Kitap 1
8
Thus Alcmaeon only threw out vague hints with regard to the other instances of contrariety, but the Pythagoreans pronounced how many and what the contraries are. Thus from both these authoritiesThe section of Pythagoreans mentioned in 6, and Alcmaeon. we can gather thus much, that the contraries are first principles of things; and from the former, how many and what the contraries are.
9
How these can be referred to our list of causes is not definitely expressed by them, but they appear to reckon their elements as material; for they say that these are the original constituents of which Being is fashioned and composed.
10
From this survey we can sufficiently understand the meaning of those ancients who taught that the elements of the natural world are a plurality. Others, however, theorized about the universe as though it were a single entity; but their doctrines are not all alike either in point of soundness or in respect of conformity with the facts of nature.
11
For the purposes of our present inquiry an account of their teaching is quite irrelevant, since they do not, while assuming a unity, at the same time make out that Being is generated from the unity as from matter, as do some physicists, but give a different explanation; for the physicists assume motion also, at any rate when explaining the generation of the universe; but these thinkers hold that it is immovable. Nevertheless thus much is pertinent to our present inquiry.
