Pre-Socratic Philosophers

1. Pre-Socratic Philosophers

2. Western philosophy began in Ancient Greece about 800 years before the common era. • Before philosophy, myths explained natural phenomena (the sun was carried around the heavens by Apollo’s chariot; Zeus hurled thunder and lightning from the top of Mount Olympus). • Early philosophers attempted to provide uniform, rational explanations for the “world order” or kosmos and for nature.

3. Thales of Miletus(624-545 B.C.E) • Sought a common source, a single substance underlying all things. • Believed that substance was water: all things are water. • Used rational evidence and careful observation rather than mythological accounts to explain the nature of the universe.

4. Anaximander of Miletus(611-546 B.C.E) • Earth (a cylinder) rests where it does because of its equidistance from everything else. • The “stuffs” of the world come in opposites (hot-cold, dry-wet, hard-soft) from a vast “Indefinite-Infinite” called apeiron (mass of forces with no specific qualities).

5. Anaximenes of Miletus(died 500 B.C.E) • Believed the first, universal, underlying element is air (pneuma). • Proposed two opposing processes of change: condensation and rarefaction. • Through condensation, pure air becomes denser: air - fire - wind - cloud - water - earth - stone; Matter becomes lighter during rarefaction: stone - earth - water - cloud - wind - fire - air.

6. Parmenides of Elea(5th c. B.C.E) • Transformed philosophers interest in cosmology (the study of the universe as a rationally ordered system) into ontology (the study of “being”). • “What is, is” (being can be conceived of and expressed) and “What is not, is not” (not-being is incomprehensible and inexpressible). • Change and variety are only appearances, they are not real. Reality or “being” cannot be apprehended by the senses.

7. Empedocles(5th c. B.C.E) • One of the first Pluralists (those who believed that there exist many realities or substances). • Reality must be “completely full,” a plenum, without any gaps; all motion and changes take place within existing reality. • Reality consists of six basic components: four basic “roots” (earth, air, fire, water) and two basic “motions” (Love, which unites different things and Strife, which breaks things up into basic elements).

8. Anaxagoras(500-428 B.C.E) • Nous is the all-pervading “mind” which imposes an intelligible pattern in an otherwise unintelligible universe; nous affects things without being in them. • Things are composed of tiny bits or seeds that we cannot see individually only combined in sufficient quantity.

9. The Atomists:Leucippus of Miletus (5th c. B.C.E)Democritus of Abdera (460-370 B.C.E) • Leucippus is credited as originator of atomism: the universe consists of empty space and simple entities that combine to form objects. • Democritus argued that atoms must be so small that they are invisible to the naked eye, that atoms are eternal, and and constantly moving. • The void is Democritus’s term for no-thing, no-bodies, or empty space. • Democritus believed there is no intentional order or purpose to the universe, no Nous or intelligence guiding or combining atoms.

10. Heraclitus of Ephesus(510-480 B.C.E) • Logos is the rule according to which all things are accomplished and the law which is found in all things. • Everything is always changing. • Distinguished between appearance and reality in a way that contrasted apparent permanence with hidden reality.