The poet Empecdocles

Metaphor, mimesis, and the poetry of science

Abstract

If one reads Aristotle's Poetics closely, Empedocle's status as a writer seems to be double: He is first and foremost at natural scientist, a physiologon, but he is also a poet. With the Aristotelean distinction between theoretical and practical sciences in mind, this double status requires an explanation. The answer is to be found in metaphor. According to Aristotle, Empedocles was a frequent user of metaphors and based on Aristotle's own concept of metaphor, as it is laid out in the Poetics and the Rhetoric, this article will present three explanations to the apparent double nature of Empedocles's science, which are at the same time three arguments for calling Empedocles, and any other natural scientist, a poet.