Patricia Curd

Powers, Structure, and Thought in Empedocles

Abstract How is it that Empedocles’ world is is an organized system of diverse entities and how does this system of maintain regularity over long periods of time? I suggest that it is the impulses and thoughts of the roots and of Love and Strife that answer these questions. Love and Strife, working within the laws of nature provide the major structural aspects of the cosmos: the circular motion of the whirls created by the opposing forces produce the masses of roots that are worked up into the heavenly bodies and the living things that populate the cosmos. It is useful to conceive of Empedocles as a proto-power-structuralist. The basic ingredients of the world are ontologically prior to the medium sized objects of sensible experience: it is not the case that there are underlying Aristotelian subjects with properties and attributes depending on those subjects.