PHILOSOPHY IN FRAGMENTS: CULTIVATING PHILOSOPHIC THINKING WITH THE PRESOCRATICS - DANIEL SILVERMINTZ

r 2009 The Author
Journal compilation r 2009 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 40, No. 5, October 2009
0026-1068

The Philosopher as Teacher

PHILOSOPHY IN FRAGMENTS:
CULTIVATING PHILOSOPHIC THINKING WITH THE
PRESOCRATICS

DANIEL SILVERMINTZ

Abstract: This article presents a strategy for introducing Presocratic thought to
students in a manner that is both engaging and relevant. The first section
addresses students’ reactions to the claim that the Presocratics were the first
philosophers. The second section considers how the fragmentary state of Preso-
cratic thought does not hinder its comprehension. The third section proposes a
classroom exercise for testing the scientific merits of each of the Presocratic
theories. The final section proposes the use of a mock trial as a means of applying
the materialist approach introduced by the Presocratics to contemporary debates
about free will and determinism.

Keywords: Presocratics, materialism, free will and determinism, philosophy
pedagogy.

Euripides gave Socrates the treatise of Heraclitus and asked his opinion of it;
he replied, ‘‘What I understand of it is excellent, and so too is, I daresay, what I
do not understand, but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.’’
—Diogenes Laertius (1969, 2.22)

Although we have the good fortune of a massive extant literature from
the ancient world, one still laments the great loss of the numerous works
that did not survive. This loss is most severely felt in the history of
philosophy as a result of the almost complete absence of any surviving
works of the Presocratic scientists and sophists. From what may be
reconstructed from the fragments we have of their works, these two
groups of Presocratics speculated on nearly the entire range of philo-
sophic thought: biology, physics, cosmology, theology, epistemology,
ontology, ethics, politics, language, logic, and rhetoric. It is troubling to
acknowledge the immense contributions made by these thinkers and yet
have to admit that without the primary sources our examination of their
ideas is conjectural at best. Although historians of philosophy would

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690 DANIEL SILVERMINTZ

surely prefer that we were not in this predicament, we might consider how
the philosophy teacher can take advantage of this situation by using the
fragments to stimulate philosophic thinking among students.
In what follows, I detail how I teach students to think philosophically
using the Presocratic fragments. The article begins by considering the
political ramiﬁcations of presenting the Presocratics as the founders of
philosophy. It proceeds by establishing a strategy for interpreting the
fragments. This is followed by a discussion of several classroom exercises
that are aimed at showing the relevance of these ancient thinkers for
contemporary studies in the sciences and humanities.

1. The Presocratics as the Founders of Philosophy
Socrates claims that philosophy begins in wonder (Plato 1921, 155e). If this
is the case, it seems odd to claim that philosophy has an origin. Have not
human beings always looked at the heavens and wondered about the
nature of the universe? Has not every community considered questions of
social and political justice when establishing legal codes? Bruno Snell
boldly argues to the contrary, claiming that the Greeks are single-handedly
responsible for the development of philosophy: ‘‘We must ﬁrst of all
understand that the rise of thinking among the Greeks was nothing less
than a revolution. They did not, by means of a mental equipment already
at their disposal, merely map out new subjects for discussion, such as the
sciences and philosophy. They discovered the human mind’’ (Snell 1962, v).
Few today would contest the contributions made by Greek thinkers in the
development of Western thought, and yet we are equally reticent to make a
claim for the absolute superiority of one culture over all others.
Students’ sensitivities to multicultural issues demand that the claims
made regarding one civilization’s unique contributions be presented in a
nuanced manner. How might we present the Presocratics as the founders
of philosophy without the baggage of ethnocentrism?1 Although
Diogenes Laertes ultimately agrees with Snell regarding the Greeks’
role as originators of philosophic thought, he begins his account of the
history of philosophy by citing the numerous counter claims advanced by
other ancient civilizations:

Some authorities say that the study of philosophy began among the barbar-
ians. They argue that the Persians have had their Magi, the Babylonians or
Assyrians their Chaldeans, and the Indians their Gymnosophists. Among the
Celts and Gauls, moreover, there are persons called Druids or Holy Ones. As
authorities, they cite the Magicus of Aristotle and Sotion in the twenty-third
book of his Succession of Philosophers. They also say that Mochus was a
Phoenician, Zamolxis a Thracian, and Atlas a Libyan. The Egyptians hold that
1
This is the claim advanced in Bernal 1987, 1991, 2006; for challenges to Bernal, see
Lefkowitz 1996; Lefkowitz and Rogers 1996.

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PHILOSOPHY IN FRAGMENTS 691

Hephaestus was the son of the Nile, and that philosophy began with him;
priests and prophets were its chief proponents. (Diogenes Laertius 1969, 1.1)

Considering the ancient dispute regarding the founding of philosophy, we
need not grant superhuman status to the Greeks. On the contrary, one
might expect, as Aristotle (1924, 981b) has suggested, to find the
philosophic impulse among every ancient culture with a priestly class
that was afforded leisure for contemplation.2
In light of our own predicament regarding texts that have been lost to
posterity, one can certainly imagine that philosophical investigations were
conducted in other ancient civilizations besides Greece. Aristotle (1924,
1074b), at least, believes that each of the arts and sciences was developed
and forgotten numerous times throughout history. We need not consider
the Greeks the first to philosophize; they are, however, the first to do so
who are not forgotten.

2. Reconstruction as Recollection
Students may easily lose interest in a subject when they are led to believe
that it offers no decisive answers. The fragments may be extremely
provocative to one already trained as a professional philosopher, yet
one cannot assume the same reaction by a student untutored in the
history of philosophy. On the contrary, someone encountering the
Presocratic fragments for the first time would probably read them as a
set of poetic metaphors (all is water; the cosmos is a harmony; nature is
moved by love and strife) rather than the foundation of scientific thought.
How does one convince students that despite the poetic language with
which these theories are presented, they are meant as rational claims?3
Moreover, the meaning of the fragments is ascertainable in spite of the
fact that we do not possess the authors’ explanations of their theories.
In my classes on ancient philosophy, I begin my discussion of the
Presocratics by defending how we are able to reconstruct their ideas on
account of their underlying rationality. I illustrate this point by having the
students consider how a text based on rational premises differs from other
sorts of texts. The Internet has made texts easier than ever to reproduce
and disseminate, and one hopes that the electronic revolution has saved
us from ever again suffering the loss of a great cultural work. With that
said, all technological advances do come at a cost. The same technology
that allows us to reproduce documents at lightning speed is capable of
deleting them with the push of a button. Anyone who has lost data due to
a virus or other computer malfunction can attest to the perils of electronic
2
Cf. Burnet (2005, 4), who credits the absence of the priestly class in Greece for the
development of free inquiry.
3
In addition to using poetic imagery, Empedocles and Parmenides wrote their philoso-
phy in verse.

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media. And who can forget the panic in response to the problem of Y2K
in the days before the millennium? In addressing our ability to reconstruct
a text from fragments, I ask my class to consider the fallout if we were to
suffer an electronic atrocity that wiped out all of our databases.
For a generation raised in the electronic age, it is crippling when the
server is temporarily down; the consequences would be almost incon-
ceivable were this entire electronic world suddenly to disappear. One must
further recognize that this dependence on the world of electronic
information has shaped an epistemology in which the search for knowl-
edge has been replaced by a set of concrete facts that may be ascertained
simply by looking them up. A truth claim in the electronic age is valid
merely because it has been posted on the Web. So what would be the
status of truth if all the information were to disappear?
I think the Presocratic natural scientists would appreciate this thought
experiment about an electronic Armageddon. This is not far from similar
mental exercises they conducted in formulating their theories. Consider
Aristotle’s account of the Presocratic search for the imperishable sub-
stance that persists through generation and corruption: ‘‘Of the first
philosophers, then, most thought the principles which were of the nature
of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things
that are consist, the first from which they come to be, the last into which
they are resolved (the substance remaining, but changing in its modifica-
tions), this they say is the element and this the principle of things, and
therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this
sort of entity is always conserved’’ (Aristotle 1924, 983b). In contrast to
the modern mindset in which truth is conceived of as historically and
culturally contingent, the Presocratics sought to uncover an imperishable
realm that endures throughout time and place.
Our thought experiment regarding the destruction of all electronic
information has attempted both to prepare students for the activity of
reconstructing Presocratic philosophy and to orient students regarding
Presocratic epistemology. As already suggested, truth is for the Preso-
cratics what is always there to behold. This conception of truth is
complicated by the fact that things are not always as they appear.
Heraclitus thus says that ‘‘Nature loves to hide’’ (fr. 123). The truth is
what always exists even if it cannot always be seen. The philosophic
impulse is born of disenchantment with the world of appearances that
leaves us to consider what lies beneath it. Socrates affirms to Meno that
seeking after what we do not immediately know does not prevent inquiry;
on the contrary: ‘‘Supposing one ought to seek what one does not know
we would be better, more able to be brave and less lazy than if we
supposed that which we do not know we are neither capable of discover-
ing nor ought to seek—on behalf of that I would surely battle, so far as I
am able, both in word and in deed’’ (Plato 2003, 86b–c). Socrates vows to
battle with all of his might in pursuit of the truth, yet how will he ever

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know if he has won the battle and not foolishly fought with windmills?
This is essentially the critique raised by Meno, who wishes to end the
beleaguering discussion with Socrates by questioning the feasibility of all
philosophic inquiry. Like Meno, modern students need justification and
confirmation that their efforts will not be in vain.
Socrates’ creative refutation of Meno’s paradox of inquiry will provide
a valuable way of defending our search for the meaning of the Presocratic
fragments. Attentive to the pedagogical need to maintain students’
interest in pursuing inquiry, Socrates initially responds to Meno’s
frustration by introducing the myth of anamnesis, or recollection. If the
soul is immortal then inquiry is possible, since it has seen all things in a
previous lifetime:

They [the priests and priestesses] declare the human soul to be immortal, and at
one time it comes to an end, which indeed they call dying, and again, at another
time, it comes into being, but it is never destroyed. . . . Inasmuch as the soul is
immortal and has been born many times and has seen all things both here and
in the house of Hades, there is nothing which it has not learned. So that there is
nothing wondrous about its also being able to recollect about virtue and about
other things, which it already knew before. For inasmuch as all nature is akin
and the soul has learned all things, there is nothing to prevent someone who
recollects (which people call learning) one thing only from discovering all other
things, so long as he is brave and does not grow tired of seeking. (Plato 2003,
81b–d)

Although he presents it in the mythic garb of a divinely inspired story,
Socrates employs recollection as a means of establishing truth as the
ground of philosophic inquiry.
Truth (aletheia) is in Greek literally what has become un-concealed
and thus un-forgotten (alpha privative1lethes). Whether employing a
postmodern thought experiment about an electronic Armageddon or an
ancient myth about the immortality of the soul, our ability to reconstruct
ideas from the past is predicated on the existence of truth that transcends
time and place. In spite of Socrates’ claim that the soul has seen all things
in previous lives, one cannot recollect something that is not true in all
times and places. As the mythic elements of recollection are stripped
away, Socrates is forced to reconstrue the activity as binding true
opinions: ‘‘For true opinions too, for as long a time as they should stay
put, are a fine thing and accomplish all kinds of good things. Yet much of
the time they are not willing to stay put, but run away out of the human
soul; so that they are not worth much until someone should bind them
with causes by reasoning. And this, my comrade Meno, is recollection, as
we agreed before’’ (Plato 2003, 97e–98a).
Much as we would like to, we cannot reconstruct much from the
thousands of literary works that are no longer extant. Likewise, the
teenager who has recorded his feelings and emotions in a daily blog will

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not be able to recreate many of his entries when they have been deleted. In
contrast, let us assess the losses if all mathematics textbooks, both
electronic and in print, were destroyed. Although much of what passed
for knowledge might crumble in the ruins, the truth of mathematics
proves absolutely indestructible. No evil tyrant will ever be able to
eradicate logic by burning books or dismantling Web sites. Such actions
can only result in a temporary loss of memory, which can ultimately be
regained by recollecting the same rational procedure that had previously
been followed. True, it might take some time to reconstruct differential
calculus. But one need not fear that any previously held truths in the
arena of mathematics could ever be permanently lost. And thus even if
Aristotle has not justified his belief that the arts and sciences have been
developed and forgotten numerous times throughout history, one sees the
underlying logic supporting the claim. The truth may be forgotten, but it
cannot be destroyed.
The belief that the individual soul has lived countless prior lives and
thus seen all things in a previous lifetime is without any substantiation;
however, it is not unbelievable that each generation has contributed
truths to the cultural memory so as to allow future generations to revive
their original meaning. Let us, then, apply the method proposed in the
Meno to Presocratic thought by assuming that each of the fragments
encapsulates a true, or at least partially true, opinion. It is then our job to
elevate the given opinion to knowledge by grounding it with a proof
based on logical reasoning. Instead of approaching the fragments as an
archaeological site of ruins to unearth and place behind glass, I suggest
that they be treated as a living set of truths that might be validated as one
does in the laboratory.

3. Presocratics in the Laboratory
In spite of the fact that the Presocratics are today studied in humanities
classes, one needs to keep in mind that these thinkers were first and
foremost engaged in the investigation of the natural world. Although
there are many foundational philosophic issues raised by this movement,
these questions only come to light when one has first encountered the
thinkers on their own terms as advancing scientifically verifiable claims.
Of course, the reason these thinkers are not studied in science depart-
ments is because their theories have been invalidated. Since we know that
the universe is not composed of four primal elements, there is no need to
devote time to theories that have been superseded. While study of
Presocratic science might be dismissed as a useless activity by modern
science departments, assessing the merits of these thinkers by the
standards of the scientific disciplines lends credence to them. The modern
physicist may have better tools at her disposal, but she still shares with her
ancient predecessors a common search for the building blocks of life.

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Moreover, the ancient belief in four primal elements (earth, air, fire, and
water) does not seem that far from modern chemistry’s belief that there
are ninety-two naturally occurring elements.
Having earlier suggested the need to orient students with regard to the
difference between the Presocratic conception of truth and our own, I
think it is valuable to show the similarities between Presocratic inquiry
and modern scientific inquiry. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth
century was largely motivated by a rejection of Aristotle’s physics; yet it
might also be understood as a return to an older tradition of inquiry
inaugurated by the Presocratics. Again, the absence of primary texts
constrains our knowledge about the extent to which Presocratic scientific
methods were developed; however, we are afforded grounds on which to
speculate by Aristophanes’ satirical depiction of the natural scientists’
activities. Consider the ingenious method for observing and recording the
distance of a flea’s jump presented by the playwright as an illustration of
what might have been typical of other similar exercises: ‘‘He melted some
wax, then took the flea and dipped two of its feet into the wax; as it
cooled, Persian slippers grew around them. He took these off and was
measuring the space’’ (Aristophanes 1998, 149–52). Although studying
how far a flea jumps may seem like a comical affair, the mechanism of this
phenomenon remains an active subject of study by modern entomolo-
gists. Using high-speed cinematography, Bennet-Clark and Lucey were
able to explain the mechanism as follows: ‘‘The main impulse comes from
the depression of the metathoracic femur, whose depressor muscle
originates on the notum. In the resting position the attachment of the
depressor tendon to the femur is over-centre with respect to the trochan-
ter-femoral joint. When the muscle contracts energy is stored in a resilin
pad located between notum and pleuron. This energy is released by a
second muscle which pulls the depressor tendon away from the over-
centre position, thus enabling it to depress the femur’’ (Bennet-Clark and
Lucey 1967, 59). Notwithstanding the level of detail afforded by modern
instrumentation, one sees in this side-by-side analysis ancient and modern
scientists grappling with the same phenomena.
At the risk of committing a certain sin against the history of
philosophy by attributing explanations that might go beyond our knowl-
edge of the facts, let us do what is in the best interest of philosophic
thinking by claiming the fragments as opinions subject to validation or
falsification. If we do commit a sin, then it is no worse than that
committed by Aristotle, who similarly speculates about the rationale
behind the Presocratic theories. Consider his explanation of Thales’ claim
that all is water: ‘‘Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says the
principle is water (for which reason he declared that the earth rests on
water), getting the notion perhaps from seeing that the nutriment of all
things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept
alive by it (and that from which they come to be is a principle of all

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things)’’ (Aristotle 1924, 983b). As it is believed that Thales did not record
his investigations in writing, we are in the same predicament as Aristotle
when it comes to making sense of his thought.
The pedagogical approach that I am proposing thus departs from
presentations that attempt to unearth the individual thinker’s ideas in
their historical context. In contrast, I suggest treating the fragments as
scientific claims that are to be assessed and defended by explanations that
can be developed by the resources of our own time. One thus reads the
history of philosophy as proposing claims that are to be verified or
rejected by the standard of truth. Consider how Euclid does not merely
appropriate prior mathematical theorems but improves upon them with
his own reasoning: ‘‘Euclid, who was not much younger than Hermoti-
mus and Philippus, composed Elements, putting in order many of the
theorems of Eudoxus, perfecting many that had been worked on
by Theaetetus, and furnishing with rigorous proofs propositions that
had been demonstrated less rigorously by his predecessors’’ (Proclus,
Commentary on Euclid, 1, qtd. in Cohen and Drabkin 1958, 37). Adopting
the scientific model as our hermeneutic for reading the Presocratic
fragments, let us consider how to use them to cultivate philosophic
thinking in our students.
I ask students to puzzle out the meaning of the Presocratic thinkers
using nothing more than a terse statement of each thinker’s theory. In the
absence of the thinker’s own explanation, the student’s conjecture about
his meaning may be just as valuable as Aristotle, Zeller, Burnet, Guthrie,
Barnes, or Waterfield. In fact, students who bring to this activity their
training in one of the scientific disciplines will certainly have specialized
knowledge not possessed by many classical scholars. Students should be
encouraged to draw on this knowledge and, in so doing, to regard the
history of philosophy as a living and ongoing activity in which they can
participate.
Students are asked to explain and support each of the Presocratic
theories by using evidence, observation, and hypothetical experiments.4
This line of investigation begins by simply noting the characteristics and
qualities of each of the four primal elements. For example, one might
consider how a student’s investigation of Thales’ argument regarding
water as the single explanatory cause might proceed. A student would
begin by simply observing water’s qualities: it is colorless, though it can
have a green, blue, or brown tint; it has a wet and soft texture; it naturally
flows downward; it fills containers of different sizes and shapes. Although
a good start, these observations all assume water is observed in its liquid
state. As ice, it is dry and hard and not malleable, though as snow it is soft

4
Although historians of science typically credit the experimental method as a modern
development, see Burnet (2005, 27) for evidence of the Greeks anticipating modern scientific
method.

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and plastic with a white color. As gas, it naturally rises upward and is less
easily detectable with the senses. It is particularly interesting to see the
contradictory qualities attributed to water (wet and dry, soft and hard,
flows down and rises up) once one has considered it in its various states.
These observations already suggest how one substance can appear in
quite different ways. The plasticity of water to fill containers of different
sizes and shapes and to assume the different states of matter lends further
support for why Thales might have posited water as the solitary substance
responsible for the multiplicity of existing things.
Having catalogued all of water’s qualities, students are now asked to
consider its various powers: it nourishes living organisms; cleanses and
purifies; erodes solid matter. Students are further asked to provide
verification of these claims by proposing hypothetical experiments. For
example, the ability of water to both nourish and destroy can be studied
by the relative vitality of plants that are given various amounts of water,
from absolute deprivation to overabundance.
After preparing an inventory of characteristics and powers for each of
the primal causes ahead of time, students then work in groups during
class time to compare notes and collectively prepare an argument to be
presented to the class in defense of one of the Presocratic theories. This
part of the exercise attempts to show the dialectical character of
philosophy’s development. As part of their presentation, the groups
must address inadequacies of previous theories that are accounted for
by the theory they are defending. Without any knowledge of who might
have studied with whom, students come to appreciate how scientific ideas
unfold as a developing process. Sometimes, as with Thales and Anaxi-
menes, one sees subsequent thinkers offering competing theories that are
premised on assumptions similar to those of their predecessors. Anaxi-
menes has clearly adopted Thales’ conception that a single substance can
account for all things in spite of the fact that he defends a different
substance. In contrast, later thinkers such as Pythagoras, Anaxagoras,
and Empedocles introduce causal agents (missing from the Ionian
theories) in order to explain how matter comes to be organized.

4. Presocratics in the Courtroom
Once students have assessed the scientific merits of each cosmological
claim, they are prepared to consider the political and social ramifications
that follow from the assumptions of Presocratic metaphysics. I thus have
students reconsider each of the Presocratic fragments with regard to how
one might formulate theories of human behavior if one accepts the
premises of each of the cosmological theories. As the first part of the
assignment is meant to draw on the expertise of the science majors in the
class, this part of our study of the Presocratics attempts to engage the
psychology, sociology, political science, religion, and legal studies majors.

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To help students in their consideration of the relationship between
metaphysics and human affairs, I have them read Aristophanes’ Clouds.
Caricaturing Socrates as a natural scientist and sophist, the playwright
has him undermining the existence of the gods by reducing their powers to
the meteorological phenomena along the lines of Xenophanes. Boldly
proclaiming that Zeus does not exist, Socrates offers a rationalist
explanation for the cause of thunder and rain: ‘‘The clouds full of water
fall into each other and clap because of their density’’ (Aristophanes 1998,
384). While such an explanation may seem perfectly rational to us, it is
completely shocking to a practitioner of Greek religion who believes that
the forces of nature are acts of the gods used to mete out justice. The
character Strepsiades cannot, therefore, accept an explanation of light-
ning that divorces it from its role in enforcing justice: ‘‘But teach me
where the thunderbolt, bright with fire, comes from, which burns us to
ashes when it strikes, and scorches the living. For it is apparent indeed
that Zeus hurls it at perjurers’’ (Aristophanes 1998, 395–97). Aristo-
phanes is attempting to show that accepting Presocratic first principles
leads to the sophistic conception of politics and ethics.5 Representing the
sophists’ position, he has the character Unjust Speech declare: ‘‘For I
quite deny that Justice even exists’’ (Aristophanes 1998, 902).
Aristophanes insightfully brings to light the difficulty of justifying
ethics when one accepts a materialist epistemology. Understood in this
way, the sophists merely draw out the consequences for social and
political thought that follow from the premises laid down by the
Presocratic natural scientists. If all reality is understood solely with
regard to its material constituents, then human behavior would seem to
be dictated by nothing more than the play of forces, relegating ethics to
physics. Like our modern psychophysiologists, the ancients working from
a materialist conception reduced human behavior to its chemical basis as
determined by the relative presence of one of the four humors: blood
causing cheerfulness; phlegm causing sluggishness; choler causing anger;
black bile causing melancholy. In contrast to the majority of Presocratic
thinkers, Anaxagoras and Pythagoras offer noteworthy conceptions of
the natural world insofar as they allow for a conception of human
behavior that does not discount human agency. For these thinkers,
humans are not merely a product of their biochemistry; on the contrary,
the possession of a rational mind affords the individual the ability to tune
the soul in such a way so as to bring harmony to the respective humors.
The discussion about the ethics and politics of Presocratic thought
naturally leads to the foundational dispute concerning whether humans
possess free will and agency or whether human behavior is predetermined.
This conflict is most evident in the attempt to harmonize the Democritean

5
For additional ideas on using Aristophanes to teach the sophists, see Porter 2003,
79–87.

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fragments on ethics with their author’s ideas on physics. In spite of the
fact that Democritus affirms that atoms move by necessity, he urges men
to seek instruction and to follow the path of the good man. If the
moralistic fragments attributed to Democritus are authentic, then they
must be construed so that the agency granted to human action does not
violate the determinism of a being composed solely of atoms.6
I attempt to show the contemporary relevance of this foundational
debate by having students stage a mock trial for an infamous serial killer.
The American legal system assumes that individuals possess free will and
that the state is justified in punishing a criminal act when it has been
committed voluntarily. The prosecution must prove that the individual
has both acted of his own volition (actus reus) and with the intention to
create the resulting act (mens rea). While the law assumes that human
beings are for the most part in control of their actions, it also acknowl-
edges mitigating circumstances such as an epileptic seizure or sleepwalk-
ing, in which the criteria of actus reus would not be satisfied, or mental
insanity, in which the criteria of mens rea would not be satisfied.
The mock trial is employed as a means of highlighting the competing
claims concerning human agency and determinism that underlie the legal
system. Students are given the fact pattern of a crime in which there is no
dispute that the defendant committed the crime; what is in dispute is
whether the defendant committed it with volition and intentionality. The
class is divided into two teams responsible for either prosecuting the
defendant by demonstrating her volition and intentionality or defending
her by demonstrating the mitigating circumstances. Using a biographical
sketch of the defendant, the defense team might argue that their client’s
behavior was determined by her biochemical makeup, abusive childhood,
socialization, socioeconomic status, or cultural influences. In response,
the prosecution must use the same biographical facts to show how the
defendant could have overcome any mitigating factors and still acted of
her own volition. Initiated by consideration of the ethical consequences of
Presocratic metaphysics, the mock trial ultimately engages the most
contemporary debates in the social sciences that conceive of human
behavior as a product of biochemistry, economic and social conditioning,
and cultural formation.
Let us, then, reappropriate the Presocratic fragments as a storehouse
of living ideas relevant to contemporary discussions in both the natural
and the social sciences rather than an archaeological site of ruins from a
lost civilization! Would that the ideas of great men and women were not

6
Although Democritus offers the most extensive and explicit discussion of morals of any
of the Presocratics, scholars such as Guthrie are suspicious of the authenticity of these
fragments on account of the difficulty of harmonizing them with his atomistic physics. For
discussion, see Vlastos 1945, 1946; Guthrie 1965, 489–92; Edmunds 1972; Kahn 1985;
Warren 2002.

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lost to posterity; yet we need not fear if these thinkers of the past had
indeed seen a truth for all times. For just as the Presocratics believed that
matter does not perish in the process of generation and corruption, so too
the truth is always there to contemplate.

Daniel Silvermintz
University of Houston-Clear Lake
2700 Bay Area Blvd., Box 371
Houston, TX 77058
USA
silvermintz@uhcl.edu

References
Aristophanes. 1998. ‘‘Clouds.’’ In Four Texts on Socrates, translated by
Thomas G. West and Grace S. West. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press.
Aristotle. 1924. Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Bennet-Clark, H. C., and E. C. A. Lucey. 1967. ‘‘The Jump of the Flea: A
Study of the Energetics and a Model of the Mechanism.’’ Journal of
Experimental Biology 47:59–76.
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