Thales And Western Philosophy

Western Philosophy began in the Greek cities of Asia Minor otherwise known as Ionia, with Thales of Miletus. Thales was born around 624 B.C.E. and died around 546 B.C.E. Though Thales had never recorded any of his ideas, many future students and writers had recorded his notable attributes to philosophy. He is credited with figuring out a method for measuring the height of the pyramids, inventing a device used to measure the distance between ships out at sea, as well as some clever military strategies. His most famous idea though, was that the originating principle in nature was water. This question of what matter is composed of has influenced philosophers from the Ancient Philosophy period to modern science of today. Thales’ most noted pupil was Anaximander , who “agreed with his teacher that there is some single basic stuff out of which everything comes,” but argued that instead of water, the ‘most basic stuff’ was To Apeiron. This word, To Apeiron, according to Anaximander is the primary substance out of which all specific things come. A young associate of Anaximander, and Anaximenes, also desired to find the answer about what “basic stuff” consisted of. He stated that air was the primary substance from which all things came. With the introduction of western philosophy came other thinkers and different ideas regarding ‘basic stuff.’ Pythagoras, who lived from around 569 to 500 B.C.E., was born on the Greek island of Samos. Unlike many philosophers of his time who reasoned that there was a tangible substance that all matter was composed of, Pythagoras took the view that all things were made of numbers. Heraclitus of Ephesus, who lived through the years 540 to 480 B.C.E., shifted attention from the question concerning ‘basic stuff...

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...er is the Allegory of the Cave, in which he explains a scenario where people, from birth, are chained by their necks and ankles with the view of a wall in this cave that ultimately limit their experiences of life until freed. This extended metaphor contrasts the way we perceive and believe what reality is. The thesis behind his allegory is that all we perceive are imperfect "reflections" of the ultimate Forms, which subsequently represent truth and reality. In Plato’s Metaphor of the Divided Line, he goes into detail about the levels of knowledge that can be obtained through a hierarchy with the most superficial type of knowledge being the lowest while perfect intelligence is the highest. Plato's most outstanding student was Aristotle, perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid