Early Greek Philosophy & Western thoughts foundation: A Blog on Culture & Social History
The Western perspective situates the actual birth of philosophy in the attempt to understand the world exclusively through rational perspectives, breaking from the traditional mythical and religious explanations for natural phenomena that had pervaded early human era.
In this view, ancient philosophy began with the Presocratic philosophers around the 7th century BCE, named as such for chronologically preceding Socrates, who marked the start of the Classical period in the 5th century BCE, lasting until the 3rd century BCE, and being characterized by some of the most influential figures in the entire history of philosophy. They were followed by the Hellenistic period from the 4th century BCE to the 1st century CE, ending finally with the Roman period up until the 6th century CE. As you can see, some of these periods overlap, as this is largely a thematic organization rather than a chronological one. It is also important to note that much of our understanding comes from only fragments, contemporary discussion, or third-party accounts, and new evidence can alter our understanding of this era as it already has multiple times before.
The first philosopher in this definition was Thales, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, a mathematician and astronomer from the ancient Miletus, in Ionia, Greece, currently a ruin near Balat, Turkey. He wanted to discover the material origins of life and the world. Through observation, he noted that living, moving things usually were either humid or needed water or wetness in order to thrive; and analogously, dead and still things either were or became dry. Thus, he thought that water must be the primal element from which all life springs, the single substance permeating existence.
Beyond his cosmological perspective, Thales understood that geometry encompassed all of space, and was an important tool in understanding the world, creating two important theorems: Thales’ theorem and the intercept theorem. To understand the world, then, one must understand one’s own measure, both in substance and geometry, leading to his advice carved into the entrance to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: “Know thyself”. His method of a philosophical approach to understanding the natural world inspired many others, culminating in the creation of the Milesian school, named after their town, later becoming the Ionian school, which is named after its greater region, lasting until the 5th century BCE.
The Milesians were concerned with “material monism”, or the single material substance which permeated the whole of existence – much like water according to Thales. Anaximander was the first of his pupils, and likewise sought to rationally understand the origins of the world. However, instead of a single existing element like his teacher, he theorized the existence of a limitless, timeless, abstract, chaotic mass which originated all things. He also created the first non-mythological cosmological model of the solar system and theorized the existence of multiple worlds endlessly beginning and ending. The final member of its school before its change.
In name and focus was Anaximenes, who thought air was itself the nature of all things, shifting in density to create heavier things. Thus, even water is created from condensed air, which creates clouds and then rain. Outside of that, they all primarily agreed with each other, but one important idea from Anaximenes was the idea that the same natural laws applied to humanity and to the entire cosmos, indistinguishably. Though these first members are also considered members of the Ionian school, a paradigm shift occurred with later members as nature was no longer the sole focus of their inquiry, but rather everything else it enticed.
Xenophanes hypothesized that extremes of water and earth generated clouds of all sorts, composing all of existence from the sun and moon to rainbows, and the electrical phenomenon known as St. Elmo’s Fire, thus explaining formerly divine phenomena through an early meteorological approach. And although he defended that humanity could acquire knowledge “as the gods do”, he was an early founder of skepticism in that he believed we could never reach the actual “truth”. He was also the first one to propose a difference between having a true belief, as in a belief discovered by wide evidence, and the truth knowable only to the gods themselves.
Heraclitus was a controversial writer, later being called incoherent by Plato and contradicting by Aristotle, claiming that everything is ruled by an ever-changing but constant order, much like fire: never the same, yet always fire. The world, its objects, and how we refer to them, could then too have a lasting name but inconstant properties. One famous example of his is the river: you can enter the same one many times, but it will never be the same water.
Our rationality, our intellectual capability for reasoning and discourse, known to the Greeks as *logos*, would then obey these same patterns. Everything in the cosmos would be knowable, but the sensory information would also need theoretical inquiry toward a more complete grasp. He also theorized a soul as the seat of emotion and reason, and described its dampening, as with alcohol or coldness, or its stimulation through heating. He said these actions may respectively impair or enhance the soul, suggesting some sort of materiality to it.
Another early thinker, at one time misattributed as the first philosopher, was Pythagoras. Mathematics was always an important field of study for most intellectuals in ancient Greece, although frequently separate from philosophical inquiries. But allegedly, it was never greater than for him and his followers around the 6th century BCE, who are known for the Pythagorean theorem in geometry, still taught to this day, though lacking direct evidence to his authorship.
While some degree of mysticism and religious behavior can be observed in other philosophical schools, his was quite literally a cult of mathematics, geometry, and rationality. No original writing of his survived, but he was quite famous for his religious beliefs on the immortality of the soul, and reincarnation, which extended to animals, as well as other doctrines and practices – supposedly even working wonders.
These intertwined with his philosophical view on the geometrical perfection of reality, in that all can be assessed and measured with natural numbers, which reveals the perfect proportion and relationship of everything. The planets known at the time were perfect spheres, and their mathematically flawless paths resonated with an inaudible song which permeated everything – the “harmony of the spheres”. These conjectures were inseparable from their practice, to a degree of obsession with mathematical perfection, even leading to the rumor that the Pythagoreans murdered the mathematician who first discovered irrational numbers. But this is probably false, and much of his teachings and positions also have conflicting sources, casting doubt on most of the information we have on him and his school.
These schools were foundational in establishing philosophy as we know it today, in their various analyses of nature and cosmology based predominantly on reasoning. In the next tutorial, we will continue with the presocratics by taking a look at some other mathematical philosophers, and also some of the first formulations of the atom, and logic as a practice.
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