Sophie could possibly accept that a frog consisted of earth and water, in which
case the earth must consist of more than one kind of substance. If the earth consisted
of a lot of different substances, it was obviously possible that earth and water together
could produce a frog. That is, if the earth and the water went via frog spawn and
tadpoles. Because a frog could not just grow out of a cabbage patch, however much
you watered it.
When she got home from school that day there was a fat envelope waiting for
her in the mailbox. Sophie hid in the den just as she had done the other days.
THE PHILOSOPHERS’ PROJECT
Here we are again! We’ll go directly to today’s lesson without detours
around white rabbits and the like.
I’ll outline very broadly the way people have thought about philosophy,
from the ancient Greeks right up to our own day. But we’ll take things in their
correct order.
Since some philosophers lived in a different age—and perhaps in a
completely different culture from ours—it is a good idea to try and see what
each philosopher’s project is. By this I mean that we must try to grasp
precisely what it is that each particular philosopher is especially concerned
with finding out. One philosopher might want to know how plants and animals
came into being. Another might want to know whether there is a God or
whether man has an immortal soul.
Once we have determined what a particular philosopher’s project is, it is
easier to follow his line of thought, since no one philosopher concerns himself
with the whole of philosophy.
I said his line of thought—referring to the philosopher, because this is
also a story of men. Women of the past were subjugated both as females and
as thinking beings, which is sad because a great deal of very important ex-
perience was lost as a result. It was not until this century that women really
made their mark on the history of philosophy.
I do not intend to give you any homework—no difficult math questions,
or anything like that, and conjugating English verbs is outside my sphere of
interest. However, from time to time I’ll give you a short assignment.
If you accept these conditions, we’ll begin.
THE NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS
The earliest Greek philosophers are sometimes called natural
philosophers because they were mainly concerned with the natural world and
its processes.
We have already asked ourselves where everything comes from.
Nowadays a lot of people imagine that at some time something must have
come from nothing. This idea was not so widespread among the Greeks. For
one reason or another, they assumed that “something” had always existed.
How everything could come from nothing was therefore not the all-
important question. On the other hand the Greeks marveled at how live fish
could come from water, and huge trees and brilliantly colored flowers could
come from the dead earth. Not to mention how a baby could come from its
mother’s womb!