Nous - Pre-Socratic Usage

Pre-Socratic Usage

In early Greek uses, Homer used nous to signify mental activities of both mortals and immortals, for example what they really have on their mind as opposed to what they say aloud. It was one of several words related to thought, thinking, and perceiving with the mind. Amongst pre-Socratic philosophers it became increasingly distinguished as a source of knowledge and reasoning and opposed to mere sense perception, or thinking influenced by the body such as emotion. For example Heraclitus complained that "much learning does not teach nous".

Among some Greek authors a faculty of intelligence, a "higher mind", came to be considered to be a property of the cosmos as a whole.

The work of Parmenides of Elea set the scene for Greek philosophy to come and the concept of nous was central to his radical proposals. He claimed that reality as the senses perceive it is not a world of truth at all, because sense perception is so unreliable, and what is perceived is so uncertain and changeable. Instead he argued for a dualism wherein nous and related words (the verb for thinking which describes its mental perceiving activity, noein, and the unchanging and eternal objects of this perception noēta) describe a form of perception which is not physical, but intellectual only, distinct from sense perception and the objects of sense perception. These eternal immaterial objects which people perceive in their mind are the equivalent of the forms or ideas, in the later philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, born about 500 BC, is the first person who is definitely known to have explained the concept of a nous (mind), which arranged all other things in the cosmos in their proper order, started them in a rotating motion, and continuing to control them to some extent, having an especially strong connection with living things. (However Aristotle reports an earlier philosopher from Clezomenae named of Hermotimus who had taken a similar position.) Amongst Pre-Socratic philosophers before Anaxagoras, other philosophers had proposed a similar ordering human-like principle causing life and the rotation of the heavens. For example Empedocles, like Hesiod much earlier, described cosmic order and living things as caused by a cosmic version of love, and Pythagoras and Heraclitus, attributed the cosmos with "reason" (logos).

According to Anaxagoras the cosmos is made of infinitely divisible matter, every bit of which can inherently become anything, except Mind (nous), which is also matter, but which can only be found separated from this general mixture, or else mixed in to living things, or in other words in the Greek terminology of the time, things with a soul (psuchē). Anaxagoras wrote:

All other things partake in a portion of everything, while nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would partake in all things if it were mixed with any; for in everything there is a portion of everything, as has been said by me in what goes before, and the things mixed with it would hinder it, so that it would have power over nothing in the same way that it has now being alone by itself. For it is the thinnest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest strength; and nous has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have soul .

Concerning cosmology, Anaxagoras, like some Greek philosophers already before him, believed the cosmos was revolving, and had formed into its visible order as a result of such revolving causing a separating and mixing of different types of elements. Nous, in his system, originally caused this revolving motion to start, but it does not necessarily continue to play a role once the mechanical motion has started. His description was in other words (shockingly for the time) corporeal or mechanical, with the moon made of earth, the sun and stars made of red hot metal (beliefs Socrates was later accused of holding during his trial) and nous itself being a physical fine type of matter which also gathered and concentrated with the development of the cosmos. This nous (mind) is not incorporeal; it is the thinnest of all things. The distinction between nous and other things nevertheless causes his scheme to sometimes be described as a peculiar kind of dualism.

Anaxagoras' concept of nous was distinct from later platonic and neoplatonic cosmologies in many ways, which were also influenced by Eleatic, Pythagorean and other pre Socratic ideas, as well as the Socratics themselves.

In ancient Indian Philosophy also, a "higher mind", came to be considered to be a property of the cosmos as a whole.