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Three Greeks

Western philosophy begins with the Greeks of Miletus, in Asia Minor—Anaximander, Thales, and Anaximenes.

Some of their contemporaries, and those who followed were important to the foundations of what would become known as philosophy as well, including: Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Protagoras, Hippias, Socrates, Democritus, and Leucippus. Most of these will be addressed elsewhere.

With them begins the first serious attempts to understand the world by means of reason alone, and with that attempt came two ideas, one, good, and fundamental to all intellectual enquiry from science to philosophy; the other, bad, and a mistake that has plagued philosophy ever since.

The good idea was that the world, or universe, and all that is in it, is understandable and can be understood by observation and reasoning about that observation—that the world can be understood in terms of principles and that man is capable of discovering them.

The bad idea is called “rationalism.” The term is confusing today, because it is usually understood to mean simply, “using reason,” but in philosophy, it has another meaning as well. That meaning too, means using reason, but using it in a wrong way. It does not mean, “rationalization,” which is using a “form” of reason to intentionally evade or obfuscate some fact or truth. It means attempting to use reason to answer philosophical (such as metaphysical) questions (what is the nature of matter? for example), without examining the facts in question.

One good example of rationalism is Heraclitus (not a Miletian, but a contemporary of the Miletians) who “guessed” that everything was fire, earth, and water. The actual reasoning was much more complex, but it was nevertheless, just “made up” by means of reason, disconnected from any observation. (Some “guesses” were almost prescient, such as the atomism of Democritus and Leucippus. Still, it was rationalism, and would remain so until the advent of science.)

Every philosopher since has been plagued at some point by rationalism. Perhaps a more astounding example is Aristotle, who “reasoned to the belief,” that women had fewer teeth than men. As Bertrand Russell once remarked, a mistake easily corrected by asking Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth and counting her teeth, that is, examining the evidence.

Anaximander (611-547 BC)

For the early Greeks there was no distinction between science and philosophy, and much of their “philosophy” addressed questions we regard as questions of science. It is no surprise that astronomy and cosmology dominated the bulk of Anaximander’s “philosophical” work.

Though not philosophy, Anaximander’s ideas about astronomy and cosmology are important to philosophy, because they changed how mankind would view the world ever after. Though the details of his “science” are fantastic (because they were rationalism), his insights, such as, the earth floats unsupported in space and the heavenly bodies make full circles around the earth, was the first “modern” view of the cosmos. He did describe an “origin” of the cosmos, which probably no one understands today, and introduced a concept called, “boundless,” which seems to reflect some idea of the “infinite,” but it’s actual meaning is greatly debated.

The “boundless” is in some way the source of the cosmos, but, according to Anaximander, it has no origin itself. He also apparently believed in a kind of evolution of life, which arose from the moisture of the earth before it was dried up by the sun. These views are more rationalism, of course, including one that has dominated human thinking since—the assumption that the universe, or life, must have some “origin,” and that what that origin is matters to philosophy.

Anaximander made no contribution to either science or philosophy which in their details are of any value today. His contribution to philosophy is that viewpoint that the world can be understood, and that reason is the means to that understanding. Though he was not successful in explaining in true scientific terms such things as the motions of the heavenly bodies, he eliminated the superstitious views of such things by demonstrating that they could at least be explained without resorting to myths and mythical beings.

Thales (585 BC)

Some histories make Thales the first philosopher of Miletus, and Anaximander his student. That may be true, but it is a detail that is not important to philosophy, and something for the historians to thrash out.

Thales was a true polymath and literally studied everything. He made real contributions to geometry, but in other fields, including philosophy, his contributions were not particularly valuable.

Aristotle considered him the first real philosopher, because he attempted to answer all questions in terms of the observable, though much of his reasoning was still rationalism. Thales’ “metaphysics” held that everything was derived from water. He is therefore regarded as a “naturalist,” (as opposed to a supernaturalist). Today he might be called a “physicalist,” meaning someone who believes the physical is all there is, and everything arises from that.

Thales was not a strict naturalist, however, because he believed everything was, “full of gods,” though the meaning of that is not clear, and he also believed in the immortality of souls.

His rationalism is obvious in such views as his correct observation, that the earth is a sphere though he incorrectly assumed that it floats on water. Though not in philosophy, he did make some important contributions to science.

He predicted a total eclipse of the sun that occurred on May 28, 585 BC (though no one knows for certain how he did it). Its importance was in demonstrating that such heavenly events were “natural,” and the nature of such events could be discovered and explained. He also calculated the diameters of the sun and moon, also by methods that are not now known with any certainty.

Thales contributed a number of “propositions” and “definitions” to geometry, which Euclid was probably familiar with. These were real contributions, which, not strictly speaking, philosophy, were significant to later philosophical thinking. Some of those proposition and definitions are the following:

It was based on this proposition, no doubt, that Thales discovered the principle of proportionality, the principle he used in measuring the height of pyramids and the distance of ships at sea.

Aristotle was intrigued by the fact that an angle circumscribed in a semi-circle is always right. In two works, he asked the question: “Why is the angle in a semicircle always a right angle?” But Aristotle never answered the question.

That has always seemed odd to me. He may not have been that familiar with his contemporary Euclid, but was certainly familiar with Pythagoras. The proof is actually simple enough and I provide an example here for anyone interested.

The triangle, PRQ, has the diameter, PQ, of the circle as its base, and its vertex, R, on that circle, thus inscribing it in a semicircle. RC is the median of triangle PRQ drawn from the center of the circle (or center of the base) to the vertex R. The median, RC, divides the triangle PRQ into two isosceles triangles, PRC and QRC, because PC, RC, and QC are all equal.

The sum of the angles PCR and QCR is 180° (the diameter, a straight line).
Let the value of angle CPR or CRP be a (because they are equal). Therefore CPR plus CRP equals 2a.
Let the value of angle CQR or CRQ be b (because they are equal). Therefore CQR plus CRQ equals 2b.
Since the sum of all interior angles of a triangle is 180°, 2a plus angle PCR equals 180° and 2b plus angle QCR equals 180°. Summing all these angles then, 2a plus 2b plus angle PCR plus angle QCR equals 360°. Since PCR plus QCR equals 180°, 2a plus 2b equal 360° minus 180°, or 180°. Therefore a plus b equals 90°, so angles CRP plus CRQ equals 90°, and since PRQ equals CRP plus CRQ, PRQ equals 90°.

Therefore, triangle PRQ is a right triangle.

Anaximenes (528 BC)

Anaximenes is the youngest of the Miletians, and may have been a student of Anaximander, but if he was, his thoughts were inferior to his teacher’s. All of these early thinkers (they were not quite philosophers, I think) indulged in rationalism, but Anaximenes was the wildest, totally divorced from observation.

Anaximander’s views that the earth floats unsupported in space and that the heavenly bodies made fill circles around the earth at least fit the observation. Anaximenes pictured the earth as a flat disk that floated on the air, and thought all the heavenly bodies were disks too, and that the sun only vanished in the evening because it was behind some higher parts of the earth, all of which came out of his imagination, not observation.

As most have been throughout history, the early thinkers were obsessed with metaphysics (what is the ultimate nature of everything) and cosmology (what is the ultimate origin of everything) which were somewhat mixed, whether it was the ultimate nature of existence or the ultimate origin of existence, men were already looking for some ultimate answer or explanation for everything. In some sense this emphasis will also plague philosophy for the rest of its history.

Thales thought everything was derived from water and Anaximander thought the ultimate source of everything was something he called “the boundless.” Anaximenes thought everything was derived from air, and came into existence by means of changes attributable to different densities of air. Less dense was fire. More dense was first wind, then water, earth, stones, and everything else as it became more dense.

Though both fantastic and rationalistic, Anaximenes is given credit for continuing the attempt to understand the nature of the world in terms of principles that could be understood in opposition to mysticism.

A Beginning of Some Things

There was little of real philosophical value contributed by these early Greek thinkers except for one thing, without which there would be no philosophy. That one thing is the view that reality or existence is not some kind of fantastic world controlled by indiscoverable forces and mysterious causes, but is a world that can be understood in terms of principles, and that those principles can be discovered. Except for the geometric principles discovered by Thales, they did not themselves discover many of those principles.

Though most of the “principles” they proposed were rationalistic, they were attempts to discover the nature of things from observation. Though it would be another 250 years or so, before Archimedes described the nature buoyancy, no doubt Thales’ assumption that the earth floats on water was influenced by his observation of the many large ships he saw “floating on water” in the seafaring harbors of Miletus.

There are three things these thinkers contributed to the nature of the intellectual pursuit of knowledge. First, that all truth or knowledge is discovered, not decided or dictated by any authority. Second, that the only source of that knowledge is observation of the facts of whatever is being studied. Third, that only reasoning from those observed facts is valid. It is neglect of the third of these principles that is the basis of rationalism and a bane to every form of intellectual pursuit including philosophy and science.

The chain of reason from observation to the discovery of principles may be long and complex, but if there are no contradictions and no unverified assumptions are included, such long chains of reason will correct. It is when someone allows some conclusion or assumption, not based on observed fact, to be inserted into their reasoning, that it becomes rationalism. Such conclusions or assumptions are not based on reason, but on a feelings or “impressions” or “preferences” that convince the reasoner that their conclusion or assumption “seems” reasonable, or plausible, or fits one’s preferred view of things.

All of mans discoveries are the result of the almost insatiable human desire for knowledge, but there is another side of that good desire, which is not good and manifests itself as a horror of ignorance. There will always be more ignorance than knowledge because there will always be more to discover and learn than we have thus far achieved. But that ignorance is not something to fear; ignorance and the unknown future represent all that we have before us to learn, experience, and discover. That ignorance represents the great adventure of exploration and discovery which is our life.

To some extent, this fear and loathing of ignorance is one of the motives for rationalism, because most people are terrified of admitting ignorance of anything; most people are simply afraid to utter the words, “I do not know.” Rather than admit they don’t know, they would rather make up a plausible story that they are willing to accept as the “probable” explanation for something, which rapidly transforms itself into, “settled science,” or “settled philosophy.“The examples that immediately come to mind in science are environmentalism, psychology, and evolution. The example that comes to mind in philosophy is the dominant philosophy of the day that “no certain knowledge is possible,” in anything.

—Reginald Firehammer (02/11/10)