Empedocles' Cosmic Cycle O'Brien Paperback Cambridge University Press

Empedocles' Cosmic CycleA Reconstruction from the Fragments and Secondary Sources\nAuthor(s): Denis O'Brien\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521100373, 978-0521100373\nSynopsis\nThe cosmic cycle described in the surviving fragments of Empedocles' poem is the alternation, in endless succession, of Love and Strife. Love is the cause of happiness and unity; Strife the cause of separation and misery. These forces rule in turn as they cause the One and the Many. Love makes the elements into a blissful whole, the Sphere; Strife breaks into the Sphere and causes movement and division - the condition of the world, according to Empedocles, in which we now live. Dr O'Brien's book is primarily an analysis of this elaborate system. It seeks to determine the positions which Love and Strife occupy in the world at different times, the processes involved in becoming one and becoming many and the duration of b.