The Natural Philosophers

Map of Ancient Greece

Miletus: Where it all started
 The Natural Philosophers
They were also known as:

1. The Pre-Socratics
2. The Early Greeks
3. The Milesians
4. The Ancient Philosophers
5. The Philosophers of Origin
 The Natural Philosophers
They were also known as:

1. The PreSocratics
2. The Early Greeks
3. The Milesians/The Ionians
4. The Ancient Philosophers
5. The Philosophers of Origin/Change
 The Natural Philosophers
Why are they the first philosophers?
1. They were the first to ask about the basic
substance that comprises everything.
2. They tried to explain the world differently.
(Their approach is less Homeric, less
mythological or legendary, and less
religious.)
3. They started an intellectual activity that
characterized philosophical inquiry. (Inquiring
with not just the senses but the mind.)
 Three Concerns

1. The Origin (Where do we come

from?)
2. The Problem of Change (Are things
really changing?)
3. The Source of Knowledge (Is sense
perception more reliable than pure
reason?)
THE ORIGIN
 THALES (thay-leez)
• The first Milesian philosopher
• The first to be given the label “wise.”
• An expert on managing water, he could
navigate ships and re-route rivers.
• BASIC ELEMENT: WATER (may come
into being as liquid, solid, and vapor) could
explain how reality changes.
• Thales looked at the world around him and
recognized an underlying and vital life
force that was present in everything. “All
things are full of gods.”
 ANAXIMANDER
• Another Milesian Philosopher; a
Contemporary of Thales
• He shared Thales’ view that there was a
basic stuff that glued the universe together.
But he didn’t agree it was anything as
ordinary as water.
• BASIC ELEMENT: APEIRON (Greek)- “THE
BOUNDLESS” (The Infinite, The Unlimited);
Something beyond the physical universe, but
the source of everything in it; The ultimate
substance must be something other than the
things created (neither created nor
destroyed).
• He used Thales’ idea as a springboard for
claiming that people had evolved from fish.
 ANAXIMENES
• Another Milesian Philosopher; a Student of
Anaximander
• He looked carefully at the natural world around
him, then disagreed with his master.
• BASIC ELEMENT: AIR or VAPOR (All things
are either thick air or thin air.) Water came from
air as it is a condensed air. Pressed even
further it becomes earth. The thinnest air is fire.
• AIR is also the source of all life because people
have to breathe air to live.
• People’s souls were air. (His ideas about the
universe explained both spiritual and material
reality.)
He said, “As our soul, being air, holds us
together and controls us, so does wind and air
enclose the whole world.”
THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF CHANGE:THE
ELEATICS (Elea, Southern Italy)

Their concerns:
• CHANGE is more apparent than the
substance underlying all things. (Shift in topic)
• CHANGE goes against logic.
 HERACLITUS
• Change is not an illusion, but a
characteristic of nature.
• CHANGE (represented as ‘fire’) is the
most basic characteristic of nature.
(faith on what you can perceive)
• Change manifests itself in the existence
of motion and the plurality of things.
• “Everything flows. We cannot step twice
into the same river.”
• “Everything happens for a reason.”
LOGOS (Reason or God) – the universal
reason/law guiding everything that
happens in nature.
 PARMENIDES
• “Everything has always existed.” (to save the
principle of identity and the principle of non-
contradiction)
• “Nothing can come out of nothing.” (to create means
to turn something out of nothing)
• “We should not equate our perception with our
rationality.”
• “ONENESS” – origin of all
Senses – “Nature is in a constant state of flux.”
Reason – “Our senses could give us an
incorrect picture of the world, a picture that does not
tally with our reason.” (PERCEPTUAL ILLUSION)
 RATIONALISM – unshakeable faith in HUMAN
REASON
 ZENO
- A student of Parmenides who tried to defend him using several
Paradoxes against the Pluralists or the proponents of Motion
Zeno’s PARADOXES:
1. The Millet Seed – “A seed falls to the ground and does not
make any sound. Several seeds fall off and make a sound.”
2. Achilles and the Tortoise – “Achilles can never overtake the
tortoise because in doing so he must always reach a point
that the tortoise has passed.”
3. The Arrow – “Does an arrow move when the archer shoot it at
the target? NO, since the arrow must occupy a position in
space equal to its length which makes it at rest.”
Other Greek Philosophers
 EMPEDOCLES
- Came from Sicily
• BASIC ELEMENTS: He disagreed that there was one
basic ingredient to the universe. He said reality boiled
down to the simplest parts of the four elements/roots
(fire, air, earth, and water).
• All natural processes were due to the COMING
TOGETHER AND SEPARATING of these four elements.
• Explanation – Watch a piece of wood burning.
Something disintegrates. We hear it crackle and splutter
– the water. Something goes up – the air. The ‘fire’ we
can see. Something also remains – the earth.
• FORCE: LOVE AND STRIFE
 ANAXAGORAS
• First Athenian Philosopher

PONDERINGS OF ANAXAGORAS:
• “Nature is built up of an infinite
number of minute particles invisible
to the eye – THE SEEDS.”
• “The Seeds have something of
everything.”
• FORCE: ORDER – THE MIND or
THE NOUS
 DEMOCRITUS
- Came from Abdera, Aegean coast
PONDERINGS OF DEMOCRITUS:
• “Everything was built up of tiny invisible blocks, each of
which was eternal and immutable – “atomos” (Greek
word for indivisible)
Three Characteristics of Atoms:
a. Indivisible/Eternal (the basic element comprising all)
b. Smallest
c. Can be used as a Building Block
• He is a MATERIALIST. The only things that existed are
the atoms and the void. (There is no force or soul that
intervenes.)