Greek Philosophers Biographies - Milesian school Part 1

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2015-12-20 : the website is under construction. THE PROVERBS ARE O.K., but It will take me a few hours to re-insert the images of the greek philosophers, which for some reason were lost, after my last revision, which i have done a few days ago. so until i remove the sign 'website - under - construction' ... you can study the proverbs with safety !. Please stay on Alert !.

Notes: 1. Diogenes of Sinope ... and ... Sinope ... is the same Greek Philosopher

2. Heraclitus of Ephesus ,,, and ... Ephesus is the same Greek Philosopher

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Greek Philosophers Biographies - Milesian school Part 1 in English

The Greek philosophers were among the most influential people in history because they invented both philosophy and science. By asking questions about themselves and the world around them, these philosophers helped create modern civilization.

Interestingly enough, the Greek philosophers thought of themselves as scientists rather than thinkers. They called themselves seekers and lovers of wisdom and often studied a wide variety of subjects, including history, physics, law, sociology, politics, mathematics, and biology. The famous philosophers were also teachers, educating wealthy children and operating schools as well as thinkers.

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Author Birth - Death

15 SEVEN (7) ANCIENT SAGES - Thales of Melitus 624 BC - 546 BC

PRE-SOCRATIC - IONIANS - Anaximander of Miletus

PRE-SOCRATIC - IONIANS - Anaximenes of Miletus

17 ELEATIC - IONIANS - Xenophanes of Colophon 570 BC - 480 BC

09 INDIVIDUAL - IONIANS - Heraclitus 544 BC - 483 BC

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15 SEVEN (7) ANCIENT SAGES - Thales of Miletus

προσωκρατικοί φιλόσοφοι - ο αρχαιότερος προσωκρατικός φιλόσοφος,

επτά (7) σοφοί της αρχαιότητας - ο πρώτος των επτά (7) σοφών της αρχαιότητας - Θαλής ο Μιλήσιος

Thales of Miletus

Thales (Electricity), sculpture from "The Progress of Railroading" (1908), main facade of Union Station (Washington, DC)

Thales, Nuremberg Chronicle.

Thales' Theorem:

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Life and Work

Thales of Miletus (fl. c. 585 BC) is regarded as the father of philosophy. He is also considered the founder of Milesian school and one of the seven sages. Only few fragmentary sources survive from Thales’ work. Some ancient authors ascribe to him, without serious justification, a work with the name Nautical Star-guide while according to some others he wrote only two works: On the Solstice and On the Equinox.

Astronomy and Mathematics

Thales was also a great astronomer and mathematician. It is significant that he foretold the eclipse of the sun in 585 BC. Thales was an avid traveler. Herodotus provides important evidence for Thales’ activities as statesman and engineer. He seem to measure the pyramids of Egypt by their shadow, having observed the time when our shadow is equal to his height. As a mathematician, Thales is famous for his theorems, three of which are attributed to him by Proclus: circle bisected by diameter; angles at base of isosceles triangle are equal vertically opposed angles are equal.

The Water

Thales was the first Greek philosopher to speculate about the primary material element or source (arche) of all beings and cosmic phenomena, which he identified as water (hydor). The importance of water in life and nature was probably the principal reason that made Thales came to this conclusion. According to another viewpoint, Thales probably follows the traditional Homeric world-image and more precisely that of Oceanos; the river source of all mortal and immortal life. On this basis, Thales states that the earth floats on water like a raft.

Pantheism

Thales’ monistic view of water leads him to animistic pantheism. Since water is the divine source of all living things and so all animate and inanimate things can be alive, then the whole world is full of gods. This conclusion leads Thales to suggest that the real substance of soul and nature is water since water’s power is fundamentally kinetic.

Testimonies

Aristotle Metaphysics 983b6

... for there must be some natural substance, either one or more than one, from which the other things come-into-being, while it is preserved. Over the number, however, and the form of this kind of principle they do not all agree; but Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, says that it is water...

Aristotle De Anima IIa7

And some say that it [soul] is intermingled in the universe, for which reason, perhaps, Thales also thought that all things all full of gods.

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for more information, please visit the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in the following web page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales

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PRE-SOCRATIC - IONIANS - Milesian school - Anaximander of Miletus

προσωκρατικοί φιλόσοφοι - Αναξίμανδρος ο Μιλήσιος

Life and Work

Anaximander (c.612-545 BC) was a discipline of Thales. He studied systematically the natural phenomena and he made the first comprehensive attempt to explain the origins both of man and the cosmos. Anaximander wrote a book in prose with the influential title On Nature. His thought includes significant theories on the fields of cosmology, cosmogony and biology. Anaximander was the first to draw the inhabited world on a map or tablet. He was also famous for explaining winds, rains, earthquakes and other natural phenomena in a rational non-mythological way.

Earth and Heavenly Bodies

For Anaximander the earth is cylindrical in shape; curved and round like a drum. Its surfaces are flat and stays in equilibrium at the center of the cosmos. The heavenly bodies are ‘breathing holes’ in the air. For Anaximander the first living organisms were born from moisture evaporated by the sun. Man was born from a different kind, a fish-like creature. That is because man, in contrast to other creatures, is not self-supporting but needs prolonged nursing.

The Apeiron

Anaximander is the first philosopher to say that the ‘principle’ (arche) and ‘element’ (stoicheion) of everything existent is the ‘unlimited’ (apeiron): it is the derivative source of all things. From the apeiron all things arise in coming-to-be and return by necessity in passing-away. The apeiron is the eternal originative substance without limits in (1) Space (2) Time (3) Quality (4) Quantity. It is this nature of the apeiron that brings it close to the ontological neutrality of the Hesiod’s Chaos.

Fragments and Testimonies

1(1) From the source from which they arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed, 'for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the assessment of time', as he says in somewhat poetical terms.

2 (A11 from Hippolytus) He said that the arche ('beginning and basis') of existing things is an apeiron ('limitless') nature of some kind, from which come the heavens and the kosmos ('world order') in them.

3(3) ... deathless and indestructible <the indefinite>

4(5) He compared the earth to a stone column section.

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BIOGRAPHY

A famous wise man of Ancient Greece, possibly a pupil of his fellow citizen Thales. According to some ancient writers, Anaximander invented the solar clock, using the sun and a shadow to calculate time. As Herodotus mentions that this instrument came to Greece from Babylon, it is a possibility than Anaximander perfected it and made it known. It is also said that he mad the first geographical map where Earth was depicted in the shape of a cylinder.

He was the first Greek philosopher who put down his opinions and thoughts written in a book using prose, and the first who inserted the term «Αρχη», the greek word for principle, a term well used in philosophy ever since. He thought that the “Infinite” was the origin of everything, a vast and interminable primary matter, from which everything comes and to which everything returns. It is said that he once predicted an earthquake in Sparta, and his prediction proved to be correct.

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for more information, please visit the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in the following web page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximander

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PRE-SOCRATIC - IONIANS - Milesian school - Anaximenes of Miletus

προσωκρατικοί φιλόσοφοι - Αναξιμένης ο Μιλήσιος

Life and Work

Anaximenes (fl. c.545 BC) was a discipline of Anaximander. He is the third and the last of the Milesian philosophers. Only a few sources survive for his life and activities. He wrote a book in prose probably within the same framework of natural philosophy as that of Anaximander. Anaximenes speculated on cosmology, cosmogony and meteorology.

The Air

For Anaximenes, in contrast to Anaximander, the source of all things is not an indefinite and unlimited apeiron but the air (aer): a definite material substance. The air by the process of ‘rarefaction’ becomes fire and by the process of ‘condensation’ becomes water and earth. Hot and cold do not have an ontological or material status but they are due to rarefaction and condensation. For Anaximenes the earth is flat and rides on a cushion of air. A heavenly firmament revolves like a felt cap around it. The heavenly bodies were made by rarefaction into fire, they are also flat and rest on air.

The Soul

For Anaximenes, the air is divine and causes life. It is also the source of life which encloses the cosmos as well as the first principle that is responsible for the maintenance of all living organisms. The air is the divine psychic principle between microcosm and macrocosm. As the soul (air) of an individual organism maintains the single individual organism, so the soul of the cosmos (universal breath) surrounds and maintains the whole universe. Hence Anaximenes’ cosmos is conceived as a huge animate being with divine origins.

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for more information, please visit the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in the following web page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaximenes_of_Miletus

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17 ELEATIC - IONIANS - Xenophanes of Colophon

Ελεατική Σχολή - Ξενοφάνης απο την Κολοφώνα ( ο Κολοφώνιος )

Xenophanes, 17th-century engraving

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Life and Work

Xenophanes (c.570-c.475 BC) was born in Colophon, an Ionian Greek city of Asia Minor. He emigrated in western Greece and he activated as a poet in Sicily and southern Italy. For this reason he was probably related to the Pythagorean School. He wrote especially didactic poetry and ‘Lampoons’ (Silloi): satirical poems in hexameters. Some verses of these poems survive from his work.

Religion Criticism

Xenophanes is well-known for his criticism of the traditional view-image of the Gods. In his poems he clearly attacks the Homeric and Hesiodic anthropomorphic descriptions of the divine deities. The image of the Gods is relative to the region and the culture which is expressed (black gods for the Africans, white gods for the Greeks). Such portrayals should be denied because of their subjectivity.

Single God

For Xenophanes there is one single god beyond any human or physical description. It is the greatest among the Gods without organs or body. This God is motionless, intelligent, with complete perception of the world, activating everything just by the sheer power of thought. It is this Xenophanes’ account of God that probably affects the Eleatic conception of the oneness and immobility of Being.

Cosmology

Xenophanes asserts that all natural phenomena are not divine deities but formations of material substances (the rainbow is not Iris but a special cloud formation). Earth stretch down ad infinitum and the horizontal border between air and earth is the only visible one. More significantly he distinguishes between divine knowledge and human opinion. Divine knowledge is the only true knowledge, while human opinion is totally subjective and probable. Xenophanes is aware that even his own views are only an assumption.

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for more information, please visit the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in the following web page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes

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09 INDIVIDUAL - IONIANS - Heraclitus

Ηράκλειτος

Heraclitus by Johannes Moreelse. The image depicts him as "the weeping philosopher" wringing his hands over the world, and as "the obscure" dressed in dark clothing—both traditional motifs

Heraclitus (with the face and in the style of Michelangelo) sits apart from the other philosophers in Raphael's School of Athens.

Bust of Heraclitus, 'The Weeping Philosopher' by Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke ca. 1757.

Heraclitus by Hendrick ter Brugghen

Crying Heraclitus and laughing Democritus, from a 1477 Italian fresco, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

Democriet (laughing) & Herakliet (crying) by Cornelis van Haarlem

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Life and Work

Heraclitus (fl. c.500 BC) was born in Ephesus, the second great Ionian city. He was a man of strong and independent philosophical spirit. Heraclitus wrote a single book, with the title On Nature, perhaps divided in three sections: cosmology, politics and theology. He dedicated and placed his book in the temple of Artemis.

The Obscure Philosopher

Heraclitus is characterized as the obscure philosopher, due to the insignificance of his language and the enigmatic aphorisms of his writings. It is noteworthy that his book was purposely written rather obscurely so that only those of rank and influence should have access to it, and it should not be easily despised by the populace. For this reason, when Socrates read his book said: the concepts I understand are great, but I believe that the concepts I cant understand are great too. However, the reader needs to be an excellent swimmer like those from Dilos, so not to be drown from his book.

Fire and Logos

Like the Milesian philosophers, Heraclitus focused on the material origins of the world. Moreover, he inspired the internal hidden rhythm of nature which moves and regulates things, namely, the logos. Heraclitus accepted only one material source of natural substances, fire (pyr). Fire is the manifestation of logos which creates an infinite and uncorrupted world, without beginning or end in time. In turn fire changes or transforms to water and earth.

Eternal Change

Heraclitus is the philosopher of the eternal change. His well known statement is that ‘everything flows’. He expresses this notion of eternal change and mobility in terms of the continuous flow of the river which always renews itself. Heraclitus’ view of cosmos is that of continuous conflict between species. He converts this world into various shapes as a harmony of the opposites. The composition of opposites sustains everything in nature. Good and evil, just and unjust are simply opposite sides of the same single thing.

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for more information, please visit the Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in the following web page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus

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