Outlines of Pyrrhonism

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...they even denied those things of which they were convinced by their own senses. For which of the two, I ask, sins more gravely against the truth: he who doubts whether there is motion or not (to bring forth this example), as the Sceptics do; or he who dares to assert that there is no motion at all, as a good part of the Dogmatists The "Dogmatists" refers to philosophers who assert positive doctrines or "dogmas" as absolute truths, in contrast to the Sceptics who withhold judgment. do? Regarding their other inventions for overturning the existence of motion, I shall speak at another time; but I will recount this one for the sake of a laugh.

"If something moves," they used to say, "it moves either in the place where it is, or in the place where it is not. But it does not move in the place where it is (for it remains there), nor in the place where it is not (for how could it act in a place where it is not even present?). Therefore, nothing moves."

When the physician Herophilus Erophilus in the original Latin; a famous Greek physician of the 3rd century BCE, often called the father of anatomy. knew that this invention greatly pleased Diodorus Diodorus Cronus, a philosopher of the Megarian school famous for his logical paradoxes, including arguments against the possibility of motion. the Dogmatic philosopher, he very wittily turned that same cleverness back upon him. For when Diodorus, having by chance dislocated his shoulder, came to him imploring not philosophical but medical aid, Herophilus said: "Diodorus, how will you persuade me that your dislocated shoulder has fallen out of its place? For either the shoulder fell in the place where it was, or where it was not. But it did not fall in the place where it was, for by remaining there, it could not fall. Nor indeed did it fall in the place where it was not; for how could it act where it is not? Therefore, your shoulder is not dislocated." And thus spoke Herophilus, most jovially.

But let us, leaving aside these jests, come to serious matters and compare the Dogmatists with the Sceptics in their knowledge of God. Who does not know that many of the Dogmatists, from that more than unrestrained audacity of judging—when they, as if they were censors of divine providence, measured it by their own senses—have fallen into atheism original: "ἀθεότητα" (atheotēta), a Greek term for godlessness or the denial of the gods.?

But the Sceptics said that while a suspension of judgment original: "ἐποχὴν" (epochēn), the core Sceptical practice of neutralizing opposing arguments to reach a state of mental tranquility. was induced by the arguments philosophers made for and against the existence of God, yet they were driven by a natural instinct to believe that there is a God, by whose providence all things are governed, and to worship and venerate Him, as they complied with the observations pertaining to common life. Although these things are so, even I myself [do not...]