thales – Pokémaniacal

So the fundamental concepts of modern physics is older than the concept of the four classical elements?

(follow-up to this)

Ehhhhh, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s more that Thales lived in a time of… let’s call it experimentation. The Greek philosophers of the 6th century BC were kinda throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick. His notion that water might be the one fundamental “stuff” was just one of several ideas being tossed around at the time; other philosophers suggested air, or aether, and of course the idea that wound up dominating was Empedocles’ belief that there were four different kinds of fundamental “stuff” (earth, water, fire and air). Continue reading “Random Access asks:” →

I’ve been reading about monism and ancient monistic philosophers (particularly Thales), and I find it absolutely fascinating! Could you please explain the topic a little more in-depth, in your usual easy-to-read style? 🙂 I’m also wondering if our current scientific knowledge points to a neo-monistic view of the universe (in that everything is made up of atoms)? (although I understand that atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons) (matter and energy are the same thing, aren’t they?)

Well, pre-Socratic philosophy is not exactly my “thing” but here goes

So Thales was a Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus (modern Milet, western Turkey), probably around the early 6th century BC, who was famous for predicting eclipses, and discovering that any angle in a semicircle is always a right angle, good stuff like that. We don’t have anything written by Thales himself, but we know a fair bit about his thinking and his achievements in engineering and mathematics because he gets quoted a lot by later Greek philosophers. Apparently, one of the things that Thales believed was that everything is water. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →