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What is the world made of? Twenty-six hundred years ago, three thinkers in the Greek city of Miletus asked that question — and Western philosophy began. This lecture from Academy of Ideas profiles Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, the Milesians who hunted for the single source behind all change. One named it water, another an infinite boundless something, and the third said air. Simple answers on the surface, but beneath them lay a living, intelligent cosmos — and the same dream modern physicists chase today as a ‘theory of everything.’
Full Video Transcript
The Presocratics Lecture 2, The Milesians. In the last lecture we introduced the Presocratics, noted why they are significant, and explained the difference between mythology and philosophy.
In this lecture we will discuss the earliest Presocratics, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, who are widely considered the first philosophers in Western civilization.
All three philosophers lived in the city of Miletus in the 6th century BC, and for this reason are referred to as the Milesians.
Miletus was located in Ionia, on the western coast of Asia Minor, or what today is western Turkey.
The Milesians were physiologists, as they attempted to provide a rational account, or logos, of nature, the Greek word for nature being physis,
Hence the word physiologist, or one who provides a logos of physis.
Note that today the word physiologist has a different meaning.
In attempting to give a rational account of nature, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes were all interested in the fundamental question, what is the world made of?
Looking out into the world, they noted that reality displays two fundamental characteristics.
Firstly, everything in the world is constantly changing, or constantly in flux.
This is why philosophers often call the world we perceive as a world of becoming, as everything
is always becoming something else.
Secondly, they observe that for all practical purposes, there are an infinite plurality
of different things in the world.
In other words, any single thing that exists is different than anything else that exists,
has existed, or will ever exist.
the world displays infinite variation.
When the Milesians asked what is the world made of, they concluded that underlying the
plurality of things in this world, and underneath all the transformations these things undergo,
there exists a single and permanent substance.
In other words, they proposed that everything in the world is made of the same stuff, and
that this stuff, although undergoing modifications in this world, always retains its unity and
fundamental identity. This material substance underlying the world, the ancient Greeks called
the Arche. David Ruchnick explains the meaning of the term. First principle translates the Greek
Arche, but it could also be rendered as origin, source, beginning, and significantly, ruler. The
Arche is thus the origin that persists and continues to exert authority. In the above quote,
as we’ve already explained, Ruchnik notes that the Arche is the underlying source and
origin of all things. But what does he mean when he says that the Arche was thought of
as the ruler, or as exerting authority? In order to understand this idea, we must heed
the advice of the early 20th century professor of ancient philosophy, Francis Cornford, who
stressed that, if we would understand the 6th century philosophers, we must disabuse
our minds of the atomistic conception of dead matter in mechanical motion, and of the Cartesian
dualism of matter and mind. The archae, the underlying substance and source of all things,
was thought by the Milesians to be a physical or corporeal material, as the concept of immaterial
spirit or pure mind had not yet been arrived at by the Greeks. However, at the same time this
underlying substance was thought to be alive and endowed with spirit, considered to be divine,
and imbued with intelligence. The Archaic, being alive, was therefore the author of its own
movement, or self-caused, so to speak, and hence was the ruler of all things, and exerted its
authority by guiding the birth, transformations, and death of all things. This view, that matter
is imbued with life and intelligence, and is also divine, is called Hylazoism.
With respect to the question what is the Archaea made of, each Milesian offered a different
answer, and we will now proceed to investigate exactly what Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes
propose to be the source and underlying identity of the world.
Philosophy, Bertrand Russell declared in his book A History of Western Philosophy, begins
with Thales.
As the first philosopher, Thales is credited with proposing the first philosophical account
of the universe, and he concluded that the substance underlying everything, the Archae,
is water.
Aristotle elaborated on this idea, contemplating why Thales would have chosen water as the
Archae.
His supposition may have arisen from the observation that the nourishment of all creatures is moist,
and that warmth itself is generated from moisture and lives by it, and water is for most things
the origin of their nature. However, since so little is known about Thales, this idea
is mere conjecture, and all we can safely say with any certainty is that he thought
everything in the world was made of water. But remember the early Presocratics were Hylazoists,
so this water was no ordinary water. It was alive, divine, intelligent, and the source
and ruler of everything that exists in the world.
We know quite a bit more about Anaximander’s ideas, and in order to understand his main
proposition regarding the nature of the Archaea, we must first discuss a belief that was widespread
in ancient Greece. The Greeks thought the world and everything in it was made of four primary
elements, earth, water, fire, and air. Anaximander, building on such a belief, reasoned that since
each of these elements is finite and limited, none of them can be the Archaea. Thales, he concluded,
was wrong to claim the Archaea was water, for the Archaea, if it is to exist, cannot be limited,
for it is the eternal underlying source of everything, and therefore must be something
unlimited. Anaximander proposed that the arche was not any material substance we perceive in this
world, but instead is a non-perceptible substance he called the aperon. The word aperon is a Greek
word which was constructed by combining the privative a, indicating absence, with peris,
meaning limited. Hence, the apairon is that which is absent of limits, or the unlimited,
yet it is also referred to as the boundless or the indefinite. For Anaximander, the archaic and
hence underlying origin and source of the world, was a boundless and non-perceptible material
substance that surrounds the world. Some have suggested that a more accurate translation of
Anaximander’s apairon is the indefinite instead of the unlimited. Anaximander thought the world
we experience was made out of two pairs of opposites, the hot and the cold, and the wet
and the dry. These opposites correspond to the four primary elements which, as we mentioned,
the Greeks thought the world was made of, fire, air, water, and earth. The two pairs of opposites,
or four elements, were proposed by Anaximander to be originally mixed together with each other
in the Aperon. Hence, the Aperon is not a definite material thing such as air or water,
but instead is the indefinite, as all four elements are mixed together in it to form an
undifferentiated mass. Because the apairon is engaged in eternal motion, these opposites are
separated out of their potential state in the apairon, and in doing so form the world as we
experience it. This process of the primary elements separating out from the apairon
is not a one-time event. Instead, Anaximander thought this separation of the opposites out
of the Apeiron was continuous, and could explain the flux we perceive in this world, as things
are constantly being born from the Apeiron, while simultaneously other things are dying
and perishing, returning home, so to speak, back into the Apeiron.
Anaximander of Miletus, the philosopher Aetius wrote, says that the first principle of existing
things is the Boundless, for from this all come into being and into it all perish, wherefore
innumerable worlds are both brought to birth and again dissolved into that out of which
they came.
The last of the Milesian philosophers was Anaximenes.
He proposed that the Arche, or underlying substance and origin of all things, was air.
In calling the Arche a definite substance, he seems to have failed to grasp Anaximander’s
insight that if the Arche is to exist it must be an indefinite substance.
However, some have claimed that Anaximenes represents an advance on Thales and Anaximander
because, unlike his predecessors, he gave a scientific explanation as to how the Archae,
air in his case, transforms itself into all the different things we observe in the world.
To do this, Anaximenes utilized the physical processes known to us as condensation and
vaporization.
Condensation occurs when water vapor condenses, changing its physical state from a gas to
a liquid. It is the process responsible for the formation of clouds and thus rain and
snow. Anaximenes reasoned that if air can change into mist and water, if condensed further
it can also change into earth and rock. Vaporization is the opposite of condensation, and occurs
when water changes from a liquid to a gaseous state. And following the same line of reasoning
as before, Anaximenes proposed that if water can turn back into air, then if vaporized
further it could also transform into fire. Hence, Anaximenes provided a scientific theory
as to how air, the underlying substance and identity of all things, can transform into
water, earth, and fire, or the other three elements the Greeks thought everything was
made of. While today we don’t believe that all things are made of water, air, or an unlimited
substance, in searching for an underlying unity amidst the plurality and flux we observe
our experience of the world, the Presocratics over 2,000 years ago were undergoing the exact
search which continues to this day.
In his book, The Second Creation, Makers of the Revolution in 20th Century Physics, Robert
Kreis wrote,
“…across the globe theoretical physicists are engaged in an extraordinary enterprise,
the attempt to construct by sheer force of reason, what some refer to, only half jokingly,
as a theory of everything.
Scientists have always hoped for a unified picture of nature, and now and then individuals
have actually sought one.
What is remarkable about the present search is that the cream of the present generation
of researchers has decided that the time may be ripe for unification.
The first philosophers, the Milesians, were also engaged in an attempt, by sheer force
of reason, to construct a theory of everything, and they too thought the time was ripe for
unification.
Although the tools have changed and our knowledge base has increased since the Presocratics
laid down their bold theories, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes were in search of exactly that
which consumes the minds of modern theoretical physicists.
In the next lecture we will consider the life and ideas of Heraclitus.
Source: Academy of Ideas