Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is
ancient Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire ...
before
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in
cosmology
Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...
, the beginning and the substance of the
universe
The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. Acc ...
, but the inquiries of these early philosophers spanned the workings of the natural world as well as
human society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societ ...
,
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
, and
religion
Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
. They sought explanations based on
natural law
Natural law ( la, ius naturale, ''lex naturalis'') is a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independently of positive law (the express enacte ...
rather than the
actions of gods. Their work and writing has been almost entirely lost. Knowledge of their views comes from ''testimonia'', i.e. later authors' discussions of the work of pre-Socratics. Philosophy found fertile ground in the ancient Greek world because of the close ties with neighboring civilizations and the rise of autonomous civil entities, ''
poleis
''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also ...
''.
Pre-Socratic philosophy began in the 6th century BCE with the three
Milesians:
Thales
Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him ...
,
Anaximander
Anaximander (; grc-gre, Ἀναξίμανδρος ''Anaximandros''; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. a city of Ionia (in moder ...
, and
Anaximenes. They all attributed the ''
arche
''Arche'' (; grc, ἀρχή; sometimes also transcribed as ''arkhé'') is a Greek word with primary senses "beginning", "origin" or "source of action" (: from the beginning, οr : the original argument), and later "first principle" or "element". ...
'' (a word that could take the meaning of "origin," "substance" or "principle") of the world to, respectively,
water
Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a ...
, ''
apeiron
''Apeiron'' (; ) is a Greek word meaning "(that which is) unlimited," "boundless", "infinite", or "indefinite" from ''a-'', "without" and ''peirar'', "end, limit", "boundary", the Ionic Greek form of ''peras'', "end, limit, boundary".
Origin ...
'' (the unlimited), and air governed by ''
nous
''Nous'', or Greek νοῦς (, ), sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
Alternative English terms used in p ...
'' (mind or intelligence). Another three pre-Socratic philosophers came from nearby Ionian towns:
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon (; grc, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φ ...
,
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (; grc-gre, Ἡράκλειτος , "Glory of Hera"; ) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire.
Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote ...
, and
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymou ...
. Xenophanes is known for his critique of the
anthropomorphism of gods. Heraclitus, who was notoriously difficult to understand, is known for his maxim on
impermanence
Impermanence, also known as the philosophical problem of change, is a philosophical concept addressed in a variety of religions and philosophies. In Eastern philosophy it is notable for its role in the Buddhist three marks of existence. It is ...
, ''
ta panta rhei,'' and for attributing
fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products.
At a certain point in the combustion reaction, called the ignition ...
to be the
arche
''Arche'' (; grc, ἀρχή; sometimes also transcribed as ''arkhé'') is a Greek word with primary senses "beginning", "origin" or "source of action" (: from the beginning, οr : the original argument), and later "first principle" or "element". ...
of the world. Pythagoras created a cult-like following that advocated that the universe was made up of
numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
. The
Eleatic school (
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates a ...
,
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea (; grc, Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known fo ...
, and
Melissus) followed in the 5th century BCE. Parmenides claimed that only one thing exists and nothing can change. Zeno and Melissus mainly defended Parmenides' opinion.
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras (; grc-gre, Ἀναξαγόρας, ''Anaxagóras'', "lord of the assembly"; 500 – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, ...
and
Empedocles
Empedocles (; grc-gre, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; , 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the fo ...
offered a
pluralistic account of how the universe was created.
Leucippus
Leucippus (; el, Λεύκιππος, ''Leúkippos''; fl. 5th century BCE) is a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who has been credited as the first philosopher to develop a theory of atomism.
Leucippus' reputation, even in antiquity, was obscured ...
and
Democritus
Democritus (; el, Δημόκριτος, ''Dēmókritos'', meaning "chosen of the people"; – ) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. No ...
are known for their
atomism
Atomism (from Greek , ''atomon'', i.e. "uncuttable, indivisible") is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms.
References to the concept of atomism and its atoms ...
, and their views that only
void
Void may refer to:
Science, engineering, and technology
* Void (astronomy), the spaces between galaxy filaments that contain no galaxies
* Void (composites), a pore that remains unoccupied in a composite material
* Void, synonym for vacuum, a ...
and
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic partic ...
exist. The
Sophists
A sophist ( el, σοφιστής, sophistes) was a teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. They taught ' ...
advanced
critical thinking
Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgement. The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis ...
and
philosophical relativism.
The impact of the pre-Socratics has been enormous. The pre-Socratics invented some of the central concepts of
Western civilization
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
, such as
naturalism and
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...
, and paved the way for
scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
ology.
Terminology
''Pre-Socratic'' is a term adopted in the 19th century to refer to this group of philosophers. It was first used by the German philosopher
J.A. Eberhard as ''"vorsokratische Philosophie in the late 18th century. In earlier literature they were referred to as ''physikoi'' ("physicists", after ''
physis
Fusis, Phusis or Physis (; grc, φύσις ) is a Greek philosophical, theological, and scientific term, usually translated into English—according to its Latin translation "natura"—as "nature". The term originated in ancient Greek philosophy, ...
'', "
nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
"), and their activity, as ''
physiologoi
Fusis, Phusis or Physis (; grc, φύσις ) is a Greek philosophical, theological, and scientific term, usually translated into English—according to its Latin translation "natura"—as "nature". The term originated in ancient Greek philosophy, ...
'' (physical or
natural philosophers
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
From the ancient wor ...
), with this usage arising with
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
to differentiate them from ''
theologoi'' (theologians) and ''mythologoi'' (storytellers and bards who conveyed
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the Cosmogony, origin and Cosmology#Metaphysical co ...
), who attributed natural phenomena to the gods.
The term was coined to highlight a fundamental change in philosophical inquiries between the philosophers who lived before Socrates, who were interested in the structure of nature and ''
cosmos
The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity.
The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...
'' (i.e., the universe, with the implication that the universe had order to it), and Socrates and his successors, who were mostly interested in ethics and politics. The term comes with drawbacks, as several of the pre-Socratics were highly interested in ethics and how to live the best life. Further, the term implies that the pre-Socratics are less significant than Socrates, or even that they were merely a stage (implying
teleology
Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton ...
) to classical era philosophy. The term is also chronologically inaccurate, as the last of the pre-Socratics were contemporaries of Socrates.
According to James Warren, the distinction between the pre-Socratic philosophers and philosophers of the classical era is demarcated not so much by Socrates, but by geography and what texts survived. The shift from the pre-Socratic to the classical periods involves a shift from philosophers being dispersed throughout the Greek-speaking world to their being concentrated in Athens. Further, starting in the classical period we have complete surviving texts, whereas in the pre-Socratic era we have only fragments. Scholar André Laks distinguishes two traditions of separating pre-Socratics from Socratics, dating back to the classical era and running through current times. The first tradition is the Socratic-Ciceronian, which uses the content of their philosophical inquires to divide the two groups: the pre-Socratics were interested in nature whereas Socrates focused on human affairs. The other tradition, the Platonic-Aristotelian, emphasizes method as the distinction between the two groups, as Socrates moved to a more epistemological approach of studying various concepts. Because of the drawbacks of the term pre-Socratic, ''early Greek philosophy'' is also used, most commonly in Anglo-Saxon literature.
Sources
Very few fragments of the works of the pre-Socratic philosophers have survived. The knowledge we have of the pre-Socratics derives from the accounts of later writers such as
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
,
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''P ...
,
Diogenes Laërtius
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Ancient Greece, Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a ...
,
Stobaeus
Joannes Stobaeus (; grc-gre, Ἰωάννης ὁ Στοβαῖος; fl. 5th-century AD), from Stobi in Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containin ...
, and
Simplicius, and some early Christian theologians, especially
Clement of Alexandria
Titus Flavius Clemens, also known as Clement of Alexandria ( grc , Κλήμης ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς; – ), was a Christian theologian and philosopher who taught at the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Among his pupils were Origen and ...
and
Hippolytus of Rome
Hippolytus of Rome (, ; c. 170 – c. 235 AD) was one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestin ...
. Many of the works are titled ''Peri Physeos'', or ''On Nature'', a title probably attributed later by other authors. These accounts, known as ''testimonia'' (testimonies), often come from biased writers. Consequently, it is sometimes difficult to determine the actual line of argument some pre-Socratics used in supporting their views. Adding more difficulty to their interpretation is the obscure language they used. Plato paraphrased the pre-Socratics and showed no interest in accurately representing their views. Aristotle was more accurate, but saw them under the scope of his philosophy.
Theophrastus
Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routledge ...
, Aristotle's successor, wrote an encyclopedic book ''Opinion of the Physicists'' that was the standard work about the pre-Socratics in ancient times. It is now lost, but Simplicius relied on it heavily in his accounts.
In 1903, the German professors
H. Diels and
W. Kranz published ''Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'' (''The Fragments of the pre-Socratics''), which collected all of the known fragments. Scholars now use this book to reference the fragments using a coding scheme called
Diels–Kranz numbering
Diels–Kranz (DK) numbering is the standard system for referencing the works of the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, based on the collection of quotations from and reports of their work, ''Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'' (''The Fragmen ...
. The first two characters of the scheme are "DK" for Diels and Kranz. Next is a number representing a specific philosopher. After that is a code regarding whether the fragment is a ''testimonia'', coded as "A", or "B" if is a direct quote from the philosopher. Last is a number assigned to the fragment, which may include a decimal to reflect specific lines of a fragment. For example, "DK59B12.3" identifies line 3 of Anaxagoras fragment 12. A similar way of referring to quotes is the system prefixed with "LM" by André Laks and Glenn W. Most who edited ''Early Greek Philosophy'' in 2016.
Collectively, these fragments are called ''
doxography Doxography ( el, δόξα – "an opinion", "a point of view" + – "to write", "to describe") is a term used especially for the works of classical historians, describing the points of view of past philosophers and scientists. The term ...
'' (derived from the latin ''doxographus''; derived from the Greek word for "opinion" ''
doxa
Doxa (; from verb )Henry Liddell, Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott (philologist), Robert Scott. 1940.δοκέω" In ''A Greek–English Lexicon, A Greek-English Lexicon'', edited by Henry Stuart Jones, H. S. Jones and R. McKenzie. Oxford. ...
'').
Historical background
![Greek Colonization Archaic Period](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Greek_Colonization_Archaic_Period.png)
Philosophy emerged in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. The pre-Socratic era lasted about two centuries, during which the expanding Persian
Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...
was stretching to the west, while the Greeks were advancing in trade and sea routes, reaching Cyprus and Syria. The first pre-Socratics lived in
Ionia
Ionia () was an ancient region on the western coast of Anatolia, to the south of present-day Izmir. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionian ...
, on the western coast of
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
. Persians conquered the towns of Ionia c. 540 BCE and Persian
tyrants
A tyrant (), in the modern English usage of the word, is an absolute ruler who is unrestrained by law, or one who has usurped a legitimate ruler's sovereignty. Often portrayed as cruel, tyrants may defend their positions by resorting to rep ...
then ruled them. The
Greeks revolted in 499 BCE, but ultimately were defeated in 494 BCE. Slowly but steadily Athens became the philosophical center of Greece by the middle of the fifth century. Athens was entering its
Classical Era
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
, with philosophers such as Socrates,
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
, but the impact of the pre-Socratics continued.
Several factors contributed to the birth of pre-Socratic philosophy in Ancient Greece. Ionian towns, especially Miletus, had close trade relations with
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
, cultures with observations about the natural world that differed from those of the Greeks. Apart from technical skills and cultural influences, of paramount significance was that the Greeks acquired the alphabet c. 800 BCE.
Another factor was the ease and frequency of intra-Greek travel, which led to the blending and comparison of ideas. During the sixth century BCE, various philosophers and other thinkers moved easily around Greece, especially visiting pan-Hellenic festivals. While long-distance communication was difficult during ancient times, persons, philosophers, and books moved through other parts of the Greek peninsula, the
Aegean islands, and
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; these re ...
, a coastal area in
Southern Italy
Southern Italy ( it, Sud Italia or ) also known as ''Meridione'' or ''Mezzogiorno'' (), is a macroregion of the Italian Republic consisting of its southern half.
The term ''Mezzogiorno'' today refers to regions that are associated with the peop ...
.
The democratic political system of independent ''poleis'' also contributed to the rise of philosophy. Most Greek towns were not ruled by
autocrats
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...
or
priests
A priest is a religious leader authorized to perform the sacred rituals of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and one or more deity, deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in p ...
, allowing citizens to question freely a wide range of issues. Various ''poleis'' flourished and became wealthy, especially Miletus. which was a centre of trade and production during the early phases of pre-Socratic philosophy. Trade of grain, oil, wine, and other commodities among each ''polis'' and colonies meant these towns were not isolated but embedded – and economically dependent – on a complex and changeable web of trade routes.
Greek mythology also influenced the birth of philosophy. The philosophers' ideas, were, to a certain extent, answers to questions that were subtly present in the work of
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
and
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...
. The pre-Socratics arose from a world dominated by myths, sacred places, and local deities. The work of epic poets such as Homer, Hesiod and others reflected this environment. They are considered predecessors of the pre-Socratics since they seek to address the
origin of the world and to organize traditional folklore and legends systematically. However, their answers were rather simplistic and resisted naturalistic explanations, hence they were far from being named as philosophers. Greek popular religion contained many features of the religions of neighboring civilizations, such as the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Hittites. The first pre-Socratic philosophers also traveled extensively to other lands, meaning that pre-Socratic thought had roots abroad as well as domestically.
Homer, in his two epic poems, not only personifies gods and other natural phenomena, such as the Night, but he hints at some views on the origin and the nature of the world that came under scrutiny by the pre-Socratics. In his epic poem ''
Theogony
The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 10 ...
'' (literally meaning the birth of gods) Hesiod (c. 700 BCE) describes the origin of gods, and apart from the solid mythical structure, one can notice an attempt towards organizing beliefs using some form of rationalization; an example would be that Night gives birth to Death, Sleep and Dreams. Transmigration of life, a belief of the
Orphics
Orphism (more rarely Orphicism; grc, Ὀρφικά, Orphiká) is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus ...
, a religious cult originating from Thrace, had affected the thought of the 5th century BCE but the overall influence of their cosmology on philosophy is disputed.
Pherecydes, a poet, magician, and contemporary of Thales, in his book describes a particular cosmogony, asserting that three gods pre-existed – a step towards rationality.
General features
The most important feature of pre-Socratic philosophy was the use of reason to explain the universe. The pre-Socratic philosophers shared the intuition that there was a single explanation that could explain both the plurality and the singularity of the whole – and that explanation would not be direct actions of the gods. The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected
traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations, initiating analytic and
critical thought. Their efforts were directed at the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. Many sought the material principle (''
arche
''Arche'' (; grc, ἀρχή; sometimes also transcribed as ''arkhé'') is a Greek word with primary senses "beginning", "origin" or "source of action" (: from the beginning, οr : the original argument), and later "first principle" or "element". ...
'') of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. They emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected supernatural explanations, seeking natural principles at work in the world and human society. The pre-Socratics saw the world as a ''cosmos'', an ordered arrangement that could be understood via rational inquiry. In their effort to make sense of the cosmos they coined new terms and concepts such as rhythm, symmetry, analogy, deductionism, reductionism, mathematicazion of nature and others.
An important term that is met in the thought of several pre-Socratic philosophers is ''arche''. Depending on the context, it can take various related meanings. It could mean the beginning or origin with the undertone that there is an effect on the things to follow. Also, it might mean a principle or a cause (especially in Aristotelian tradition).
A common feature of the pre-Socratics is the absence of empiricism and experimentation in order to prove their theories. This may have been because of a lack of instruments, or because of a tendency to view the world as a unity, undeconstructable, so it would be impossible for an external eye to observe tiny fractions of nature under experimental control.
According to
Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes, British Academy, FBA (born 26 December 1942 in Wenlock, Shropshire) is an English scholar of Aristotelianism, Aristotelian and ancient philosophy.
Education and career
He was educated at the City of London School and Balliol Co ...
, a professor of ancient philosophy, pre-Socratic philosophy exhibits three significant features: they were ''internal'', ''systematic'' and ''economical''. Internal meaning they tried to explain the world with characteristics found within this world. Systematic because they tried to universalize their findings. Economical because they tried to invoke only a few new terms. Based on these features, they reached their most significant achievement, they changed the course of human thought from myth to philosophy and science.
The pre-Socratics were not atheists; however, they minimized the extent of the gods' involvement in natural phenomena such as thunder or totally eliminated the gods from the natural world.
Pre-Socratic philosophy encompasses the first of the three phases of
ancient Greek philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman Empire ...
, which spanned around a thousand years. The pre-Socratic phase itself is divided into three phases. The first phase of pre-Socratic philosophy, mainly the Milesians, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus, consisted of rejecting traditional cosmogony and attempting to explain nature based on empirical observations and interpretations. A second phase – that of the Eleatics – resisted the idea that change or motion can happen. Based on their radical monism, they believed that only one substance exists and forms Kosmos. The Eleatics were also
monists
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
* Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., i ...
(believing that only one thing exists and everything else is just a transformation of it). In the third phase, the post-Eleatics (mainly Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus) opposed most Eleatic teaching and returned to the naturalism of the Milesians.
The pre-Socratics were succeeded by the second phase of ancient philosophy, where the philosophical movements of
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at le ...
,
Cynicism
Cynic or Cynicism may refer to:
Modes of thought
* Cynicism (philosophy), a school of ancient Greek philosophy
* Cynicism (contemporary), modern use of the word for distrust of others' motives
Books
* ''The Cynic'', James Gordon Stuart Grant 1 ...
,
Cyrenaicism,
Aristotelianism
Aristotelianism ( ) is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the socia ...
,
Pyrrhonism
Pyrrhonism is a school of philosophical skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BCE. It is best known through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE.
History
Pyrrho of E ...
,
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy founded around 307 BC based upon the teachings of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism.
Few writings by Epi ...
,
Academic skepticism
Academic skepticism refers to the skeptical period of ancient Platonism dating from around 266 BCE, when Arcesilaus became scholarch of the Platonic Academy, until around 90 BCE, when Antiochus of Ascalon rejected skepticism, although individua ...
, and
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century Common Era, BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asser ...
rose to prominence until 100 BCE. In the third phase, philosophers studied their predecessors.
Pre-Socratic philosophers
Milesian beginning: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes
The
Milesian school
The Ionian school of Pre-Socratic philosophy was centred in Miletus, Ionia in the 6th century BC. Miletus and its environment was a thriving mercantile melting pot of current ideas of the time. The Ionian School included such thinkers as Thales, ...
was located in
Miletus
Miletus (; gr, Μῑ́λητος, Mī́lētos; Hittite transcription ''Millawanda'' or ''Milawata'' (exonyms); la, Mīlētus; tr, Milet) was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in a ...
, Ionia, in the 6th century BCE. It consisted of
Thales
Thales of Miletus ( ; grc-gre, Θαλῆς; ) was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him ...
,
Anaximander
Anaximander (; grc-gre, Ἀναξίμανδρος ''Anaximandros''; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. a city of Ionia (in moder ...
, and
Anaximenes, who most probably had a teacher-pupil relationship. They were mainly occupied with the origin and substance of the world; each of them attributed the Whole to a single ''arche'' (beginning or principle), starting the tradition of naturalistic monism.
Thales
Thales (c. 624–546 BCE) is considered to be the father of philosophy. None of his writings have survived. He is considered the first western philosopher since he was the first to use reason, to use proof, and to generalize. He created the word ''cosmos'', the first word to describe the universe. He contributed to
geometry
Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...
and predicted the
eclipse of 585 BCE. Thales may have been of
Phoenician ancestry. Miletus was a meeting point and trade centre of the then great civilizations, and Thales visited the neighbouring civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, and Phoenicia. In Egypt, geometry was advanced as a means of separating agricultural fields. Thales, though, advanced geometry with his abstract
deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be fals ...
reaching
universal generalizations.
Proclus
Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers ...
, a later Athenian philosopher, attributed the theorem now known as
Thales's theorem
In geometry, Thales's theorem states that if A, B, and C are distinct points on a circle where the line is a diameter, the angle ABC is a right angle. Thales's theorem is a special case of the inscribed angle theorem and is mentioned and proved ...
to Thales. He is also known for being the first to claim that the base angles of
isosceles triangle
In geometry, an isosceles triangle () is a triangle that has two sides of equal length. Sometimes it is specified as having ''exactly'' two sides of equal length, and sometimes as having ''at least'' two sides of equal length, the latter versio ...
s are equal, and that a
diameter
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest chord of the circle. Both definitions are also valid for ...
bisects the
circle
A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. Equivalently, it is the curve traced out by a point that moves in a plane so that its distance from a given point is const ...
. Thales visited Sardis, as many Greeks then, where astronomical records were kept and used astronomical observations for practical matters (oil harvesting). Thales was widely considered a genius in ancient times and was revered as one of the
Seven Sages of Greece
The Seven Sages (of Greece) or Seven Wise Men (Greek: ''hoi hepta sophoi'') was the title given by classical Greek tradition to seven philosophers, statesmen, and law-givers of the 7–6th century BC who were renowned for their wisdom.
The S ...
.
Most importantly, what marks Thales as the first philosopher is the posing of the fundamental philosophical question about the origin and the substance of the world, while providing an answer based on
empirical evidence
Empirical evidence for a proposition is evidence, i.e. what supports or counters this proposition, that is constituted by or accessible to sense experience or experimental procedure. Empirical evidence is of central importance to the sciences and ...
and reasoning. He attributed the origin of the world to an element instead of a divine being. Our knowledge of Thales' claim derives from Aristotle. Aristotle, while discussing opinions of previous philosophers, tells us that "Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says the principle (arche) is water." What he meant by arche, is a matter of interpretation (might be the origin, the element, or an ontological matrix), but regardless of the various interpretations, he conceived the world as One thing instead of a collection of various items and speculated on the binding/original elements.
Another important aspect of Thales' philosophy is his claim that everything is full of gods. What he meant by that is again a matter of interpretation, that could be from a theistic view to an atheist one. But the most plausible explanation, suggested by Aristotle, is that Thales is advocating a theory of
hylozoism
Hylozoism is the philosophical point of view that matter is in some sense alive. The concept dates back at least as far as the Milesian school of pre-Socratic philosophers. The term was coined by English philosopher Ralph Cudworth in 167 ...
, that the universe, the sum of all things that exist, is divine and alive. Lastly, another notable claim by Thales is that earth "rests on water"- maybe that was a conclusion after observing fish fossils on land.
Anaximander
Anaximander (610–546 BCE), also from Miletus, was 25 years younger than Thales. He was a member of the elite of Miletus, wealthy and a statesman. He showed interest in many fields, including mathematics and geography. He drew the first map of the world, was the first to conclude that the earth is spherical, and made instruments to mark time, something like a clock. In response to Thales, he postulated as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities (''
apeiron
''Apeiron'' (; ) is a Greek word meaning "(that which is) unlimited," "boundless", "infinite", or "indefinite" from ''a-'', "without" and ''peirar'', "end, limit", "boundary", the Ionic Greek form of ''peras'', "end, limit, boundary".
Origin ...
''), out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His answer was an attempt to explain observable changes by attributing them to a single source that transforms to various elements. Like Thales, he provided a naturalistic explanation for phenomena previously given supernatural explanations. He is also known for speculating on the origin of mankind. He proclaimed that the earth is not situated in another structure but lies unsupported in the middle of the universe. Further, he developed a rudimentary evolutionary explanation for biodiversity in which constant universal powers affected the lives of animals. According to
Giorgio de Santillana
Giorgio Diaz de Santillana (30 May 1902 – 8 June 1974) was an Italian-American philosopher and historian of science, born in Rome. He was Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Biography
A son of ...
, a philosophy professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
, Anaximander's conception of a universe governed by laws shaped the philosophical thinking of centuries to come and was as important as the discovery of fire or Einstein's breakthroughs in science.
Anaximenes
Little is known of Anaximenes' (585–525 BCE) life. He was a younger contemporary and friend of Anaximander, and the two worked together on various intellectual projects. He also wrote a book on nature in prose. Anaximenes took for his principle ''aēr'' (air), conceiving it as being modified, via thickening and thinning, into the other
classical element
Classical elements typically refer to earth, water, air, fire, and (later) aether which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Tibet, and India had simil ...
s: fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth. While his theory resembled that of Anaximander, as they both claimed a single source of the universe, Anaximenes suggested sophisticated mechanisms in which air is transformed to other elements, mainly because of changes of density. Since the classical era, he was considered the father of naturalistic explanations. Anaximenes expanded Anaximander's attempt to find a unitary cause explaining natural phenomena both living and nonliving, without, according to James Warren, having to "reduce living things in some way to mere locations of material change".
Xenophanes
![Elmo's fire-2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Elmo%27s_fire-2.jpg)
Xenophanes was born in
Colophon, an Ionian town near Miletus. He was a well-traveled poet whose primary interests were
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
and
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
. Concerning theology, he pointed out that we did not know whether there was one god or many gods, or in such case whether there was a hierarchy among them. To critique the anthropomorphic representation of the gods by his contemporary Greeks, he pointed out that different nations depicted their gods as looking like themselves. He famously said that if oxen, horses, or lions could draw, they would draw their gods as oxen, horses, or lions. This critique was not limited to the looks of gods but also their behaviour. Greek mythology, mostly shaped by the poets
Homer
Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...
and
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...
, attributed moral failures such as jealously and adultery to the gods. Xenophanes opposed this. He thought gods must be morally superior to humans. Xenophanes, however, never claimed the gods were omnipotent, omnibenevolent, or omniscient. Xenophanes also offered naturalistic explanations for phenomena such as the sun, the rainbow and
St. Elmo's fire
St. Elmo's fire — also called Witchfire or Witch's Fire — is a weather phenomenon in which luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal hornHeidorn, K., Weather Element ...
. Traditionally these were attributed to divine intervention but according to Xenophanes they were actually effects of clouds. These explanations of Xenophanes indicate empiricism in his thought and might constitute a kind of proto-scientism. Scholars have overlooked his cosmology and naturalism since Aristotle (maybe due to Xenophanes' lack of teleology) until recently but current literature suggests otherwise. Concerning epistemology, Xenophanes questioned the validity of human knowledge. Humans usually tend to assert their beliefs are real and represent truth. While Xenophanes was a pessimist about the capability of humans to reach knowledge, he also believed in gradual progress through critical thinking. Xenophanes tried to find naturalistic explanations for meteorological and cosmological phenomena.
Ancient philosophy historian Alexander Mourelatos notes Xenophanes used a pattern of thought that is still in use by modern metaphysics. Xenophanes, by reducing meteorological phenomena to clouds, created an argument that "X in reality is Y", for example B32, "What they call Iris
he rainbow
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
that too is in reality a cloud: one that
appears to the eye as purple, red, and green. This is still use
today 'lightning is massive electrical discharge' or 'items such as tables are a cloud of micro-particles'." Mourelatos comments that the type of analogy that the cloud analogy is remains present in scientific language and "...is the modern philosopher's favourite subject for illustrations of inter-theoretic identity".
According to Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius,
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon (; grc, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φ ...
was Parmenides' teacher; but is a matter of debate in current literature whether Xenophanes should also be considered an Eleatic.
Heraclitus
The hallmark of Heraclitus' philosophy is
flux
Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications to physics. For transport ph ...
. In fragment DK B30, Heraclitus writes: ''This world-order
osmos
''Osmos'' is a 2009 puzzle video game developed by Canadian developer Hemisphere Games for various systems such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, OnLive, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android.
Gameplay
The aim of the game is to propel o ...
the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures''. Heraclitus posited that all things in nature are in a state of perpetual flux. Like previous monist philosophers, Heraclitus claimed that the ''arche'' of the world was fire, which was subject to change – that makes him a
materialist
Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialis ...
monist. From fire all things originate and all things return to it again in a process of eternal cycles. Fire becomes water and earth and vice versa. These everlasting modifications explain his view that the cosmos ''was and is and will be''. The idea of continual flux is also met in the "river fragments". There, Heraclitus claims we can not step into the same river twice, a position summarized with the slogan ''ta panta rhei'' (everything flows). One fragment reads: "Into the same rivers we both step and do not step; we both are and are not" (DK 22 B49a). Heraclitus is seemingly suggesting that not only the river is constantly changing, but we do as well, even hinting at
existential questions about humankind.
Another key concept of Heraclitus is that opposites somehow mirror each other, a doctrine called
unity of opposites
The unity of opposites is the central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense. . Two fragments relating to this concept state, "As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these" (B88) and "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet" (B126). Heraclitus' doctrine on the unity of opposites suggests that unity of the world and its various parts is kept through the tension produced by the opposites. Furthermore, each polar substance contains its opposite, in a continual circular exchange and motion that results in the stability of the cosmos. Another of Heraclitus' famous axioms highlights this doctrine (B53): "War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free", where war means the creative tension that brings things into existence.
A fundamental idea in Heraclitus is ''
logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, wikt:λόγος, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive ...
'', an ancient Greek word with a variety of meanings; Heraclitus might have used a different meaning of the word with each usage in his book. ''Logos'' seems like a universal law that unites the cosmos, according to a fragment: "Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one" (DK 22 B50). While ''logos'' is everywhere, very few people are familiar with it. B 19 reads:
oi polloi"...do not know how to listen
o Logos
O, or o, is the fifteenth Letter (alphabet), letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in ...
or how to speak
he truth
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
Heraclitus' thought on ''logos'' influenced the
Stoics
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting that th ...
, who referred to him to support their belief that
rational law governs the universe.
Pythagoreanism
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samos, Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionians, Ionian Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher and the eponymou ...
(582–496 BCE) was born on
Samos
Samos (, also ; el, Σάμος ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the -wide Mycale Strait. It is also a separate ...
, a small island near Miletus. He moved to
Croton at about age 30, where he established his school and acquired political influence. Some decades later he had to flee Croton and relocate to
Metapontum
Metapontum or Metapontium ( grc, Μεταπόντιον, Metapontion) was an important city of Magna Graecia, situated on the gulf of Tarentum, between the river Bradanus and the Casuentus (modern Basento). It was distant about 20 km from ...
.
Pythagoras was famous for studying numbers and the geometrical relations of numbers. A large following of Pythagoreans adopted and extended his doctrine. They advanced his ideas, reaching the claim that everything consists of numbers, the universe is made by numbers and everything is a reflection of analogies and geometrical relations. Numbers, music and philosophy, all interlinked, could comfort the beauty-seeking human soul and hence Pythagoreans espoused the study of mathematics.
Pythagorianism perceived the world as perfect harmony, dependent on number, and aimed at inducing humankind likewise to lead a harmonious life, including ritual and dietary recommendations. Their way of life was ascetic, restraining themselves from various pleasures and food. They were vegetarians and placed enormous value on friendship. Pythagoras politically was an advocate of a form of
aristocracy
Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'.
At t ...
, a position which later Pythagoreans rejected, but generally, they were reactionary and notably repressed women. Other pre-Socratic philosophers mocked Pythagoras for his belief in
reincarnation
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrection is a ...
.
Notable Pythagorians included
Philolaus
Philolaus (; grc, Φιλόλαος, ''Philólaos''; ) was a Greek Pythagorean and pre-Socratic philosopher. He was born in a Greek colony in Italy and migrated to Greece. Philolaus has been called one of three most prominent figures in the Pytha ...
(470-380 BCE),
Alcmaeon of Croton
Alcmaeon of Croton (; el, Ἀλκμαίων ὁ Κροτωνιάτης, ''Alkmaiōn'', ''gen''.: Ἀλκμαίωνος; fl. 5th century BC) was an early Greek medical writer and philosopher-scientist. He has been described as one of the most e ...
,
Archytas
Archytas (; el, Ἀρχύτας; 435/410–360/350 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, music theorist, astronomer, statesman, and strategist. He was a scientist of the Pythagorean school and famous for being the reputed founder ...
(428-347 BCE) and
Echphantus. The most notable was Alcmaeon, a medical and philosophical writer. Alcmaeon noticed that most organs in the body come in pairs and suggested that human health depends on harmony between opposites (hot/cold, dry/wet), and illness is due to an imbalance of them. He was the first to think of the brain as the center of senses and thinking. Philolaus advanced cosmology through his discovery of heliocentricism – the idea that the Sun lies in the middle of the earth's orbit and other planets.
Pythagoreanism influenced later Christian currents as Neoplatonism, and its pedagogical methods were adapted by Plato. Furthermore, there seems to be a continuity in some aspects of Plato's philosophy. As Prof. Carl Huffman notes, Plato had a tendency to invoke mathematics in explaining natural phenomena, and he also believed in the immortality, even divinity of the human soul.
The Eleatics: Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus
The Eleatic school is named after
Elea, an ancient Greek town on the southern Italian Peninsula.
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates a ...
is considered the founder of the school. Other eminent Eleatics include
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea (; grc, Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known fo ...
and
Melissus of Samos. According to Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius,
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon (; grc, Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φ ...
was Parmenides' teacher, and it is debated whether Xenophanes should also be considered an Eleatic. Parmenides was born in
Elea to a wealthy family around 515 BCE.
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (; grc-gre, Παρμενίδης ὁ Ἐλεάτης; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.
Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Elea, from a wealthy and illustrious family. His dates a ...
of
Elea was interested in many fields, such as biology and astronomy. He was the first to deduce that the earth is spherical. He was also involved in his town's political life.
![Being Parmenides](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Being_Parmenides.png)
Parmenides' contributions were paramount not only to ancient philosophy but to all of western metaphysics and ontology. Parmenides wrote a hard to interpret poem, named ''On Nature'' or ''On What-is'', that substantially influenced later Greek philosophy. Only 150 fragments of this poem survive. It tells a story of a young man (''kouros'' in ancient Greek) dedicated to finding the truth carried by a goddess on a long journey to the heavens. The poem consists of three parts, the
proem
__NOTOC__
A preface () or proem () is an introduction to a book or other literary work written by the work's author. An introductory essay written by a different person is a ''foreword'' and precedes an author's preface. The preface often closes ...
(i.e., preface), the ''Way of Truth'' and the ''Way of Opinion''. Very few pieces from the ''Way of Opinion'' survive. In that part, Parmenides must have been dealing with cosmology, judging from other authors' references. The ''Way of Truth'' was then, and is still today, considered of much more importance. In the ''Way of Truth'', the goddess criticizes the logic of people who do not distinguish the real from the non-existent ("What-is" and "What-is-Not"). In this poem Parmenides unfolds his philosophy: that all things are One, and therefore nothing can be changed or altered. Hence, all the things that we think to be true, even ourselves, are false representations. What-is, according to Parmenides, is a physical sphere that is unborn, unchanged, and infinite. This is a monist vision of the world, far more radical than that of Heraclitus. The goddess teaches Kouros to use his reasoning to understand whether various claims are true or false, discarding senses as fallacious. Other fundamental issues raised by Parmenides' poem are the doctrine that
nothing comes from nothing
Nothing comes from nothing ( gr, οὐδὲν ἐξ οὐδενός; la, ex nihilo nihil fit) is a philosophical dictum first argued by Parmenides. It is associated with ancient Greek cosmology, such as is presented not just in the works of Homer ...
and the unity of being and thinking. As quoted by DK fragment 3: ''To gar auto noein estin te kai einai'' (For to think and to be is one and the same).
Zeno and Melissus continued Parmenides' thought on cosmology. Zeno is mostly known for his
paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically u ...
es, i.e., self-contradictory statements which served as proofs that Parmenides' monism was valid, and that pluralism was invalid. The most common theme of those paradoxes involved traveling a distance, but since that distance comprises infinite points, the traveler could never accomplish it. His most famous is the Achilles paradox, which is mentioned by Aristotelis: "The second is called the 'Achilles' and says that the slowest runner will never be caught by the fastest, because it is necessary for the pursuer first to arrive at the point from which the pursued set off, so it is necessary that the slower will always be a little ahead." (Aristotle Phys. 239b14–18
K 29 A26
K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''kay'' (pronounced ), plural ''kays''. The letter K ...
Melissus defended and advanced Parmenides' theory using prose, without invoking divinity or mythical figures. He tried to explain why we think various non-existent objects exist.
The Eleatics' focus on Being through means of logic initiated the philosophical discipline of ontology. Other philosophers influenced by the Eleatics (such as the Sophists, Plato, and Aristotle) further advanced logic, argumentation, mathematics and especially ''elenchos'' (proof). The Sophists even placed Being under the scrutiny of elenchos. Because of the Eleatics reasoning was acquiring a formal method.
The Pluralists: Anaxagoras and Empedocles
![The Death of Empedocles by Salvator Rosa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/The_Death_of_Empedocles_by_Salvator_Rosa.jpg)
The Pluralist school marked a return to Milesian natural philosophy, though much more refined because of Eleatic criticism.
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras (; grc-gre, Ἀναξαγόρας, ''Anaxagóras'', "lord of the assembly"; 500 – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, ...
was born in Ionia, but was the first major philosopher to emigrate to Athens. He was soon associated with the Athenian statesman
Pericles
Pericles (; grc-gre, Περικλῆς; c. 495 – 429 BC) was a Greek politician and general during the Golden Age of Athens. He was prominent and influential in Athenian politics, particularly between the Greco-Persian Wars and the Pelopo ...
and, probably due to this association, was accused by a political opponent of Pericles for
impiety
Impiety is a perceived lack of proper respect for something considered sacred. Impiety is often closely associated with sacrilege, though it is not necessarily a physical action. Impiety cannot be associated with a cult, as it implies a larger b ...
as Anaxagoras held that the sun was not associated with divinity; it was merely a huge burning stone. Pericles helped Anaxagoras flee Athens and return to Ionia. Anaxagoras was also a major influence on
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
.
Anaxagoras is known for his "theory of everything". He claimed that "in everything there is a share of everything." Interpretations differ as to what he meant. Anaxagoras was trying to stay true to the Eleatic principle of the everlasting (What-is) while also explaining the diversity of the natural world. Anaxagoras accepted Parmenides' doctrine that everything that exists (What-is) has existed forever, but contrary to the Eleatics, he added the ideas of ''
panspermia
Panspermia () is the hypothesis, first proposed in the 5th century BCE by the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, comets, and planetoids, as well as by spacecraf ...
'' and ''
nous
''Nous'', or Greek νοῦς (, ), sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
Alternative English terms used in p ...
''. All objects were mixtures of various elements, such as air, water, and others. One special element was ''nous'', i.e., mind, which is present in living things and causes motion. According to Anaxagoras, ''Nous'' was one of the elements that make up the cosmos. Things that had ''nous'' were alive. According to Anaxagoras, all things are composites of some basic elements; although it is not clear what these elements are. All objects are a mixture of these building blocks and have a portion of each element, except ''nous''. ''Nous'' was also considered a building block of the cosmos, but it exists only in living objects. Anaxagoras writes: "In everything there is a portion (''
moira'') of everything except mind (''nous''), but there are some things in which mind too is present." ''Nous'' was not just an element of things, somehow it was the cause of setting the universe into motion. Anaxagoras advanced Milesian thought on epistemology, striving to establish an explanation that could be valid for all natural phenomena. Influenced by the Eleatics, he also furthered the exploration of metatheoretical questions such as the nature of knowledge.
Empedocles
Empedocles (; grc-gre, Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; , 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the fo ...
was born in
Akragas
Agrigento (; scn, Girgenti or ; grc, Ἀκράγας, translit=Akrágas; la, Agrigentum or ; ar, كركنت, Kirkant, or ''Jirjant'') is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy and capital of the province of Agrigento. It was one of ...
, a town in the southern Italian peninsula. According to
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal sour ...
, Empedocles wrote two books in the form of poems: ''Peri Physeos'' (On nature) and the ''Katharmoi'' (Purifications). Some contemporary scholars argue these books might be one; all agree that interpreting Empedocles is difficult.
On cosmological issues, Empedocles takes from the Eleatic school the idea that the universe is unborn, has always been and always will be. He also continues Anaxagoras' thought on the four "roots" (i.e., classical elements), that by intermixing, they create all things around us. These roots are fire, air, earth, and water. Crucially, he adds two more components, the immaterial forces of love and strife. These two forces are opposite and by acting upon the material of the four roots unite in harmony or tear apart the four roots, with the resulting mixture being all things that exist. Empedocles uses an analogy of how this is possible: as a painter uses a few basic colors to create a painting, the same happens with the four roots. It is not quite clear if love and strife co-operate or have a greater plan, but love and strife are in a continual cycle that generates life and the earth we live in. Other beings, apart from the four roots and love and strife, according to Empedocles' ''Purifications'' are mortals, gods, and
daemons. Like Pythagoras, Empedocles believed in the soul's transmigration and was vegetarian.
Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus
![Hendrik ter Brugghen - Democritus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Hendrik_ter_Brugghen_-_Democritus.jpg)
Leucippus and Democritus both lived in
Abdera, in
Thrace
Thrace (; el, Θράκη, Thráki; bg, Тракия, Trakiya; tr, Trakya) or Thrake is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe, now split among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to t ...
. They are most famous for their atomic cosmology even though their thought included many other fields of philosophy, such as ethics, mathematics, aesthetics, politics, and even embryology.
The atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus was a response to the Eleatic school, who held that motion is not possible because everything is occupied with What-is. Democritus and Leucippus reverted the Eleatic axiom, claiming that since motions exist, What-is-not must also exist; hence void exists. Democritus and Leucippus were skeptics regarding the reliability of our senses, but they were confident that motion exists. Atoms, according to Democritus and Leucippus, had some characteristics of the Eleatic What-is: they were homogeneous and indivisible. These characteristics allowed answers to
Zeno's paradoxes
Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides' doctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in pluralit ...
. Atoms move within the void, interact with each other, and form the plurality of the world we live in, in a purely mechanical manner.
One conclusion of the Atomists was
determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
- the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. As Leucippus said, (DK 67 B2) "Nothing comes to be random but everything is by reason and out of necessity." Democritus concluded that since everything is atoms and void, several of our senses are not real but conventional. Color, for example, is not a property of atoms; hence our perception of color is a convention. As Democritus said, (DK 68 B9) "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention colour; in reality atoms and void." This can be interpreted in two ways. According to James Warren there is an
eliminativist interpretation, such that Democritus means that color is not real, and there is a
relativist
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...
interpretation, such that Democritus means that color and taste are not real but are perceived as such by our senses through sensory interaction.
Sophists
The sophists were a philosophical and
educational
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Vari ...
movement that flourished in ancient Greece before Socrates. They attacked traditional thinking, from gods to morality, paving the way for further advances of philosophy and other disciplines such as drama, social sciences, mathematics, and history.
Plato disparaged the sophists, causing long-lasting harm to their reputation. Plato thought philosophy should be reserved for those who had the appropriate intellect to understand it; whereas the sophists would teach anyone who would pay tuition. The sophists taught rhetoric and how to address issues from multiple viewpoints. Since the sophists and their pupils were persuasive speakers at court or in public, they were accused of moral and epistemological relativism, which indeed some sophists appeared to advocate. Prominent sophists include
Protagoras
Protagoras (; el, Πρωταγόρας; )Guthrie, p. 262–263. was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue '' Protagoras'', Plato credits him with inventing the r ...
,
Gorgias
Gorgias (; grc-gre, Γοργίας; 483–375 BC) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxogr ...
,
Hippias
Hippias of Elis (; el, Ἱππίας ὁ Ἠλεῖος; late 5th century BC) was a Greek sophist, and a contemporary of Socrates. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, ...
,
Thrasymachus
Thrasymachus (; el, Θρασύμαχος ''Thrasýmachos''; c. 459 – c. 400 BC) was a sophist of ancient Greece best known as a character in Plato's ''Republic''.
Life, date, and career
Thrasymachus was a citizen of Chalcedon, on the Bosphorus ...
,
Prodicus
Prodicus of Ceos (; grc-gre, Πρόδικος ὁ Κεῖος, ''Pródikos ho Keios''; c. 465 BC – c. 395 BC) was a Greek philosopher, and part of the first generation of Sophists. He came to Athens as ambassador from Ceos, and became known as ...
,
Callicles Callicles (; el, Καλλικλῆς; c. 484 – late 5th century BC) is thought to have been an ancient Athenian political philosopher. He figures prominently in Plato’s dialogue '' Gorgias'', where he "presents himself as a no-holds-barred, ...
,
Antiphon
An antiphon (Greek ἀντίφωνον, ἀντί "opposite" and φωνή "voice") is a short chant in Christian ritual, sung as a refrain. The texts of antiphons are the Psalms. Their form was favored by St Ambrose and they feature prominently ...
, and
Critias
Critias (; grc-gre, Κριτίας, ''Kritias''; c. 460 – 403 BC) was an ancient Athenian political figure and author. Born in Athens, Critias was the son of Callaeschrus and a first cousin of Plato's mother Perictione. He became a leading ...
.
Protagoras is mostly known for two of his quotes. One is that "
umans are..''the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, of things that are not that they are not"'' which is commonly interpreted as affirming philosophical
relativism
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. Ther ...
, but it can also be interpreted as claiming that knowledge is only relevant to humankind, that moral rightness and other forms of knowledge are relevant to and limited to human mind and perception. The other quote is, "Concerning the gods, I cannot ascertain whether they exist or whether they do not, or what form they have; for there are many obstacles to knowing, including the obscurity of the question and the brevity of human life."
Gorgias wrote a book named ''On Nature,'' in which he attacked the Eleatics' concepts of What-is and What-is-not. He claimed it is absurd to hold that nonexistence exists, and that What-is was impossible since it had to either be generated or be unlimited and neither is sufficient. There is an ongoing debate among modern scholars whether he was a serious thinker, a precursor of extreme relativism and skepticism, or merely a charlatan.
Antiphon placed natural law against the law of the city. One need not obey the city's laws as long as one will not get caught. One could argue that Antiphon was a careful hedonist—rejecting dangerous pleasures.
Philolaous of Croton and Diogenes of Apollonia
Philolaus of Croton and
Diogenes of Apollonia
Diogenes of Apollonia ( ; grc, Διογένης ὁ Ἀπολλωνιάτης, Diogénēs ho Apollōniátēs; 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, and was a native of the Milesian colony Apollonia in Thrace. He lived for some ti ...
from
Thrace
Thrace (; el, Θράκη, Thráki; bg, Тракия, Trakiya; tr, Trakya) or Thrake is a geographical and historical region in Southeast Europe, now split among Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, which is bounded by the Balkan Mountains to t ...
(born c. 460 BCE) are considered the last generation of pre-Socratics. Rather than advancing a cosmological perspective on how our universe is constructed, they are mostly noted for advancing abstract thinking and argumentation.
Pythagorianism, Anaxagoras and Empedocles influenced Philolaus. He attempted to explain both the variety and unity of the cosmos. He addressed the need to explain how the various masses of the universe interact among them and coined the term ''Harmonia'', a binding force that allows mass to take shape. The structure of the cosmos consisted of ''apeira'' (unlimiteds) and ''perainonta'' (limiters).
Diogenes of Apollonia returned to Milesian monism, but with a rather more elegant thought. As he says in DK64 B2 "It seems to me, overall, that all things are alterations of the same things and are the same thing". He explains that things, even when changing shapes, remain ontologically the same.
Topics
Knowledge
The ''mythologoi'', Homer and Hesiod, along with other poets, centuries before the pre-Socratics, thought that true knowledge was exclusive to the divine. But starting with Xenophanes, the pre-Socratics moved towards a more secular approach to knowledge. The pre-Socratics sought a method to understand the cosmos, while being aware that there is a limit to human knowledge.
While Pythagoras and Empedocles linked their self-proclaimed wisdom to their divinely inspired status, they tried to teach or urge mortals to seek the truth about the natural realm—Pythagoras by means of mathematics and geometry and Empedocles by exposure to experiences. Xenophanes thought that human knowledge was merely an opinion that cannot be validated or proven to be true. According to Jonathan Warren, Xenophanes set the outline of the nature of knowledge. Later, Heraclitus and Parmenides stressed the capability of humans to understand how things stand in nature through direct observation, inquiry, and reflection.
Theology
Pre-Socratic thought contributed to the demythologization of the Greek popular religion. The narrative of their thought contributed to shifting the course of ancient Greek philosophy and religion away from the realm of divinity and even paved the way for teleological explanations. They attacked the traditional representations of gods that Homer and Hesiod had established and put Greek popular religion under scrutiny, initiating the schism between natural philosophy and theology. Pre-Socratic philosophers did not have atheistic beliefs, but it should be kept in mind that being an atheist those days was not without social or legal dangers. Despite that, arguments rejecting deities were not barred from the public sphere which can be seen in Protagoras's quotation on the gods: "About the gods I am able to know neither that they exist nor that they do not exist."
The theological thought starts with the Milesian philosophers. It is evident in Anaximander's idea of the ''
apeiron
''Apeiron'' (; ) is a Greek word meaning "(that which is) unlimited," "boundless", "infinite", or "indefinite" from ''a-'', "without" and ''peirar'', "end, limit", "boundary", the Ionic Greek form of ''peras'', "end, limit, boundary".
Origin ...
'' steering everything, which had other abilities usually attributed to Zeus. Later, Xenophanes developed a critique of the anthropomorphism of the gods. Xenophanes set three preconditions for God: he had to be all good, immortal and not resembling humans in appearance, which had a major impact on western religious thought.
The theological thought of Heraclitus and Parmenides is not entirely certain, but it is generally accepted that they believed in some kind of divinity. The Pythagoreans and Empedocles believed in the
transmigration of souls
Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrection is a ...
. Anaxagoras asserted that cosmic intelligence (''
nous
''Nous'', or Greek νοῦς (, ), sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
Alternative English terms used in p ...
'') gives life to things. Diogenes of Appollonia expanded this line of thinking and might have constructed the first teleological argument "it would not be possible without Intellection for it so to be divided up that it has the measures of all things — of winter and summer and night and day and rains and winds and fair weather. The other things, too, if one wishes to consider them, one would find disposed of in the best possible way." While some pre-Socratics were trying to find alternatives to divinity, others were setting the foundation of explaining the universe in terms of teleology and intelligent design by a divine force.
Medicine
Prior to the pre-Socratics, health and illness were thought to be governed by gods. Pre-Socratic philosophy and medicine advanced in parallel, with medicine as a part of philosophy and vice versa. It was
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of ...
(often hailed as the father of medicine) who separated – but not completely – the two domains. Physicians incorporated pre-Socratic philosophical ideas about the nature of the world in their theoretical framework, blurring the border between the two domains. An example is the study of epilepsy, which in popular religion was thought to be a divine intervention to human life, but Hippocrates' school attributed it to nature, just as Milesian rationalism demythologized other natural phenomena such as earthquakes. The systematic study of anatomy, physiology, and illnesses led to the discovery of cause-effect relations and a more sophisticated terminology and understanding of the diseases that ultimately yielded rational science.
Cosmology
The pre-Socratics were the first to attempt to provide reductive explanations for a plethora of natural phenomena.
Firstly, they were preoccupied with the mystery of the cosmic matter—what was the basic substance of the universe? Anaximander suggested ''apeiron'' (limitless), which hints, as Aristotle analyzed, there is no beginning and no end to it, both chronologically and within the space. Anaximenes placed ''aêr'' (air) as the primary principle, probably after realizing the importance of air to life and/or the need to explain various observable changes. Heraclitus, also seeking to address the issue of the ever changing world, placed fire as the primary principle of the universe, that transforms to water and earth to produce the universe. Ever-transforming nature is summarized by Heraclitus' axiom ''panta rhei'' (everything is in a state of flux). Parmenides suggested two ever-lasting primary building blocs, night and day, which together form the universe. Empedocles increased the building blocks to four and named them roots, while also adding Love and Strife, to serve as the driving force for the roots to mingle. Anaxagoras extended even more the plurality of Empedocles, claiming everything is in everything, myriads of substances were mixing among each other except one, ''Nous'' (mind) that orchestrates everything—but did not attribute divine characteristics to ''Nous''. Leucippus and Democritus asserted the universe consists of atoms and void, while the motion of atoms is responsible for the changes we observe.
Rationalism, observation and the beginning of scientific thought
The pre-Socratic intellectual revolution is widely considered to have been the first step towards liberation of the human mind from the mythical world and initiated a march towards reason and scientific thought that yielded modern western philosophy and science. The pre-Socratics sought to understand the various aspects of nature by means of rationalism, observations, and offering explanations that could be deemed as scientific, giving birth to what became Western rationalism. Thales was the first to seek for a unitary arche of the world. Whether arche meant the beginning, the origin, the main principle or the basic element is unclear, but was the first attempt to reduce the explanations of the universe to a single cause, based on reason and not guided by any sort of divinity. Anaximander offered the
principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhau ...
, a revolutionary argument that would also yield the principle that nothing comes out of nothing. Most of pre-Socratics seemed indifferent to the concept of teleology, especially the Atomists who fiercely rejected the idea. According to them, the various phenomena were the consequence of the motion of atoms without any purpose. Xenophanes also advanced a critique of anthropomorphic religion by highlighting in a rational way the inconsistency of depictions of the gods in Greek popular religion.
Undoubtedly, pre-Socratics paved the way towards science, but whether what they did could constitute science is a matter of debate. Thales had offered the first account of a reduction and a generalization, a significant milestone towards scientific thought. Other pre-Socratics also sought to answer the question of arche, offering various answers, but the first step towards scientific thought was already taken. Philosopher
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the cl ...
, in his seminal work ''Back to Presocratics'' (1958) traces the roots of modern science (and the West) to the early Greek philosophers. He writes: "There can be little doubt that the Greek tradition of philosophical criticism had its main source in Ionia ... It thus leads the tradition which created the rational or scientific attitude, and with it our Western civilization, the only civilization, which is based upon science (though, of course, not upon science alone)." Elsewhere in the same study Popper diminishes the significance of the label they should carry as purely semantics. "There is the most perfect possible continuity of thought between
he Presocratics'
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
theories and the later developments in physics. Whether they are called philosophers, or pre-scientists, or scientists, matters very little." Other scholars did not share the same view. F. M. Cornford considered the Ionanians as dogmatic speculators, due to their lack of empiricism.
Reception and legacy
Antiquity
The pre-Socratics had a direct influence on classical antiquity in many ways. The philosophic thought produced by the pre-Socratics heavily influenced later philosophers, historians and playwrights. One line of influence was the Socrato-Ciceronian tradition, while the other was the Platonic-Aristotelian.
Socrates,
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; grc, wikt:Ξενοφῶν, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Anci ...
and
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the estab ...
were highly influenced by the ''physiologoi'' (naturalists) as they were named in ancient times. The naturalists impressed young Socrates and he was interested in the quest for the substance of the cosmos, but his interest waned as he became steadily more focused on epistemology,
virtue
Virtue ( la, virtus) is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standard ...
, and
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
rather than the natural world. According to Xenophon, the reason was that Socrates believed humans incapable of comprehending the cosmos. Plato, in the ''Phaedo'', claims that Socrates was uneasy with the materialistic approach of the pre-Socratics, particularly Anaxagoras. Cicero analyzed his views on the pre-Socratics in his ''
Tusculanae Disputationes
The ''Tusculanae Disputationes'' (also ''Tusculanae Quaestiones''; English: ''Tusculan Disputations'') is a series of five books written by Cicero, around 45 BC, attempting to popularise Greek philosophy in Ancient Rome, including Stoicism. It is s ...
'', as he distinguished the theoretical nature of pre-Socratic thought from previous "sages" who were interested in more practical issues. Xenophon, like Cicero, saw the difference between pre-Socratics and Socrates being his interest in human affairs (''ta anthropina'').
The pre-Socratics deeply influenced both Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle discussed the pre-Socratics in the first book of ''
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
'', as an introduction to his own philosophy and the quest for ''arche''. He was the first to state that philosophy starts with Thales. It is not clear whether Thales talked of water as ''arche'', or that was a retrospective interpretation by Aristotle, who was examining his predecessors under the scope of his views. More crucially, Aristotle criticized the pre-Socratics for not identifying a purpose as a
final cause
The four causes or four explanations are, in Aristotelian thought, four fundamental types of answer to the question "why?", in analysis of change or movement in nature: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final. Aristotle wrote th ...
, a fundamental idea in Aristotelian metaphysics. Plato also attacked pre-Socratic materialism.
Later, during the Hellenistic era, philosophers of various currents focused on the study of nature and advanced pre-Socratic ideas. The Stoics incorporated features from Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, such as ''nous'' and fire respectively. The Epicureans saw Democritus' atomism as their predecessor while the Sceptics were linked to Xenophanes.
Modern era
The pre-Socratics, along with the rest of ancient Greece, invented the central concepts of Western civilization: freedom, democracy, individual autonomy and rationalism.
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
, a 16th-century philosopher known for advancing the
scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
, was probably the first philosopher of the modern era to use pre-Socratic axioms extensively in his texts. He criticized the pre-Socratic theory of knowledge by Xenophanes and others, claiming that their deductive reasoning could not yield meaningful results—an opinion contemporary philosophy of science rejects. Bacon's fondness for the pre-Socratics, especially Democritus' atomist theory, might have been because of his anti-Aristotelianism.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...
admired the pre-Socratics deeply, calling them "tyrants of the spirit" to mark their antithesis and his preference against Socrates and his successors. Nietzsche also weaponized pre-Socratic antiteleology, coupled with the materialism exemplified by Democritus, for his attack on Christianity and its morals. Nietzsche saw the pre-Socratics as the first ancestors of contemporary science—linking Empedocles to Darwinism and Heraclitus to physicist
Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (31 August 1821 – 8 September 1894) was a German physicist and physician who made significant contributions in several scientific fields, particularly hydrodynamic stability. The Helmholtz Association, ...
. According to his narrative, limned in many of his books, the pre-Socratic era was the glorious era of Greece, while the so-called Golden Age that followed was an age of decay, according to Nietzsche. Nietzsche incorporated the pre-Socratics in his
Apollonian and Dionysian
The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work ''The Birth of Tragedy'' by Fri ...
dialectics, with them representing the creative Dionysian aspect of the duo.
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...
found the roots of his
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
and later thinking of Things and the Fourfold in the pre-Socratics, considering Anaximander, Parmenides, and Heraclitus as the original thinkers on being, which he identified in their work as ''physis''
ύσις(emergence, contrasted against κρύπτεσθαι, kryptesthai, in Heraclitus’ Fragment 123)
or ''
aletheia
''Aletheia'' or Alethia (; grc, ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. Originating in Ancient Greek philosophy, the term was later used in the works of 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although often translated as "tru ...
''
λήθεια(truth as unconcealment).
References
Cited sources
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Further reading
* Cornford, F. M. 1991. ''From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation.'' Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...
.
* Graham, D. W. 2010. ''The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics.'' 2 vols. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
.
* Furley, D. J., and R. E. Allen, eds. 1970. ''Studies in Presocratic Philosophy.'' Vol. 1, The Beginnings of Philosophy. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
.
* Jaeger, W. 1947. ''The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers.'' Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
*
Lloyd, G. E. R., ''Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle''. New York:
Norton Norton may refer to:
Places
Norton, meaning 'north settlement' in Old English, is a common place name. Places named Norton include: Canada
* Rural Municipality of Norton No. 69, Saskatchewan
*Norton Parish, New Brunswick
**Norton, New Brunswick, a ...
, 1970.
* Luchte, James. 2011. ''Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn.'' New York:
Continuum International Publishing Group
Continuum International Publishing Group was an academic publisher of books with editorial offices in London and New York City. It was purchased by Nova Capital Management in 2005. In July 2011, it was taken over by Bloomsbury Publishing. , al ...
* McKirahan, R. D. 2011. ''Philosophy Before Socrates.'' Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Company
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. is an academic publishing house located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Since beginning operations in 1972, Hackett has concentrated mainly on the humanities, especially classical and philosophical texts. Many Hackett ...
.
* Robb, K., ed. 1983. ''Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy.'' La Salle, IL: Hegeler Institute.
* Stamatellos, G. 2012, ''Introduction to Presocratics: A Thematic Approach to Early Greek Philosophy with Key Readings'',
Wiley-Blackwell
Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...
.
* Vlastos, G. 1995. ''Studies in Greek Philosophy.'' Vol. 1, The Presocratics. Edited by D. W. Graham. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
* Vassallo, Ch. 2021 ''The Presocratics at Herculaneum: A Study of Early Greek Philosophy in the Epicurean Tradition.'' Berlin-Boston:
De Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.
History
The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...
.
External links
Collections Containing Articles on Presocratic Philosophy*
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