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Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Pre-Socratic Philosophers. 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).

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Pre-Socratic Philosophers

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  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.

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