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Alexander P. D. Mourelatos 6 S Parmenides, Early Greek Astronomy, and Modern Scientific Realism Summary “Doxa,” the second part of Parmenides’s metaphysical and cosmological poem, is expressly disparaged by Parmenides himself as “off-track,” “deceptive,” and “lacking genuine credence.” Nonetheless, there is good evidence that “Doxa” included some astronomical breakthroughs. The study presented here dwells on fragments B10, B14, and B15 from the 91 This chapter incorporates, with revisions, material excerpted from my book, The Route of Parmenides, 2nd edition, revised and expanded (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2008— hereafter Route), pp. xxxvii–xlviii, as well as from my article “Xenophanes’ Contribution to the Explanation of the Moon’s Light,” Philosophia (Athens) 32 (2002): 48 and 52–54. I acknowledge the kind permissions, respectively, by Parmenides Publishing and by the Academy of Athens, for use of the excerpted material. An earlier version of the entire essay has been published in Parmenides Venerable and Awesome: Proceedings of the International Symposium, ed. NéstorLuis Cordero (Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides Publishing, 2011), 167–89. It is that version which is reprinted here, with further additions and changes, and again with the kind permission of Parmenides Publishing. This essay originated as a lecture, presented October 19, 2007, at the Catholic University of America, and again, October 30, 2007, at the Coloquio Internacional, “Parménides, venerable y temible,” Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires. Other presentations in lecture form were as follows: December 2007, at the Università degli Studi di Napoli, Federico II; February 2008, at the University of Crete, Rethimno (for the latter, in my own Modern Greek translation); and April 2011 at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, under auspices of the Sociedad Ibérica de Filosofía Griega (in translation by Beatriz Bossi). I thank the Catholic University of America and the other four sponsors respectively for hosting the lecture events, and I thank the audiences in all five venues for their helpful comments and questions. My special thanks to Beatriz Bossi, whose careful and elegant Spanish translation helped me detect points of unclarity or ambiguity in the English text. For thoughtful and challenging exchanges on earlier drafts, I thank Patricia Curd, German Sierra Rodero, and Thomas K. Seung. 92  Alexander P. D. Mourelatos “Doxa,” and especially on the term aidēla, interpreted as “causing disappearance ,” in B10.3. The aim is to bring out the full astronomical import of Parmenides’s realization of four related and conceptually fundamental facts: (i) that it is the sun’s reflected light on the moon that explains lunar phases; (ii) that it is the sun’s glare which, as the sun moves in its annual circuit, causes the gradual seasonal disappearance of stars and constellations, and that the absence of such glare explains their seasonal reappearance; (iii) that it is likewise the sun’s glare which causes the periodic disappearance, alternately, of the Morning Star and the Evening Star, and it is the absence of such glare that allows, alternately and respectively , for the reappearance of each of these stars; and (iv), a ready inference from (iii), the realization that the latter supposedly two stars are an identical luminary. In seeking to make sense of the paradoxical antithesis of “Truth” versus a disparaged yet scientifically informed “Doxa,” the present study explores two modern analogues: Kant’s doctrine of the antithesis of “thingsin -themselves” (or “noumena”) versus “appearances” (Erscheinungen or “phaenomena”); and the twentieth-century doctrine of scientific realism, notably propounded by Wilfrid Sellars. The latter model is judged as more apt and conceptually more fruitful in providing an analogue for the relation between “Truth” and “Doxa.” Astronomical Knowledge before Parmenides: The Modern Estimates By the middle of the last century, serious challenges had already been posed, and then continued being posed in subsequent decades, to older estimates by historians of science and historians of philosophy concerning the extent and depth of astronomical knowledge attained by Parmenides ’s predecessors—i.e., by the Milesians, by Pythagoras, and by the early Pythagoreans. In the light of these challenges,1 the older esti1 . For Pythagoras and his schools, see Burkert, Lore and Science in Early Pythagoreanism; for the early Ionians, and more generally, see Dicks, Early Greek Astronomy, esp. chs. 1–4. The accounts both by Burkert and by Dicks have been criticized as hyper-skeptical in one or another respect. But the new standard—established in the second half of the twentieth century by these and other historians of early Greek science—a standard of cautious-critical...

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