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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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6. Scientific Views of the Cynics. The doxography
contains in section 73 a passage of scientific, theoretical
character. Cynicism may have derived its view of
nature via the Sophists from Anaxagoras (who had
considerable influence on Athenian philosophical
views), from Diogenes of Apollonia, and from the
Atomists. It is easy to find fragments which tie up with
the main theme of this passage. The source quoted is
Diogenes' tragedy Thyestes, with the reservation that
the tragedies may not be genuine. Diogenes

... saw no impropriety either in stealing anything from
a temple or eating the flesh of any animal; nor even anything
impious in touching human flesh, this, he said, being clear
from the custom of some foreign nations. Moreover, accord-
ing to right reason, as he put it, all elements are contained
in all things and pervade everything: since not only is meat
a constituent of bread, but bread of vegetables; and all other
bodies also, by means of certain invisible passages and
particles, find their way and unite with all substances in
the form of vapor.

It is quite possible to date this passage to the fourth
century B.C. The idea that lies behind it is old; the
scientific terms are early technical terms, and even if
the whole line of reasoning in this section is foreign
to the traditional view of Diogenes, which ignores his
intellectual side, we must still reckon with the possi-
bility that Diogenes justified his radical views with
plausible and appropriate scientific arguments. He was
not, however, interested in physical or logical problems
for their own sake.

This part of Diogenes' doxography is the only place
in the whole Diogenes tradition where we have a
reference to a really scientific theory as a justification
of Diogenes' views. Elsewhere he adduces simple,
eristic arguments to support a radical thesis or to
explain an objectionable phenomenon. The passage
contains no word about the desirability of the realiza-
tion of the theory in actual society or in any ideal state.