TalosPrinciple2a

NAME: ON THE UNIVERSE

AUTHOR: STRATON OF STAGEIRA

LOCATION: HAR-1

On the Universe

A fragment from Straton's On the Universe:

AMYNTAS: I grant you, then, that man is indeed like Talos, and cannot escape his material nature despite the claims of metaphysics (4) as you have many times said.

NICOMACH US: Too many, perhaps.

STRATON: Repetition is the mother of teaching, at least when the students are hard-headed.

AMYNTAS: But what does this tell us about the nature of the universe, which is what we were discussing?

STRATON: That is the next question we must undertake to answer. We begin with the self because that is what determines our existence as individuals; but the self cannot exist without that which surrounds it. The citizen lives within the city; and the city lives within the cosmos. So now we must apply the principle we have discovered to the wider world, and ask: if man is like a machine, could it be that the universe is similar in nature? And if so, what follows from that fact?

Footnotes

4. The use of the term "metaphysics" in this context is likely an error introduced in the Trebizond manuscript. The fragmentary Heraklion manuscript controversially uses "superstitions" instead.