The Sleepwalkers (6 page)

2.
Ionian Fever

Where
Babylon
and
Egypt
left
off,
Greece
took
over.
At
the
beginning,
Greek
cosmology
moved
much
on
the
same
lines
–
Homer's
world
is
another,
more
colourful
oyster,
a
floating
disc
surrounded
by
Okeanus.
But
about
the
time
when
the
texts
of
the
Odyssey
and
Iliad
became
consolidated
in
their
final
version,
a
new
development
started
in
Ionia
on
the
Aegean
coast.
The
sixth
pre-Christian
century
–
the
miraculous
century
of
Buddha,
Confucius
and
Lâo-Tse,
of
the
Ionian
philosophers
and
Pythagoras
–
was
a
turning
point
for
the
human
species.
A
March
breeze
seemed
to
blow
across
this
planet
from
China
to
Samos,
stirring
man
into
awareness,
like
the
breath
in
Adam's
nostrils.
In
the
Ionian
school
of
philosophy,
rational
thought
was
emerging
from
the
mythological
dream-world.
It
was
the
beginning
of
the
great
adventure:
the
Promethean
quest
for
natural
explanations
and
rational
causes,
which,
within
the
next
two
thousand
years,
would
transform
the
species
more
radically
than
the
previous
two
hundred
thousand
had
done.

Thales
of
Miletos,
who
brought
abstract
geometry
to
Greece,
and
predicted
an
eclipse
of
the
sun,
believed,
like
Homer,
that
the
earth
was
a
circular
disc
floating
on
water,
but
he
did
not
stop
there;
discarding
the
explanations
of
mythology,
he
asked
the
revolutionary
question
out
of
what
basic
raw
material,
and
by
what
process
of
nature,
the
universe
was
formed.
His
answer
was,
that
the
basic
stuff
or
element
must
be
water,
because
all
things
are
born
from
moisture,
including
air,
which
is
water
evaporated.
Others
taught
that
the
prime
material
was
not
water,
but
air
or
fire;
however,
their
answers
were
less
important
than
the
fact
that
they
were
learning
to
ask
a
new
type
of
question,
which
was
addressed
not
to
an
oracle,
but
to
dumb
nature.
It
was
a
wildly
exhilarating
game;
to
appreciate
it,
one
must
again
travel
back
along
one's
own
private
time-track
to
the
fantasies
of
early
adolescence
when
the
brain,
intoxicated
with
its
newly
discovered
powers,
let
speculation
run
riot.
"A
case
in
point,"
Plato
reports,
"is
that
of
Thales,
who,
when
he
was
star-gazing
and
looking
upward,
fell
into
a
well,
and
was
rallied
(so
it
is
said)
by
a
clever
and
pretty
maidservant
from
Thrace
because
he
was
eager
to
know
what
went
on
in
the
heaven,
but
did
not
notice
what
was
in
front
of
him,
nay,
at
his
very
feet."
⁴

The
second
of
the
Ionian
philosophers,
Anaximander,
displays
all
the
symptoms
of
the
intellectual
fever
spreading
through
Greece.
His
universe
is
no
longer
a
closed
box,
but
infinite
in
extension
and
duration.
The
raw
material
is
none
of
the
familiar
forms
of
matter,
but
a
substance
without
definite
properties
except
for
being
indestructible
and
everlasting.
Out
of
this
stuff
all
things
are
developed,
and
into
it
they
return;
before
this
our
world,
infinite
multitudes
of
other
universes
have
already
existed,
and
been
dissolved
again
into
the
amorphous
mass.
The
earth
is
a
cylindrical
column,
surrounded
by
air;
it
floats
upright
in
the
centre
of
the
universe
without
support
or
anything
to
stand
on,
yet
it
does
not
fall
because,
being
in
the
centre,
it
has
no
preferred
direction
towards
which
to
lean;
if
it
did,
this
would
disturb
the
symmetry
and
balance
of
the
whole.
The
spherical
heavens
enclose
the
atmosphere
"like
the
bark
of
a
tree",
and
there
are
several
layers
of
this
enclosure
to
accommodate
the
various
stellar
objects.
But
these
are
not
what
they
seem,
and
are
not
"objects"
at
all.
The
sun
is
merely
a
hole
in
the
rim
of
a
huge
wheel.
The
rim
is
filled
with
fire,
and
as
it
turns
round
the
earth,
so
does
the
hole
in
it
–
a
puncture
in
a
gigantic
tyre
filled
with
flames.
For
the
moon
we
are
given
a
similar
explanation;
its
phases
are
due
to
recurrent
partial
stoppages
of
the
puncture,
and
so
are
the
eclipses.
The
stars
are
pin-holes
in
a
dark
fabric
through
which
we
glimpse
the
cosmic
fire
filling
the
space
between
two
layers
of
"bark".