The beginning of science may have been born of the speculations of the early Greeks, as some would tell us. However others argue that the ancient wisdom of the earlier Egyptian civilation surpassed that of the Greeks, and the remnant fragments of the buried treasure of that civilization was held by the Greeks as the flickering candle for the Western Civilization to keep burning.
Hopefully this flame has not flickered out with the somewhat less civil izations, or by the generational transitions from human minds to a technology of curated data called intelligence. Of course curated data is not a new phenomena as observed by centuries of revisions and reformations.
As we delve into the little box of jewels worn and admired as ancient science or ageless wisdom we will also discern the facets of each little gem as we hold it up to the light and try to establish authenticity. Learning to grasp the vaiidity of sources is equal in importance to the learning of our stories and histories.
Red glass in a fine setting does not make a ruby. (more on sources - SIDE NOTE 1 ).
In this article the less detailed notations on each philosopher can be easily taken in as a simple introduction to each of them. The more detailed sections add depth and the side notes provide images, links and other sources for anyone to continue exploring if curious. All ages of schoolers, homeschoolers and inquiring minds may find little jewels of interest.
The article overview provides a perspective of this era derived from old books and sources of different time periods including excerpts from the 1815 Encyclopedia Britannica along with modern sources. And SIDE NOTE 2 offers more detail on the Ionian Islands where the city of Miletos was located. Spellings may change over time, for example in our time the internet sources will use Miletus as the common spelling of this city.
The philosopher's names and time periods are given in a chronological sequence with the pieces of ancient wisdom or history they have become known for.
Download the crossword puzzle after reading
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Lets take a walk into the sixth century BCE- the Ionian Islands
and meet some old friends or new acquaintances. These sages have in later time been referred to as the cosmologists, a term derived from Greek kosmos, -order of the world. The dates of the lives of specific philosophers change or are curated differently with various sources and different years of publications.
Meet The Sages-
"Thus Thales poses Water, Anaximander the Indefinite, Anaximenes Air, and Herakleitos Fire, as the principle of all things. Here we have an ensemble, Chaos and the four elements, but what is to be made of it?" - R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz - Sacred Science (1961)
THALES 630-546 BCE
Our first source on Thales is a book published in 1929 The History of Philosophy by Paul Glenn
These pages tell us:
THALES (about 624-545 B. c.)
"Life: Thales was born at Miletus. He was a mathematician and an astronomer. He also showed ability as a man of business, a military engineer, and a philosopher. He was one of “The Seven Wise Men of Greece.” What we know of him is traditional history which was consigned to writing long after his time and was recounted by Aristotle in the 4th century B.C.
Works: It is probable that Thales wrote nothing. At any rate, no writing of his survives.
Doctrine: The world-stuff is water. All things are made of water. The world emerges from water, returns again to water, and repeats this process continually at stated periods (infinite series of worlds). Water is infinite and alive. Hence the whole universe lives (hylozoism)."
Our second source The First Philosophers of Greece by Arthur Fairbanks was published in 1898
"According to Aristotle the founder of the Ionic physical philosophy, and therefore the founder of Greek philosophy, was Thales of Miletos"
"According to Diogenes. Laertios, Thales was born in the first year of the thirty fifth Olympiad (640 B.C.), and his death occurred in the fifty-eighth Olympiad (548-545 B.C.). He attained note as a scientific thinker and was regarded as the founder of Greek philosophy because he discarded mythical explanations of things, and asserted that a physical element, water, was the first principle of all things."
"There are various stories of his travels, and in connection with accounts of his travels in Egypt he is credited with introducing into Greece the knowledge of geometry. Tradition also claims that he was a statesman, and as a practical thinker he is classed as one of the seven wise men.
"A work entitled ‘ Nautical Astronomy’ was ascribed to him, but it was recognised as spurious even in antiquity."
The book PHILOSOPHY A Study of Alternative Beliefs -Klausner & Kuntz published 1961
This source says:
Thales 585 BC
Thales is said to have believed that everything is made of water, perhaps from the awareness of solid ice forming liquid, and liquid water evaporating into air.
The source Introduction To The History of Science Volume 1 -by George Sarton
This book was first published in 1927 for the Carnegie Institute of Washington and reprinted again in the 1940's, 50's and 60's.
"THALES
Thales of Miletos. born c. 624, still living in 548. Thales was an Ionian, but possibly had some Phoenician blood in his veins. One of the Seven Wise Men. The founder of Greek science and philosophy. ‘Traveled many years in Egypt, where he became familiar with Egyptian mathematics and astronomy. Predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585. (Tannery says it was the eclipse of September 30, 610; this would not be inconsistent with the birth year which is generally quoted, 640.) On the basis of Egyptian empirical knowledge he founded abstract geometry. Various geometrical propositions and appli- cations are explicitly ascribed to him. Knowledge of the loadstone; first notion of natural law; founder of the Ionian school of philosophy; the first to give a general explanation of the universe: water is the principle of all things, or all things are water. No writings of Thales have remained."
From of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz - Sacred Science Appendix I English translation published 1982 -book first published 1961 French
"Thales of Miletos (630-546 B.C. ) is cited by both Diodorus of Sicily (1.96) and Clement of Alexandria (Strom.)as among those Greek philosophers and sages who received instruction in Egypt. One is inclined to believe, however, that Thales either learned very little from the Egyptian priests, or else transmits but a smattering of their teaching. For besides the theorum that bears his name, some merely fragmentary data of Egyptian origin, technical in nature, are attributed to him.”
Schwaller then lists for us in more detail these four fragments:
-knowledge of the Pharonic vague year of 365 days, but not of the Sirian year of 365 1/4 days”’
-knowldge of the nonuniformity of the sun's annual circuit and the determination of the equinoxes and solstices;
-several dates of star risings relative to a much more southern climate than that of Miletos, hence obviously borrowed from the Egyptian star guides ;
-prediction of a total eclipse of the sun in 610 B.C. which made him famous although he was not considered capable of explaining it.
More detail of this is provided by Schwaller noting that no Greek contemporary of Thales was knowledgable in astronomy or capable of calculating events such as eclipses, however these predictions were common in Chaldea at this same period. It was only later, about 400 B.C., that this knowledge was introduced into Greece by another student of Egypt, Eudoxos of Cnidos, who according to Schwaller “apparently acquired a much more complete knowledge of astronomy in that country” [Egypt].
We also learn from the same source book of Schwaller that "no direct documentation of Ionian philosophy survived. What was later stated very much resembled all the incoherent writings about the Hermetic art.” It seems that these Ionian philosophers, having certain notions about this science either through tradition or through actual knowledge, gave oral instruction and were no better understood than were the master Hermetists of our West understood by a rational science.”
Referencing The Encyclopedia Britannica -Volume 20 from the year 1815
It was written in 1815 about Thales
"He said, “ That the most difficult thing in all the world is to know ourselves ; the most easy to advise others ; and the most sweet to accomplisti our desires. That, in order to live well, we ought to abstain from what we find fault with in others. That the bodily felicity consists in health, and that of the mind in knowledge. That the most ancient of beings is God, because he is uncreated : that nothing is more beautiful than the world, because it is the work of God ; nothing more extensive than space, quicker than spirit, stronger than necessity, wiser than time.”
ANAXIMANDER 611-546 BCE
SOURCE The History of Philosophy Paul Glenn -published 1929
ANAXIMANDER (about 611-547 B.C.)
" Life: Anaximander was born at Miletus. It is probable that he was a pupil of Thales. He was a student of physics, astronomy, and geography.
Works: Anaximander wrote a treatise “On Nature’ of which only two sentences survive. What we know of his doctrine is taken from the works of Theophrastus and Aristotle (both 4 century B.c.).
Doctrine: The world-stuff is an infinite, living, material substance called "The Boundless.” This infinite substance is to be conceived as a sort of spray or mist which in the beginning contained particles of every kind of body found in the world, and elements of heat and cold, wet and dry. Bodily things were separated out from the Boundless by the action of its heat elements. Through the action of heat the warmer particles drew off from the colder, and both were condensed. The condensed warm elements took shape as the sun and the heavenly bodies, while the cold elements condensed into the earth and its waters. The sun beat upon the earth, gradually drying it and causing the waters to run off the surface of the land to form the ocean which surrounds the earth. Continued action of heat upon the drying earth raised bubbles upon its muddy surface, and presently these broke from their moorings and became fishes. The fishes evolved into animals and ultimately into men.
The earth is a cylinder poised in the centre of the universe. The sun and other bright heavenly bodies are great rings of fire which surround the earth, and what we see of them is but apertures in the rings. When these apertures are wholly or partially stopped up, we have eclipses.
The world will eventually be reduced to the spray-form of the primal ‘Boundless, and then it will emerge as before, and this process will go on repeating itself indefinitely (infinite series of worlds)."
Source The Elements of Greek Philosophy From Thales to Aristotle by R.B. Appleton published 1922.
"Anaximander also was a native of Miletus; he was born about 610 B.C., and was a pupil or associate of Thales: Like his master, he would seem to have been something of a scientist; Diogenes Laertius tells us that he invented the yváuwv, or index of the sun-dial; but, as it was known to the Babylonians before this time, it is probable that Anaximander merely introduced it to the Greeks from them. We are also told that he was one of the first to make a map of the world, and Hecataeus, the later geographer whom Herodotus loved so well, both used, and improved, this map. This is all that we can affirm with confidence about the personal life of Anaximander."
"In his philosophical significance he is the second of the great Ionian physicists. Thales had found the permanent ύλη [substance -matter] which underlies the manifold variety of phenomena, with which our senses present us, in water. " ... "But Anaximander seems to have felt a difficulty in deriving all phenomena from something which is itself one of those phenomena." .... " If all phenomena arise from one permanent ύλη [substance] and are merely different manifestations of it, surely this ύλη cannot itself be one of its own many manifestations, but must be something over and above them, something which our senses, it is true, can present to us only in one or other of its manifestations, but which we nevertheless must not confuse with any one of them. This vague "something," which is thus posited at the back of phenomena, Anaximander called the Indeterminate or Infinite". The book by Appleton is explored more in the side notes.
From The Encyclopedia Britannica -Volume 2 published 1815
"ANAXIMANDER, a famous Greek philosopher, born at Miletus in the 42d Olympiad, in the time of Polycrates tyrant of Samos. He was the first who publicly taught philosophy, and wrote upon philosophical subjects. He carried his researches into nature very far for the time in which he lived. It is said, that he discovered the obliquity of the zodiac, was the first who published a geographical table, invented the gnomon, and set up the first sundial in an open place at Lacedaemon. He taught, that infinity of things was the principal and universal element; that this infinite always preserved its unity, but that its parts underwent changes; that all things came from it; and that all were about to return into it.
According to all appearance, he meant by this obscure and indeterminate principle the chaos of the other philofophers. He asserted, that there is an infinity of worlds; that the stars are composed of air and fire, which are carried in their spheres, and that these spheres are gods; and that the earth is placed in the midst of the universe, as in a common centre. He added, that infinite worlds were the product of infinity, and that corruption proceeded from separation."
ANAXIMENES 598-528 BCE
From the book The History of Philosophy -Paul Glenn published 1929
ANAXIMENES (about 588-524 B.C.)
"Life: Anaximenes was born at Miletus. He is said to have been a pupil of Anaximander.
Works: Anaximenes wrote a scientific treatise on the nature of the world, but of this work only one sentence remains and it is not of certain genuinity. What we know of this philosopher is taken from Theophrastus (4 century B. c.).
Doctrine: The world-stuff is air or vapor. This vapor is an infinite, living mass. It is marked by a thickening and thinning process (condensation and rarefaction) which causes different things—winds, clouds, water, fire, earth—to emerge. The earth and the heavenly bodies float in the boundless air like leaves. Anaximenes probably held the infinite series of worlds theory.
Remark: Anaximenes owes much to his two predecessors in the School of Earlier Ionians. From Thales he took the notion of a single world-stuff, and from Anaximander he took the idea of a process of “separating out’’ the bodily universe from the original boundless mass of air."
From the book The Elements of Greek Philosophy From Thales to Aristotle by R.B. Appleton published 1922
"Anaximenes, the pupil of Anaximander, was another native of Miletus. His date is fixed for us by that of Anaximander, and we also have a terminus ad quem in the destruction οf Miletus by the Persians in 494 Β.C. The philosophical school of Miletus then came to an end, so we must put the floruit of Anaximenes before this date." As with the other Milesians, the pondering of the origin of all continued with Anaximenes.
"He taught that this [substance] was ἀήρ, and that things are evolved out of this either by a process of condensation or of rarefaction . By ἀήρ we must probably understand something more akin to fire than to what we call “air,” for in the process of ἀραίωσις, αἰωσις fire is the next stage to ἀήρ, and in an example of πύκνωσις we find that ἀήρ is “rarer” than ἄνεμος (wind)."
This is a challenge for the reader because the Greek words are not translated for us, however moving forward on the written page this begins to fall in place, and shows us as well that translation of ancient ideas is generally influenced by the interpreter.
"....whatever these early philosophers may have meant by “ earth, air, fire, and water,” it is highly improbable that they meant what these words suggest to our senses. According to the theory of Anaximander everything is derived from the “ indeterminate" according to that of Anaximenes everything is derived from ἀήρ (vapour? In Ionic Greek the word means mist). The two theories are equally plausible, especially if we do not allow ourselves to think of ἀήρ as air,
The following footnote on the page adds insight to the writing -footnote
"2 What are these four elements? It has been suggested to me by my friend, Mr. W. H. S. Jones, Fellow of St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge, that they were a figurative way of speaking, that earth = solids, water = liquids, air = vapour, and that fire is something of the nature of vital warmth. And Dr. W. H. D. Rouse tells me that this is the sense in which these very names are used in Sanskrit philosophy."
"Moreover, that it was hardly our “air” is probable from the remark of his that [longer Greek phrase was written and this followed written in the parehthesis ] "(As our soul, which is ‘“‘air,” holds us together, so the wind and the ‘‘ air,” embraces the whole world.)"
..."the name of Anaximenes really marks a great step forward in the history of philosophical development. For in him we see the all-important idea of a Process rising into prominence in the functions which he assigns to πύκνωσις and. dpalwouvs- We are passing from a static to a dynamic conception of things, and the ideas which lie behind these two words are ideas which are destined to play a very important part in the development of philosophy.
Side Note 3 offers more sources on Anaximenes
HERAKLEITOS 544-480 BCE [Heraclitus ]
It seems that the works of Heraclitus remain mostly from "fragments", as is probable of most of the works of these philosophers of antiquity. In the past some scholars worked to record these fragments and sources to better trace what is passed on in the name of a Greek philosopher such as Heraclitus. following are some of these recorded fragments.
SOURCE The Elements of Greek Philosophy From Thales to Aristotle by R.B. Appleton published 1922
"T h o u g h not of Miletus, Heraclitus really belongs to the Milesian school; for it is in him that we see the full exposition of that doctrine."
"He wrote a book in a very obscure style, and considerable fragments of this are still extant. Without going into details of his many enigmatic sayings, we can piece together sufficient to obtain a fairly clear idea of his philosophical significance. He gives full expressiont to that doctrine of. process, which is involved, but not explicitly stated, in the early Ionian philosophy. Fire is the fundamental form of existence; but there is continual change going on. [ greek term of Anaximenes ] Fire passes by the [ greek term of Anaximenes ] into water and earth; these, in their turn, pass, by [ greek term of Anaximenes ] back again into fire."
Moving away from the ideas of Anaxamander, Heraclitus regards the various existence of phenomena, matter, as a play of opposites, "such as that of the lyre and of the bow. It is, in fact, just this continual strife which makes the existence of the world possible. This idea is at the bottom of his doctrine of the unity of opposites and of the One and the Many.* " ' Life is death; sleeping is waking; we are and are not; young and old are the same.' So runs a fragment which has been preserved by Plutarch."
"*The speculations of Heraclitus upon the One and the Many were
purely physical. Later on they will have a very important logical application" -footnote
SOURCE -William Harris Prof. Emeritus Middlebury College
"Heraclitus was born at Ephesus, apparently from a noble family connected with religious rites, but early retired from their social position and devoted himself to study and the development of his philosophical ideas. There are no specific dates to attach to
his life, but he must have flourished about somewhere about 500 B.C. He is said to have written his thoughts out in a prose document, a very early use of prose for philosophy, of which only fragmentary quotations have survived as citations from later authors over the next fifteen hundred years. There is almost nothing more which we know abou Heraclitus' personal life and identity"
"The thought of this Greek philosopher, whom Aristotle first called "The Obscure", has exerted an important influence on modern thinking about a wide variety of subjects, including religion, the nature of the universe, the concept of the continuum, and other points some of which have not yet been sufficiently fathomed. I encourage you to proceed with slow and careful reading ."
A Few Fragments...
"4. Seekers after gold dig up much earth and find little"
"5. Let us not make arbitrary conjectures about the greatest
matters."
"6. Much learning does not teach understanding, otherwise it
would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and
Hecataeus."
"Anyone who has spent time in higher-education will be painfully aware of the "learned views" which go nowhere and shed no light at all. All those "possible points of view..." which fills the pages of learned Journals crowd the path to Understanding. Yet knowing much is also something Heraclitus stresses, so we are caught between the jaws of ignorance and encyclopediasm." -this full work is linked in the side note 4
The 1961 Book PHILOSOPHY A Study of Alternative Beliefs -Klausner & Kuntz
"Heraclitus is known in western thought as the man struck with the changing character of things. For him everything and you "could not step twice in the same river." Still there is some basic substance. He selects fire. Not arbitrarily, because there is some empirical evidence to support him for example, man's consciousness is associated with warmth, for at death the body becomes cold."
From The Encyclopedia Britannica 1815 vol 10
"HERACLITUS, a famous Ephesian philosopher, who flourished about the 69th Olympiad, [...]. He is said to have continually bewailed the wicked lives of men, and, as often as he came among them, to have fallen a-weeping, contrary to Democritus, who made the follies of mankind a subject of laughter."
"The fundamental doctrine of his [Heraclitus] philosophy was, that fire is the principle of all things ; and the ancient philosophers have collected and preserved admirable apophthegms of this philosopher."
above image from the 1896 book The Story Of Greece
So the question with which philosophy started
What is the world made of?
has now seemingly been answered by Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus, as studied and understood in this time of antiquity, or as perceived and perpetuated by those who came after them and recorded their history.
These were the philosophers said to begin the Western Civilization's shift away from mythology toward a primary concern of the origin of the universe, the beginning, the cause, the substance from which this universe is created.
But the origin and true substance of their ideas has been passed down from only fragments.
Essentialy these philosophers have all been interpreted and explained by other philosophers centuries later. These later philosophers also remain only in revisions of those original visions.
And
their world of reasoning was not necessarily universal.
Civilizations have been studied, charted, dated and debated. The Greeks were but one of these civilizations, evolving to what we now call Western Civilization. Some less ancient but wise sages will tell us that this particular rational concept of thinking appeared only with the Greeks and was spread only among the European peoples, and only since the eighteenth century.
Other periods of dawning civilization are said to have pondered these same questions of cosmogony,, the origin of the solar system. And all peoples were likely influenced by the same forces of sacred consideration. Human activity is thought to have evolved into a period or phase of half rational half mystical orientation. Some less ancient wisdom relates this to our evolved right-left brain phenomena.
Is human activity now phasing in some new brain phenomena of technological development, and phasing out...?
Will the originating flame be smothered with digital data and finally flicker out?
If humans have an origin in duality as a product of Unity then is the stability of civilization bound to a system of balance? If reason seeks to dominate, or religion works to convert many to one, and education is a science to indoctrinate one teaching, then is the cycle of civiliations is a pattern to eliminate... the balance?
The sun rises in the East and sets in the West not in a pendular line, but a curve.
Unity may be One. Cosmology may be a search for the balance of the two poles of that one Axis which keep this kosmos spinning. Or if nothing else it keeps our head spinning.
image from The Book of Earths Edna Kenton 1928
Have fun with the CROSSORD PUZZLE 26212
ANTIQUITIES PEOPLE the GREEKS TIME TRAVELLER HOMESCHOOLING
