From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordΣύγκρισις is a coming or putting together.
- In this workThe standard pairing makes Love combine and Strife separate, as in A28 and Diogenes’ summary.
- In this editionSynkrisis is the witnesses’ technical description.
- A place to readAssociates combination with Love and with changes in quantity among persistent elements.
Meaning
Σύγκρισις is a coming or putting together. The verb and noun denote the assembly through which the witnesses explain what ordinary language calls generation. Combination does not itself specify whether the result is a fully blended compound or a juxtaposition of preserved minute parts.
Use in the book
The standard pairing makes Love combine and Strife separate, as in A28 and Diogenes’ summary. Aristotle’s A37 reassigns combination to Strife at another level: when unlike roots are separated, each kind gathers into a homogeneous mass. Combination therefore has an object and a scale. Roots joining one another and portions of one root joining their like are not the same event, although the same Greek verb can describe both.
A44 places combination alongside separation as the two processes that replace strict generation and destruction in its collective classification. A43 asks what such composition amounts to if the constituents persist unchanged. Aristotle’s wall image answers polemically: small parts remain side by side. Galen’s A34 offers another illustration of tightly mixed ingredients. A lexicon should not decide the resulting controversy merely by choosing “combination” over “mixture” in English.
The repeated word is consequently both an explanatory resource and a source of critical ambiguity: it names a genuine reordering without telling the reader, on its own, whether the constituents retain their independent qualitative effects.
Places to read
- A 28 (testimony)Simplicius, Physics 25,21, from Theophrastus. Associates combination with Love and with changes in quantity among persistent elements.
- A 37 (polemical)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 985a21. Shows that Strife also combines like portions while separating unlike kinds.
- A 44 (testimony)Aëtius I 24,2 (D. 320). Substitutes combination and separation for generation and destruction properly so called.
Translation in this edition
Synkrisis is the witnesses’ technical description. Its occurrence does not establish a modern process of chemical reaction or molecular bonding.