THE PRESOCRATICSOPHOS

Men have talked about the world

without paying attention to the world or

to their own minds, as if they were

asleep or absent-minded.

Heraclitus

As early Greek civilization became increasingly refined and

sophisticated, a new kind of thinker emerged known as

sophos, from the Greek word for “wise”. These wise men

asked increasingly sophisticated questions about all sorts of

things, but specially about natural processes and the

origins and essence of life, these philosophers were

noted for their attempts to use reason and observation

to figure out for themselves how the world works.

FROM SOPHOS TO PHILOSOPHER

In his earliest incarnations, the western sophos was

predominantly a ‘”sage or wise man”, he was not a professional

thinker, that is, he did not charge people fees to study with him

or to accompany him. His relatioships with his students were

personal, complex and long lasting. In many cases his pupils

were more like disciples than like paying students.

The sophos (sage or wise men) was seen as a kind of prophet-

priest-theraphist, the philosopher, who is in love with wisdom

but not necessarily wise, was seen as an unusual sort of thinker

and truth seeker.

THE SEARCH FOR A COMMON PRINCIPLE

The earliest Western philosophers are reffered to as the

Presocratics because they appear prior to Socrates, the first

mayor figure in the western philosophical tradition. Some of

the Presocratic philosophes were described as proto-

scientists, because they initiated the transformation of

mythology into rational inquiry about nature and the

cosmos.

RATIONAL DISCOURSE

Traditionally the first Western philosopher is said to have been Thales.

Thales lived in the city of Miletus, part of a Greek colony on the Asian

coast in an area known as Iona.

For most of his life, it seemed that Thales devoted himself to his

studies, devoting a minimum effort to his financial affairs.

Philosophically, Thales is significant for his attempt to find a

common source, a single substance underlying all things. For him

this basic “stuff” was water. Aristotle says that Thales “observed” that

“the nutrient of everything is moist, and that…..the seeds of

everything have a moist nature,….. And that from which

everything is generated is always its first principle’’.

The real force of Thales insight was not his specific conclusion that

all things are water but, rather, his reduction of all things to one

substance. The name for such single –substance philosophies is

monism, the belief that reality is essencially one- either one

reality, one process, one substance, one structure, or one

ground.

Thales’ assertion that everything is composed of water was a

mayor move beyond mythological accounts of nature because it

rested on systematic, rational evidence and careful observation ,

rather than on mythical stories and poetic images.

The resulting interplay of carefully argued ideas is known as rational

discourse, which is the use of reason to order, clarify, and

identify reality and truth according to agreed-upon standards of

verification.

As Thales ideas became known, other philosophers offered rational

explanations and modifications of his claims. For example Thales

claimed that the earth floats on water. But what holds up the water? A

pupil of Thales, Anaximander, who was also from Miletus made

another contribution to philosophical reasoning by offering a rational

explanation for what holds the earth in place, he argued that he

could not percieve the earth in its entirety or observe whatever held it

up.

Anaximander reasoned that the earth stays where it is because it

is at the precise center of the cosmos, “not supported by anything

but resting where it is because of its equal distance from

everything”.

Aristotle said that Anaximander’s reasoning rested on the

principle that nothing happens without a reason, today that

princple is known as: Principle of Sufficient Reason: The

principle that nothing happens wihout a reason.

According to Aristotle, Anaximander argued that there was no

reason why the earth should move in one direction rather than in

another direction.

Anaximander also claimed that in the beginning the earth

was a fluid and that an external source of heat dried some of

it, the dried sections became land. Variations in temperature

caused winds, and living organisms arose at varying states of

this drying out process.

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

Thales` direct legacy culminated in Anaximander`s pupil

Anaximenes, the third of the presocratic Milesian

philosophers. Anaximenes` notion that the first, universal,

underlying element is air or pneuma which is the ultimate,

pervasive spirit that holds the world together. Just as

Anaximander identified problems in Thales` thinking,

Anaximenes recognized a search for a common principle with

the introduction of the argument that qualitative differences

can result from quantitative changes.

Anaximenes proposed two opposing processes of Exchange:

Condensation and Rarefaction. In Anaximenes cosmology, air is

invisible in its pure, original state. Pure air becomes

progressively denser through the process of condensation, in

the following stages: air-fire-wind-cloud-water-earth-stone.

Matter becomes progressively lighter during the process of

rarefaction: Stone-earth-water-cloud-wind-fire-air. Thus the

ongoing cosmic and natural cycle of generation and destruction

provides a single underlying world order, that itself stays the same

throughout all change: air-fire-wind-cloud-wáter-earth-stone.