WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.200 I want you to close your eyes for a second. We 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:04.400 are going on a trip. We're traveling back in 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:07.080 time about two and a half thousand years to the 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:09.359 island of Sicily. And we are not just going to 00:00:09.359 --> 00:00:11.640 the beach. We are hiking up the side of Mount 00:00:11.640 --> 00:00:14.699 Etna. Which is an active volcano, mind you. This 00:00:14.699 --> 00:00:16.899 is not a leisurely stroll. Definitely not. The 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:20.000 air is thick with sulfur. It smells like rotten 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:23.120 eggs and burning earth. The ground is actually 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:25.079 vibrating under your feet because this mountain 00:00:25.079 --> 00:00:28.589 is alive. And it's hot. It is so hot, unbearably 00:00:28.589 --> 00:00:30.789 hot. So we get to the very edge of the caldera, 00:00:30.809 --> 00:00:32.890 the precipice, you know, looking down into the 00:00:32.890 --> 00:00:35.950 boiling lava below and standing right there on 00:00:35.950 --> 00:00:38.969 the edge of oblivion is a man. And he is not 00:00:38.969 --> 00:00:41.590 dressed for hiking. No, not at all. He's wearing 00:00:41.590 --> 00:00:43.289 these purple robes, which was the most expensive 00:00:43.289 --> 00:00:45.850 dye in the ancient world. He has a golden wreath 00:00:45.850 --> 00:00:48.850 on his head like a king or a god. And on his 00:00:48.850 --> 00:00:51.820 feet. He's wearing these heavy, very distinct 00:00:51.820 --> 00:00:55.579 bronze sandals. He looks at his followers. He 00:00:55.579 --> 00:00:57.899 raises his arms, declares that he is no longer 00:00:57.899 --> 00:01:00.500 mortal, but has become an immortal god. And he 00:01:00.500 --> 00:01:03.140 jumps. The ultimate dramatic exit. I mean, you 00:01:03.140 --> 00:01:05.640 can't top that. He holds himself into the volcano. 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:08.620 And the legend says, you know, he wanted to disappear 00:01:08.620 --> 00:01:11.040 completely so that when people couldn't find 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:12.599 his body, they would just assume he descended 00:01:12.599 --> 00:01:15.079 to Olympus. He wanted to fake his own apotheosis, 00:01:15.180 --> 00:01:19.379 his own becoming a god moment. Exactly. But the 00:01:19.379 --> 00:01:22.500 volcano, the volcano had the last laugh. It did. 00:01:22.780 --> 00:01:25.000 It did. A little while later, the volcano sort 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:29.260 of burps. Wow. And it spits out exactly one bronze 00:01:29.260 --> 00:01:32.299 sandal. Wow. It lands at the feet of his followers. 00:01:33.519 --> 00:01:36.280 It's the ultimate debunking. It is such a fantastic 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:39.760 story. Almost certainly a myth, but it tells 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:41.680 us everything we need to know about the subject 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:44.219 of today's Dipe Dive. Right. We're talking about 00:01:44.219 --> 00:01:47.299 Empedocles of Acragas. And this story, it just 00:01:47.299 --> 00:01:49.439 sets the stage so perfectly because it captures 00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:51.480 the two sides of his reputation. Okay, what are 00:01:51.480 --> 00:01:53.219 the two sides? Well, on one hand, you've got 00:01:53.219 --> 00:01:55.959 the mad philosopher, the guy with the god complex 00:01:55.959 --> 00:01:58.180 who thinks he can cheat death. But on the other 00:01:58.180 --> 00:02:00.700 hand, you have a man who was so influential, 00:02:00.879 --> 00:02:03.640 so larger than life, that people told these stories 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:07.159 about him for centuries. And? That is our mission 00:02:07.159 --> 00:02:10.509 today. We want to look past the bronze sandal. 00:02:10.509 --> 00:02:12.629 We want to understand how this one man who lived 00:02:12.629 --> 00:02:15.590 in the 5th century B .C. managed to bridge this 00:02:15.590 --> 00:02:19.250 gap between being like a mystical shaman who 00:02:19.250 --> 00:02:22.129 claimed to control the weather and a hard -nosed 00:02:22.129 --> 00:02:24.389 scientist who basically invented the periodic 00:02:24.389 --> 00:02:27.169 table, proposed a form of natural selection, 00:02:27.430 --> 00:02:30.530 and proved air was a physical substance. It's 00:02:30.530 --> 00:02:33.229 a massive resume. And that tension you just mentioned 00:02:33.229 --> 00:02:35.469 between the shaman and the scientist, that is 00:02:35.469 --> 00:02:39.050 the key. We put those things in different boxes, 00:02:39.169 --> 00:02:41.050 you know. You have your physics professors over 00:02:41.050 --> 00:02:44.669 here and your gurus or mystics over there. Empedocles 00:02:44.669 --> 00:02:46.550 didn't see a difference. He saw it as all one 00:02:46.550 --> 00:02:49.030 thing. He is the bridge. He's that moment in 00:02:49.030 --> 00:02:51.430 history where magic starts to turn into mechanics. 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:53.969 So let's unpack this life because even without 00:02:53.969 --> 00:02:56.669 the volcano jump, it is pretty wild. He was born 00:02:56.669 --> 00:02:59.930 around 494 B .C. in Acragas. Right. And before 00:02:59.930 --> 00:03:01.449 we get into the man, we have to talk about the 00:03:01.449 --> 00:03:04.949 place, Acros. In Sicily. in sicily and if you're 00:03:04.949 --> 00:03:07.069 imagining like a dusty little village with a 00:03:07.069 --> 00:03:09.169 few goats you have to get that out of your head 00:03:09.169 --> 00:03:12.810 sicily in the 5th century bc was the new world 00:03:12.810 --> 00:03:15.789 of the greek empire oh really yeah it was booming 00:03:15.789 --> 00:03:18.490 it was the frontier so it's like new york or 00:03:18.490 --> 00:03:21.229 dubai or something exactly it was incredibly 00:03:21.229 --> 00:03:26.060 wealthy culturally vibrant and chaotic Acragas 00:03:26.060 --> 00:03:29.139 was famous for luxury. There's a great quote 00:03:29.139 --> 00:03:31.759 that says the people of Acragas built their houses 00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:34.699 as if they were going to live forever and dined 00:03:34.699 --> 00:03:36.800 as if they were going to die tomorrow. I love 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:39.139 that. So Empedocles is growing up in this environment 00:03:39.139 --> 00:03:42.719 of like. Excess and high stakes. Yeah. And he 00:03:42.719 --> 00:03:45.020 wasn't nobody, right? His family. Oh, far from 00:03:45.020 --> 00:03:47.500 it. He came from serious old money. His grandfather, 00:03:47.780 --> 00:03:50.340 who was also named Empedocles, won a horse race 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:52.620 at the Olympia. Okay. I feel like in modern times, 00:03:52.639 --> 00:03:54.740 winning a horse race is cool, but it's not that 00:03:54.740 --> 00:03:57.659 big of a deal. In the ancient Greek world, winning 00:03:57.659 --> 00:03:59.699 at Olympia was everything. It was like winning 00:03:59.699 --> 00:04:03.139 the Super Bowl and Oscar and the presidency all 00:04:03.139 --> 00:04:05.939 in one afternoon. It gave your family immense 00:04:05.939 --> 00:04:09.500 social capital. So our Empedocles, he grows up 00:04:09.500 --> 00:04:13.250 in the lap. of luxury. He flourished around 444 00:04:13.250 --> 00:04:16.709 B .C., give or take. But he didn't just sit around 00:04:16.709 --> 00:04:19.829 counting his grandfather's trophy money. He became 00:04:19.829 --> 00:04:22.389 a celebrity in his own right. I mean, Aristotle, 00:04:22.829 --> 00:04:24.949 the heavy hitter of philosophy, called Empedocles 00:04:24.949 --> 00:04:28.230 the father of rhetoric. Which is a huge, huge 00:04:28.230 --> 00:04:31.139 compliment. It means he wasn't just smart. He 00:04:31.139 --> 00:04:33.680 was persuasive. He knew how to move a crowd. 00:04:33.879 --> 00:04:36.000 And he needed that skill. He did, because he 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:38.339 was traveling from town to town, essentially 00:04:38.339 --> 00:04:40.639 performing his philosophy. Performing. What do 00:04:40.639 --> 00:04:42.519 you mean by that? I mean, he wasn't giving dry 00:04:42.519 --> 00:04:44.860 lectures in a classroom. He was a poet. He's 00:04:44.860 --> 00:04:47.019 actually the last major Greek philosopher to 00:04:47.019 --> 00:04:50.399 write his ideas in verse. In poetry. Epic hexameter, 00:04:50.519 --> 00:04:53.000 the same style as Homer. He wanted his science 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.069 to sing. And so he would show up in these towns, 00:04:56.170 --> 00:04:57.910 probably with a whole retinue of servants dressed 00:04:57.910 --> 00:05:00.610 in his purple and gold, claiming to be a healer 00:05:00.610 --> 00:05:02.689 and a prophet. It sounds a bit like a traveling 00:05:02.689 --> 00:05:04.870 revival show. There's definitely that vibe. I 00:05:04.870 --> 00:05:07.029 mean, he claimed he could cure illnesses, control 00:05:07.029 --> 00:05:09.230 the winds. And even bring the dead back to life. 00:05:09.430 --> 00:05:11.529 Yeah. Yeah. That one's a pretty bold claim. It's 00:05:11.529 --> 00:05:14.889 a bold claim. I can teach you physics and also 00:05:14.889 --> 00:05:18.160 I can resurrect your grandma. It shows the scope 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:20.920 of his ambition, though. He did not think small. 00:05:21.319 --> 00:05:24.000 And this larger -than -life persona is probably 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:26.860 why there are so many weird stories about his 00:05:26.860 --> 00:05:29.459 death. Right. We started with the volcano, which 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:32.100 is the most famous one, recorded by the biographer 00:05:32.100 --> 00:05:35.180 Diogenes Luricius. But that's not the only theory, 00:05:35.240 --> 00:05:37.600 is it? No, and the alternatives are just as entertaining. 00:05:37.699 --> 00:05:39.720 There's the removed -from -Earth theory. Okay. 00:05:40.400 --> 00:05:43.060 Heraclitus Ponticus wrote that Empedocles threw 00:05:43.060 --> 00:05:47.720 a feast and during the night he was just plucked. 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:51.180 Taken. The alien abduction theory of antiquity. 00:05:51.279 --> 00:05:53.620 Basically. He just ascended into the sky. Then 00:05:53.620 --> 00:05:56.319 you have the, you know, the boring version. Aristotle 00:05:56.319 --> 00:05:59.100 thought he just died of old age at 60. Right. 00:05:59.160 --> 00:06:01.459 The sensible explanation. Yeah. Some others said 00:06:01.459 --> 00:06:04.680 he lived to be 109. But my favorite by far has 00:06:04.680 --> 00:06:07.060 to be the satire by Lucian. Oh, Lucian is great. 00:06:07.160 --> 00:06:09.060 He's the ancient equivalent of a stand -up comic, 00:06:09.180 --> 00:06:11.240 just roasting everyone. And Lucian suggested 00:06:11.240 --> 00:06:13.639 that when the volcano erupted, it didn't kill 00:06:13.639 --> 00:06:16.379 Empedocles. What did it do then? The blast launched 00:06:16.379 --> 00:06:18.759 him into the stratosphere, he landed on the moon, 00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:22.300 and he survived there, living on dew. The first 00:06:22.300 --> 00:06:25.319 astronaut. It's hilarious, but it also shows 00:06:25.319 --> 00:06:27.839 you that even the comedians of the time recognized 00:06:27.839 --> 00:06:30.379 Empedocles as someone who just didn't belong 00:06:30.379 --> 00:06:33.319 on Earth. He was other. It's so interesting that 00:06:33.319 --> 00:06:36.879 his death often overshadows his life. People 00:06:36.879 --> 00:06:38.600 know the sandal story, but they don't know the 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:41.199 mind behind it. So I want to pivot now to what 00:06:41.199 --> 00:06:43.819 he actually thought. Because beneath the gold 00:06:43.819 --> 00:06:46.139 wreath and the poetry, this guy was a rigorous 00:06:46.139 --> 00:06:49.139 thinker. Let's talk about the four roots. This 00:06:49.139 --> 00:06:51.579 is the big one, his biggest innovation. This 00:06:51.579 --> 00:06:54.639 is the cornerstone of Western science for 2 ,000 00:06:54.639 --> 00:06:56.819 years. Right. We all learned this in school, 00:06:56.879 --> 00:06:58.660 or we see it in movies like The Fifth Element. 00:06:58.860 --> 00:07:02.769 Fire, air. earth, water. Empedocles is the originator 00:07:02.769 --> 00:07:05.170 of that list. He is. Before him, philosophers 00:07:05.170 --> 00:07:08.009 were usually what we call monists. Monists, meaning 00:07:08.009 --> 00:07:10.329 one. Meaning they thought the world was made 00:07:10.329 --> 00:07:12.350 of one thing. Thales thought everything was made 00:07:12.350 --> 00:07:14.629 of water. Heraclitus thought everything was fire. 00:07:15.430 --> 00:07:17.730 Anaximenes thought it was air. It feels a bit 00:07:17.730 --> 00:07:19.730 like they were just guessing, like, I like water, 00:07:19.790 --> 00:07:22.129 so everything is water. It was a bit more logical 00:07:22.129 --> 00:07:23.670 than that. But yeah, they were trying to simplify 00:07:23.670 --> 00:07:26.009 the incredible complexity of the world down to 00:07:26.009 --> 00:07:29.110 a single substance. Empedocles looked around 00:07:29.110 --> 00:07:31.810 and said, it's too complicated for one thing. 00:07:31.829 --> 00:07:33.990 It has to be a mixture. And he called them roots, 00:07:34.209 --> 00:07:36.129 right? He didn't use the word elements. Correct. 00:07:36.170 --> 00:07:39.029 The word element, which is Stocean in Greek, 00:07:39.209 --> 00:07:41.350 that was likely coined by Plato a bit later. 00:07:42.050 --> 00:07:45.529 Empedocles called them rhizomata or roots. Roots. 00:07:46.110 --> 00:07:48.709 That implies something living, something that 00:07:48.709 --> 00:07:51.329 things grow from. Exactly. It's a much more organic 00:07:51.329 --> 00:07:54.329 metaphor. And true to his style, he didn't just 00:07:54.329 --> 00:07:56.949 give them scientific names. He used a code. He 00:07:56.949 --> 00:08:00.149 associated them with gods. So he's mixing theology 00:08:00.149 --> 00:08:02.370 and chemistry. Right from the start. He linked 00:08:02.370 --> 00:08:04.930 Zeus, the king of gods, with fire, or maybe the 00:08:04.930 --> 00:08:07.050 aether, the bright, shining stuff. He linked 00:08:07.050 --> 00:08:09.790 Hera, the life bringer, with earth or air. The 00:08:09.790 --> 00:08:12.310 sources differ. Adonius, which is another name 00:08:12.310 --> 00:08:15.170 for Hades, was earth. Okay. And water. And water 00:08:15.170 --> 00:08:18.899 was nestus. Nestus. I don't know that guy. It's 00:08:18.899 --> 00:08:21.579 a local Sicilian cult name for Persephone or 00:08:21.579 --> 00:08:24.620 a similar water deity. Empedocles wrote this 00:08:24.620 --> 00:08:28.899 beautiful line about her. Nestus, who moistens 00:08:28.899 --> 00:08:31.579 mortal springs with tears. That is lovely. So 00:08:31.579 --> 00:08:34.659 water is literally the tears of a god. It's poetry, 00:08:34.879 --> 00:08:38.299 but the concept behind it is hard science. Empedocles 00:08:38.299 --> 00:08:41.399 argued that these four roots are eternal, indestructible, 00:08:41.539 --> 00:08:44.960 and unchangeable. Wait, unchangeable? But... 00:08:45.399 --> 00:08:48.659 Wood burns and becomes ash. Yeah. Water evaporates. 00:08:48.820 --> 00:08:51.480 Things change all the time. And this brings us 00:08:51.480 --> 00:08:54.039 to the biggest intellectual hurdle that Empedocles 00:08:54.039 --> 00:08:56.519 had to clear. We have to talk about a guy named 00:08:56.519 --> 00:08:59.759 Parmenides. Parmenides. I've heard the name, 00:08:59.779 --> 00:09:02.100 but remind me what his deal was. Parmenides was 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:04.759 the giant of philosophy right before Empedocles, 00:09:04.840 --> 00:09:07.200 and he had trapped everyone in a logical nightmare. 00:09:07.500 --> 00:09:09.620 Okay. He argued that nothing comes from nothing. 00:09:09.679 --> 00:09:11.559 That sounds reasonable. You can't pull a rabbit 00:09:11.559 --> 00:09:13.519 out of a hat if the rabbit isn't already in the 00:09:13.519 --> 00:09:16.299 hat. Right. But Parmenides took it to its logical 00:09:16.299 --> 00:09:19.019 extreme. He said, if nothing comes from nothing, 00:09:19.240 --> 00:09:22.179 then nothing new can ever exist. Because if it 00:09:22.179 --> 00:09:24.840 didn't exist before and it exists now, it must 00:09:24.840 --> 00:09:26.759 have come from nothing, which you just said is 00:09:26.759 --> 00:09:30.059 impossible. Uh -oh. Therefore, change is an illusion. 00:09:30.299 --> 00:09:33.340 Movement is an illusion. The entire universe 00:09:33.340 --> 00:09:36.980 is one solid, frozen, unchanging block of being. 00:09:37.259 --> 00:09:40.139 Well, that's obviously wrong. I'm moving my hand 00:09:40.139 --> 00:09:42.000 right now. I can see things changing outside 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:44.340 the window. Your senses tell you things change. 00:09:44.559 --> 00:09:47.139 But Parmenides said your senses are lying to 00:09:47.139 --> 00:09:49.320 you. Logic tells you change is impossible. It 00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:52.500 was a crisis. Philosophy was stuck. How do you 00:09:52.500 --> 00:09:55.220 explain the real world without breaking the fundamental 00:09:55.220 --> 00:09:57.879 rules of logic? And Empedocles found the loophole. 00:09:57.960 --> 00:09:59.960 He found the loophole. He said, OK, Parmenides, 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:03.320 you were right. Nothing is ever created or destroyed. 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:07.340 The roots, fire, air, earth. Water are eternal. 00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:12.259 They never change. But they can add. So the ingredients 00:10:12.259 --> 00:10:14.820 are eternal, but the recipe changes. Precisely. 00:10:14.879 --> 00:10:17.000 This is the birth of the concept of the mixture. 00:10:17.279 --> 00:10:19.440 Think of a painter. He has four colors on his 00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:21.980 palette. Say, red, white, black, and yellow. 00:10:22.159 --> 00:10:24.379 Those colors are constant. Red is always red. 00:10:24.580 --> 00:10:26.419 Right. But the painter can mix them to create 00:10:26.419 --> 00:10:28.740 a tree, a face, a river. The picture changes. 00:10:28.919 --> 00:10:30.919 If he wipes the canvas, the painting is gone, 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:33.460 but the paint itself still exists. That makes 00:10:33.460 --> 00:10:36.159 so much sense. So when a tree dies, the earth 00:10:36.159 --> 00:10:38.500 and water and fire inside it don't actually die. 00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:41.080 They just come apart and go somewhere else. Exactly. 00:10:41.320 --> 00:10:44.379 Reality is a remix. Everything we see, this microphone, 00:10:44.639 --> 00:10:47.200 your body, that volcano, is just a temporary 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:49.700 arrangement of the four roots. That sounds incredibly 00:10:49.700 --> 00:10:51.919 modern. It's basically the law of conservation 00:10:51.919 --> 00:10:54.399 of matter. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, 00:10:54.559 --> 00:10:56.820 only transformed. It is the grandfather of that 00:10:56.820 --> 00:10:59.620 law. He established the idea that the universe 00:10:59.620 --> 00:11:02.480 is a closed system. Okay, so we have the building 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:06.279 blocks, the Legos, so to speak. Yeah. But Legos 00:11:06.279 --> 00:11:08.559 don't just build themselves. If I dump a box 00:11:08.559 --> 00:11:10.720 of bricks on the floor, they don't magically 00:11:10.720 --> 00:11:13.320 turn into a castle. They just sit there. What 00:11:13.320 --> 00:11:15.580 makes them move? This is his second stroke of 00:11:15.580 --> 00:11:18.460 genius. He realized that matter needs energy 00:11:18.460 --> 00:11:21.179 to move it. So he introduced two opposing forces, 00:11:21.659 --> 00:11:25.080 love and Greek, philotes and strife, or nikos. 00:11:25.340 --> 00:11:27.659 Love and strife. Again, these sound like emotions, 00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:30.720 not physical forces. In his world, they are both. 00:11:31.149 --> 00:11:34.250 He projected his human experience onto the cosmos. 00:11:34.690 --> 00:11:37.809 Love is the force of attraction. It's what pulls 00:11:37.809 --> 00:11:41.309 unlike things together. It mixes water with earth 00:11:41.309 --> 00:11:44.169 to make mud. It binds people together in friendship. 00:11:44.330 --> 00:11:46.690 And strife is the opposite. Strife is the separator. 00:11:47.049 --> 00:11:49.649 It pushes things apart. It segregates. It separates 00:11:49.649 --> 00:11:52.049 the oil from the vinegar in salad dressing. It's 00:11:52.049 --> 00:11:54.470 a repulsive force. So the entire universe is 00:11:54.470 --> 00:11:56.149 just a battleground between these two forces. 00:11:56.269 --> 00:11:59.070 Yes. And it's not a static battle. It's a cycle. 00:11:59.850 --> 00:12:01.950 Empedocles mapped out a whole cosmic history 00:12:01.950 --> 00:12:04.450 that goes in a loop. It has four distinct stages. 00:12:04.730 --> 00:12:06.250 Okay, let's walk through the stages. I want to 00:12:06.250 --> 00:12:09.009 visualize this. Okay. Stage one is the sphere. 00:12:09.759 --> 00:12:12.460 Imagine a time where love is completely, 100 00:12:12.460 --> 00:12:15.100 % dominant. Strife has been pushed all the way 00:12:15.100 --> 00:12:17.820 outside the universe. So every particle of earth, 00:12:18.039 --> 00:12:21.440 air, fire, and water is perfectly mixed together. 00:12:21.659 --> 00:12:23.919 Like a smoothie. A perfect, seamless smoothie. 00:12:24.080 --> 00:12:26.460 There are no lumps, no distinctions, no sun, 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:29.279 no moon, no trees, no people. Just a perfect, 00:12:29.340 --> 00:12:32.240 featureless sphere of being. It sounds peaceful, 00:12:32.379 --> 00:12:36.220 but also kind of terrifying. There's no me in 00:12:36.220 --> 00:12:38.720 the sphere. Exactly. It's divine. It's perfect. 00:12:38.820 --> 00:12:41.879 But it's static. Nothing happens. Then comes 00:12:41.879 --> 00:12:45.159 stage two, the intrusion of strife. Strife starts 00:12:45.159 --> 00:12:48.159 to leak back in from the edges. Corruption begins. 00:12:48.500 --> 00:12:50.799 Or the creation begins, depending on how you 00:12:50.799 --> 00:12:53.299 look at it. Strife starts to cut into the sphere. 00:12:53.500 --> 00:12:55.960 It begins to separate the elements. The smoothie 00:12:55.960 --> 00:12:59.320 starts to curdle. Vortices form. This is likely 00:12:59.320 --> 00:13:02.259 the Big Bang moment of his cosmology. Things 00:13:02.259 --> 00:13:04.799 start spinning and separating out. And this leads 00:13:04.799 --> 00:13:07.440 to stage three. Stage three is the world of phenomena. 00:13:07.980 --> 00:13:10.440 This is where Empedocles believed we are living 00:13:10.440 --> 00:13:12.820 right now. We are halfway between total unity 00:13:12.820 --> 00:13:15.360 and total separation. We are in the war zone. 00:13:15.720 --> 00:13:17.659 Yes. Love is trying to keep things together. 00:13:17.860 --> 00:13:19.460 That's why your body doesn't just fall apart 00:13:19.460 --> 00:13:21.500 into a pile of dust and water. But strife is 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:23.240 trying to pull them apart. That's why we have 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:25.779 death and decay. The tension between the two 00:13:25.779 --> 00:13:28.440 creates the complexity of life. And then finally, 00:13:28.519 --> 00:13:32.559 stage four. Stage four is total separation. This 00:13:32.559 --> 00:13:35.399 is when strife wins for a time. Love is gone. 00:13:36.120 --> 00:13:39.139 Imagine the universe organized into four massive 00:13:39.139 --> 00:13:42.399 separate layers. A ball of pure earth in the 00:13:42.399 --> 00:13:44.759 middle, surrounded by a shell of pure water, 00:13:44.899 --> 00:13:48.480 then a shell of air, then a shell of fire. So 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:51.299 no mixing at all. No life. Nothing. Just dead 00:13:51.299 --> 00:13:53.669 layers. And then. It doesn't just end there, 00:13:53.710 --> 00:13:56.070 does it? No, because then love begins to creep 00:13:56.070 --> 00:13:58.309 back in, mixing them all up again, and we start 00:13:58.309 --> 00:14:00.490 heading back toward the sphere. It's a pendulum. 00:14:00.509 --> 00:14:02.870 It just swings back and forth forever. A cosmic 00:14:02.870 --> 00:14:06.110 heartbeat. expanding and contracting, uniting 00:14:06.110 --> 00:14:08.710 and separating forever and ever. It's amazing 00:14:08.710 --> 00:14:10.990 how he takes this physical theory and then applies 00:14:10.990 --> 00:14:13.450 it to biology. Yeah. Because when I was reading 00:14:13.450 --> 00:14:15.870 the notes on his theory of evolution, I honestly 00:14:15.870 --> 00:14:17.769 thought I was misreading it. It sounds like a 00:14:17.769 --> 00:14:19.870 horror movie. It really, really does. This is 00:14:19.870 --> 00:14:22.210 the monster section of his philosophy. Right. 00:14:22.250 --> 00:14:24.190 So Empedocles is trying to explain where animals 00:14:24.190 --> 00:14:27.169 come from. But he doesn't say a god made a horse. 00:14:27.409 --> 00:14:30.250 And he doesn't say a fish crawled onto land. 00:14:30.889 --> 00:14:33.460 What does he say? He describes the early stages 00:14:33.460 --> 00:14:36.120 of the world when love was just starting to mix 00:14:36.120 --> 00:14:38.100 things up again from that state of separation. 00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:41.220 He calls it the Lego phase, though obviously 00:14:41.220 --> 00:14:43.179 he didn't use that word. Right. He says that 00:14:43.179 --> 00:14:46.519 before whole animals existed, individual body 00:14:46.519 --> 00:14:49.769 parts were just Wandering around. Wandering around. 00:14:49.850 --> 00:14:52.809 Yes. He writes about heads without necks, arms 00:14:52.809 --> 00:14:55.470 without shoulders, and eyes wandering alone bereft 00:14:55.470 --> 00:14:57.590 of foreheads. I'm sorry. I'm picturing a giant 00:14:57.590 --> 00:15:00.070 eyeball just rolling across the landscape. That 00:15:00.070 --> 00:15:03.620 is absolute nightmare fuel. It is Hieronymus 00:15:03.620 --> 00:15:06.360 Bosch meets ancient Greece. It's total chaos. 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:09.940 So what happens to these wandering limbs? Well, 00:15:09.980 --> 00:15:12.019 they start bumping into each other. And because 00:15:12.019 --> 00:15:14.159 love is the force of attraction, they stick together 00:15:14.159 --> 00:15:16.519 randomly. This is what he calls the hybrid phase. 00:15:16.620 --> 00:15:19.919 Random assembly. So you might get an arm attached 00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:23.220 to an ear. Or much, much worse. Empedocles describes 00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:26.419 creatures with double faces, offspring of oxen 00:15:26.419 --> 00:15:29.740 with human faces, humans with ox heads, and creatures 00:15:29.740 --> 00:15:32.259 of double sex. Man -faced oxen. It sounds like 00:15:32.259 --> 00:15:36.059 the minotaur, but everywhere. Just these groaning, 00:15:36.159 --> 00:15:39.460 mismatched monstrosities stumbling around. Exactly. 00:15:39.659 --> 00:15:42.340 But here is the scientific brilliance hidden 00:15:42.340 --> 00:15:45.059 inside the monster movie. He asks the question, 00:15:45.320 --> 00:15:49.080 why don't we see... man -faced oxen walking around 00:15:49.080 --> 00:15:51.000 today. Because they're terrifying. Because they 00:15:51.000 --> 00:15:53.879 died. Empedocles argues that most of these random 00:15:53.879 --> 00:15:57.019 combinations were not adapted to survive. The 00:15:57.019 --> 00:15:59.580 man -faced ox maybe couldn't chew glass properly. 00:15:59.879 --> 00:16:02.120 The head walking on arms couldn't reproduce. 00:16:02.620 --> 00:16:05.659 So they perished. They were filtered out by nature. 00:16:05.899 --> 00:16:08.779 Wait a minute. That is, that's natural selection. 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:11.259 It is the core mechanism of natural selection. 00:16:11.870 --> 00:16:14.669 2 ,000 years before Darwin. Darwin said that 00:16:14.669 --> 00:16:16.730 nature produces variations and the environment 00:16:16.730 --> 00:16:19.070 selects the ones that work. Empedocles is saying 00:16:19.070 --> 00:16:21.429 the exact same thing. Wow. He believed nature 00:16:21.429 --> 00:16:23.830 produced these random monsters and only the ones 00:16:23.830 --> 00:16:25.370 that happened to fit together correctly, the 00:16:25.370 --> 00:16:27.169 ones where the teeth matched the stomach and 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.610 the legs could actually run, only those survived 00:16:29.610 --> 00:16:31.570 to have babies. That is absolutely incredible. 00:16:31.870 --> 00:16:34.330 He missed the slow change over millions of years 00:16:34.330 --> 00:16:37.169 part, but he nailed the survival of the fittest 00:16:37.169 --> 00:16:40.690 part. He did. He viewed the order we see in nature 00:16:40.690 --> 00:16:43.669 not as a perfect design by a god, but as the 00:16:43.669 --> 00:16:46.970 survivor of a massacre. The beautiful horses 00:16:46.970 --> 00:16:49.610 and lions we see today were just the lucky few 00:16:49.610 --> 00:16:52.789 who weren't monsters. That is a dark but brilliant 00:16:52.789 --> 00:16:55.110 way to look at the world. It forces us to rethink 00:16:55.110 --> 00:16:57.429 the history of science. We think of evolution 00:16:57.429 --> 00:17:01.570 as a 19th century idea, but here it is in 450 00:17:01.570 --> 00:17:04.769 BC written in poetry. So we've got physics, we've 00:17:04.769 --> 00:17:07.720 got evolution. But Empedocles wasn't just observing 00:17:07.720 --> 00:17:11.160 the outside world. He was deeply, deeply concerned 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:14.200 with the inside world. The soul. This is where 00:17:14.200 --> 00:17:16.740 the shaman comes back in a big way. Empedocles 00:17:16.740 --> 00:17:19.059 was a firm believer in metempsychosis. Which 00:17:19.059 --> 00:17:21.079 is reincarnation. Transmigration of the soul, 00:17:21.180 --> 00:17:23.240 yeah. He believed that the soul is an immortal 00:17:23.240 --> 00:17:25.220 thing that travels through different shapes over 00:17:25.220 --> 00:17:27.859 time. It can be a human, an animal, or even a 00:17:27.859 --> 00:17:30.819 plant. Even a plant. Yes. Empedocles actually 00:17:30.819 --> 00:17:33.059 claims to remember his past lives. There's a 00:17:33.059 --> 00:17:35.640 very famous fragment where he says, For I have 00:17:35.640 --> 00:17:38.279 already been a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird 00:17:38.279 --> 00:17:40.940 and a mute sea fish. He remembers being a bush. 00:17:41.099 --> 00:17:43.660 I wonder what that felt like. Photosynthesis 00:17:43.660 --> 00:17:46.119 and vibes. Probably very peaceful until a goat 00:17:46.119 --> 00:17:48.279 comes along. But for Empedocles, this isn't just 00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:51.539 a fun past life story. Reincarnation was a punishment. 00:17:51.799 --> 00:17:55.460 A punishment? How so? He believed that we, or 00:17:55.460 --> 00:17:57.559 at least some of us, are what he called fallen 00:17:57.559 --> 00:18:00.940 daemons. Daemons. Like demons. In Greek, a daemon 00:18:00.940 --> 00:18:03.500 isn't necessarily evil. It's more like a divine 00:18:03.500 --> 00:18:07.140 spirit. A minor god. Empedocles believed we used 00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:09.339 to live in that perfect sphere of love. We were 00:18:09.339 --> 00:18:12.859 divine and we were blissfully happy. But then, 00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:15.579 we committed a crime. What crime did we commit? 00:18:15.920 --> 00:18:19.200 The text suggests bloodshed. Or maybe perjury, 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:21.960 breaking a sacred oath. We trusted in strife. 00:18:22.059 --> 00:18:24.859 We engaged in violence. And as punishment, we 00:18:24.859 --> 00:18:27.140 were cast out of the sphere and forced to wander 00:18:27.140 --> 00:18:29.220 this chaotic earth. So we were grounded. For 00:18:29.220 --> 00:18:32.640 a very long time. The sentence is 30 ,000 seasons, 00:18:32.700 --> 00:18:35.990 which... Probably means cycles. Wow. 30 ,000 00:18:35.990 --> 00:18:38.289 seasons. That is a long time to think about what 00:18:38.289 --> 00:18:41.549 you did. And you have to spend those seasons 00:18:41.549 --> 00:18:43.849 cycling through mortal bodies. You're tossed 00:18:43.849 --> 00:18:46.710 from the ocean as a fish to the air as a bird 00:18:46.710 --> 00:18:49.250 to the land as a beast. The elements themselves 00:18:49.250 --> 00:18:52.890 hate you. He writes, the force of the air pursues 00:18:52.890 --> 00:18:55.930 them into the sea. The sea spits them onto the 00:18:55.930 --> 00:18:58.210 threshold of the earth. Nobody wants the sinner. 00:18:58.349 --> 00:19:00.869 Nobody wants you. You're in exile. This explains 00:19:00.869 --> 00:19:03.029 the vegetarianism, doesn't it? It connects perfectly. 00:19:03.670 --> 00:19:07.250 Empedocles was a militant vegetarian. But it 00:19:07.250 --> 00:19:09.509 wasn't for health reasons or animal welfare, 00:19:09.609 --> 00:19:12.109 as we think of it. It was a cosmic necessity. 00:19:12.450 --> 00:19:15.430 Because if souls reincarnate into animals. Exactly. 00:19:15.430 --> 00:19:17.410 If you kill a cow and eat a steak, you might 00:19:17.410 --> 00:19:19.210 be killing and eating your late grandfather. 00:19:19.569 --> 00:19:22.450 Or a fallen god who is serving his time. It's 00:19:22.450 --> 00:19:24.890 essentially cannibalism. Spiritual cannibalism. 00:19:25.390 --> 00:19:28.390 He writes this horrifying passage about a father 00:19:28.390 --> 00:19:30.849 lifting up his own son, who has changed form 00:19:30.849 --> 00:19:33.369 into an animal, and slaughtering him while saying 00:19:33.369 --> 00:19:36.430 a prayer. He calls it the ultimate horror. raises 00:19:36.430 --> 00:19:39.410 the stakes of dinner. It does. But notice the 00:19:39.410 --> 00:19:42.430 consistency, right? In the sphere of love, everything 00:19:42.430 --> 00:19:45.230 is united. There is no killing. In the world 00:19:45.230 --> 00:19:47.829 of strife, we kill and eat each other. So by 00:19:47.829 --> 00:19:50.990 being vegetarian, Empedocles is trying to reject 00:19:50.990 --> 00:19:53.390 strife. He is trying to live according to the 00:19:53.390 --> 00:19:55.430 law of love. He's trying to act like he's already 00:19:55.430 --> 00:19:58.430 back in the sphere. Exactly. It's an act of rebellion 00:19:58.430 --> 00:20:01.009 against the chaos of the world. It's beautiful 00:20:01.009 --> 00:20:04.650 in a way. He sees every living thing as a brother 00:20:04.650 --> 00:20:07.869 or sister in exile. It's a radical empathy that 00:20:07.869 --> 00:20:10.190 flows directly from his physics. Okay, I want 00:20:10.190 --> 00:20:13.130 to switch gears now. We've been very high concept 00:20:13.130 --> 00:20:16.130 cosmic cycles, reincarnated bushes. Yeah. But 00:20:16.130 --> 00:20:18.650 I want to talk about a specific kitchen utensil. 00:20:18.670 --> 00:20:21.720 Ah, the klepsydra. The water thief. When I read 00:20:21.720 --> 00:20:23.420 about this, I had trouble visualizing it. Can 00:20:23.420 --> 00:20:24.980 you walk us through what this thing actually 00:20:24.980 --> 00:20:27.640 is? Sure. Picture a sphere made of bronze, maybe 00:20:27.640 --> 00:20:30.079 the size of a grapefruit or a large orange. Okay, 00:20:30.180 --> 00:20:32.200 holding the bronze grapefruit in my mind. On 00:20:32.200 --> 00:20:34.180 the bottom of the sphere, there are lots of tiny 00:20:34.180 --> 00:20:37.200 holes, like a sieve or a colander. On the top, 00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:40.299 there is a long, narrow neck, like a bottleneck, 00:20:40.299 --> 00:20:43.440 with a single open hole at the very tip. Got 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:46.559 it. Siv on the bottom, one hole on top. Now imagine 00:20:46.559 --> 00:20:48.720 you're Empedocles. You're playing with this thing 00:20:48.720 --> 00:20:51.539 in a basin of water. You dunk the sphere underwater. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:54.319 What happens? Water rushes in through the siv 00:20:54.319 --> 00:20:57.079 at the bottom, right? Naturally. But what happens 00:20:57.079 --> 00:20:59.200 if you put your thumb over the top hole before 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:02.059 you dunk it? If I cover the top hole and push 00:21:02.059 --> 00:21:05.759 it down, the water can't get in, or very little 00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:09.279 gets in. It stays mostly empty. Why? Well... 00:21:09.660 --> 00:21:12.140 Because the air is trapped inside. It's pushing 00:21:12.140 --> 00:21:14.960 back. The air is inside. Stop and think about 00:21:14.960 --> 00:21:16.940 that statement for a second. To us, that's obvious. 00:21:17.019 --> 00:21:20.960 But in 450 BC, most people, most philosophers, 00:21:21.140 --> 00:21:24.279 thought air was nothing. It was void. Empty space. 00:21:24.640 --> 00:21:27.359 Right. If a cup has no water in it, we say it's 00:21:27.359 --> 00:21:29.920 empty. But Empedocles sees the water trying to 00:21:29.920 --> 00:21:31.980 get in and something invisible is pushing it 00:21:31.980 --> 00:21:34.339 back. The nothing is fighting the something. 00:21:34.619 --> 00:21:37.119 And winning. And winning, exactly. Yeah. The 00:21:37.119 --> 00:21:40.900 air effectively blocks the water. Then, if he 00:21:40.900 --> 00:21:42.980 lifts his thumb off the top hole while it's still 00:21:42.980 --> 00:21:45.619 underwater, what happens? The air rushes out 00:21:45.619 --> 00:21:47.920 and the water rushes in. You can feel the air 00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:50.079 against your finger. It's a physical thing. It's 00:21:50.079 --> 00:21:52.640 such a simple experiment. A child could do it. 00:21:52.859 --> 00:21:55.910 And that's the brilliance. He used a common household 00:21:55.910 --> 00:21:59.529 tool, basically a ladle or a wine thief, to prove 00:21:59.529 --> 00:22:03.569 a massive point in physics. Air is a corporeal 00:22:03.569 --> 00:22:06.589 substance. It's a body. It takes up space. It 00:22:06.589 --> 00:22:08.910 exerts pressure. He proved the invisible world 00:22:08.910 --> 00:22:12.410 is physical. He eliminated the void from physics, 00:22:12.589 --> 00:22:15.529 at least for a while. He showed that even when 00:22:15.529 --> 00:22:18.349 things look empty, they are full of matter. And 00:22:18.349 --> 00:22:20.839 he even applied this to the human body. He thought 00:22:20.839 --> 00:22:22.940 breathing worked the same way, blood and air 00:22:22.940 --> 00:22:25.460 moving in and out of pores, driven by pressure, 00:22:25.619 --> 00:22:27.940 just like the Clepsydra. It really shows that 00:22:27.940 --> 00:22:30.039 he wasn't just a mystic having visions in a cave. 00:22:30.119 --> 00:22:32.059 He was an observer. He's running experiments. 00:22:32.579 --> 00:22:34.960 He was. And this brings us to another one of 00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:37.759 his scientific hits, light. Oh, right. The speed 00:22:37.759 --> 00:22:39.480 of light. Well, the idea of the speed of light. 00:22:39.880 --> 00:22:41.619 Empedocles was the first person we know of to 00:22:41.619 --> 00:22:43.640 suggest that light travels. As opposed to what? 00:22:43.720 --> 00:22:48.059 Just being there instantly? Teleporting. As opposed 00:22:48.059 --> 00:22:51.539 to being instantaneous. Aristotle, much later, 00:22:51.680 --> 00:22:53.599 argued that light is just a state of the air. 00:22:53.700 --> 00:22:55.539 Like, if I open the door to a dark room, the 00:22:55.539 --> 00:22:57.920 room is instantly lit. It happens all at once. 00:22:58.019 --> 00:23:01.720 Right. Empedocles said, no, light is a substance. 00:23:01.799 --> 00:23:04.299 It's a form of fire. It has to stream from the 00:23:04.299 --> 00:23:07.640 sun to the earth. And if it moves, it must take 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.259 time to get here. He was right. It takes about 00:23:10.259 --> 00:23:12.339 eight minutes for light to get from the sun to 00:23:12.339 --> 00:23:15.400 us. He couldn't measure it, obviously. The idea 00:23:15.400 --> 00:23:18.109 was probably inconceivable. But his intuition... 00:23:18.109 --> 00:23:25.170 He thought we see things because tiny particles, 00:23:25.369 --> 00:23:27.970 effluences, fly off objects and hit our eyes. 00:23:28.190 --> 00:23:30.309 The high -five theory of vision. Something has 00:23:30.309 --> 00:23:32.289 to physically touch you. Exactly. And he had 00:23:32.289 --> 00:23:34.430 this quirky little add -on, this idea that, like, 00:23:34.430 --> 00:23:37.289 is known by like. We see fire because we have 00:23:37.289 --> 00:23:39.829 fire in our eyes. We perceive water because we 00:23:39.829 --> 00:23:41.910 have water in us. So if I didn't have any fire 00:23:41.910 --> 00:23:44.069 in my eye, I would be blind to a candle. That 00:23:44.069 --> 00:23:46.799 was the theory. It's biologically wrong, of course, 00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:50.339 but the core concept that sensation is a physical 00:23:50.339 --> 00:23:52.579 interaction between the observer and the object 00:23:52.579 --> 00:23:56.859 is the basis of all modern sensory science. It's 00:23:56.859 --> 00:23:59.299 fascinating. He's right about the general mechanics, 00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:02.019 like particles are moving, even if he's wrong 00:24:02.019 --> 00:24:04.279 about the specific details, like fire in the 00:24:04.279 --> 00:24:06.099 eyeballs. Exactly. He's building the foundation. 00:24:06.519 --> 00:24:10.339 So we have this massive body of work, but there's 00:24:10.339 --> 00:24:14.119 a mystery that plagued scholars for centuries. 00:24:14.700 --> 00:24:17.319 It seemed like Empedocles had a split personality. 00:24:17.700 --> 00:24:20.140 This is the two poems problem. Traditionally, 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:22.339 scholars thought Empedocles wrote two completely 00:24:22.339 --> 00:24:24.779 different books. One was called On Nature, and 00:24:24.779 --> 00:24:27.500 it was the science book physics. The Elements 00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:29.759 Evolution. The textbook. Right. And the other 00:24:29.759 --> 00:24:32.339 was called Purifications. And that was the religious 00:24:32.339 --> 00:24:34.400 book reincarnation, vegetarianism, the fallen 00:24:34.400 --> 00:24:36.519 demon. And it makes sense why people would think 00:24:36.519 --> 00:24:38.599 they were separate. It's hard to imagine the 00:24:38.599 --> 00:24:41.240 same guy writing about the pressure of air in 00:24:41.240 --> 00:24:44.420 Eclipse, Sidra, and I was a bush once. It fits 00:24:44.420 --> 00:24:46.880 our modern bias, doesn't it? We like to separate 00:24:46.880 --> 00:24:50.000 science and religion. So historians just assumed 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:51.920 he had a scientific phase and then a religious 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:54.000 phase. Maybe he found religion in his old age 00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.490 or something. But then. 1999 happened. The Strasburg 00:24:57.490 --> 00:25:00.089 Papyrus. This is a real -life textual detective 00:25:00.089 --> 00:25:02.849 story. It's so cool. What happened? Where did 00:25:02.849 --> 00:25:05.279 they find it? In a library in Strasbourg, France, 00:25:05.579 --> 00:25:08.440 scholars finally examined some papyrus fragments 00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:10.940 that had just been sitting there neglected for 00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:14.339 decades. They had been used to make a kind of 00:25:14.339 --> 00:25:17.900 papier -mâché wreath for a mummy in Egypt. Wait, 00:25:17.920 --> 00:25:19.900 they were mummy wrapping? Basically, yeah. In 00:25:19.900 --> 00:25:22.460 antiquity, old scrap paper was often recycled 00:25:22.460 --> 00:25:25.440 to make cartonage for mummies. So these fragments 00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:28.000 were painstakingly peeled apart. And when they 00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:30.920 read the Greek text, they realized it was Empedocles. 00:25:31.140 --> 00:25:33.589 What did it say? This is the bombshell. They 00:25:33.589 --> 00:25:37.130 found over 50 new lines of his poetry. And in 00:25:37.130 --> 00:25:39.650 these fragments, the religious stuff about the 00:25:39.650 --> 00:25:42.509 daemons and sin was woven directly into the scientific 00:25:42.509 --> 00:25:45.109 stuff about the elements and the cosmic cycle. 00:25:45.349 --> 00:25:47.470 So they weren't two different books. Or if they 00:25:47.470 --> 00:25:50.109 were, the content wasn't separated into science 00:25:50.109 --> 00:25:53.490 and religion. The Strasbourg papyrus showed us 00:25:53.490 --> 00:25:56.579 that for Empedocles, physics was theology the 00:25:56.579 --> 00:25:58.640 story of the fallen daemon is part of the story 00:25:58.640 --> 00:26:01.380 of the cosmic cycle exactly you are a fallen 00:26:01.380 --> 00:26:04.839 soul because of the force of strife you are reincarnating 00:26:04.839 --> 00:26:06.839 because the elements are separating and mixing 00:26:06.839 --> 00:26:09.819 in this stage of the cycle the cycle of your 00:26:09.819 --> 00:26:12.099 soul and the cycle of the universe are the same 00:26:12.099 --> 00:26:15.180 thing they're one unified story there's a profound 00:26:15.180 --> 00:26:17.839 realization it means he wasn't a schizophrenic 00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:20.299 thinker he was a unified thinker he was trying 00:26:20.299 --> 00:26:23.299 to build a theory of everything To him, understanding 00:26:23.299 --> 00:26:25.400 the four roots wasn't just chemistry, it was 00:26:25.400 --> 00:26:28.279 the path to salvation. If you understand how 00:26:28.279 --> 00:26:30.700 the universe works, you can purify your soul 00:26:30.700 --> 00:26:33.319 and get back to the sphere of love. Science is 00:26:33.319 --> 00:26:35.740 a spiritual practice. Precisely. So let's bring 00:26:35.740 --> 00:26:38.059 us all back to the edge of the volcano. We started 00:26:38.059 --> 00:26:40.059 with this image of a madman jumping into the 00:26:40.059 --> 00:26:43.400 lava. But now, after looking at his work, who 00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:45.339 do we see standing there? We see the bridge. 00:26:46.400 --> 00:26:48.720 Empedocles stands right on the fault line between 00:26:48.720 --> 00:26:51.099 the old world of myth and the new world of reason. 00:26:51.440 --> 00:26:55.339 He uses the language of gods, Zeus, Hera, Nestus, 00:26:55.359 --> 00:26:58.279 to explain the laws of matter, like the elements 00:26:58.279 --> 00:27:00.859 in conservation. He gave us the four elements, 00:27:01.059 --> 00:27:04.220 a theory that dominated science until the periodic 00:27:04.220 --> 00:27:06.519 table was invented. He gave us the foundational 00:27:06.519 --> 00:27:09.809 idea that the universe is a closed system. that 00:27:09.809 --> 00:27:12.690 nothing comes from nothing. Things just get rearranged. 00:27:12.809 --> 00:27:15.029 He gave us a preview of natural selection and 00:27:15.029 --> 00:27:17.289 the survival of the fittest centuries before 00:27:17.289 --> 00:27:20.109 anyone else. And he proved air exists with essentially 00:27:20.109 --> 00:27:22.130 a kitchen ladle. And he did it all while wearing 00:27:22.130 --> 00:27:24.049 bronze sandals and writing in Hicks Amateurverse. 00:27:24.170 --> 00:27:27.130 He truly was one of a kind, a complete original. 00:27:27.529 --> 00:27:29.529 As we wrap up, I want to leave you with a final 00:27:29.529 --> 00:27:31.210 thought, something to chew on about that cosmic 00:27:31.210 --> 00:27:34.930 cycle. Empedocles believed the sphere, that state 00:27:34.930 --> 00:27:37.670 where love is totally dominant, was the perfect 00:27:37.670 --> 00:27:42.029 state. It was heaven, utopia. Yes. Total unity. 00:27:42.369 --> 00:27:46.309 No conflict. But in that state, we don't exist. 00:27:46.490 --> 00:27:48.390 There are no individuals. There is no you, no 00:27:48.390 --> 00:27:51.089 me, no deep dive to listen to. We're just a blended 00:27:51.089 --> 00:27:54.569 smoothie. That's the irony, isn't it? Existence, 00:27:54.569 --> 00:27:57.809 our specific individual lives, is only possible 00:27:57.809 --> 00:28:01.579 because of strife. Strife. breaks the unity strife 00:28:01.579 --> 00:28:04.180 creates the separation that allows me to be distinct 00:28:04.180 --> 00:28:06.940 from you and for you the listener to be distinct 00:28:06.940 --> 00:28:09.799 from us so in a strange way we owe our existence 00:28:09.799 --> 00:28:12.960 to the bad guy of his cosmic drama we need a 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:15.500 little bit of cosmic conflict just to be ourselves 00:28:15.500 --> 00:28:18.160 so the next time your life feels chaotic or things 00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:20.789 feel like they are falling apart Maybe remember 00:28:20.789 --> 00:28:23.529 Empedocles. That chaos isn't just a nuisance. 00:28:23.609 --> 00:28:25.670 It's the only reason you're here at all. Strife 00:28:25.670 --> 00:28:27.930 is what makes you, you. A provocative thought 00:28:27.930 --> 00:28:30.089 to end on. Thanks for diving deep with us. Until 00:28:30.089 --> 00:28:30.569 next time.