1. Fill the gaps with the correct word from the list below.

Presocratics. First Philosophers and Scientists.

The Presocratics were 6th and 5th century BCE Greek _thinkers_____ who introduced a new way of
_inquiring_____ into the world and the place of human beings in it. They were recognized in antiquity
as the first philosophers and scientists of the __western___ tradition.
Our understanding of the Presocratics is complicated by the incomplete nature of our
__evidence___. Most of them wrote at least one “book” (short __pieces_____ of prose writing, or, in
some cases, poems), but no complete work survives. Instead, we are dependent on later philosophers,
_historians___, and compilers of collections of ancient wisdom for disconnected quotations
(fragments) and reports about their views.
The term, “Presocratic philosophers”, coined in the eighteenth century, was made current by
Hermann Diels in the nineteenth, and was meant to mark a contrast between Socrates who was
interested in __moral___ problems, and his predecessors, who were supposed to be primarily
concerned with _cosmological_____ and physical speculation. “Presocratic,” if taken strictly as a
chronological term, is not accurate for the last of them, who were ___contemporaneous___ with
Socrates and even Plato.
In his account of his predecessors' searches for “causes and principles” (the “archê”) of the natural
world and natural __phenomena___. Aristotle says that Thales of Miletus (a city in Ionia, on the west
coast of what is now ___Turkey__) was the first to engage in such inquiry. He seems to have lived
around the beginning of the 6th c. BCE. 

But first philosophers were not only interested in theoretical discussions. Thales predicted a solar
eclipse in 585 BC, introduced geometry into Greece from Egypt, and produced some engineering
__marvels____. ___Anaximander__, –another Milesian-, is reported to have invented the gnomon (the
raised piece of a sundial whose ___shadow___marks time); to have created a __sphere___ of the
heavens serving as an _astronomical____ and cosmological model; and to have been the first to draw a
map of the __inhabited___ world.
 The Milesians were the first philosophers and scientists. They did not see “scientific” and
“philosophical” questions as belonging to separate disciplines, requiring distinct methods of inquiry.
Science and Philosophy were the same: rational thinking.
phenomena, Turkey, astronomical, thinkers, marvels, inquiring, evidence, Anaximander,
contemporaneous, Western, pieces, historians, moral, cosmological, shadow, sphere, inhabited.
 What is everything made of? What is the “archê”?

αρχη [archê]

Greek term for beginning or ultimate principle. The Milesian philosophers

looked for a single material stuff of which the entire universe is composed.

Part 1.
Often only fragments of writing have been found from the first Ancient Greek philosopher-scientists of
over 2,600 years ago. From these fragments we have to try to piece together what they may have wanted
to communicate about their beliefs and their ways of seeing the world.

Read these fragments. They are all trying to answer the question: What is everything made of? They are
all looking for just one answer to that question.

Thales (Thay-lees) c.585 BC

‘….the four substances – of which we say the chief is water, making it

as it were the one element of which everything is made……’

1. What does Thales think everything is made of?

Thales says that it [the nature of things] is water'

_________________________________________________________________

2. What could the other three substances be?

Land, fire and air

_________________________________________________________________

Anaximander (Anax-im-ander) c.560 BC

‘The Non-Limited is the original material of existing things…it is also

that to which they return at their destruction. This Non-Limited is
everlasting and ageless.’

3. If something is limited that means it has boundaries, limits, a beginning and

an end. So what might the Non-Limited be like?

there are no rules or limits that control it

_______________________________________________________________
 Anaximenes (Anax-im-en-ees) c.546 BC

‘….. air holds us together, so do breath and air surround the whole
universe.’

4. What does Anaximenes think everything is made of?

considered the earth to be a flat piece of material that was floating on air.
_______________________________________________________________

Heraclitus (Herra-cly-tus) c500 BC

‘This ordered cosmos which is the same for all…..was ever and is
and shall be everlasting Fire, kindled in measure and quenched in
measure.’ When Fire is in living things ‘it rests from change’.

5. What does Heraclitus think everything is made of?

believed the world is in accordance with Logos (literally, "word", "reason", or
"account") and is ultimately made of fire. He also believed in a unity of opposites and
harmony in the world.
______________________________________________________________

6. Which one of these words do you think he means by ordered?

unpredictable, reliable, chaotic, unreasonable
Chaotic.
_____________________________________________________________

All these thinkers believe that the universe has order and pattern and is
not ruled by the whims and moods of the gods.
 Part 2

These Greek thinkers are called the first ‘natural philosophers’ because they were
concerned with finding material explanations for how the natural world works.
Most ordinary people still believed that the actions of the gods were enough
explanation for why things happened. The natural philosophers must have found this
cultural background difficult to shake off.

Can you find references to the state religion in any of these writings?

Parmenides (Par-men-id-ees) c.475 BC

‘I will describe how earth and sun and moon…and the Milky
Way in the heavens, and outermost Olympus, and the hot power
of the stars, came into being.’

7. In what way could we say that Parmenides is thinking scientifically?

Parmenides maintains that everything that is is and cannot be otherwise, that is,
that it does not change, to which it can be objected that this is impossible, since we
ourselves experience movement and, therefore, change.
______________________________________________________________

8. How does he bring in an idea from the state religion?

He thought that Being is intangible, that is, it has no place in the material world.
Instead of sinking into pessimism, they looked for explanations that would lead them
to accept the impact of the world. What is "reality" and how do we access it?
______________________________________________________________

Empedocles (Em-ped-o-clees) c.450 BC

‘……from the mixture of Water, Earth, Air and Fire there came
into being the forms and colours of mortal things in such numbers
as now exist, fitted together by Aphrodite.’

9. How does Empedocles describe the ‘stuff’ of all things?

Of what is it a mixture?
He described air, fire, water, and earth as: “the fourfold root of all things.”
______________________________________________________________

10. How does he bring in an idea from the state religion?

He mentions Aphrodite.

______________________________________________________________
 Whatever time we live in, it is difficult, or even impossible, not to be
influenced by the background beliefs and concepts of our own culture. We
can see that Parmenides and Empedocles have one foot in the pool of old
ideas and the other foot reaching out to a stepping stone taking them to new
ideas about how the world is.