Miletus philosophers

The last of the Miletus philosophers was Anaximenes. His dates are also uncertain, but he must have created his theory before 494 B.C. when the Persians destroyed Miletus. Apparently Anaximenes did not find Anaximander s ideas very convincing, because he maintained that the fundamental element was air. Anaximenes maintained that fire was rarefied air and that air could be condensed into all known substances. Progressive condensations successively condensed it into wind, clouds, water, and finally into earth and stone. Just as our soul being air, holds us together, he said, so do breath and air encompass the whole world. ... 

The first philosopher to theorize about such matters was Thales of Miletus, at the time, the sixth century B.C., the greatest Greek city Asia Minor. According to Thales there was one fundamental element water, the material of which everything was made. To the modern mind, such an idea seems absurd. However, it is much more reasonable than it might appear. Lacking evidence to the contrary, it must have seemed very plausible that everything was made of some primal material. And if it was, water was really not a bad candidate. 

Thales of Miletus (c.620-c.555 bc), one of the first known enquirers into the constitution of the physical world, posited only one fundamental substance water. There is ample justification for this view in myth the Hebrew god was not the only deity to bring forth the world from a primal ocean. But the Milesian school of philosophers that Thales founded produced little consensus about the profe hyle or first matter that constituted everything. Anaximander (c.6ll-547 bc), Thales successor, avoided the issue with his contention that things are ultimately made of apeiron, the indefinite and unknowable first substance. Anaximenes (d. C.500 bc) decided that air, not water, was primary. For Heraclitus (d. 460 bc), fire was the stuff of creation. 

The Greek philosopher who started this transformation was Thales of Miletus. Information about him is limited, and what we know comes to us from later writers, since no texts by him have survived. He was probably born about 623 b.c.e., in Ionia, which is in modem Turkey. Thales was believed to have traveled widely and likely visited Egypt and studied in Greece. He conceived of the world as a sphere floating in an eternal sea and argued that water was the most fundamental element. It came in three forms water, earth, and mist. This was an important philosophical insight, since it demonstrated an understanding of the states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas, in modem terms) in addition to different types of matter. 

Some of the Presocratic philosophers had also explicitly argued that life originated by a sort of evolutionary process beginning with the primordial slime. Anaximander of Miletus, writing in the sixth century b.c.e. said that... 

It may have been reasoning of this sort that led the Greek philosopher Anaximenes, also of Miletus, to conclude, about 570 b.c, that air was the element of the universe. He felt that toward the center of the universe it was compressed, forming the harder and denser varieties of substance such as water and earth. (See Figure 2.)... 

Before the sixth century B.C., air was identified as emptiness. Greek natural philosophers assigned air and water beside earth and fire to the four elements (in Latin, materia prima, primary matter). Thales of Miletus (624-546 B.C.) was the first... 

Anaximenes of Miletus (about 585-528 BC) Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher, probably a younger contemporary of Anaximander and together with Thales one of the three Milesian philosophers. 

The periodic table, the great classificatory scheme of chemistry, is based on two of the most fundamental concepts in physical science—elements and atoms. In their rudimentary forms, both of these ideas were inventions of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. The earliest of these thinkers was Thales of Miletus (ca. 624-545 BC), who subscribed to the idea that all matter is derived from one substance. While he considered water to be the elementary substance, others like Anaximenes, Heraclitus, and Anaximander favored air, fire, and apeiron (an eternal, unlimited element), respectively. 

Some Greek philosophers who studied matter between 700 and 300 bce described matter in a way that differed from the way atomists described it. They attempted to identify and describe a fundamental substance from which all other matter was formed. Thales of Miletus (640-546 bce) was among the first to suggest the existence of a basic element. He chose water, which exists as liquid, ice, and steam. He interpreted water s changeability to mean that water could transform into any other substance. Other philosophers suggested that the basic element was air or fire. Empedokles (ca. 490-ca. 430 bce) focused on four elements earth, air, fire, and water. He thought that these elements combined in various proportions to make all known matter. 

THALES of MILETUS (seventh—sixth century). One of the Seven Sages and the first known natural philosopher. He is credited with being the first to explain eclipses (28 May 585) and the first creator of a celestial globe. 

---