Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each claim by which pluralist holds it.
Groups: Empedocles · Anaxagoras
- There are exactly four eternal roots
- Creatures arose by random combination and differential survival
- Love and Strife drive cosmic cycles
- Mind is unmixed and initiates the cosmic rotation
- In everything there is a portion of everything
Hints
- One posits a small fixed number of elements; the other posits infinitely many kinds everywhere.
- The ordering mind belongs to the second.
Show the answer
Empedocles: There are exactly four eternal roots, Love and Strife drive cosmic cycles, Creatures arose by random combination and differential survival
Anaxagoras: In everything there is a portion of everything, Mind is unmixed and initiates the cosmic rotation
Why
Empedocles is the more economical and Anaxagoras the stranger: infinite divisibility with everything in everything, ordered by a mind that is the one unmixed thing. Both satisfy Parmenides on coming-to-be.
Practise The Pluralists: Empedocles and Anaxagoras
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