by Corry Shores
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[Samuel Sambursky, entry directory]
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[The following is a selective summary, meaning that I select certain ideas to discuss rather than thoroughly summarize the text. All bracketed commentary and boldface is mine. Proofreading is incomplete, so you will encounter distracting typos. I apologize in advance.]
Samuel Sambursky
Physics of the Stoics
Ch.1
The Dynamic Continuum
1.2 The Physical State of a Body
Selective summary
Brief summary [of selected ideas]:
Pneuma’s function is two-fold: it both coheres the parts of a thing and it also serves as a field carrying the properties of the thing. There are three hierarchical orders of compositional organizations for things. {1a} Discrete non-denumerable entities, where there is a disordered assembly of bodies that are too disorganized for us to count, as in a crowd of people. {1b} Discrete denumerable entities where the elements are arranged in an ordered way allowing for us to count them, as with an army formation. {2} Contiguous structures, whose elements are combined, as with links in a chain. Both discrete and contiguous structures have the property that any part can survive if all the others are destroyed, as they are constituted by an additive principle. The situation is different for {3} unified structures, which are organized by hexis. Hexis is what organizes the parts of inorganic objects, like physis for plants and psyche for animals. Here the units of the thing are not merely the parts but rather the different properties of the thing, which interpenetrate such that a change in one leads to a change in the others, as a result of the “sympathy” holding between the properties. But if it is the same thing, namely, pneuma, that carries the properties of various things, then how do we explain why different things have different properties? In Sambursky’s interpretation, a hexis of a thing is composed of many pneumata, one for each property. What differentiates the pneumata is that they have their own compositional ratio of mixture of Air and Fire. All such pneumata are combined in the thing but without each losing its own identity, hence their particular properties are expressed. But these pneumata are connected as well such that a change in one creates a change in the others.
Selective summary
As we saw in the prior section, pneuma’s tension produces the cohesion of matter. But that is just one half of pneuma’s two-fold function. It also generates the physical qualities of matter. [The way this works, as we will see later, is not entirely well known, but it has to do with the proportions of Fire and Air constituting the pneuma that serves as the thing’s hexis.] So, along with being the glue that binds the parts of matter, it is also like a physical field that somehow carries the thing’s specific properties. When we conceive the pneuma as serving these two function, it takes on the more specific meaning of hexis, which is the physical state of the body. This for example can mean that the hexis which binds iron together also gives it its property of hardness. [So perhaps the cohesion can at least explain certain physical properties that are obviously matters of density for instance.] Hexis as the structure of inorganic matter is similar to the way physis structures organic things and psyche living things [see Bréhier, La théorie des incorporels dans l'ancien stoïcisme, §7.]
Cohesion of matter is not the only effect produced by the tension of the pneuma. The latter has a twofold function: besides being a binding force, it is an agent which generates all the physical qualities of matter. [...] By their conception of the pneuma as the generator of physical qualities the Stoics generalized their continuum theory into a field theory; the pneuma is the physical field which is the carrier of all specific properties of material bodies, and cohesion as such thus gets a more specific meaning by becoming hexis, the physical state of the body. The following quotation from a book by Chrysippos On Physical States is very instructive: “The physical states are nothing else but spirits, because the bodies are made cohesive by the. And the binding air is the cause for those bound into such a state being imbued with a certain property which is called hardness in iron, solidity in stone, brightness in silver.”39 And a little later he continues: “Matter, being inert by itself and sluggish, is the substratum of the properties, which are | pneumata and air-like tensions giving definite form to those parts of matter in which they reside.” This gives some idea of the central position in the Stoic theory of matter of hexis, which denotes the structure of inorganic matter in a similar way to which physis expresses organic structure and psyche the structure of the living being.
39. Plut., De Stoic. repugn., 1053 f.
(7-8)
The Stoics thought there was a hierarchy of inorganic structures, with hexis being the highest. There are three sorts. [Please see the quotation to follow, as the divisions are not clear to me. It is possible that there are four levels but three qualities they may have. Or perhaps there are three levels, but the first has two distinct subcategories.] The lowest is {1a} discrete non-denumerable entities, where there is a disordered assembly of bodies whose members are too disorganized for us to count, as in a crowd of people. The next highest is {1b} discrete denumerable entities where the elements are arranged in an ordered way allowing for us to count them, as with an army formation. Then there are {2} contiguous structures, whose elements are combined, as with links in a chain. Both discrete and contiguous structures have the property that any part can survive if all the others are destroyed, as they are constituted by an additive principle. The situation is different for {3} unified structures, which are organized by hexis. Here the units of the thing are not merely the parts but rather the different properties of the thing, which interpenetrate such that a change in one leads to a change in the others. [Consider a metal where when you change one property, like its temperature, you affect its other properties, like its malleability.] This co-existence of the structural elements [the interpenetrating properties] is called sympathy (sympatheia), with the example of a living organism: when one’s finger is cut, the whole body shares that condition.
The structural concept of hexis, also defined as the “binding spirit” of a body,43 represents the highest entity in the hierarchy of inorganic structures as conceived by the Stoics.44 These entities are divided into discrete, contiguous and unified.45 At the lowest level we have an assembly of bodies in a disordered state, such as a crowd which does not lend itself to numerical determination. The following level is also a discrete state, but here the elements are arranged in an order which allows for numerical determination, such as a choir or an army in formation. This is a “denumerable” entity.46 Contiguous structures are composed of conjoined elements, like the links of a chain or the planks of a ship or the stones of a house.47 What the discrete and contiguous structures have in common is that each of their elements can continue to exist even if the rest are destroyed,48 which is characterized by a simple additive relationship between the elements. [...]
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The situation is completely different in the case of unified structures, such as stone or wood or metal which are “ruled by a single state”.44 It is not an additive principle which defines the relation between the physical state of a body, hexis, and its elements. We must realize that the elements of hexis are not mere localized units but physical properties which interpenetrate and create a totality where each of them shares in the existence of the rest. In our modern terminology: all the qualities which define the physical state of a certain body – its mechanical, thermic, electric, optical properties – have their origin in common roots and are therefore interdependent and not additive. Every one of them is affected if all or some of the others change. The physical state is an organization of dynamic character, each of its elements subsisting only in co-existence with the rest, and not able to exist if the organization as a whole disintegrates. The Stoic term for this form of co-existence of the elements of the highest structure was “sympathy” (sympatheia), and it is again significant that analogies from the living organism were given to exemplify this condition: when a finger is cut, the whole body shares in its condition.48
43. Achill., Isagoge, 14 (Arnim, II, 368).
44. Sext. Emp., Adv. math., IX, 78; Plut., Praec. conug., 34: De def. orac., 29; Achill., Isagoge, 14.
45. διεστῶτα, συναπτόμενα, ἡνωμένα.
46. ἀριθμῷ ληπτός.
47. Seneca, Natur. quaest., II, 2.
48. Sext. Emp., loc. cit., 80.
(8-9. Note, the footnote enumerations in the text can be out of order, but it seems that means to refer to a footnote on a previous page.)
We now wonder, given “the unmistakable connection between hexis and pneuma” what is “the mechanism by which different physical states were thought to arise out of the pneuma pervading the bodies”? (10). The problem with determining this is that “The very scanty remnants of Stoic physics do not permit us more than vague conjectures about the details of their theory on this topic” (10). One clue comes from Galen, who says that the Stoics distinguish the pneuma of physis and psyche by saying that the pneuma of physis is more humid and colder, while the pneuma of psyche is drier and hotter. What we gather from this is that at least with regard to these two sorts of pneuma, there can be a differentiation in the composing mixtures of Air and Fire:
Some light is thrown on this problem in the passage in Galen already mentioned above9: “According to them (the Stoics), psyche is a sort of pneuma, as is also physis, but the pneuma of physis is more humid and colder, while that of psyche is drier and hotter. This pneuma is a kind of matter akin to psyche, and the specific quality of this matter is given by the proportions admixed of the airy and fiery substance.” Here a principle of differentiation is stated for the world of animals and plants, derived from the basic assumption of the composite nature of the pneuma which allows for different ratios of mixture of its two components – a definite proportion of this mixture defining a definite quality.
9. Galen, De anim. mor. (Arim, II, 787); cf. also Arnim, II, 446.
(10 / footnote: 2)
In similar vein, Diogenes of Apollonia, who seemed to have some influence on the Stoics,
identifies soul and intelligence with air, and the variations in the former are explained by the difference in proportion of hot and cold, dry and wet in air. The differences in the degree of warmth of the soul in animals and in human beings is particularly stressed by Diogenes. The multitude of possible variations of the mixture is the reason for the observed diversity in form, way of life, and intelligence.
(10)
So far, Sambursky’s point is that in the organic realm, differences between types of pneumata, like between that of plants, animals, and humans, was accounted for on the basis of differences in the mixture of Fire and Air in the pneuma. His made that point so that now, by analogy, we might infer the same principle would hold for the hexis of inorganic objects. In other words, what accounts for the different properties in objects is that they have a different hexis, whose variations are based on differences of composition, that is, different ratios of Fire and Air. Sambursky it seems further suggests that for each property there is a different pneuma. So a single hexis would be made of various pneumata, each retaining their individual and thus each property being distinct, while at the same time the various pneumata are physically interrelated such that a change in one property/pneuma corresponds with a change in the others.
We have seen already that hexis was regarded by the Stoics as | a notion equivalent in the inorganic realm to that of physis and psyche in the organic, and we may therefore assume by analogy that here, too, the same principle of differentiation was used in Stoic physics. In other words, each of the physical properties of a body, according to this principle, would be defined by a specific sort of pneuma, characterized by a definite mixture of fire and air. All these different sorts of pneuma permeate the body and mix with each other without losing their identity, since the properties to which they are co-ordinated are well defined and stable in spite of the fact that by coalescing they form the specific nexus by which an inert lump of matter is endowed with hexis.39
39. Plut., De Stoic. repugn., 1055 f.
(10-11 footnote: 7)
Sambursky, Samuel. 1973. Physics of the Stoics. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. [First published 1959, London: Routledge and Kagen Paul.]
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