The Birth of Reason

Richard C. Smith is a professor in the Classics Department of the
University of Alberta.

In this short book, Dudek explores the possible links between Greek
philosophy before Socrates and modern science and humanism. His
interpretation includes the thesis that the scientific conception of the
universe (“which is itself creative, changing and progressive”) is
also the fourth (and most advanced) stage of religious evolution. Thus,
he feels, the doctrine of atomism developed among the pre-Socratics is
today not only the chief “theory underlying scientific knowledge”
but also the basis of modern culture.

Dudek not only provides a brief background for the development of
philosophy among the ancient Greeks but also gives a tantalizing taste
of their actual thought in 39 fragments of their work. He also indicates
some of the difficulty of studying these early thinkers, which is
primarily caused by the scarcity of what remains of their writings as
well as by the fact that much of our present interpretation is based on
later writers of variable reliability. He then gives a brief account of
the interpretation of the pre-Socratics in modern times, from the late
19th century on, citing such scholars as William Wallace, Cyril Bailey,
F.M. Cornford, John Burnet, and W.K.C. Guthrie.

While Dudek feels that “art, and religion, define the human” and
that he has “a personal attachment to Christianity,” it is quite
clear that, for him, religion is merely a creation of human thought and
that God “can never be anything other than a projection of the human
mind.” Thus he feels that the thought of the early atomists is the
highest achievement of religion and that new revelations about matter
will be the direction of modern “religion” and human thought. This,
he believes, is the modern approach to ultimate reality and is primarily
due to the original thinkers of early Greece. A challenging thesis as
well as a timely reminder of the importance of early Greek thought for
the modern reader.