 So far, the guys who've been dealing with, the philosophers who have been dealing with, have been concerned with trying to explain reality, and they do it mostly in terms of stuff. Right? What's it made of? What's the, you know, component, you know, the fundamental stuff of all of reality? You know, Thales says it's water. Annex Amanda provides his arguments to say that it's boundless. Annex Menes says that, you know, boundless isn't going to work, it doesn't explain anything, so it's air. Right? It's still sufficiently, you know, amorphous, but it's nonetheless air. You know, Pythagoras is interested in the same project. He is still trying to answer what it, you know, what is, what things fundamentally are. Right? What's going to be the constituent thing? Right? What's going to explain all of reality? But he has a very different idea than saying it's stuff. So you might wonder exactly what Pythagoras has in mind here. Well, let's put ourselves in Pythagoras' place. Now he was a huge fan of numbers and mathematics. If you've ever heard of the Pythagorean theorem, that's who it comes from. He was a really big fan of numbers because he saw a strong connection between numbers and the world around him. So for instance, let's say they're these pebbles, right? Now with the pebbles, this is probably one of the ways he really kind of started counting. When we have one petal, a pebble, we just have, you know, the one thing, the one dimension. When you have two pebbles, you have a line. When you have three pebbles, you have a plane, okay? And when you add a fourth pebble, you have a figure, you have a solid. So right away, Pythagoras started drawing a connection between number and the objects around him. And you know, in his defense, numbers are everywhere. They really are, okay? Let's just think about this for a second. Everything has a weight, right? That's one number. Everything has a density. That's another number, okay? I am six feet tall. There's a number, okay? I have four limbs. That's another number. My body temperature, well, it's really sunny outside right now, and I'm outside. So it might be a little bit higher than 98.6, but, you know, theoretically, my body temperature is around 98.6, right? There's all kinds of ways to use numbers to quantify what's happening with me and the world around me, right? We can start looking at these treats. Number of branches. How tall are they? And not even just some kind of incidental things like that. Number plays a great part in what kind of thing it is, okay? So just for instance, numbers are found in, sorry, numbers are found in music all the time. In fact, music used to be considered applied mathematics, specifically where numbers and beauty intersected, all right? If you don't believe me, we'll think about this. A scale, a musical scale is defined in terms of the steps, the number of steps from one note to another. A chord, same thing. A chord is defined in terms of the number that corresponds to on the scale. Harmony, same thing, right? Harmony is going to be determined by number, or at least can be described by number. A color wheel, right? A shirt is red, the trees are green, the sky is blue. All these colors have a corresponding number in terms of wavelengths, okay? Chemistry, even chemistry. All the elements on the periodic table of elements have an atomic number, okay? And how you identify the different elements is determined by the number. The golden ratio. Golden ratio is fascinating. The golden ratio keeps popping up time and time again, especially in nature. It creates, or your golden ratio can measure, is a measure of spirals, okay? It tends to correspond with things that we consider beautiful, which is really kind of fascinating. And like I said, it pops up time and time again. The ratio is accurate for the spiral of a galaxy and the spiral of a snail shell. It's really quite fascinating. So it looks like, you know, from Pythagoras' point of view, that number, number is everywhere, okay? It's in everything. So Pythagoras concludes, everything is number. Everything is number. I'm going to go walk down the path three for a little while. Well, I'm out here walking amongst the numbers. I joke, I'm probably being too uncharitable to Pythagoras, but this is basically what he's saying. But what are we supposed to make of this, right? So, you know, looking at the pebble again, I don't pick up the pebble and start plucking out the number fives. Well, no, that's not what's happening, right? Pythagoras isn't claiming that numbers fit together to make pebbles or trees or me or anything like that. That's not what's going on. That's to confuse the difference, to confuse numbers for stuff, all right? Now everything, you know, all these things around us have stuff. Even Pythagoras is going to say that, yeah, there's stuff there, right? So the trees have water, minerals, fibers. I have minerals, water, some fibers. I have, actually, I'm not entirely sure what the chemical constitution of my body is, but there's a lot going on there. You know, the trees, pretty much, sorry, not the trees, but the pebbles, the rocks, pretty much just minerals, right? You know, that's stuff, sure, but that's not what Pythagoras is talking about, right? He's talking about the difference between form and matter. Matter is stuff, all right? Matter is, you know, the chemicals, the atoms of Thales, water, will that we be matter? Even Annexamander's boundless, well that's matter, too, in a sense, right? It's still matter, still kind of stuff, same thing with Annexamander's air. That stuff, what Pythagoras is talking about, is something different. It's not stuff, it's form. So imagine that you're at least a little bit curious as to what this form is supposed to be. One way to start thinking about form, or some words that we use when we start talking about form, is definition, limit, meaning, even essence is sometimes used when we're talking about form. Form, like I said, form is in contrast to stuff. In a way you can start thinking about, another way you can start thinking about, especially in the terms of the ancient Greeks, is to think about Annexamander's boundless, right? The boundless has no form. It has no limits. It has no definition. It's stuff unlimited, stuff unformed. Chaotic may not even necessarily be a good word, because we still kind of put some kind of notion of form or limit on chaos, namely that it's not ordered. Chaotic is boundless, and probably in some sense be both chaotic and ordered, if you can make any sense of that, which you probably can. That's the idea. The form is a really bad way to think about it, is the mold to which stuff goes into, and then it becomes the object. That's not the best analogy, because form itself is not physical. It's not physical. It's immaterial. But things around us have form. They have definition. They have meaning. This is a tree. This is not a dog. This is not a human being. It's a tree. I'm a human being. I'm not a dog. I'm not a tree. I have a definition. I have a limit. There's something that makes me, me, and that, that. And for Pythagoras, Pythagoras is the first one to introduce this idea. There's something that makes me, me, and that, that. It's not the stuff. There's a lot of common stuff between us, but it's the form. It's how it's arranged. It's the order, the structure, the pattern. Patterns are not physical. Patterns are immaterial. So this is Pythagoras' point. It's really a huge innovation. Pythagoras saw number everywhere, but number is not physical. He thought that all objects had form, and he further thought that all form was number. And the reason why is because he saw numbers everywhere. You know, before we move on, I really want to push on a point here regarding form. You know, like I said, form is not physical. It's not material. You have never seen the number one. You can't interact with it. You can't hear it. You don't see the number one. You've seen numerals. You've seen representations and writing for the number one, which you haven't ever seen the number one. This is not the number one. This is a single thing. This is my finger. That's a single thing. Now I've taken my finger down, but it doesn't mean the number one ceased to exist. The form of one did not come into existence now, and then go away. That's not how form works. You haven't seen the number one. You've seen this numeral for one, but there's also this numeral for one, as well as this numeral for one, and like Pythagoras, we can even just represent it with a dot. So all of these represent the number one, but they're not the same thing. And for any of those individual numerals, they're not one. One doesn't have a weight. One doesn't have a smell. One can't be thrown or created or destroyed. One is immaterial. You've never seen the number one. You've comprehended it, and there's a big difference. There's plenty of things that you see that you don't comprehend, and there's plenty of things that you comprehend that you don't see. And the number one is only one of them. So when we say that this is real distinction between form and matter, this is the big distinction. Matter is physical. It's stuff. Form is immaterial. It's not stuff. It's definition. It's abstract. Now this idea, this difference between form and matter, is huge in the history of western philosophy. It's pretty much everyone else. And the topic keeps coming up, especially whether there is a difference between form and matter. How later philosophers are distinguished by trying to handle this distinction and how it's supposed to work. That's a big topic of debate currently, whether there is such a thing as form, whether it even exists, whether it's just matter. Socrates, Plato was most definitely influenced by this idea of form. He was very directly influenced by Pythagoras. Socrates probably was as well. And Aristotle carries on that tradition. If Socrates played on Aristotle talk about it, there's a really good chance, like an almost certain chance that everybody else is going to, or other people in the history of western philosophy are also going to talk about that as well. This distinction is huge. I mean, it's the distinction between this pebble and the form of pebble. This pebble came into existence and it will cease to exist. The form probably always exists. The tree. There's trees. It's a form for the tree. Form existed before the tree and will exist after the tree. The tree will come and go. The form stays for Pythagoras. It's the distinction between the concrete and the abstract. It's the distinction between the particular and the universal. It's the distinction between matter and form. So so far, philosophers have just been dealing pretty much with things as they are at a given moment, right? Thales, Annexmen, or Annexmenes, even Pythagoras, they have worried about the question of what constitutes a thing, okay? What makes that thing what it is, Thales, Annexmen, or Annexmenes all point into some kind of stuff. Pythagoras points to stuff, matter, and form. So it's not only what is constituted but what it's made into. But they have really been dealing with things as they change. And this is kind of, this is a real issue. So just to think about it, consider Heraclitus' example. Heraclitus is famous for this phrase, you never step into the same river twice. Now if anybody's been tubing on the Guadalupe and they've done it more than once, you might say, well then where did I go? Because it sure seems like I was on the Guadalupe River. And yeah, that's kind of the issue here. In one way, yes, you never stepped into the same river twice because it's always been different water. The water flows through the river. It doesn't ever back, well, sometimes rivers back up but that's a whole other situation. Normally rivers don't back up. The water just keeps going from one end to the other, onwards eventually towards the ocean. Or at least lower anyway. So there's this idea that there's a sense in which you never step into the same river twice because it's a constant flow of water. It's never the same water that goes through the river that you step into. It's always different water that you're stepping into. But at the same time, we want to say, yes, it is the same river. It's been at that place more than once. I don't step into the Guadalupe and step into it again. I'm stepping into a totally different river. So this is the problem of change. And you might think, well, that's just a problem with rivers. It doesn't really a problem with everything else. No. Everything you've ever experienced, everything around you is going through change in the same way, in a similar way, that water is passing through a river. Just consider the sky. The sky is a great variety of chemical compounds in gaseous form. We've got oxygen at the very least, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide. That's just to name a few. I'm sure there's more out there, but I'm not a meteorologist. Not to mention the water vapor that's up there with the clouds. But you look into a different sky, not every day. Sometimes it's just a bright sunny day all the time. But you certainly look into different skies in that sense through the course of the year because the sky changes. These trees around me, you might say these trees are pretty solid, pretty permanent. But guess what? They're going through changes just like the sky. There is a flow of matter through these trees at the very least water. There's other minerals, vitamins. These trees are living things. That means, amongst other things, that they have a process by which they turn matter into energy. You do the same thing. This is the whole idea behind food and metabolism. You take in matter and you convert it to energy. Also by the way, these trees have certain kinds of matter in them. There's bark. There's water. There's minerals. There's sap. But it's not as if the matter that exists in this tree right now is the same matter that has existed in the tree since it started. No. The bark that's on the outside of this tree will be worn off and will be replaced by other bark. The needles that are on this tree, because these are cedar trees, these needles fall off and are replaced by other needles. Just like there's flow through the river, there's flow of matter through the tree. Same thing's true about you. There's the flow of matter through you in terms of food. Well, there's a flow of matter in terms of your cells as well. You are composed of organs. Every organ is made of cells. Every cell is generated and after a period of time dies and new cells take its place. The process overall takes about three years for your skin. It's about seven years for your bones, seven to ten years for your bones. I forget the ages of the other organs. I want to say livers are around three or four years old, but I could be wrong about that. In your brain, we've known for a long time that brain cells die. Some recent evidence suggests that they're also generated as well. So, yes, there's a flow of matter through you, just like there's a flow of water through a river. So what Heraclitus is getting at here, he's getting at this question of unity and diversity. There's unity with the river in the sense that it's the same river. The water is flowing through it. There's unity in you, in the sense that there's matter flowing through you. But there's also diversity. The diversity is the matter that's going through. So the way to summarize this difference, this question of unity and diversity is what is it that remains the same? That's unity. What is it that changes? That's diversity. What is it that remains the same? That's unity. What is it that changes? That's diversity. So before we really get to Heraclitus' answer, why don't you ask yourself real quick? What is it that makes you you? Because it's probably not your cells. Your cells come and go. It's not the flow of matter. It's what's holding, however you want to think about it, that flow of matter. And the question there is, what is that? Heraclitus is dealing with this question of unity and diversity. Now his answer as to what the unity is, is fire. Now he's not doing the same thing as Staley's, Annexamander and Annexamander's. What they were doing is trying to find the constituent material, what everything has in common. Heraclitus is going to say everything has fire in common, yeah. But he's not saying that fire is what constitutes everything. There's not little bits of fire that make everything. What Heraclitus is saying is fire is the thing that's changing. That's the unity. The diversity is something else. But fire is the thing that unifies it all. What ties it all together, what makes that thing that thing. Now here's where it gets really interesting. So Heraclitus is pointing to fire. But he's noted something. He's noted that fire does go through changes. Fire is the unity and the diversity that goes through changes. But the changes are really orderly. There's a pattern to the changes. You might even say a rhythm to the changes if you like. And the rhythm basically is this, is that there's a downward movement from fire down. Fire, he says, condenses into moisture. Moisture condenses into liquid. Liquid condenses into earth. And earth, in turn, eventually blows back up, I'm sorry, it goes down to earth. And that's the downward movement from fire on down to earth. There's also an upward movement where earth becomes less dense into liquid, right? Liquid less dense into moisture, moisture less dense into fire. Now you might think this is a little silly. Have you ever seen a volcano? Because that's kind of like what it looks like. Volcano is earth. And it's so hot that earth becomes liquid. And the really violent volcanoes spew up a lot of smoke and ash into the sky. Now smoke and ash looks a lot like clouds, right? And if you've ever seen lava, that looks a lot like liquid. Actually, it is liquid, technically speaking, it's liquid, not water, but it's liquid. So smoke and ash looks a lot like clouds, which looks a lot like moisture, right? And that goes right up into the sky. And if you want to know where the ultimate fire is, I don't think this is Heraclitus' answer, but if you want to know where this fire is, that everything comes down, you might think it's the sun, right? That's an answer. The sun is really hot. So there's not, you know, Heraclitus isn't completely off his rocker when he's trying to talk about this upward movement and downward movement. Now whether you think this upward movement or this downward movement involves fire, you can't deny Heraclitus' observation that there is a regular order to the universe. Everybody pretty much up to this point has noted that there's a regular order to the universe. Now the question is, why? Why is there a regular order to the universe? Now Heraclitus notes that there is an order, a pattern, with this matter, oh, sorry, with fire, excuse me, not matter with fire, that there's this upward movement and this downward movement of fire. There's something else that he notes too. And this, I'm going to suggest, should sound a little familiar, right? So one of the things that he says is that fire changes, but fire is never lost. Even when fire goes from the downward movement down to earth, right, there's no fire lost, it's still fire there. Same thing as earth moves up to fire, there's still fire there, there's nothing that is ever lost, it's just a change in its state. And fire is the thing that remains the same. Now this should sound a little familiar, where there's changes in the state of it, and nothing is ever lost. We might even somewhat cheekily call this the law of the conservation of fire. Heraclitus has given us this idea that fire is the thing that's changing. There's this upward movement and this downward movement. There's this order, there's this pattern, there is the conservation of fire. Now the question is, why is there this movement? Why isn't the fire just goes straight to earth, then back up to fire, then hangs around liquid, then to earth, then back up to fire? Why isn't it that it just changes all over the place? Why isn't it that just stays fire, or just stays earth? There is a pattern, there is an order. Now Pythagoras calls this order, reason, or logos, okay, reason or logos. It is an order. Now fire doesn't have this order all on its own. Fire is given this order. Now if it's given this order and its reason, well then it's given by a mind. Now don't think, I know the book identifies this, Heraclitus thinks this is God. I don't think that's really a great translation here, a great interpretation. I think what Heraclitus has in mind here is, because he certainly wasn't dealing with the Greek God. Greek gods were nothing like this. He had no contact with the Hebrews, so he wasn't exposed to any of the ideas about a God in that sense. Actually, the closest that this notion of fire and reason and logos comes, the closest that comes to it, is something like Buddhism, and he didn't have any contact, I'm sorry, Hinduism and Buddhism. He didn't have contact with any of those cultures either. So he is talking about a mind, but it's not a personal mind, or in other words it's not a person. It is a mind in the sense that it deals with reason, it deals with maybe something like ideas or definitions, it deals with patterns, but it's not necessarily what we would recognize as conscious, not necessarily what we would recognize as alive. Maybe it is, but we need not reach that judgment right away. Now here's where it gets interesting. Everything for Heraclitus is fire. Now yes, this logos is given to fire and is given by a mind, but it's not as if that mind is something other than fire. Okay? No, it's fire too. In fact, everything is fire. Everything is fire. Everything, remember what fire is? Fire is not merely the stuff, right? It's not the atoms, it's not merely the matter. It is the thing that remains the same. It's the thing that remains the same. All of this, you and I, we're the changes. We're not the thing that remains the same, the unity is fire. All of this is the changes, that's the diversity. So since all of this is one in that sense, all of this is fire, and this universal mind which gives logos is also fire, the universal mind, this logos, is everything. This is what's called pantheism. The idea that everything is the divine. Everything is the divine, which is why I say it's closer to Buddhism and Hinduism. It's not anything like Judaism or Christianity or even the Greek gods. This is pantheism, the view that everything is God. Now this is probably hard to accept, but consider what Heraclitus has to say as far as his reasoning. And by the way, there are lots of people who will reason very convincingly for pantheism. So maybe Heraclitus just isn't as crazy as you think he is.