Atoms, Arguments, and the Last Word Before Socrates (My History of Philosophy)

Welcome to Episode Seven—the final episode of my journey through the Presocratic world before we step into the classical era. 

It's about the birth of atoms. And it is also about the rise of professional arguers and the philosophical chaos that made Socrates necessary. Because by the time we reach the thinkers in today’s episode, the ancient world is buzzing with questions:

What is matter really made of?

Is the universe purposeful or mechanical?

What is truth? Can truth even be known?

And if it can’t be known…, can we at least win the argument and pretend like we know?

These are not small questions, because these are the questions that will shape the entire emerging classical world, as we call it today. And the thinkers we will meet today—Leucippus, Democritus, and the Sophists—will push philosophy to its breaking point.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Living in Faith Everyday Podcast, the life podcast, and you're following me on my journey and my study time through the history of philosophy. Now I am not a philosophy, I'm simply a retired Baptist minister who has been studying this recently and enjoys bringing what I've learned and putting my spin on the history of philosophy. It's not meant to be definitive, but it is perhaps a starting point where you can begin to look at this in such a way as you can still hold on to, in fact, thrive in your Christian faith and worldview. So thanks for joining me, and today's episode is called Atoms, Arguments, and the Last Word Before Socrates. Welcome to Episode 7. This is the final episode of the first part of our journey through what is called the pre-Socratic world before we step into the classical era. In the last episode, well, it was about cosmic forces, those paradoxes, and the first appearance of the concept of a mind behind the universe. But this one is about something even more explosive, the birth of atoms. Did you see what I did there? Haha. It's also about the rise of professional arguers and the philosophical chaos that made Socrates seem necessary. Because by the time we reach the thinkers in today's episode, the ancient world is buzzing with questions. Questions like what is matter really made of? Is the universe purposeful or just mechanical? And what is truth and can it ever be known? And if it can't be known, can we at least win the arguments and pretend like we know? And these are not small questions, because these are the questions that will enshape the entire emerging classical world as we call it today. And the thinkers we meet today, Lucifus, Democritus, and the sophists who follow them, will push philosophy, well some would say, to its breaking point. First, we get to meet Lucifus, the shadowy figure of what is called atomism. Lucifus, a philosopher so mysterious that some ancient writers weren't even sure he existed, but whether he was one man or a convenient pseudonym for an entire school of thoughts, the important thing is the idea has changed everything, being that nothing happens at random, everything has a reason and comes by necessity. Lucifus was the first to propose that the universe is made of atoms, and what we meant by that was tiny, indivisible particles moving through empty space. It is one of the most astonishing leaps in the history of thought, and it will carry us all the way down and through history into modern physics. Then there is Democritus, the laughing philosopher, as some we call him, and the architect of those atoms. Democritus was Lucifer's brilliant successor, the man who took the idea of atoms and built an entire worldview around them. He believed everything's is atom and the void. He even believed that our souls are made of atoms. And perception, our thoughts, is simply atoms striking other atoms, and even moral character had an atomic explanation. He was a cheerful, curious, endlessly inquisitive man, and occasionally unsettling. He is the philosopher who laughed at human folly, but not out of cruelty, but as an attempt to bring clarity. But his ideas raised deep questions for Christians. If everything is atoms, then what becomes of the soul? If everything is necessity, what becomes a purpose in life? And if everything is mechanical, what becomes of meaning? And indeed, where does free will fit in with all of this? These are questions that Christian thinkers will wrestle with for centuries. And then finally today we look at the Sophists, the philosophers, well, they really broke the rules of everything that had gone before. Now I'm revisiting the sophists for the second time in my study life. In fact, I shared an episode on them when I launched this podcast before I launched out on the structured course I'm doing. But as part of our journey together, chronologically through the history of philosophy, we're visiting them again, and they arrive at a point in time and they emerge as sort of travelling teachers who actually turn philosophy into a profession and persuasion into an art form. They teach rhetoric, politics, virtue, and most importantly, they teach people how they can win arguments. They ask questions like what is truth? Does truth matter? Is morality objective or just a social convention? And can you teach virtue or just the appearance of virtue anyway? Now some of them are brilliant, but many are cynical, and some are both at the same time. They are the perfect warm up act for Socrates who will soon walk onto the stage and challenge them with a single devastating question Is any of this that you're saying in teaching true? But more on that next week. So why does today's episode matter? This episode is important because we're at a pivot point between worlds. It's the moment where matter becomes atomic and truth becomes contested. Arguing will become an art form and philosophy will become public for the first time, and that of course sets the stage for Socrates. Lucifer Democritus gave us a universe of particles and necessity. The Sophists gave us a word of persuasion that we could argue any case we wanted, but along with that of course came uncertainty. And together they create the intellectual tension that will make the classical era possible. And because of that, they raise questions that Christians will later answer with what I believe is profound clarity. Questions like is the universe purposeful or accidental? Is truth really objective? Is the soul material or immaterial? And is wisdom something we perform and argue for, or is it something we actually receive? So welcome to episode seven of my history of philosophy, where we'll see atoms collide, arguments fly, and philosophy prepares for its greatest transformation yet. Welcome to today's episode of the Living in Faith Everyday Podcast. Okay, let's begin with Lucifus the philosopher. Well, he may not have even existed. If Empedocles last time was the flamboyant showman and Anaxagoras, the calm intellectual, then Lucifus is the philosophical equivalent of Bigfoot. Everyone talks about him, some people swear he's real, and a few ancient writers insist he never existed at all. But whether he was a single brilliant thinker or a convenient name for a school of thought, one thing we can say is certain. Lucifus introduced one of the most important ideas in the history of philosophy and indeed science, that of atoms. Tiny, indivisible internal particles moving through empty space. That's what the term means, in fact, not divisible. It is a breathtaking leap, so breathtaking that it will take the world more than two thousand years really to catch up. Lucifer's most famous surviving line is that nothing happens at random but everything from reason and necessity. This is the ancient world's first philosophical statement of what is later called determinism. There is no cosmic love here, no divine mind behind anything, no mystical fire behind the universe, no breath of the Holy Spirit either, just atoms and the void. All of them obeying rules of necessity. It is the philosophical equivalent of saying the universe isn't a romance novel, it's a physics textbook. Lucifer's worldview is astonishingly simple. The universe is made of atoms, tiny, solid, indivisible particles, and the void, the space in which those atoms move. Everything else, everything we see, just atoms rearranged. You, me, the stars, the sea, your favourite biscuit, the sound of a violin, the smell of coffee even, everything just atoms bumping into each other. Now that's bold, but it's also slightly depressing for me. But it is the first time anyone in human history has proposed a fully materialistic, deterministic explanation of the universe. But why atoms? Well, Lucifus was trying to solve a problem that had haunted the pre-Socratics. Permenides had said change is impossible, Heraclus then said no, change is everywhere, and Empedocles said change is a cosmic tug of war, and Anaxnogoras said change is in the mind, stirring the mixture. Lucifus looked at all that had gone before and all of this and said, Gentlemen, you're overcomplicating things. His solution was the atoms never change, but their arrangements do. So change is real, but it doesn't violate that Parmenides rule that says that something cannot come from nothing. It's a bit like building with Lego bricks. The bricks never change, but the castle can become a spaceship, can become a dragon, and can become a pile of bricks on the floor again. Lucifer's universe is radically mindless. In it there is no divine intelligence, no cosmic purpose and no moral order, just atoms obeying necessity. And yet, here's the interesting part, his insistence that the universe is governed by reason and necessity, not randomness. And that would indeed resonate with a Christian instinct. Christians would say, yes, the world is ordered, the world is intelligible, and the world follows rational principles. The difference is that Christians root that order in a personal creator, not in blind necessity. As Augustine so perfectly put it, the order of the universe is the trace of God's wisdom. Ancient writers always disagreed about whether Lucifer's ever even existed. Aristotle mentions him, but Epicurus denies him, and most modern scholars, well they just shrug and say, as far as I can see, probably he existed, maybe he existed. But whether he was a real person or a philosophical placeholder, his ideas are real enough, and they will shape the entire trajectory of Western thought. Because after Lucifus comes a thinker who will take Atomism and turn it into a full blown worldview. That man is Democritus, the laughing philosopher, as some call him, the cheerful materialist, the man who believes that every soul, and I mean every soul, is made of atoms. If Lucifus is the shagg the shadowy figure of the atomic worldview, then Democritus is the enthusiastic son who took the family business and made it global. He is the philosopher who doesn't just propose atoms, he builds an entire worldview out of them. He is curious, endlessly inquisitive, and famously known as the laughing philosopher. Now not because he told jokes, because he looked at the world and saw human folly and laughed, but not in mockery, but in recognition. Democritus took Lucifer's ideas and expanded them into a full cosmology. Atoms, he says, are eternal, solid, indivisible, and too small to see. They only differ in shape, size and arrangements. Atoms move through the void, colliding, combining, and separating. Everything from stars to souls are just variations of atoms in motion. Now that's elegant in some ways, it's bold, but it's also unsettling, because it is the first fully materialistic worldview in Western philosophy. Democritus is the man who looks at a beautiful sunset and says, Well that's just atoms scattering light. Democritus' universe kind of works like a cosmic model, meaning the parts never change, but the structures do, and the structure explains everything we see. A tree is just atoms arranged tree wise, if that's the word. A horse is atoms arranged horsewise. And your mother-in-law, atoms arranged? Well, you get the idea. Democritus's genius is that he solves the ancient problem of change. Parmenides had said change is impossible, Heraclitus said change is everywhere. But Democritus brings these two concepts together and says the atoms don't change, but their arrangements do. It's the perfect philosophical compromise. But here's where things get interesting and where Christian listeners might lean in a little. Democritus also believed that the soul is made of atoms. Very small, very smooth, and very fast moving atoms. When you breathe, soul atoms enter you, and when you die, soul atoms disperse. In fact, experiments his followers did said the weight of the soul was twenty one grams. But there is no afterlife here, no judgment, no immorality, just atoms returning to the cosmic dance. It's a worldview that array that raises important questions like if the soul is materialistic, what then becomes of moral responsibility? If everything is a necessity, what becomes of freedom? And if the universe is mechanical, what becomes of any meaning behind it? Now Christian thinkers will later respond with what I believe are compelling counter arguments that say we are much more than atoms. And of course Democritus was famous for looking at all of these things and for simply laughing where he saw human folly. Now not in cruelty, not in cynicism, but in a recognition that humans sometimes take themselves far too seriously. He once said happiness does not come from wealth or power, but from a calm mind and a well ordered soul. Yet this is the man who believed that the universe is just atoms and void, and yet even looking into that void, he remained cheerful, content, and deeply committed to his view of virtue. He believed that wisdom leads to joy and ignorance would lead to misery, and he is the philosopher who says, Look, life is short, don't waste it being foolish. Now Democritus was astonishingly astonishingly wide ranging in his thinking. He studied what we would today call geometry, astronomy, biology, and even a sort of early form of psychology. And he is also the first one to propose that the Milky Way was made up of distant stars like our sun, only further away. What an amazing leap of thought that was. He even suggested that taste depends on the shapes of atoms. He believed that necessity governed the entire cosmos, and he's the first philosopher, as he said, to propose a fully naturalistic, deterministic explanation of the world, no the universe. And yet he is the philosopher who is also able to write about contentment and the good life with surprising warmth, even staring into the void in that way. Democritus's universe is ordered, rational and lawful, but it's not personal. There's no divine mind behind it, no logos, no creator, just atoms obeying necessity. And yet his insistence still is that the universe isn't intelligible. It is structured and governed by rational principles. And that, of course, does resonate with Christian thought. Christians, of course, will later say the universe is ordered because God is ordered, and the universe is intelligible because God is intelligent, and the universe is purposeful because God has a purpose behind it. Democritus gives us the order, but Christianity would later emerge and give us the reason for the order. So why does he matter? Well, Democritus is the first philosopher to insist that the universe must be lawful and necessity governs all things. He is also one of the first to recognise that happiness can come through virtue, not possessions, and that wisdom or the search from wisdom can lead to joy and satisfaction in life independent of other worldly things. So in that way he's cheerful, brilliant, but some for some unsettling. But we can't dispute the fact that he's deeply influential and he sets the stage for the next group in the opening part of our story. The thinkers who will take Democritus's clarity and turn it into something well far more slippery. These guys were called the Sophists. The travelling teachers who asked whether truth even exists and whether winning the argument matters much more than being right. The sophists were the philosophers who turned wisdom into a profession and truth into nothing more than a topic for debate. If Democritus is the cheerful scientist of the ancient world, then the sophists are the travelling consultants who show up with a briefcase full of verbal tricks, a dazzling smile, and a fee schedule that would make a modern lawyer blush. They are the first professional philosophers, the teachers who wander from city to city, offering lessons in rhetoric, politics, virtue, and the fine art of winning arguments. They are clever, some of them charismatic, occasionally cynical, but always entertaining. The sofish other people you are when you want to sound wise, even when you're not entirely wise yourself. So who were these sophists? Now the word sophist originally just meant wise person, but by the time they hit their stride in the fifth century in Athens, it has come to mean something closer to a sort of professional arguer and a rhetorical coach, a sort of ancient influencer, the person that when you need to win a debate or an argument, you probably they'll help you, but it's one that you probably shouldn't be having in the first place. They taught people how to speak persuasively and how to argue both sides of any question. In other words, how to succeed in politics and how to appear virtuous, even how to make the weaker argument appear stronger than the stronger argument. They were the ancient world's TED Talk speakers, that would be if TED talks changed by the R and guaranteed election victories. The most famous sophist is Protagoras, who delivered one of the most influential and dangerous sentences in the entire history of influ of ancient philosophy. He was the first to say man is the measure of all things. In other words, truth is relative, and there's no such thing as right and wrong because morality is subjective. He is the first to say what is true for you may not be true for me, but it is my truth. And that term has haunted us for millennia ever since. And of course that also means that what is true for me can depend on whether I've paid my life coach in advance, and this is the philosophical equivalent, is saying truth is whatever you can get away with or whatever you can afford to buy. It is also the moment where the ancient world begins to slide towards relativism. Not surprising, really. A theme that Christian thinkers will later have to challenge with the conviction that truth is objective and grounded in the character of God. Another famous sophist was someone called Georgius, the man who argued that nothing actually exists. He wrote a treatise with three famous claims. Firstly, nothing exists. Secondly, if something did exist, well we couldn't even know it anyway, and thirdly, even if we knew it, we couldn't communicate it. This is the philosophical equivalent of pulling the fire alarm and just walking away. Georges is the man who says reality is optional. Knowledge, true knowledge, truth isn't possible, and trying to communicate it is pointless anyway. Now who wants to hire me to teach you how to publicly speak and argue for that or anything? The sophists all charge fees, and not small ones. But unlike the earlier pre-Socratics that we've been looking at so far, these guys were more like wandering sages. The Sophists were professional, they charged for their teaching and they charged well. This is what made them controversial. Some Athenians, of course, admired them, but others accused them of corrupting the youth of Athens. You can almost hear Socrates' warning, warming up backstage here. But the truth is the Sophists democratized education, well to some extent, and they made learning available to anyone, well anyone who could pay. And they were the first to say wisdom and the spreading of it as a service, so let's invoice for it. But it was the art of persuasion over the love of truth. The Sophists were, of course, masters of rhetoric. Winning those arguments, they could argue anything. And they could make anything sound possible, and they could teach you to win debates even when you were wrong, and you knew you were wrong, and that is where the tension with Socrates begins. For Sophists the goal is always persuasion, but for Socrates he step will step on the stage and say, No, the goal must be truth. The Sophists will teach you how to win, but Socrates would teach how to live. The Sophists would give you techniques, Socrates would attempt to give you wisdom. The Sophists would say, Let me show you how to sound virtuous and appear virtuous. Socrates would say, No, let me show you if there's a way that we can be virtuous. The Sophists raise questions that only Christians I feel will later answer with complete clarity. Answers that say truth is objective and morality is not grounded in human opinion, but in the divine character of God. And persuasion is not more important than integrity, and virtue must be formed in an individual rather than taught. The Sophists leaned heavily towards relativism, performance, and technique, but Christianity repositioned that lean towards truth, personal character, and personal transformation. Like Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So why do these guys matter? Well, the sophists are essential because they professionalize philosophy and learning and are in the process, in their own way, in a limited way, democratizing education. They may have challenged traditional morality and introduced relativism and elevated the technique of rhetoric over truth, yet they still prepared the stage for the most important figures in classical era, and the first of those will be Socrates. Socrates, the man who will confront the sophists, challenge their assumptions, expose their contradictions, and ask the question, the one question that everyone who came before couldn't answer, but is what you're saying true? And that brings us to the end of episode seven, my final chapter of the pre-Socratic part of our adventure together, just before the classical era will dawn. Now we've travelled a long way already, from those early days of water, air, and boundless beginnings to today's thinkers. But these guys, the pre-Socratic thinkers, represent the last great burst of creativity for a while. Together, these seven episodes and the thinkers we've covered bring the ancient pre-Socratic era to its climax. They have left us with questions that cannot be ignored. Is the universe purposeful or mechanical? Is truth objective or relative? Is the soul a material or an immaterial thing? And is wisdom something we can simply perform, or is it something we should become? These are the questions that will soon draw a certain Athenian stonemation into the public square to speak. Because in our next episode, everything changes. Because we meet Socrates, the man who asked better questions. Next time we'll meet Socrates, the philosopher, who never actually wrote a word down himself, yet changed the world. He is the man who confronted the sophists, challenged their relativism, exposed their contradiction, and insisted that truth is not your truth and it's not a performance, but a meaningful way of life. He is the thinker who believes that the unexamined life is not worth living, and that virtue itself is knowledge, and that the soul is the most important thing about us. He is the hinge on which the entire history of philosophy will now pivot and turn. Plato and Aristotle are now also waiting in the wings, so Socrates does not come alone because standing beside him are two further towering figures, pupils of him and each other, in fact. Plato, his brilliant student, who will build the first great philosophical system for the West, and Aristotle, Plato's student, who will shape science, ethics, logic, and theology for centuries. But before we reach them, we must meet the man who first will teach many how to think. The next episode is important because it is where philosophy begins to come personal, where the questions turn inward and where the soul takes the center stage and where truth becomes literally a matter of life and death. It is the moment where the ancient world begins to ask, how should we live? What is virtue, what is justice, and what really is the good life? And Christians will recognize in Socrates' moral seriousness, his devotion to truth, his willingness even to die for what he believed a faint echo of a deeper and even greater story. So next time join me as we step out into the world of atoms and arguments, into the world of the soul, in the first of a number of episodes where we'll consider the life, the thinking, and the work of Socrates. But for now, thank you for listening, and may the love of truth guide you in the knowledge that truth is personal and real. Thanks for being with me today. Bye bye for now.