Empedocles

Empedocles

On a bright Sicilian morning in the fifth century BCE, the city of Acragas rises from the sea in terraces of stone and dust. Temples crown the ridge above, their columns catching the sun. Below, olive groves and vineyards climb the slopes. In the streets, merchants call out prices, children weave through the crowds, and somewhere, perhaps in a house near the city wall or walking among companions on a country path, moves a man whose reputation will swell to legend: physician, prophet, poet, wonder-worker, and philosopher. His name is Empedocles, and he will try to do something audacious with his thought—to reconcile the severe logic of Parmenides with the obvious fact that the world seems full of many things that change.

Empedocles was born in Acragas, on the southern coast of Sicily, around 495 BCE, a generation after Parme ...