According to Anaximenes, the fundamental principle of the world is. Anaximenes: biography
from Miletus c.585-525 BC e.) Pupil of Anaximander and the last representative of the Miletus school. Anaximenes considered air to be the source of all life: fire, water and earth are formed by its discharge or condensation.
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ANAXIMENE (585-525 BC)
Ionian (from Miletus) natural philosopher, student of Anaximander. A. can be considered both as a successor to the line of the latter, and as a direct follower of Thales. As a material principle, A. proposed one that simultaneously corresponded to the idea of Thales (the principle as a specific natural element) and the ideas of Anaximander (a qualityless principle - apeiron). The air of A. is the most qualityless of all material elements, a transparent and invisible substance that is difficult to see, which has no color and ordinary bodily qualities. At the same time, air is a qualitative principle, although in many respects it is an image of universal spontaneity, filled with a generalized-abstract, philosophical content. From the air, according to A., due to rarefaction, fire arises, due to condensation - wind, clouds, water, earth and stones. On the principle of parallelism of the microcosm and macrocosm, A.'s choice of air as a cosmogonic first principle and the actual life basis of the cosmos is based: just as air in the form of our soul holds us together, so breath and air cover the entire Earth. The postulation of "condensation" and "rarefaction" of a single pra-matter suggested a step towards the development of the first teachings about qualitative changes in the world.
Anaximenes (Greek Άναξιμένης) from Miletus (585 - 525 BC) - Ionian natural philosopher. He considered air (apeiron) as a material principle, from which fire arises due to rarefaction, and wind, clouds, water, earth and stones due to condensation.
Anaximenes is a student and follower of Anaximander. He, unlike his teacher, who wrote, as the ancients themselves noted, "artificial prose", wrote simply and artlessly. This speaks of the formation of a scientific and philosophical language, of its liberation from the remnants of mythology and socioanthropomorphism.
Anaximenes, like the Milesian philosophers, was a scientist. But the range of his scientific interests is narrower than that of Anaximander. Questions of biology and mathematics did not seem to interest him. Anaximenes is an astronomer and meteorologist. He is the author of the essay "On Nature".
This philosopher taught that the world arises from "infinite" air, and the whole variety of things is air in its various states. Cooling, the air condenses and, solidifying, forms clouds, earth, stones; rarefied air gives rise to heavenly bodies with a fiery nature. The latter arise from earthly vapors.
Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorted to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air. Anaximenes' boundless air encompasses the whole world, is the source of life and breath of living beings.
Anaximenes thought that the Sun was the Earth, which became hot from its rapid movement. The Earth and heavenly bodies hover in the air. At the same time, the earth is motionless, while other luminaries move in air whirlwinds.
As far as psychology and atheism are concerned, the first Milesian philosophers, Thales and Anaximander, as far as we know, spoke little about the soul, about consciousness. Thales associated the soul with the ability to self-propelled. A magnet, he said, has a soul because it attracts iron. All the more valuable is the little that we find on this subject in Anaximenes. Completing the construction of a unified picture of the world, Anaximenes saw in the boundless air the beginning of both the body and the soul. The soul is airy.
As for the gods, Anaximenes also brought them out of the air. Augustine reports that "Anaximenes did not deny the gods and did not pass them over in silence." But he, says Augustine, was convinced that "the air was not created by the gods, but that they themselves were from the air." So, the gods are a modification of the material substance. What then is divine in them? asks the Christian theologian.
Some guesses of Anaximenes are quite successful. Hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes, and if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow forms. Wind is condensed air, which is not true. The flat earth floats motionless in the air. Likewise, the floating flat Sun, Moon and planets, which Anaximenes distinguished from stars, are moved by cosmic winds. Anaximenes corrected Anaximander's mistake and placed the stars beyond the Moon and the Sun. He associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.
Anaximenes of Miletus(other Greek. Ἀναξιμένης , / - /502 BC e. , Miletus) - an ancient Greek philosopher, a representative of the Milesian school of natural philosophy, a student of Anaximander.
Genesis of the world
Anaximenes is the last representative of the Milesian school. Anaximenes strengthened and completed the trend of spontaneous materialism - the search for natural causes of phenomena and things. Like Thales and Anaximander earlier, he considers a certain type of matter to be the fundamental principle of the world. He considers such matter to be unlimited, infinite, having an indefinite form. air, from which everything else arises. “Anaximenes… proclaims air to be the beginning of existence, for everything arises from it and everything returns to it.”
As a meteorologist, he believed that hail is formed when water falling from clouds freezes; if air is mixed with this freezing water, snow is formed. Wind is compressed air. Anaximenes associated the state of the weather with the activity of the Sun.
Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes studied astronomical phenomena, which, like other natural phenomena, he sought to explain in a natural way. Anaximenes believed that the Sun was a [flat celestial] body, similar to the Earth and the Moon, which became hot from rapid movement. Earth and heavenly bodies hover in the air; The earth is motionless, other luminaries and planets (which Anaximenes distinguished from stars and which, as he believed, arise from earthly vapors) are moved by cosmic winds.
Anaximenes corrected the teachings of Anaximander about the order of the arrangement of the Moon, the Sun and the stars in the world space, in which they followed in circles in reverse order.
Compositions
The writings of Anaximenes have been preserved in fragments. Unlike his teacher Anaximander, who wrote, as the ancients themselves noted, “artificial prose,” Anaximenes writes simply and artlessly. Outlining his teaching, Anaximenes often resorts to figurative comparisons. The condensation of air, "giving birth" to the flat earth, he likens to "felting wool"; The sun, the moon - fiery leaves floating in the middle of the air, etc.
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Literature
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- Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Early classic. - M.: Ladomir, 1994. - S. 312-317.
- Tannery P. The first steps of ancient Greek science. - St. Petersburg. , 1902.
- Thomson J. Studies in the history of ancient Greek society, v. 2. The first philosophers. Per. from English. - M.: 1959. - S. 153-154.
- Trubetskoy S. N. History course ancient philosophy. - M.: Russian yard, 1997.
- Bicknell P.J. Anaximenes' Astronomy // Acta Classica. - 1969. - Vol. 12. - P. 53-85.
- Graham D.W. Explaining the Cosmos: the Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy. - Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
- Graham D.W. A New Look at Anaximenes // History of Philosophy Quarterly. - 2003. - Vol. 20(1). - P. 1-20.
- White S.A. Milesian Measures: Time, Space, and Matter // In: P. Curd and D. Graham (Eds.), Oxford Handbook to Presocratic Philosophy. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. - P. 89-133.
Notes
Links
| Anaximenes at Wikiquote |
- // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
- Diogenes Laertes. . Book 2.
- Graham D.W.(English) . Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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An excerpt characterizing Anaximenes
The bad feeling that suddenly came over Rostov was confirmed more and more, the farther he drove into the space occupied by crowds of heterogeneous troops, located outside the village of Prats.- What's happened? What's happened? Who are they shooting at? Who is shooting? Rostov asked, leveling with the Russian and Austrian soldiers, who fled in mixed crowds to cut across his roads.
"The devil knows?" Beat everyone! Get lost everything! - Answered him in Russian, German and Czech crowds fleeing and not understanding exactly the same as he did what was happening here.
- Beat the Germans! one shouted.
- And the devil take them, - traitors.
- Zum Henker diese Ruesen ... [To hell with these Russians ...] - the German grumbled something.
Several wounded were walking along the road. Curses, screams, groans merged into one common rumble. The shooting died down and, as Rostov later found out, Russian and Austrian soldiers were shooting at each other.
"My God! what is it? thought Rostov. “And here, where at any moment the sovereign can see them… But no, it’s true, these are just a few scoundrels. This will pass, this is not it, this cannot be, he thought. “Just hurry, hurry through them!”
The thought of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head. Although he had seen French guns and troops precisely on the Pracen mountain, on the very one where he was ordered to look for the commander-in-chief, he could not and did not want to believe this.
Near the village of Pratsa, Rostov was ordered to look for Kutuzov and the sovereign. But not only were they not here, but there was not a single commander, but there were heterogeneous crowds of disordered troops.
He urged on his already tired horse in order to quickly pass these crowds, but the farther he moved, the more upset the crowds became. On the high road, on which he left, carriages, carriages of all sorts, Russian and Austrian soldiers, of all branches of the military, wounded and unwounded, crowded. All this buzzed and swarmed mixedly to the gloomy sound of flying cannonballs from the French batteries placed on the Pracen Heights.
- Where is the Emperor? where is Kutuzov? - Rostov asked everyone he could stop, and could not get an answer from anyone.
Finally, grabbing the soldier by the collar, he forced him to answer himself.
- E! Brother! Everyone has been there for a long time, forward fled! - the soldier said to Rostov, laughing at something and breaking free.
Leaving this soldier, who was obviously drunk, Rostov stopped the horse of the batman or the caretaker of an important person and began to question him. The batman announced to Rostov that an hour ago the sovereign had been driven at full speed in a carriage along this very road, and that the sovereign was dangerously wounded.
“It can’t be,” said Rostov, “that’s right, someone else.”
“I saw it myself,” said the batman with a self-confident grin. - It’s time for me to know the sovereign: it seems how many times in Petersburg I saw it like that. Pale, pale, sitting in a carriage. As soon as he let the four blacks, my fathers, he thundered past us: it seems time to know both the royal horses and Ilya Ivanovich; it seems that the coachman does not travel with another, like with Tsar Ilya.
Rostov let his horse go and wanted to go on. A wounded officer walking by turned to him.
- Whom do you need? the officer asked. - Commander-in-Chief? So he was killed with a cannonball, he was killed in the chest with our regiment.
“Not killed, wounded,” another officer corrected.
- Yes, who? Kutuzov? Rostov asked.
- Not Kutuzov, but how do you put it, - well, yes, everything is the same, not many are left alive. Go over there, over there, to that village, all the authorities have gathered there, - this officer said, pointing to the village of Gostieradek, and passed by.
Rostov rode at a pace, not knowing why and to whom he would now go. The sovereign is wounded, the battle is lost. It was impossible not to believe it now. Rostov was driving in the direction indicated to him and along which the tower and the church could be seen in the distance. Where was he in a hurry? What was he to say now to the sovereign or Kutuzov, even if they were alive and not wounded?
“Go along this road, your honor, and they’ll kill you right here,” the soldier shouted to him. - They'll kill you!
- ABOUT! what are you saying! said the other. – Where will he go? It's closer here.
Rostov thought about it and went exactly in the direction where he was told that they would kill him.
“Now it doesn’t matter: if the sovereign is wounded, can I really take care of myself?” he thought. He drove into the space where most of the people who fled from Pracen died. The French had not yet occupied this place, and the Russians, those who were alive or wounded, had long since left it. On the field, like shocks on a good arable land, there were ten people, fifteen killed, wounded on every tithe of the place. The wounded crawled down in twos, threes together, and unpleasant, sometimes feigned, as it seemed to Rostov, their cries and groans were heard. Rostov trotted his horse so as not to see all these suffering people, and he became afraid. He was afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed and which, he knew, would not withstand the sight of these unfortunates.
The French, who had stopped shooting at this field, littered with the dead and wounded, because there was no longer anyone alive on it, saw the adjutant riding on it, pointed a gun at him and threw several cores. The feeling of these whistling, terrible sounds and the surrounding dead merged for Rostov into one impression of horror and self-pity. He remembered his mother's last letter. “What would she feel,” he thought, “if she could see me here now, on this field and with guns aimed at me.”
In the village of Gostieradeke there were, although confused, but in greater order, Russian troops marching away from the battlefield. French cannonballs were no longer reaching here, and the sounds of firing seemed far away. Here everyone already clearly saw and said that the battle was lost. To whom Rostov turned, no one could tell him where the sovereign was, or where Kutuzov was. Some said that the rumor about the wound of the sovereign was true, others said that it was not, and explained this false rumor that spread by the fact that, indeed, in the sovereign’s carriage, the pale and frightened Chief Marshal Count Tolstoy galloped back from the battlefield, who left with others in the emperor’s retinue on the battlefield. One officer told Rostov that behind the village, to the left, he saw someone from the higher authorities, and Rostov went there, no longer hoping to find anyone, but only to clear his conscience before himself. Having traveled about three versts and passing the last Russian troops, near a garden dug in by a ditch, Rostov saw two horsemen standing opposite the ditch. One, with a white sultan on his hat, seemed familiar to Rostov for some reason; another, an unfamiliar rider, on a beautiful red horse (this horse seemed familiar to Rostov) rode up to the ditch, pushed the horse with his spurs and, releasing the reins, easily jumped over the ditch of the garden. Only the earth crumbled from the embankment from the hind hooves of the horse. Turning his horse sharply, he again jumped back over the ditch and respectfully addressed the rider with the white sultan, apparently suggesting that he do the same. The horseman, whose figure seemed familiar to Rostov and for some reason involuntarily attracted his attention, made a negative gesture with his head and hand, and by this gesture Rostov instantly recognized his mourned, adored sovereign.
He lived in the most critical period of the existence of Miletus. Apparently, therefore, practically nothing is known about his life; we do not even know the dates of his birth and death, otherwise than approximately - usually 588-525 are accepted. BC e. However, the possibility is not ruled out that he lived to see the fall of Miletus in 494 BC. e. Although no more remains of his book, written "simply and artlessly," than of his teacher's book, Anaximenes' philosophy is much better known to us. Here is the testimony of Simplicius, based on Theophrastus: “... Anaximenes, who was a friend of Anaximander, says, in accordance with him, that the nature underlying [everything] is one and infinite, but contrary to him, recognizes it not as indefinite, but [qualitatively ] definite, for he calls it air (aer). It is different in the degree of rarefaction and compaction, according to the substances. Namely, when rarefied, it becomes fire; thickening - with the wind, then with a cloud, then with the earth, then with stones, and the rest arises from them. And he also recognizes the perpetual motion, as a result of which there is a change ”(DK 13 A 5).
Why did Anaximenes cheat on his teacher? Apparently, the difficulties that were associated with the underdevelopment of abstract thinking and prevented a convincing substantiation and a clear exposition of Anaximander's philosophy had an effect here. According to the doxographers, two circumstances prompted the latter to accept an "infinite"-indefinite beginning. First, he wanted to have "an inexhaustible source for birth"; secondly, from his point of view, the recognition of a single element as initial, beginningless, and therefore infinite, for example, water or air, would mean that it would necessarily absorb everything else - after all, the infinite is always “stronger” than the finite. But the "air" of Anaximenes avoids these difficulties, and at the same time is much easier to understand. It is rather indefinite in its qualities: evenly distributed and motionless, it is imperceptible to the senses, becoming tangible as a result of movement, condensation and rarefaction. Since everything consists of it, and all existing elements and things are its modifications, their source will not dry up, and they themselves will not be absorbed by the air.
The philosophy of Anaximenes clearly demonstrates the properties of air and, above all, its variability. Indeed, is not the wind moving and condensed as a result of the movement of air? And the cloud that appears after it, is it not a condensed wind? And do not the opposites of heat and cold arise from the same air? “For he says that the contracting and condensing [state of matter] is cold, and the subtle and relaxed (such is his literal expression) is warmth. Therefore, it is rightly said that a person releases both warmth and cold from his mouth. Namely, breathing with tightly compressed lips cools, while the outgoing breath with wide open lips becomes warm due to rarefaction ”(DK 13 V 1). True, we would be mistaken if we imagine the "air" of Anaximenes to be absolutely similar to ordinary air. Although there is no absolute clarity in the evidence, it must still be thought that its origin is something other than air, being in its physical composition something like vapor or breath. However, Anaximenes gives it a different name - air as the original principle is "breath" (pneyma).
But here a new perspective opens up before us. Of course, we should have expected that the philosophy of Anaximenes would consider air to be a living, mobile creative principle, a single and mobile "nature" of all things. However, here the ancient mythological idea of breath-soul as a special beginning of living and thinking bodies is superimposed on the general naive-materialistic attitude of the thinker. “Just as the soul, he says, being air, restrains us, so breath and air embrace the whole world” (B 2). Anaximenes clearly makes "soul" a derivative of "air", together with Anaximander, Anaxagoras and Archelaus, considering the nature of the soul to be "airy". Moreover, he reduces the gods to the air, because "he was of the conviction that they did not create the air, but they themselves arose from the air" (A 10). This testimony of Augustine, in a different, perhaps more adequate form, is expressed by Cicero and Aetius, who believe that, according to Anaximenes, air itself is a god. “It should be understood by these words the forces that are in the elements or in bodies” (ibid.). The last words of Aetius seem to suggest that the Milesian thinker formulates the basic idea of pantheism - God is identical with nature, in this case air as nature and the beginning of all things. However, the words of Cicero, "... that air is God, and that it arises ..." (ibid.) show that we have only the initial steps towards the pantheistic identification of God with everything that exists. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the air of Anaximenes, like Anaximander's apeiron, "is divine, for it is immortal and indestructible."
Rather simple and more primitive than Anaximander's is the cosmology of Anaximenes. Considering the Earth flat, he argued that it, like the Sun and the planets, hovered in the air. Unlike the stationary Earth, they are driven by the cosmic wind, while the stars are attached to a crystal firmament that revolves around the Earth. He explained the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon and the phases of the latter by the fact that the luminaries turn to the Earth either with their bright or dark side. Following Thales, Anaximenes believed that celestial bodies"earthly nature" (DK 11 A 17, 13 A 7). At the same time, he argued, also like Thales, that “the luminaries arose from the earth in the following way: moisture rises from the latter, which, being rarefied, becomes fire, and luminaries are formed from the rising fire” (ibid.). But if we have the same kind of contradictory evidence about Thales, then Anaximenes, apparently, speaks of celestial bodies of various kinds: arising from evaporation and feeding on it, and “earthly”. Perhaps the latter are planets. Anaximenes corrects the idea borrowed by Anaximander, apparently from Persian sources, about the arrangement of celestial bodies. He considers the stars more distant from the Earth than the Moon and the Sun.
The recognition of the first principle as air makes Anaximenes pay much attention in his philosophy to meteorological phenomena in the earth's atmosphere - rain, hail, snow, etc. Thus, hail is formed from freezing water falling from clouds; admixture of air with water leads to the formation of looser snow; rain falls from the thickened air; lightning and thunder are the brilliance and noise that occurs when the wind abruptly breaks the clouds; a rainbow is the result of the fall of solar (rarely lunar, since it is weaker) light on a dense cloud, with one part of it heating up, while the other remains dark, etc. Like Anaximander, Anaximenes explains earthquakes: this is the result of cracking the earth during drought or sinking its individual sections with excessive moisture.
In the philosophy of Anaximenes, the main idea of the “physiologists” is most consistently expressed: from which all things arise and consist, they are destroyed in the same way, completing the cycle of their life. The sensory-visual materialism of the Milesian school finds its logical conclusion in him, as does the idea of the eternal movement of the world, which is an expression of the self-movement of the "element and origin" of things, living and "breathing" air, an expression formation of all things.
Based on the materials of the book by A. S. Bogomolov “ ancient philosophy»
Ancient Greek philosophy.
Milesian school: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes
- Find the invisible unity of the world -
specificity ancient Greek philosophy, especially in the initial period of its development, is the desire to understand the essence of nature, space, the world as a whole. Early thinkers are looking for some origin from which everything came. They consider the cosmos as a continuously changing whole, in which the unchanging and self-identical origin appears in various forms, undergoing all kinds of transformations.
The Milesians made a breakthrough with their views, in which the question was clearly posed: “ What is everything from?» Their answers are different, but it was they who laid the foundation for a proper philosophical approach to the question of the origin of things: to the idea of substance, that is, to the fundamental principle, to the essence of all things and phenomena of the universe.
The first school in Greek philosophy was founded by the thinker Thales, who lived in the city of Miletus (on the coast of Asia Minor). The school was named Milesian. The disciples of Thales and the successors of his ideas were Anaximenes and Anaximander.
Thinking about the structure of the universe, the Milesian philosophers said the following: we are surrounded by completely different things (essences), and their diversity is infinite. None of them is like any other: a plant is not a stone, an animal is not a plant, the ocean is not a planet, air is not fire, and so on ad infinitum. But after all, despite this variety of things, we call everything that exists the surrounding world or the universe, or the Universe, thereby assuming the unity of all things. The world is still one and whole, which means that the world's diversity there is a certain common basis, the same for all different entities. Despite the difference between the things of the world, it is still one and whole, which means that the world's diversity has a certain common basis, the same for all different objects. Behind the visible diversity of things lies their invisible unity. Just as there are only three dozen letters in the alphabet, which generate millions of words through all sorts of combinations. There are only seven notes in music, but their various combinations create an immense world of sound harmony. Finally, we know that there is a relatively small set of elementary particles, and their various combinations lead to an infinite variety of things and objects. These are examples from modern life and they could be continued; the fact that different things have the same basis is obvious. The Milesian philosophers correctly grasped this regularity of the universe and tried to find this basis or unity, to which all world differences are reduced and which unfolds into an infinite world diversity. They sought to calculate the basic principle of the world, ordering and explaining everything, and called it Arche (the beginning).
The Milesian philosophers were the first to express a very important philosophical idea: what we see around us and what really exists are not the same thing. This idea is one of the eternal philosophical problems- what is the world in itself: the way we see it, or is it completely different, but we do not see it and therefore do not know about it? Thales, for example, says that we see various objects around us: trees, flowers, mountains, rivers, and much more. In fact, all these objects are different states of one world substance - water. A tree is one state of water, a mountain is another, a bird is a third, and so on. Do we see this single world substance? No, we do not see; we see only its state, or production, or form. How then do we know what it is? Thanks to the mind, for what cannot be perceived by the eye can be comprehended by thought.
This idea about the different abilities of the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste) and the mind is also one of the main ones in philosophy. Many thinkers believed that the mind is much more perfect than the senses and more capable of knowing the world than the senses. This point of view is called rationalism (from Latin rationalis - reasonable). But there were other thinkers who believed that one should trust the senses (sense organs) to a greater extent, and not the mind, which can fantasize anything and therefore is quite capable of being mistaken. This point of view is called sensationalism (from Latin sensus - feeling, sensation). Please note that the term “feelings” has two meanings: the first is human emotions (joy, sadness, anger, love, etc.), the second is the sense organs with which we perceive the world(sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste). On these pages it was about feelings, of course, in the second meaning of the word.
From thinking within the framework of myth (mythological thinking), it began to be transformed into thinking within the framework of logos (logical thinking). Thales freed thinking both from the fetters of mythological tradition and from the chains that tied it to direct sensory impressions.
It was the Greeks who managed to develop the concepts of rational proof and theory as its focus. The theory claims to receive a generalizing truth, which is not simply proclaimed from nowhere, but appears through argumentation. At the same time, both the theory and the truth obtained with its help must withstand public tests of counterarguments. The Greeks had the ingenious idea that one should look for not only collections of isolated fragments of knowledge, as was already done on a mythical basis in Babylon and Egypt. The Greeks began to search for universal and systematic theories that substantiated individual fragments of knowledge in terms of generally valid evidence (or universal principles) as the basis for the conclusion of specific knowledge.
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes are called Milesian natural philosophers. They belonged to the first generation of Greek philosophers.
Miletus is one of the Greek policies located on the eastern border of the Hellenic civilization, in Asia Minor. It was here that the rethinking of mythological ideas about the beginning of the world first of all acquired the character of philosophical reasoning about how the diversity of phenomena surrounding us arose from one source - the primordial element, the beginning - arche. It was natural philosophy, or the philosophy of nature.
The world is unchanging, indivisible and immovable, represents eternal stability and absolute stability.
Thales (7th-6th centuries BC)
1. Everything starts from water and returns to it, all things originated from water.
2. Water is the essence of every single thing, water is in all things, and even the sun and heavenly bodies are nourished by the vapors of water.
3. The destruction of the world after the expiration of the "world cycle" will mean the immersion of all things in the ocean.
Thales argued that "everything is water." And with this statement, as it is believed, philosophy begins.
Thales (c. 625-547 BC) - the founder of European science and philosophy
Thales pushing the idea of substance - the fundamental principle of everything , having generalized all the diversity into a consubstantial and seeing the beginning of everything is in WATER (in moisture): because it permeates everything. Aristotle said that Thales first tried to find a physical beginning without the mediation of myths. Moisture is indeed an ubiquitous element: Everything comes from water and turns into water. Water as a natural principle is the carrier of all changes and transformations.
In the position “everything from water”, the Olympian, that is, pagan, gods were “resigned”, ultimately mythological thinking, and the path to a natural explanation of nature was continued. What else is the genius of the father of European philosophy? He first came up with the idea of the unity of the universe.
Thales considered water to be the basis of all things: there is only water, and everything else is its creations, forms and modifications. It is clear that its water is not quite similar to what we mean by this word today. He has her a certain universal substance from which everything is born and formed.
Thales, like his successors, stood on the point of view hylozoism- the view that life is an immanent property of matter, being itself is moving, and at the same time animated. Thales believed that the soul is poured into everything that exists. Thales considered the soul as something spontaneously active. Thales called God the universal intellect: God is the mind of the world.
Thales was a figure who combined an interest in the demands of practical life with a deep interest in questions about the structure of the universe. As a merchant, he used trade trips to expand his scientific knowledge. He was a hydroengineer, famous for his work, a versatile scientist and thinker, an inventor of astronomical instruments. As a scientist, he became widely famous in Greece, making a successful prediction of a solar eclipse observed in Greece in 585 BC. e. For this prediction, Thales used the astronomical information he obtained in Egypt or in Phoenicia, which goes back to the observations and generalizations of Babylonian science. Thales tied his geographical, astronomical and physical knowledge into a coherent philosophical idea of the world, materialistic in the basis, despite the clear traces of mythological ideas. Thales believed that the existing arose from some kind of wet primary substance, or "water". Everything is constantly born from this “single source. The Earth itself rests on water and is surrounded on all sides by the ocean. She is on the water, like a disk or a board floating on the surface of a reservoir. At the same time, the material principle of “water” and all the nature that originated from it are not dead, not devoid of animation. Everything in the universe is full of gods, everything is animated. Thales saw an example and proof of universal animation in the properties of a magnet and amber; since the magnet and amber are able to set bodies in motion, therefore, they have a soul.
Thales belongs to an attempt to understand the structure of the universe surrounding the Earth, to determine in what order the celestial bodies are located in relation to the Earth: the Moon, the Sun, the stars. And in this matter, Thales relied on the results of Babylonian science. But he represented the order of the luminaries the opposite, which exists in reality: he believed that the so-called sky of fixed stars is closest to the Earth, and the Sun is farthest. This error was corrected by his successors. His philosophical view of the world is full of echoes of mythology.
“Thales is believed to have lived between 624 and 546 BC. Part of this assumption is based on the statement of Herodotus (Herodotus, c. 484-430/420 BC), who wrote that Thales predicted solar eclipse 585 BC
Other sources report Thales traveling through Egypt, which was quite unusual for the Greeks of his time. It is also reported that Thales solved the problem of calculating the height of the pyramids by measuring the length of the shadow from the pyramid when his own shadow was equal to the size of his height. The story that Thales predicted a solar eclipse indicates that he possessed astronomical knowledge that may have come from Babylon. He also had knowledge of geometry, a branch of mathematics that had been developed by the Greeks.
Thales is said to have taken part in the political life of Miletus. He used his mathematical knowledge to improve navigation equipment.He was the first to accurately determine the time using a sundial. And, finally, Thales became rich by predicting a dry lean year, on the eve of which he prepared in advance, and then profitably sold olive oil.
Little can be said about his works, since all of them have come down to us in transcriptions. Therefore, we are compelled to adhere in their presentation to what other authors report about them. Aristotle in Metaphysics says that Thales was the founder of this kind of philosophy, which raises questions about the beginning, from which everything that exists, that is, that which exists, and where everything then returns. Aristotle also says that Thales believed that such a beginning is water (or liquid).
Thales asked questions about what remains constant in change and what is the source of unity in diversity. It seems plausible that Thales proceeded from the fact that changes exist and that there is some kind of one beginning that remains a constant element in all changes. It is the building block of the universe. Such a "permanent element" is usually called the first principle, the "primal foundation" from which the world is made (Greek arche)."
Thales, like others, observed many things that arise from water and that disappear in water. Water turns into steam and ice. Fish are born in water and then die in it. Many substances, like salt and honey, dissolve in water. Moreover, water is essential for life. These and similar simple observations could lead Thales to assert that water is a fundamental element that remains constant in all changes and transformations.
All other objects arise from water, and they turn into water.
1) Thales raised the question of what is the fundamental "building block" of the universe. Substance (original) represents an unchanging element in nature and unity in diversity. Since that time, the problem of substance has become one of the fundamental problems of Greek philosophy;
2) Thales gave an indirect answer to the question of how changes occur: the fundamental principle (water) is transformed from one state to another. The problem of change also became another fundamental problem of Greek philosophy."
For him, nature, physis, was self-moving ("living"). He did not distinguish between spirit and matter. For Thales, the concept of "nature", physis, seems to have been very broad and most closely related to the modern concept of "being".
Raising the question of water as the only foundation of the world and the beginning of all things, Thales thereby solved the question of the essence of the world, all the diversity of which is derived (originates) from a single basis (substance). Water is what subsequently many philosophers began to call matter, the "mother" of all things and phenomena of the surrounding world.
Anaximander (c. 610 - 546 BC) the first to rise to original idea infinity worlds. For the fundamental principle of existence, he took apeiron — indefinite and infinite substance: its parts change, but the whole remains unchanged. This infinite principle is characterized as a divine, creative and moving principle: it is inaccessible to sensory perception, but is comprehensible by reason. Since this beginning is infinite, it is inexhaustible in its possibilities for the formation of concrete realities. This is an ever-living source of new formations: everything in it is in an indefinite state, as a real possibility. Everything that exists is, as it were, scattered in the form of tiny slices. So small grains of gold form whole ingots, and particles of earth form its concrete arrays.
Apeiron is not associated with any specific substance, it gives rise to a variety of objects, living beings, people. Apeiron is boundless, eternal, always active and in motion. Being the beginning of the Cosmos, apeiron distinguishes from itself opposites - wet and dry, cold and warm. Their combinations result in earth (dry and cold), water (wet and cold), air (wet and hot), and fire (dry and hot).
Anaximander expands the concept of the beginning to the concept of "arche", i.e., to the beginning (substance) of everything that exists. This beginning Anaximander calls apeiron. The main characteristic of apeiron is that it " boundless, limitless, endless ". Although apeiron is material, nothing can be said about him, except that he "does not know old age", being in eternal activity, in perpetual motion. Apeiron is not only the substantive, but also the genetic beginning of the cosmos. He is the only cause of birth and death, from which the birth of everything that exists, at the same time disappears of necessity. One of the fathers of the Middle Ages complained that Anaximander "left nothing to the divine mind" with his cosmological concept. Apeiron is self-sufficient. He embraces everything and controls everything.
Anaximander decided not to name the fundamental principle of the world by the name of any element (water, air, fire or earth) and considered the only property of the original world substance, which forms everything, its infinity, omnipotence and irreducibility to any particular element, and therefore - uncertainty. It stands on the other side of all the elements, all of them includes and is called Apeiron (Boundless, infinite world substance).
Anaximander recognized that the single and constant source of the birth of all things was no longer “water” and not any separate substance in general, but the primary substance from which the opposites of warm and cold are separated, giving rise to all substances. It is a principle different from other substances (and in this sense indefinite), has no boundaries and therefore there is boundless» (apeiron). After the isolation of the warm and cold from it, a fiery shell arose, cloaking the air above the earth. The inflowing air broke through the fiery shell and formed three rings, inside of which a certain amount of fire broke out. So there were three circles: the circle of the stars, the sun and the moon. The earth, similar in shape to the cut of a column, occupies the middle of the world and is motionless; animals and people formed from the sediments of the dried seabed and changed forms when they moved to land. Everything detached from the infinite must return to it for its “guilt”. Therefore, the world is not eternal, but after its destruction, it is separated from the infinite new world and this change of worlds has no end.
Only one fragment attributed to Anaximander has survived to our times. In addition, there are comments by other authors, such as Aristotle, who lived two centuries later.
Anaximander did not find a convincing basis for the assertion that water is an unchanging fundamental principle. If water is transformed into earth, earth into water, water into air, and air into water, etc., this means that anything is transformed into anything. Therefore, it is logically arbitrary to say that water or earth (or whatever) is "the first principle." Anaximander preferred to assert that the fundamental principle is apeiron (apeiron), indefinite, boundless (in space and time). In this way, he apparently avoided objections similar to those mentioned above. However, from our point of view, he "lost" something important. Namely, unlike water apeiron is not observable. As a result, Anaximander must explain the sensible (objects and the changes occurring in them) with the help of the sensually imperceptible apeiron. From the point of view of experimental science, such an explanation is a shortcoming, although such an assessment, of course, is an anachronism, since Anaximander hardly possessed modern understanding empirical requirements of science. Perhaps most important for Anaximander was to find a theoretical argument against Thales' answer. And yet Anaximander, analyzing the universal theoretical statements of Thales and demonstrating the polemical possibilities of their discussion, called him "the first philosopher."
The Cosmos has its own order, not created by the gods. Anaximander suggested that life originated on the border of the sea and land from silt under the influence of heavenly fire. Over time, man also descended from animals, having been born and developed to an adult state from fish.
Anaximenes (c. 585-525 BC) believed that the origin of all things is air ("apeiros") : all things come from it by condensation or rarefaction. He thought of it as infinite and saw in it the ease of change and transmutability of things. According to Anaximenes, all things arose from the air and are its modifications, formed by its condensation and discharge. Discharging, the air becomes fire, condensing - water, earth, things. Air is more formless than anything. He is less body than water. We do not see it, but only feel it.
The rarefied air is fire, the thicker air is atmospheric, even thicker is water, then earth, and finally stones.
The last in the line of Milesian philosophers, Anaximenes, who had reached maturity by the time of the conquest of Miletus by the Persians, developed new ideas about the world. Taking air as the primary substance, he introduced a new and important idea about the process of rarefaction and condensation, through which all substances are formed from the air: water, earth, stones and fire. “Air” for him is a breath that embraces the whole world. just as our soul, being the breath, holds us. By its nature, "air" is a kind of vapor or dark cloud and is akin to emptiness. The earth is a flat disk supported by air, just as the flat disks of luminaries hovering in it, consisting of fire. Anaximenes corrected the teachings of Anaximander on the order of the arrangement of the Moon, the Sun and the stars in world space. Contemporaries and subsequent Greek philosophers gave Anaximenes more importance than other Milesian philosophers. The Pythagoreans adopted his teaching that the world breathes air (or emptiness) into itself, as well as some of his teaching about heavenly bodies.
Only three small fragments have survived from Anaximenes, one of which is probably not genuine.
Anaximenes, the third natural philosopher from Miletus, drew attention to another weakness in the teachings of Thales. How is water transformed from its undifferentiated state into water in its differentiated states? As far as we know, Thales did not answer this question. As an answer, Anaximenes argued that the air, which he considered as the "primordial principle", condenses into water when cooled, and condenses into ice (and earth!). When heated, air liquefies and becomes fire. Thus, Anaximenes created a certain physical theory of transitions. Using modern terms, it can be argued that, according to this theory, different aggregate states (steam or air, actually water, ice or earth) are determined by temperature and density, changes in which lead to abrupt transitions between them. This thesis is an example of the generalizations so characteristic of the early Greek philosophers.
Anaximenes points to all four substances, which were later "called" four principles (elements) ". These are earth, air, fire and water.
The soul also consists of air."Just as our soul, being air, restrains us, so breath and air embrace the whole world." Air has the property of infinity. Anaximenes associated its condensation with cooling, and rarefaction - with heating. Being the source of both the soul and the body, and the entire cosmos, air is primary even in relation to the gods. The gods did not create the air, but they themselves from the air, just like our soul, the air supports everything and controls everything.
Summarizing the views of the representatives of the Milesian school, we note that philosophy here arises as a rationalization of myth. The world is explained on the basis of itself, on the basis of material principles, without the participation of supernatural forces in its creation. The Milesians were hylozoists (Greek hyle and zoe - matter and life - a philosophical position, according to which any material body has a soul), i.e. they talked about the animation of matter, believing that all things move due to the presence of a soul in them. They were also pantheists (Greek pan - all and theos - God - philosophy, in accordance with which "God" and "nature" are identified) and tried to reveal the natural content of the gods, understanding by this, in fact, natural forces. In man, the Milesians saw, first of all, not biological, but physical nature, deducing him from water, air, apeiron.
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