Nature of Philosophy (Readings - Part 2)

The topic deals with the history of Philosophy, the

history however is presented in order to have an idea
of the origin and the early proponents of philosophy.
Understanding of the emergence the field of will
enhance and equip us a better concept of what
philosophy is.

Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the student should be able

to:

1. Discuss the questions posted by the early

philosophers in relation to the present questions that
still haunting us.

2. Analyze the philosophical atmosphere at that time

and compare the development of philosophy today
that set the place for philosophical discourse.

The Early Philosophers

Thales
Thales left no writings. All that is available are
fragmentary references to him made by later writers
who recorded memorable incidents in his career. He
was a contemporary of Solon and Croesus, and the
years of his life are set between 624 and 546 B.C.
During a military campaign against Persian, he solved
the difficult logistics problem of enabling the Lydian
king’s army to cross the wide Halys river by digging a
channel that diverted part of the flow, thereby making
two narrower rivers over which bridges could be built.
While traveling in Egypt, Thales worked out a way of
measuring the height of the pyramids, using the

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simple procedure of measuring a pyramid’s shadow at
that time of day when one’s shadow is equal to one’s
height. Thales was able to predict the eclipse of the
sun on May 28, 585 B.C.

Plato, in his Theaetetus, writes about the “the jest

which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to
have made about Thales, when he fell into the well as
he was looking up at the stars.

Thales opened up a new area of thought for which he

has rightly earned the title of the first philosopher.
Thales’ novel inquiry concerned the nature of things.
What is everything made of, or what kind of “stuff”
goes into the composition of things? What Thales was
trying to get at with these questions was some way of
accounting for the fact that there are many different
kinds of things, such as earth, clouds, and oceans and
that some of these things change from time to time
into something else and also that they resemble each
other in certain ways. Thales assumed that some
single element, some stuff, a stuff, which contained its
own principle of action or change, lay at the
foundation of all physical reality. To him this one, or
this stuff, was water.

His question had set the stage for a new kind on

inquiry, one which could be debated on its merits and
could either be confirmed or refuted by further
analysis. Thales shifted the basis of thought from a
mythological base to one of scientific inquiry; others
were to follow him with alternative solutions, but
always with his problems before them.

Anaximander
A younger contemporary and a pupil of Thales was
Anaximander. He differentiates specific and

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determinate things from their origin by calling the
primary substance the indeterminate boundless.
Whereas actual things are specific, their source is
indeterminate, and whereas things are finite, the
original stuff is infinite or boundless.

Anaximander tried to account for the heavenly bodies

and air currents around the earth in what appears to a
mechanical explanation of the orderly movement of
the stars. He thought that the earth is cylindrical in
shape in contrast to Thales, who thought it was flat as
a disk and floated on the water. He suggested that
humanity evolved from creatures of a different kind,
using as his arguments the fact that other creatures
are quickly self-supporting, whereas humans alone
need prolonged nursing and that, therefore humanity
would have survived if this had been its original form.
Anaximander thought that there were many worlds
and many systems. He gathers up his thought by
saying poetically, that “from what source things arise,
to that they return of necessity when they are
destroyed”.

Anaximenes
The third and last of the Milesian philosophers was
Anaximenes (about 585-528 B.C.), who was the young
“associate of Anaximander. Anaximenes designated
air as the primary substance from which all things
come. As the boundless, air is spread everywhere, but
unlike the boundless, it is specific and tangible
material substance that can be identified. Anaximenes
hit upon the highly respectable concepts of
“rarefaction” and “condensation” as the specific forms
of motion which lead to describable changes in air.
Although air is invisible, we live only as long as we can
breathe, and just as our soul being air holds us
together, so do breath and air encompass the whole

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world. Anaximenes introduced the important new idea
that differences in “quality” are caused by differences
in “quantity.”

Although these Milesian philosophers appear to have

proceeded with scientific concerns and
temperaments, they did not form their hypotheses the
way modern scientists would, nor did they devise any
experiments to test their theories. Their ideas have a
dogmatic quality, a mood of positive assertion, rather
than the tentativeness of true hypotheses. But it must
be remembered that the critical question concerning
the nature and limits of human knowledge had not
been raised. Nor did the Milesians refer in any way to
the problem of the relation between spirit and body.

Pythagoras
Pythagoras was born in Samos, however, Pythagoras
became dissatisfied with conditions not only in Samos
but generally in Ionia during the tyrannical rule of the
rich Polycrates. Pythagoras migrated to southern Italy
and settled there in the prosperous Greek city of
Crotone, where his active philosophic life is usually
dated from about 525 to 500 B.C.

The Pythagoreans devoted themselves to

mathematics, they were the first to advance this
study, and having been brought up in it they thought
its principles were the principles of all things.
Pythagoreans said that things consist of numbers.

Pythagoras became interested in mathematics for

what appear to be religious reasons. His originality
could be said to consist in his conviction that the
study of mathematics is the best purifier of the soul.
The Pythagoreans were clearly concerned with the
mystical problems of the purification and immortality,

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and it was for this reason that they turned to science
and mathematics, the study of which they considered
the best purge for the soul.

Pythagoras was also the first to distinguish the three

different kinds of lives, and by implication the three
divisions of the soul, by saying that there are three
different kinds of people who go to the Olympic
games. The lowest class is made up of those who go
there to buy and sell, to make profit. Next are those
who go there to compete, to gain honors. Best of all,
he thought are those who come as spectators, who
reflect upon and analyze what is happening. Of these
three, the spectator illustrates the thinkers, whose
activity as philosophers liberates them from the
involvements of a daily life and its imperfections.

Pythagoras also discovered in the field of music that

musical intervals between the notes could be
expressed in numerical terms. They discovered that
the length of the strings of a musical instrument is
proportionate to the actual interval of the sounds they
produce.

The Pythagoreans also built numbers out of individual

units, using pebbles to count. The number one was
therefore a single pebble and all other numbers were
created by the addition of pebbles . The Pythagoreans
also discovered a relation between arithmetic and
geometry. A single pebble, as a point is one, but two is
made up of two pebbles or two points and these two
points make a line. They also differentiated the “odd”
and “even”, thereby giving them a new way of
treating the phenomenon of the conflict of opposites.
This way of understanding numbers led the
Pythagoreans to formulate their most important
philosophical notion,which was, therefore, their most

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significant contribution to philosophy; namely, the
concept of form. For them, form meant limit, and limit
is understandable especially in numerical terms. It is
no wonder that the two arts in which the
Pythagoreans saw the concept of limit best
exemplified were music and medicine, for in both of
these arts the central fact is harmony, and harmony is
achieved by taking into account proportions and
limits. In medicine the Pythagoreans saw the same
principle at work, health being the harmony or
balance or proper ratio of certain opposites such as
hot and cold, wet and dry, and the volumetric balance
of various specific elements later known as
biochemicals.

Heraclitus
Other philosophers concentrated upon describing
what things consist of, Heraclitus shifted attention to a
new problem, the problem of change. His chief idea
was that “all things are in flux,” and he expressed this
concept of constant change by saying that “you
cannot step twice into the same river.” The river
changes because “fresh waters are ever flowing in
upon you. This concept of flux, thought Heraclitus,
must apply not only to rivers but to all things,
including the human soul. Things change and thereby
take on many different forms, but, nevertheless, they
contain somethings, which continues to be the same
throughout all the flux of change. Between these
many forms and the single continuing element,
between the many and the one, there must be some
basic unity. Heraclitus described the process of
change as a unity in diversity, and he did this with
such imaginative skill that although some of his ideas
may seem fanciful, much of what he had to say found
an important place in the later philosophies of Plato

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and the Stoics and was deeply admired by Hegel and
Nietzche.

Heraclitus said that strife is the very essence of

change. The conflict of opposites is not a calamity but
the permanent condition of all things. He also stressed
that war is common and justice is strife and that all
things happen by strife and necessity. From this
perspective, he says, “what is in opposition is in
concert and from what differs comes the most
beautiful harmony. Heraclitus also assumed that
nothing is ever lost but merely changes its form, that
change requires opposites and diverse things.

Parminedes
Parminedes’ chief philosophical contribution was a
radically novel interpretation of the phenomenon of
change. Parminedes rejected the very notion of
change, resting his argument on at least two grounds:
namely, that if there is a single substance behind all
things, the concept is absurd logically, and that the
phenomenon of change is basically an illusion. He
maintained that whatever exists “must be absolutely,
or not at all.” To think of change requires one to
attempt to do the impossible; namely, to think of
something in terms of what it is not. Parminedes tried
to show the absurdity of the concept of becoming or
change by drawing out the implications of saying that
something comes to be.
Reality is a spherical, material, motionless, and fully
occupied plenum, a continuous mass where there is
no change, reality is uncreated and is also
indestructible and is, therefore, eternal and
motionless. Everywhere average people see things in
flux, and to them this represents genuine change. But
Parminedes rejected the common-sense notion of
change by his distinction between appearance and

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reality. Change is the confusion of appearance with
reality, and, therefore, change is simply an illusion.

Zeno
To philosophize, according to Parmenides and Zeno,
one must not only look at the world but must also
think about it in order to understand it. This emphasis
upon the logical relation of ideas to each other is the
central characteristic of the Eleatic philosophers, and
this is particularly evident in Zeno’s arguments.

That the senses give us no clue to reality but only to

appearance and therefore, do not give us reliable
knowledge but only opinion was demonstrated by
Zeno to his own satisfaction by his reference to the
millet seed. If takes a millet seed and drops it to the
ground, it will not make a sound. But if one takes a
half-bushel of millet seeds and lets them fall to the
ground there will be a sound. From this difference,
Zeno concluded that our senses have deceived us, for
either there is a sound when the single seed falls or
there is not a sound when the many seeds fall. To get
at the truth of things it is more reliable, then to go by
of thought than to go by way of sensation.

Empedocles
Empedocles thought it necessary not only to describe
the basis for change in objects through the
intermingling of the various types of eternal material
particles, but also to designate the specific forces that
animate the process of change. Empedocles assumed
that there are in nature positive forces, which he
called Love and Hate, or Harmony and Discord. These
physical and material forces are what cause the four
elements to intermingle and later to separate. The
force of love causes elements to be attracted to each
other and to be built up into some particular form or

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person, and the force of Hate causes the
decomposition of things.

Anaxagoras
Anaxogoras’ contribution was the concept of mind
(nous), which he distinguished from matter. According
to Anaxagoras, the nature of reality is best understood
as consisting of mind and matter. Before mind has
influenced the shape and behavior of matter, matter
exists, as a mixture of various kinds of material
substances, all uncreated and imperishable. Even
when this original mass of matter is divided into actual
objects, each part contains all “things.” Anaxagoras
differentiated mind and matter, while he may not
have described mind as completely immaterial, he did
nevertheless distinguish mind from the matter it had
to work with, saying that mind unlike matter “is mixed
with nothing but is alone, itself by itself. What mad
mind different from matter was that it is “finest of all
things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about
everything and the greatest power. Thus while matter
is composite, mind is simple.

Conclusion
The emergence of Philosophy is not an accident but
rather a manifestation of human's curiosity about his
world, his existence, and the composition of things
around him. The early philosophers delved into
questions that could have been the product of their
time, however, the rationality of the questions served
as the guiding posts of the succeeding philosophers.
However, the inquisitive thoughts of the early
philosophers still influenced the discipline today and
continues to be challenging on the part of the
contemporary philosophers. Thus, the ideas they had

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presented were still pondered today despite of the
difference of time.

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