the case in Essay 2; the editorial
acknowledgement is on pp. 65-7). The addendum to Essay 6 is leased
on' correspondence to the editor, i.e., is at least not positively declared
by the latter to have been part of a Popperian plan for revising the lecture.
The section headings in Essay 7 are not Popper's own (146) and there
seems to have been 'stylistic improvement throughout the collection'
(146) (where, exactly?). The compilation of Essay 9 is Popper's (251). But
Section VIII in Essay 10 (this essay was originally a printed article) is
itself from a printed speech (271), while the appendix is made up of
Nachlass which the editors say was not 'complete and final' (280; was the
other Nachlass material considered 'complete and final'? If so, why?).
Here, in an appendix containing material presented as real fragments,
not material sewn into an essay, is where all the relevant Nachlass really
belong. The editors are open about these procedures in the appropriate
places, but one could have wished for more information about reasons,
as well as for some indication at the beginning that some of the compiling
(especially in Essay 2) was done after Popper's death (was it, or was it
not, at his direction?). This suggestion is not meant to impugn the
honesty or candor of the editors, nor their obvious careful and friendly
attention to Popper and his work.
Department of Philosophy
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX
77843-4237
U.S.A.
s-austin@philosophy.tamu.edu

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