PasThe first question can be read and thus answered in two ways. One way entails a more contextual sense: why did the Ionian philosophers at this point in time come to the conclusion that the world is made up of a single substance as opposed to the common traditional thought of the Olympian gods? The other way of reading the question regards the philosophers’ deductions: in which manner did the Ionian philosophers come to this conclusion. What were their arguments and on the basis of what evidence were these arguments supported. The second way of reading the question is related to the actual second question (“Why did they disagree about its nature?”). The second question can be answered by comparing their arguments, their focuses of inquiry and perceptions of evidence (discussed in the first question).
Within this essay I attempt to examine the three early Ionian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) and to compare their theories. They all lived in the 6th century BC and had differences and similarities regarding their approach of coming to the conclusion that the world derives from a single substance. These three philosophers developed their theories partly in response to their predecessors, which accounts for a reason for their disagreements. They had different key ideas and thus focuses. However, they all had in common that they assumed that the world we perceive is one of change and motion. Ionian Philosophers distanced themselves from the mythical perceptions of Homer and Hesiod, marking an intellectual shift. However, the Early Ionians did take over a lot from Hesiod: most important the concept of an ordered world comprehensible to human intelligence. But their manner of expression and reasoning was dramatically different. Ionians adopt another strategy: identifying a small number of basic principles and claiming that other things can be explained in terms of these. Thales and Anaximenes posit a single principle (water and air). Within this essay, I want to remind the reader of the bad situation concerning the sources of the Presocratics: we barely have any primary evidence from works of the early Ionians themselves and even the secondary evidence is full of limitations such as, inaccuracy because they are quoted from memory or decontextualization.
This paragraph will be dedicated to the contextual reading of the question: why might this method have begun in the 6th century of Ionia? There is no single answer, but some factors unquestionably played a role: wealth, freedom, literacy being not restricted to a certain caste, freedom of thought and the absence of religious and political guardians. Another Ionian feature which relates to the question was their boldness in making theories. Without this boldness theories would not have made progress during this presocratic era.
The first Ionian philosopher is Thales. Most of our information from Thales derives from Aristotle, who methodologically makes use of Thales’ claims so that his arguments culminate as the best. Therefore, we always have to view Thales in the light of Aristotle. According to Aristotle, Thales thinks that the arche of the world is water. It is relatively certain to say that Thales actually thought the earth rests on water, because there is no real reason why Aristotle would make this up. Aristotle’s interprets this as the material substance of the world. It is unlikely however, that Thales thought so as well, because Thales does not address the question why everything else has not the characteristics of water, when according to him everything is made up of water. The more likely interpretation is that Thales thought water is the source/ origin of everything. He may have got this idea from the fact that water is the prominent physical make-up of the world and that water is a basic need for every living and apparently non-living things. This interpretation suggests that Thales differed from his successors: his questions are rooted in Hesiod’s thought but his naturalistic answers indicate a demythologized component, through rejecting the thought that there was one human god creating everything. He seems to be a mediator between the traditional thought and the new Ionian thought.
Anaximander by absorbing Thales’ naturalisticly rooted answers, misunderstands Thales’ question: Anaximander (like Aristotle) thought that Thales was asking for the material cause of the world (providing the fact that the more likely interpretation is true). Thus, Anaximander unfairly refutes Thales, by putting a counterargument forward, which is actually irrelevant for Thales’ question: If everything is made of water (or anything else), why doesn’t everything have the specific characteristics of water (or anything else)? In my opinion, Anaximander tackles this question in a sophisticated way. He argues, that because there is no property that all things have and in fact there are materials with opposite properties, the material cause must be something indefinite: apeiron. He describes the apeiron as eternal and ageless. He then explains how determinate diversity comes out of the indeterminate uniformity of apeiron by arguing that through the process of separation complex things evolve out of simple things. Not only does he describe the coming to be of the world as a process of separation but also the maintenance of the world.
Coming to be:
He declares that what arose from the eternal and is productive of (or capable of giving birth to) hot and cold was separated off at the coming to be of this Kosmos and a kind of sphere of flame from this grew around the dark mist (…). When it was broken off and enclosed in certain circles, the sun, the moon, and the stars came to be.
(pseudo-Plutarch, Stromata 2= DK12A10)
Maintenance:
Anaximander says that these (thunder, lightning, thunderbolts, watersprouts and hurricanes) all result from wind. For whenever it (wind) is enclosed in a thick cloud and forcibly escapes, because it is so fine and light, then the bursting (of the cloud) creates noise and the splitting create the flash against the blackness of the cloud.
(Aetius 3.3.1= Dk12A23)
In a way, the maintenance of the world is consisted of other things in the world. Furthermore, Anaximander challenges Thales’ theory of the world resting on water, by asking himself, where then the water rests on. Anaximander realizes though the infinite nature of this argument and ends this by reasoning that the earth is at rest since its equal distance from the extremes implies that there is no sufficient reason for it to move in one direction rather than the other. This reasoning is indicative of Anaximander critical stance towards sensory information, which he is ready to reject for some sense-based judgements.
Moving on to Anaximenes, whose importance in the modern days is slightly downsized because he argued that air is the substratum. This is considered as a regress in thought, because Thales argued as well that the substratum is something elementary. However, it is worth taking Anaximander seriously, since scholars are tempted to underestimate the dangers of the principle of charity. And if scholars reconstruct Anaximander to the extent that Anaximenes is wrong, then scholars over reconstructed Anaximander. Anaximenes actually moves the debate on: Anaximander makes us think that the reasons for hot and cold are quite different and thinks of the opposites as two distinct qualities, which are robustly characterized. Anaximenes however, puts these qualities all on a scale which only differ in density. He may have got this idea, because the perception of hot and cold also differs. For Anaximenes, there is no such thing as hot and cold until you have animal organisms who experience these vibrations through their senses. Thus, the qualities of hot and cold only emerge in one’s head. This is a massive insight and relates to Epistemology. Another argument supporting Anaximenes’ theory as opposed to Anaximander’s is the existence other qualities within one specific matter. For example, if one were to put her hand into the fire then that person would not only feel heat, but also pain and probably other emotions too. Anaximander does not substantially consider the nature of one’s emotion. And if he had, he might have argued that pain is incorporated with in the matter as well. And this is intrinsically wrong.
Furthermore, Anaximenes argues that the condensed state is cold and the loose state is hot on the basis of the evidence that when one blows out air through condensed lips the air is cold but when blown out through a relaxed mouth the air is warm. This way of reasoning is remarkable as well because this could be seen as the first experiment. However, it is not quite clear why Anaximenes chooses air as the substratum. He may have chosen that Element, because air is very prominent, lacks visual or sensual qualities and is intrinsically mobile.
Overall, Early Ionians took over a lot from Hesiod: most important the concept of an ordered world comprehensible to human intelligence. But their manner of expression and reasoning was dramatically different. Ionians adopt another strategy: identifying a small number of basic principles and claiming that other things can be explained in terms of these. Thales and Anaximenes posit a single principle (water and air). Anaximenes thinks all things are composed of air in its various phases (including fire, wind, water)- Thales thinks that all things are made up of water but instead have offered a cosmogony in which the present-day world developed out of it (rather than is composed of. Anaximander: proposed a cosmogony beginning with single substance of indefinite nature, the apeiron. In our information about Anaximenes: There is not trace of the zest for measurement or geometrical reasoning attested for Thales and Anaximander. His basic strategy for explaining physical change looks to have been quite different from Anaximander’s. Anaximander sees the universe as a battleground on which in every region war is being waged between great cosmic forces “they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice”. Anaximenes is a monist air is the on basic stuff and its transformations by the fundamental processes of compression and expansion ate the mechanisms he invokes to account for everything else.
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