pre-Socratic philosophy Milesian school His polis (city-state), Miletus, was located on the southwestern coast of what is now Turkey Thales is noted for predicting an eclipse of the Sun in 585 b.c.e More important, he explained why the eclipse would occur, saying that it would occur when the Moon passed between the Sun and the Earth The Moon would consequently block the rays of the Sun and would cast its shadow on the Earth until it moved on in its orbit around the Earth This explanation was a naturalistic explanation It did not rely on the religious mythopoeic explanations of gods, demons, or other spiritual forces that abounded in the beliefs of that time This explanation is counted as the beginning of Western philosophy It served as a corrective to the poetic views of Homer, Hesiod, and other Greek poets Thales, in a search for the ultimate unity of the cosmos, pondered the question What is everything made of? His answer was water This seemed to be a plausible answer because much of the surface of the Earth is covered with water; water comes in solid, liquid, and gaseous states, and water is the basis of life on Earth However, the answer, while wrong, is valuable because it can be “falsified.” Answers to questions that can neither be proven as true or false have little value Those that can be falsified shut the door to further research in that area and direct inquiry to other areas Thales’s immediate follower was Anaximander (c 610–545 b.c.e.), the second member of the Milesian school Anaximander speculated that the basic “stuff” of the cosmos was not water Instead, he reasoned it was an odorless, colorless, weightless substance that he called “the boundless” (aperion) His thought was that aperion was the arche, or source of all things, and it was infinite in supply His answer also initiated “philosophical criticism” because it was a reasoned analysis of the speculations of Thales For Anaximander all particular things such as earth, air, fire, and water had been spun out of the whirling mass of the boundless These particulars were in constant warfare with each other This viewpoint presented a primitive form of the idea of evolution However, his view of “evolution” was cyclical He argued that the continual change in the cosmos was part of a cycle of creation and destruction By adding time to his speculative ideas he was able to express a cyclical view of history In addition, by using reasoning about the unseen ultimate nature of the cosmos he introduced a primitive rationalist method Anaximenes (c 560–28 b.c.e.) was the third member of the Milesian school He was a younger contemporary of Anaximander He rejected the speculation of Anaxi- 365 mander that aperion is the basic stuff of the universe He reasoned that the answer is of limited use because there is too little that can be known about a stuff that is “unbounded.” Agreeing with Anaximander that the basic stuff should be eternal, unlimited, and at the same time a singular “stuff,” and using the criterion of clarity, Anaximenes declared that all thing are derived from air When this assertion is compared to the gaseous state of the universe immediately after the “big bang,” when all matter everywhere was stripped to protons, his answer can be viewed as surprisingly modern INDEPENDENT IONIAN PHILOSOPHERS The first of the independent Ionian philosophers was Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl c 500 b.c.e.) He is known as the philosopher of flux because he asserted that everything is changing and that the only thing that does not change is change itself He is famous for the saying “I can step into a river once, but I cannot step into the same river twice.” This means that the basic characteristic of the cosmos is “becoming.” Everything is constantly becoming something else Heraclitus taught that the basic “stuff” is fire He went beyond physical fire to argue that the fire was a divine reason, or logos, that was constantly in motion He used the metaphor of law courts to include a moral vision to his philosophy The cosmos is constantly changing, but there is a pattern such that “justice” (dike) seeks to establish a balance Constantly, if there is an “offense” it must be balanced This vision of the world was to greatly influence adam smith’s vision of the “harmony” (harmonia or concordia) of the marketplace that is controlled by an “invisible hand.” Xenophanes (c 560–470 b.c.e.) of Colophon (located 40 miles north of Miletus) is included among the Ionians, but Aristotle placed him among the Eleatics He lived for a time in Sicily and at Elea, where he may have founded Eleatic philosophy Xenophanes’ contribution to philosophy was a radical critique of popular Greek religion, specifically the works of Homer (Iliad and Odyssey) and Hesiod (Theogony) The Greeks were polytheists with the Olympian gods serving as the public state gods For Xenophanes the Olympian gods lacked moral inspiration and were shameful His critique began the philosophy of religion Xenophanes was neither an atheist nor an agnostic but believed in one god that was greater than any other and who was utterly different He also accepted the common ancient belief that order was the sign of intelligence that ultimately was divine All of the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers were materialistic monists As metaphysical monists their