Miletus - Ancient Philosophy at UBC

GREEK PHILOSOPHY I | CLASSES 23-24: NOV 3, 2014
FROM HESIOD TO THE MILESIANS
DR. MICHAEL GRIFFIN
CLASSICS & PHILOSOPHY
S O C R AT E S . A R T S . U B C . C A / 2 1 1
A D M I N I S T R AT I O N
• Blog project? Email the instructor, then log in at
socrates.arts.ubc.ca/agora/admin
• Michael Griffin has extra office hours in C212 Tuesday, Nov 3 from
1-3pm
B
QUESTION
• Can philosophy (or science) be effectively articulated through
myth?
• (A) Yes
• (B) No
B
Hesiod, the Milesians, and Xenophanes
The world of Greek myth: Hesiod’s cosmology & cosmogony
The Milesians: The search for the source
• Thales of Miletus and the Milesians (HT 2.1, Ricken 6-10)
• Anaximander (HT 2.2, Ricken 11-16)
• Anaximenes (HT 2.3, Ricken 17-19)
Xenophanes of Colophon: The One and Human Knowledge (HT 3.1, Ricken pars. 20-23).
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Hesiod, the Milesians, and Xenophanes
The world of Greek myth: Hesiod’s cosmology & cosmogony
The Milesians: The search for the source
• Thales of Miletus and the Milesians (HT 2.1, Ricken 6-10)
• Anaximander (HT 2.2, Ricken 11-16)
• Anaximenes (HT 2.3, Ricken 17-19)
Xenophanes of Colophon: The One and Human Knowledge (HT 3.1, Ricken pars. 20-23).
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
The World of Hesiod (Works & Days 720-61)
Hesiod on the world’s creation: APR pp. 2-3
***
Heaven
10 days’ fall
Ocean
10 days’ fall
Tartarus
Nut – Reproduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddess_nut.jpg
Map of the cosmos – Egypt
Nut – Reproduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddess_nut.jpg
Waters (nu)
Sky (nut)
Sun-Barque
Duat (Underworld)
Introducing the Milesians: Background
Aristotle’s mediation
• Aristotle, in Metaphysics 1 and Physics 1 (see optional readings online),
constructs a history of earlier “philosophy” (appropriating various cultural
activities into this new framework) as a search for causes (aitia). He suggests
that earlier thinkers have latched on to one or two of the four Aristotelian
causes and emphasized this. He situates the Milesians as especially interested
in the material (“out-of-which”) cause.
Our interests
• As historians, we are often looking for the first true philosopher (not merely
mythographer). Who is this? Why are the Milesians a candidate?
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Hesiod, the Milesians, and Xenophanes
The world of Greek myth: Hesiod’s cosmology & cosmogony
The Milesians: The search for the source
• Thales of Miletus and the Milesians (HT 2.1, Ricken 6-10)
• Anaximander (HT 2.2, Ricken 11-16)
• Anaximenes (HT 2.3, Ricken 17-19)
Xenophanes of Colophon: The One and Human Knowledge (HT 3.1, Ricken pars. 20-23).
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
The Milesian school strikes a new note, unheard before. It has a fresh sense
of the meaning of truth – a feeling for ... the sort of thing it is reasonable to
suppose. The hypothesis it characteristically deals in is concerned with the
nature of the one primary stuff ... the Milesians seem to make a great
conscious effort to get at something which really does exist. They strike us
as throwing off the vast symbolic visions of mythology, and waking, clearheaded, to see and touch real things. If we have a rational temperament, we
feel at once a refreshment. Here at last is a statement about the world
which is meant and offered as true – a logos [explanation], not a mythos
[story].
– F. M. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy (NY, 1952 ed.), 42
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
The questions which excited them were of this kind: Can this apparently
confused and disordered world be reduced to simpler principles so that
our reason can grasp what it is and how it works? What is it made of? How
does change take place? ... They abandoned mythological and substituted
intellectual solutions. ... [It] was no longer satisfying to say that storms were
roused by the wrath of Poseidon, or death caused by the arrows of Apollo
or Artemis. A world ruled by anthropomorphic gods... human in their
passions... was a world ruled by caprice. Philosophy and science start with
the bold confession of faith that not caprice but an inherent orderliness
underlies the phenomena, and the explanation of nature is to be sought
within nature itself.
–WKC Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), 1, 44-45.
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Miletus
• Thales
• Anaximander
• Anaximenes
Miletus
• Wealthy city-state in Asia Minor
• Key city for trading and shipping
between Near East & Greece
• Ionian Greek culture
• Freedom of thought
• Open political debate
• Wealth (for some) providing leisure
Theatre at Miletus
Orientalizing-style pottery
Thales of Miletus
• Lived late 7th-6th century
• Born to a Phoenician aristocratic
family – so, leisure!
• Traveled to Egypt and Babylon (by
tradition)
• Legendary wisdom
• “Founder of Western philosophy”
• First to seek an “original
cause” (archê)?
• ... to explain how unseen facts
caused visible results without
appeal to mythology?
• To provide generalizable proofs
or laws?
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy: 11A9-10
Mathematics
Water as the archê
All things are full of gods
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy
Anecdotes suggesting astronomical reputation
• Context of this extract: [Theaet. 174B] Anyone who gives their
life to the pursuit of wisdom (philosophia) is open to such
mockery. It’s true that such a person is unaware of what the
person next door is doing, hardly knows whether they’re human;
they spend all their time on the question, what it is to be human,
and what abilities and traits distinguish human nature from any
other.... [173E] “taking wing”, as Pindar says, “‘beyond the sky,
beneath the earth’, searching the heavens and measuring the
plains, everywhere searching for the true nature (phusis) of
everything as a whole.”
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy
Anecdotes suggesting astronomical reputation
Thales correctly predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BCE
• But not exact time and place
• He may have secured this information via Babylonian records, the Saros Cycle: eclipse every ~18 years
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy
Mathematics
Water as the archê
All things are full of gods
Thales of Miletus
Thales is credited with the use of a geometrical
theorem to show the distance of ships at sea.
(Source: Proclus, Commentary on Euclid 65.7-11)
He may have learned and practiced geometry in Egypt.
Optional information: it’s believed that Thales knew that triangles with
one side and the two adjacent angles equal are congruent.
From two points on shore (A,B)
determine the angles between shore
and ship (a,b). Construct equal angles on
our shoreward side of those points and
continue the lines until they intersect
(C). The distance from C to the shore =
the distance from ship to shore.
R.D. McKirahan ,Philosophy Before Socrates (Hackett)
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy: APR 2.1-3
Mathematics
Water as the archê: see HT 2.1, 11A12, 14
All things are full of gods
Nut – Reproduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goddess_nut.jpg
Waters (nu)
Sky (nut)
Sun-Barque
Duat (Underworld)
Thales of Miletus
Astronomy
Mathematics
Water as the archê
All things are full of gods: 11A22
Aristotle, De anima 1.5: Thales, too, to judge from what
is recorded about him, seems to have held psukhê (lifeprinciple, soul) to be a motive force, since he said that
the magnet has a psukhê in it because it moves the
iron…. Certain thinkers say that soul is intermingled in
the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason
that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of
gods.
Thales and the ‘Origin of Philosophy’
What’s our criterion for “philosophy”?
• Demythologization!
• Originality?
• Generality?
• Observation?
What criteria might Thales match?
Thales and the ‘Origin of Philosophy’
Thales on Water
• Aristotle: “Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, declares
[the principle of matter, archê] to be water. (This is why he indicated
that the earth rests on water).” Perhaps:
‣ Everything was originally water.
‣ Everything is now really water, but in different apparent forms. (Water > air or fire when heated; water > solid when cooled).
‣ A way of saying, everything is really one (“monism”).
• “[T]he traditional view, which follows Aristotle, is that for Thales in
some way all things are ... composed of water”. (R. McKirahan,
Philosophy Before Socrates).
Thales and the ‘Origin of Philosophy’
Thales on Water (cont’d)
• “[T]he traditional view, which follows Aristotle, is that for Thales in
some way all things are ... composed of water” (McKirahan 29).
‣ General. The theory covers multiple cases, not only one.
‣ Testable (by observation). Can you make water into air?
‣ Demythologized. (Appeals only to natural causes).
• This is Aristotle’s view, as our primary source for Presocratic
philosophy (see Ricken par. 5 on the role of Aristotelian tradition).
‣ Most scholars do follow Aristotle, because Thales’ pupil,
Anaximander, responded to such a theory (2.2, up next).
Anaximander of Miletus
• Traditionally, Thales’ star student
• 25 years old during Thales’ eclipse
(585 BCE)
• Lived c. 610-540 BCE
• “First to draw the inhabited world
on a tablet” (first mapmaker)
• Unambiguously our first “philosopher”, by standards of demythologization, originality,
generality, and observation.
Anaximander, relief, 1st century AD
Rome, Mueseo Nazionale 506
Anaximander of Miletus
“Anaximander has expurgated the
supernatural, with a boldness and
completeness to which many of his
successors failed to attain... The
primary order is still said to be
‘according to what is ordained’; it is
still a moral order in which Justice
prevails; but the will of the personal
God has disappeared, and its place is
partly taken by a natural cause, the
eternal motion.”
- F. M. Cornford, From Religion to
Philosophy (NY, 1952), 41.
Anaximander, relief, 1st century AD
Rome, Museo Nazionale 506
Anaximander of Miletus
Key contributions
• Physics: the archê
• Cosmology
• “Evolution?”
• Astronomy and Cartography
Anaximander, relief, 1st century AD
Rome, Mueseo Nazionale 506
Anaximander of Miletus
Anaximander ... said that the APEIRON [indefinite, unlimited] was
the ARCHE and the element of things that are, and he was the
first to introduce this name for the ARCHE... He says that the
ARCHE is neither water nor any other of the things called
elements, but some other nature called APEIRON, out of which
come to be all the heavens and the worlds in them. (From
Simplicius On Aristotle’s Physics 24,13-18)
The things that are perish into the things out of which they
come to be, according to necessity, for “they pay penalty
and retribution to one another according to their injustice
in accordance with the ordering of time”, as he says in
rather poetical language. (From Simplicius On Aristotle’s
Physics 24,18-21)
Anaximenes of Miletus
Reminder: So. Many. Anaxes.
A mnemonic
6th C. BCE
• Anaximander
• Anaximenes
• Anaxagoras
5th C. BCE
Anaximander, relief, 1st century AD
Rome, Mueseo Nazionale 506
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Anaximenes of Miletus
The ARCHE
• One and unlimited.
• But not undefined. It’s AIR
• Not opposites, but a continuum.
FIRE ➙ AIR ← WIND ← CLOUD ← WATER ← EARTH ← STONE
• “Loosening” and “tightening” explain hot and cold.
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Anaximenes of Miletus
EXAMPLES - YOUTUBE
• Mongolian felt making (for “felting”)
• Rotation of the night sky (link 1) (link 2)
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Leaving Miletus
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Miletus Birdseye, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Miletus – South Agora, by AndrewArmbruster.com
To the Agora from the Sacred Way, by AndrewArmbruster.com
Miletus, Northern districts, by AndrewArmbruster.com
The Lion Harbour, by AndrewArmbruster.com