Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Pluralist Answer

After Parmenides, two philosophers tried to rescue change without breaking his rule that nothing comes from nothing. Empedocles of Acragas in Sicily (c. 494–c. 434 BCE) proposed four eternal 'roots': earth, air, fire and water. Nothing is truly born or destroyed; things arise when the roots mix and perish when they separate, driven by two forces he called Love and Strife. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c. 500–c.

428 BCE) argued instead that everything contains a portion of everything else, and that a cosmic Mind (nous) set the world spinning into order. Anaxagoras moved to Athens, where he became a friend of Pericles, but he was prosecuted for impiety, partly for calling the sun a red-hot stone, and left the city. These 'pluralists' were significant because they accepted Parmenides' logic yet allowed real change, and the four elements of Empedocles shaped science until the early modern period.