Straton_Ideas

Straton_Ideas is a text document stored in the LOS-1 terminal.

Contents

The Origins of Thought

A fragment from Straton's The Origins of Thought, as quoted in a commentary by Simplicius of Cilicia:

STRATON: To say that material things are brought into being by ideas is to flatter ourselves, which is an error philosophers are particularly prone to, because it raises those who think above those who do.
NICOMACHUS: Then what is the truth that does not flatter?
STRATON: That the reverse is true. Ideas are brought into being by matter; and so each man's ideas are shaped by the world that surrounds him, as clay is shaped by its mold. Those who live in mountains fear cold; those who live in deserts fear thirst. The Athenians are shaped by Athens, and the Lacedaemonians by Sparta; and likewise it is for all peoples. (12)
NICOMACHUS: But may ideas, if we take each man to be an idea, not by deliberate action alter the shape of the mold, as you put it?
STRATON: To discover a method for accomplishing this is the chief purpose of philosophy, my friend.

Footnotes

12. The newly-discovered Heraklion manuscript, likely a lost part of the Barocci collection, contains an additional passage that differentiates between "pneuma" (the individual mind or spirit, described as an energy arising from matter) and "ideas" (which are produced by the pneuma as it interacts with the material world).