A Little Tour: Pre-Socratic Natural Philosophers

Water is the first principle of everything. Thales of Miletus (c.  624 BC – c. 546 BC)

We all acknowledge the ancient Greek philosophy and its intimidating archaic potential to understand and even interpret natural phenomena which have been entirely summarized under the embracing term of φιλοσοφία, Philosophia, or love of wisdom. I am very reluctant to say that current topics in philosophy are an exact reflection of the past activities of this enchanting field of mankind`s intellectual endeavor. It is not a duty on me but blindingly evident that science was initiated from the entire activities of early philosophers, such as Aristoteles. Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaksimondros - Although, I have to mention their names with sincere esteem, I am very unable to mention all natural philosophers. 

*

    As a young and curious STEM student, I feel responsible for making these fascinating early scientists and great thinkers familiar to me. Hence, I have just started to recapitulate the exact source of human knowledge and the impetus of loving knowledge itself throughout the generations. More importantly, I would like to notice that there were many actions that our ancestors loved to do, but the most eminent activities among them were philosophy which was pregnant with science.  I cannot underestimate the importance of ethics, questioning, or religion which were actively. sometime feverishly, discussed in the field of philosophy. However, I would like to stick to the natural philosophy and I would like to seize my chance to elucidate the complexity of scientific knowledge which was corroded throughout scientific progress and, almost. no one cares about these topics although many of them have Ph.D. which incidentally means Doctor of Philosophy. 

*

    Early philosophers were interested in explaining natural phenomena by using non-mythological explanations benefitting from reasoning and critical discussion (questioning).  Therefore, we can easily see that the main topics in ancient philosophy included the matter and challenging questions to find the probable source of matters on the physical earth. Hence, early philosophers asked ontological questions to interrogate, the so-called, origin/source/beginning of the matter (and actions) or ἀρχή; sometimes also known as arkhé. This questioning regarding the matter and relentless curiosity to find the beginning of the matter will lead to establishing the basics of elements and atoms which are the founding principles of modern sciences like physics and later chemistry.  For this reason, it was extremely common to see ancient philosophers when they were researching matter and form, and this formed the basis of today's scientific research. 

*

    For example Thales of Miletus (Aydin, a province in Turkey). At the end of the inquiries he made about the substance, he said that everything would come from water. At this point, please keep in mind the effort to reduce the plurality observed by the pre-Socratic philosophers of the first age while researching the matter. For that reason, so to speak, the ancestral habit of these scientists still continues. For example, today's physicists want to combine the theory of everything with the four big theories and also we wish to find a single method that will be effective for more than 200 cancer diseases in life sciences. These thoughts may have been extremely ancient. You might also laugh at Thales' suggestion when you first hear it, and get the idea that philosophy is indeed a futile field to study. You are not even wrong, the hypotheses of the ancient natural philosophers are a pile of erroneous ideas that have no validity today. 

*

    However, two things are important here. Thales' idea that the essence of the matter is water may not be fundamentally significant, but this idea that Thales put forward in his effort to understand nature, without using myths and only by reasoning, is important for us. This has breathed new life into humanity and laid the foundation for scientific research. Secondly, Thales' desire to find the only one against the plurality that he saw in nature is a scientific legacy that has been going on for thousands of years.

*

    In short, although today's science advances by advertising the idea of publish or perish, no matter how pragmatic it desires, or no matter how valuable the data obtained is statistically significant, we should wander among the piles of cumulative and historical knowledge of philosophy by digging deep into it and mingling around its dusty shelves. It is indisputable that our wanderlust in philosophy will make an unequivocal contribution to the progressiveness of science.

~

Thursday, 21 July 2022

Bonn.