Reading: Introduction to the ancient Greeks

As you are making your way through the first weeks of this course, I hope that the thought does NOT occur to you, "What am I doing this for?"  This week we are looking at some of the teachings of the ancient Greeks which were and ARE very significant for our understanding of the world in which we live.  The truth of the matter is that much of the manner in which we think and even educate in the western world arises from the ancient Greeks.  Their thinking was so seminal and so intriguing that they have continued to this day to influence how their heirs think of the world.  For example, the following is a quote from a website re philosophy.

Empedocles' philosophy was influenced not only by Pythagoras, but also by the ancient Greek mystery traditions, which included the Orphic mysteries and the underworld cults of Hades, Hecate, Demeter, Persephone and Dionysius. In his own thinking and writing, and in works and practices of the alchemists, neoplatonists and gnostics that further developed his theories, the four elements are not only material and spiritual forces, but also facets of a human being. Their varying combinations result in different personality types. 

Since we know that Carl Jung (1), one of the founders of modern psychology, studied mystical literature and alchemy, we can easily conclude that his conceptualization of intuition, sensation, thinking and feeling as the four basic archetypes or components of personality is clearly a derivation of Empedocles' ancient theories about fire, earth, air and water. Jung focused initially on the polarities of introversion (directing one's attention inward toward thoughts, feelings and awareness) and extroversion (directing one's energy outward toward people, actions and external objects), combining each polarity with predominances in thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting, to develop eight basic personality types. 

The four personality variables of the Meyers-Briggs test (and its offshoots, the Keirsey test and the DDLI) (2) also appear to be a further development of this psychological philosophy. 

Most philosophers and alchemists also believed that the four elements exhibited itself in man as four varying natures and that one was more prevalent in each individual than the other three. An individual leaned more to one particular type rather than possessing equivalent amounts of all four. Empedocles said that those who have near equal proportions of the four elements are more intelligent and have the most exact perceptions.
from The Four Elements by Charlie Higgins

http://www.webwinds.com/thalassa/elemental.htm

I, for one, am very intrigued by the Meyers-Briggs materials.  And to think, Empedocles started us thinking in this direction a long, long time ago.