Melissus of Samos in a New Light: Aristotle's "Physics" 186a10-16

Author(s): Daniel E. Gershenson and Daniel A. Greenberg

Source: Phronesis, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1961), pp. 1-9
Published by: BRILL
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Melissusof Samosin a New Light:

Aristotle's Physics
DANIEL
DANIEL

186aiO-16'

E. GERSHENSON
A. GREENBERG

1. Introduction:Aristotleon Melissus' Logic

TIHREE

TIMES

in the de SophisticisElenchis2 Aristotle attacks Melissus

for using false logic.

Each time the same argument is called in question. Melissus begins
with the true statement (i) that everything that has come into being
has a beginning. From this he deduces (2) that everything which-has a
beginning has come into being.
What puzzles Aristotle is the steps Melissus used to deduce (2) from
(I). He finds three possible false logical arguments which Melissus might
have followed: (a) In I 67 b 17- i 8 Aristotle suggests that Melissus might
have said: If what has come to be always has a first beginning, then, by
simple inversion, what has a first beginning has come to be. Aristotle
illustrates the fallacy here by comparing this inversion to the one
employed in saying that if a man in a fever is hot, then a man who is hot
the following is offered as a possible
is in a fever. (b) In I68b39-40
train of thought employed by Melissus: Since tlhat which has conmeinto
being has a beginning, and since that which comes to an end has a
beginning,3 then that which has come into being is identical with that
which comes to an end (and one can be substituted for the other in any
proposition). If, then, that which has a beginning is one and the sanme
as that which comes to an end, then that which has a beginning is one
and the same as that which comes into being (by substitution). Clearly,
the absurdity here is to equate that which has come into being with that
which has come to an end, merely because they share an accidental
quality, namely, having a beginning. Following this reasoning, Aristotle
points out,4 swans and snow will be identical in all respects (and
1

This study was supported in part by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
a x67bi3f.,
168b3g[., 18ia27f.
Here Aristotle assumes the proposition which he defends at length in the Physics,
that that which has a beginning has an end and vice-versa.

4 168b34-3s.
I

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interchangeable in all propositions) because they both happen to "be

white". (c) In i8i a28-29 Melissus is pictured as arguing as follows: If
that which has come into being has a beginning, that which has not
come into being has no beginning (i.e., that which has a beginning has
come into being'). Aristotle's comment on this case of false negation is,
"The fallacy of opposites consists in saying that if p implies q, then
not-p implies not-q ... This is not, however, so, for the correct negation
is that not-q implies not-p."2
Why is Aristotle so concerned with the inference of proposition
(2) from proposition (i)? On the one hand, as we have seen, he includes
other examples of the above three logical fallacies, andon the other
hand, Melissus employs false logic elsewhere 3 which Aristotle might
also have drawn upon in refuLtinghim. Proposition (2), then must have
been crucial to Melissus' system and especially offensive to Aristotle.
That it was a cornerstone of Melissus' theory, is at least in part suggested
by its prominent place among the fragments; that Aristotle felt obliged
to combat it so strongly, is seen from i 8 a X7-20, where he says that it
must be dealt with in any scientific treatise because it involves a basic
absurdity in viewing the nature of reality. For, indeed, it is not true that
everything which has a beginning has come into being, if by coming into
being one means, as Melissus and all the Eleatics did, coming into being
in an unqualified sense, i.e., the appearance of something existent out
of the nonexistent. Everv change and transformation has a beginning,
but does not involve the coming-to-be of anything essential. Thus, in
order to allow for the obvious changes which take place in Nature,
Aristotle feels compelled to show that this argument of Melissus is
sophistic and that Melissus does not, in fact, prove that all beginnings
imply substantial coming-to-be.
There are, then, according to Aristotle, three possible logical arguments
from (X) to (2), all of them specious. The mistake in reasoning in (a) is
obvious, and not generally made; that in (b) is intricate, slightly forced
and not easily followed; the fallacy in (c) is easy to fall into and easy to
understand. Therefore it will be the one to appear in an) treatise not
concerned with logic (such as the Physics), in the context of a general
attack on Melissus; and it is the one which appears at i 86a i o- i 6.

This is the correct negation of "that which has not come into being has no beginning.'
a26-27, 29-30.
Cf. i68b37, 4o-i6ga2.

2 i8I
3

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11. Some Modern Interpretations of Physics i86a

o-i6

The passage in question reads as follows:

MDLaaog, 8niBov OterXLyap ?LX7ipE ,
6TL xxt T'0 [
xacxv,
yev6lievov o0ux 9Xe.
gXeL
&pXy'v
yev61ievov
Jra xocdL'ro5to -rrtouv, t4 7atrov 1LvaXL&px-Yv- ro5 7rp&y[L1TO
xKL
Xi &X&Xa
TOX5yp6vou, xotxyeveaco
XOt' OXXo0LCGaEW4,
ep
oux &cOpo6c,yLyV0OLevT
CxaoXc.
6TtL

LCV

O?v 7=pao tXyL[ET

?C

The following translations of this passage have been made:

Dass nun Melissos einen formellen Fehlschluss macht ist klar; er glaubt naemlich auf der
Annahme zu stehen, dass, wenn alles Gewordene einen Anfang hat, darum auch das
Ungewordene keinen Anfang habe. Ausserdem ist auch das ungereimt, dass er glaubt,
es muesse von allem und jedem Dinge einen Anfang des Dinges selbst geben, dabei aber
an die Zeit nicht denkt, und ebenso es muesse einen Anfang des Entstehens, und zwar
nicht bloss des schlechthinigen Entstehens, sondern auch der qualitativen Aenderung
geben, gerade als gaebe es gar keine zumal vor sich gehende Veraenderung.1
The fallacy of Melissus is obvious. For he supposes that the assumption 'What has
come into being always has a beginning', justifies the assumption 'What has not come
into being has no beginning'. Then this also is absurd, that in every case there should be
a beginning of the thing - not of the time and not only in the case of coming to be in the
full sense but also in the case of coming to have a quality - as if change never took place
suddenly..2
Dass Melissos falsch schliesst, ist einzusehen. Er meint naemlich, wenn alles Gewordene einen Anfang habe, dann habe das nicht Gewordene keinen. Sodann ist es auch
nicht folgerichtig fuer jedes Ding einen Anfang anzunehmen, fuer die Zeit aber ein
Gleiches zu leugnen, ebenso fuer das Werden, und zwar nicht nur fuer das Werden im
Ganzen, sondern auch fuer die Umwandlung, als wenn es ein Werden im Ganzen gar
nicht erst gaebe !"
The false reasoning of Melissus is palpable; for, assuming that 'all that comes into
existence has a beginning,' he deduces from it 'all that does not come into existence has
no beginning.' And, moreover, the assumption itself 'whatever comes into existence
has a beginning' is untenable, in so far as 'began some-when' is taken (as Melissus takes
it) to be equivalent to 'begins some-where' (so that if the Universe 'had no beginning'
it 'can have no limit,' and is 'unbounded'): and again in so far as no distinction is made
between the thing itself having to begin-to-be at 'some particular point of time,' and a
modification of the thing itself, - as if there could not be a simultaneous modification
over the whole field affected.4
1 Prantl, C., Aristoteles'Acht BuecherPhysik ,(Leipzig, i854), 7.
2 The Worksof Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, U. Physica, trans. R. P. Hardieand R. K. Gaye,
(Oxford, 1930).
3 Gohlke, P., Aristoteles' PhysikalischeVorlesung,(Paderborn, 1956),
35.
' Aristotle Physics,trans. P. H. Wicksteed and F. M. Corford, (Cambridge, 1957), 29.

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Burnet has granted license to each translatorto deal with this passage
as he will. He writes, "I can make nothing of i86 a I3-I6." 1
Prantl, in defending his translation, adds: "Aristoteles nun wirft ihm
(i.e. Melissus) mit Recht vor, dass er fuer die ganze Untersuchung, ob
denn jede Veraenderung einen Anfang (sei es in Bezug auf das veraenderte
Ding oder in Bezug auf die Zeit der Veraenderung) habe, eigentlich
keinen Sinn besitze." 2 Melissus is thus pictured as having said in clear
terms the opposite of what he consistently maintained; he everywhere
holds that everything is eternal and that no change can exist in nature.
Prantl must further assume that Aristotle took the pains to point out
such an obvious inconsistency. Ross, on the other hand, postulates that
Melissus investigated the details of the process of change, though he
denied the existence of change. Ross writes in his note on the passage:
"[Melissus] must... have argued that if a change takes place, it must
begin at a particular point and then spread." 3
The above interpretations all encounter the following difficulties: In
line I 3 all the translators have assumed that the statement that there is
a beginning of all things belongs to Melissus, though it is contrary to his
well known view. This is, of course, what led Prantl into his curious
explanation. Moreover, in line I4 the phrase xo' , toi3 xpovo0u is
completely obscure. Again, the relevance of what comes next is puzzling,
for why should Melissus assume the existence of "a beginning of qualitative change", in addition to 'a beginning of simple change", if he
believes in neither? Also perplexing is the prevailing interpretation of
what all have seen to be Aristotle's own comment. Aristotle expresses
surprise that Melissus does not know that change is &0p4o;,i.e., according
to the interpreters, "sudden". What is this common experience of
sudden change to which Aristotle is referring? Certainly, he never
mentions it elsewhere in his treatises on natural philosophy.4
Burnet, J., Early GreekPhilosophy, (London, 1892'), 336, footnote So.
Prantl, op. cit., 474, footnote i i.
and Commentary,(Oxford,
3 Ross, W. D., Aristotle's Physics,a RevisedText With Introdfuction
1936), 471.
4 The search for such a process of instantaneous change led Prantl, and with him all
his successors, to the sole example in Aristotle of change which occurs &Op6oq. In
2S3b 25 we find freezing used as an example of such qualitative change. The regular
meaning of &dOp6ois "gathered together,' "thick," "frequent", or "all around," as in
this case. Aristotle is saying in Book VIII of the Physicsthat freezing is not the growth of
a single nucleus of ice until it fills the entire volume which the liquid had occupied, but
rather the crystallization of the liquid occurring simultaneously in many places. This is a
simple statement based on direct observation. The passage was taken, erroneously,
1

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Most curious, however, is the introduction of the distinction between

"some-when" and "some-where" in the Cornford-Wicksteed translation. The concept of space seems not at all to be connected with the
argument. This was certainly clear to Burnet in the first edition of
Early GreekPhilosophy(341).1
How, then, did our passagecome to be
to
a
confusion
of space and time? What brought even
taken as referring
Burnet in his later editions to concur in this interpretation? 2
It is not difficult to see how so great a scholar as Burnet was led to
such an unlikely position, and why Ross 3 and others followed. Once
' OU5TO &Tonov ("this too is absurd, etc." X86 a I 3) are
the words esl'a xom
attributed to Aristotle, only two possibilities remain: either Aristotle
is accusing Melissus of having made a statement inconsistent with his
usual opinions, or Aristotle himself is holding a particular idea to be
absurd. Prantl holds the first alternative, with the following results:
that Aristotle attributes to Melissus a view which he is nowhere else
said to have held, and that Aristotle finds it necessary to carry on an
extended dispute with a philosopher who is not capable of distinguishing
a statement from its opposite.
Accordingly, later scholars chose the second alternative. Aristotle is
thus represented as saying that it is absurd in general to hold that 7wV
has a beginning. If ,t&v is to be taken as meaning "the Universe", its
most natural interpretation, then the same difficulty that Prantl faced
arises: Melissus will then, according to Aristotle, be blatantly selfcontradictory. To meet this difficulty, wasvis taken adjectivally to modify
TO yvv60Lvov to be understood, thus giving the meaning "everything
which has come into being". In this interpretation, the proposition of
Melissus which Aristotle is attacking is at least one which MelisstLisheld;
contrary to common experience and to the meaning of the word MiOp6o;,to indicate that
water freezes all of a sudden. On the basis of this mistaken rendering of the passage in
Book VIII, freezing was then brought as an example of the sudden process of change read
into our passage. In losing sight of Aristotle's appeal to the obvious facts of experience,
the interpreters have used one error to support another. The fact that an interpreter is
forced to seek afar for examples of something which Aristotle takes as obvious to every
reader is itself a sign that the passage has been misunderstood.
1 "Melissos has been charged, on the strength of some wrongly interpreted sayings of
Aristotle, with confusing spatial and temporal infinity... But surely the human mind is
not capable of such an astounding confusion of thought. .
2 Op. cit. (4th ed.), 32S. 'Aristotle. . . seems to have (believed) .., that Melissos
inferred that what is must be infinite in space, because it had neither beginning nor
end in time."
n

3 Op.

cit. 471-2.

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in fact it is no other than proposition (i) quoted above, that everything

that has come into being has a beginning.
This conclusion, however, while restoring dignity to Melissus as a
philosopher, poses a new difficulty. Why should Aristotle suLddenly
attack proposition (i), which he nowhere else contests, and which
seems to be such a universal truth? The only reasonable answer can be
that the statement "whatever has come into being has a beginning" is
not the truism it appears to be. This means that "beginning" must be
taken to refer to other than temporal beginning, for a beginning in tinle
is inherent in the definition of "coming-to-be". If, then, a beginning in
time is ruled out in proposition (i), all that is left is to make "beginning"
mean "beginning in space".
We have now traced the development of this line of interpretation to
the point where Aristotle seemnsto be saving, "It is absurd (for Melissus)
to hold that everything which has come into being has a spatial
beginning." What does this statement mean? This school of interpretation, in the attempt to elucidate the passage as it now stands,
finds that "to have a spatial beginning" means two different things at the
same time: (A) to begin to grow outward from a point in space,1 and
(B) to be of finite extent.2 But if this is so, these interpreters again have
constructed, for all their pains, an incoherent argument. Their aim was
to make Melissus seem to be the good philosopher he was reputed to be,
but now it appears again that neither he nor Aristotle can fornma clear
idea of what "spatialbeginning" means.
In fact, space does not enter into this argument at all. In the first
place, Melissus is nowhere in the fragments seen to deal with problems
of type (A), nor do the ancient commentators associate hinmwith such
views. Then again, Melissus constructs sophisticated arguments to prove
that the universe is infinite, and could not have been guilty of such a
patently absurd confusion of temporal and spatial infinity.3 Indeed,
Aristotle himself elsewhere criticizes a good argument of Melissus
against a finite universe.4 Finallv, nowhere does Aristotle refer to such
a confusion of space and tinme in Melissus, despite the fact that he
1 See the passage cited above, referred to in footnote 3, page 4.
Ross, loc. cit., "He (i.e. Aristotle) represents him (i.e. Melissus) as saying...

that
that which does not come into being has no spatial &px( i.e. is infinite."
3Cf. Burnet (footnote i, page 5). Samples of Eleatic arguments for the infinity of space
are found in Plato's Parmenides.
' Aristotle De Gen. et Corr. 3 2 Sa 14.
6

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discusses Melissus' propositions (i) and (2) three times in the de

Soph. El. 1
All of the difficulties encountered in these interpretations stem from the
attribution of eIrx xal roiko I-ro-ov xwr. to Aristotle. They vanish when
the quotation from Melissus in line I 86 a i i is taken to extend to I 86 a i
III. The Meaningof Physics i 86a io-i6
The simple and natural way to read this passage is this: The statement
that it is ridiculous for there to be a beginning of all things,2 is a direct
conclusion from the premise that that which has not come into being
has not got a beginning,3 with the addition of the minor premise that the
world has not come into being, a well known Eleatic doctrine. Aristotle
is here merehr continuing to quote the beliefs of Melissus. Melissus is
represented as saying that it is ridiculous to assert that there is a beginning of the substance of the universe and not of time. This is the
argument: If you allow, as everyone does, that time has no beginning,
the basic Eleatic paradox results. For consider that which comes into
being. Since time is eternal, there was a time prior to its coming
into being; hence, during that prior time it did not exist, so that if one
traces the sequence of temporal events from prior to later time, one
finds not-being converted into being. According to the Eleatic argument
that no thing can ever come out of nothing, we thus find that the
commonly accepted view that time has no beginning necessitates the
conclusion that the existing universe has not come into being and hence
has no beginning.
The addition of the words "and not of time" shows Melissus to have
been the first Eleatic to have demonstrated that the proposition "time
has no beginning" completes the logical argument of the Eleatics.
Melissus' point is that one who holds that the universe has a beginning
must, if he is to be logically consistent, hold also that timehas a beginning.
For the simultaneous appearance of the universe and time makes it
impossible to say that the universe came from nothing; for since time
appeared together with what exists there is by definition no prior state
in which nothingness can be found.4
I

See above, Introduction. Ross and Burnet, in his later editions, adduce these passages
in support of their argument. We see no evidence that Aristotle is there talking about
space.
2

i86a 13.

3 i86a
'

12.

Cf. Melissus, fr. i, Diels-Kranz.

7

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For Melissus the argument is valid for all forms of coming into beingsimple coming into being (sc. of matter), as well as the coming into
being of qualities.' In all cases once time is taken to be eternal, the
conclusion follows that all that exists has no beginning and is unchanging.2
Although the seeming logical soundness of the entire argument led
the Eleatics to consider themselves natural scientists,3 Aristotle has
nothing but contempt for their pretensions.4 In fact, he denies their
competence as logicians as well. Accordingly, these are the two pillars
of his argument against them: First, that they reject the obvious
evidence of the senses (a scientist cannot allow himself to do this);
second, that they make logical errors such as mistaken inversion of
logical propositions and failure to distinguish between the two basic
senses of the verb to be, namely the potential and the actual.5 Of these
two points of attack the first is by far the more important for Aristotle.
(If an argument starts from a false premise, it is immaterial to its truth
whether the logic employed is correct or not.) This is shown by
Aristotle's treatment of these two points in the chief passage dealing
with Melissus. There, he makes both points, but deals primarily with
the former: "For their first premises are false and they use faulty logic.
Moreover, Melissus' argument is unsophisticated and provides no real
difficulty. But upon one ridiculous assumption the entire structure is
built. For us, our basic premise must be, that those things which exist
by nature, either all of them or some of them, are subject to change." 6
In the same way in our passage Aristotle exclaims: "As if change does
not take place thick and fast all around us 7
In conclusion, we offer the following version of our passage:
It is clear that Melissusreasons falsely, for he thinks, 'It is logically true that if each
thing which has come into being has a beginning, then that which has not come into
being has no beginning. [Now that which exists has not come into being.8] Therefore,
1 The Eleatic school does not distinguish different types of being. Cf. our article "A
Re-evaluation of Eleatic 'Physics'" (to be published).
eIvaL &px*v.... yvcvacoc xr. is not in
t6...
2 The statement cFro xoxt 'ro5'm &-morov,
&7nxv.The latter is a logical
contradicition to the statement 'r6 ycv6j?evov EXeL&.pX?v
statement; the former is a conclusion from the preceding arguments and refers to the
impossibility of coming-into-being in the world.
a So Melissus entitled his book Iflpt 06roEg.
' Aristotle Physics, i84b i6-i 7, where Aristotle opposes Melissus and Parmenides to

the physicists.
5 Aristotle Physics, i 86 a 3 and our passage.
6 185a9-i4.
7 i86ai6.
8

This is the premise which is omitted in this enthymeme of Melissus.

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it is true that the universe (everything) has no beginning, i.e. it is absurd that substance should have a beginning while time has not, and that all types of coming to be
should ever have originated - not only simple coming to be (of substance) but also
qualitative change,"as if change does not occur thick and fast all around us!

We have in this passage reference to a doctrine first introduced by

Melissus. The realisation that the nature of time is integrally connected
with the argument about the nature of being is an important step forward
in Eleatic thought. For this reason alone we should like to see this
passage included in full in the next edition of Diels-Kranz.
Columbia University
(Departments of Greek and Latin and of Physics)

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