SH1706

Predecessors of the Big Three

Western Philosophy - by which we usually mean everything apart from the Eastern
Philosophy of China, India, Japan, Persia, etc. - began in Ancient Greece in about the 6th
century B.C. Thales of Miletus is usually considered the first proper philosopher, although he was
just as concerned with natural philosophy (known today as Science) as with philosophy as we know
it.

Thales and most of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers (i.e. those who lived before Socrates) limited
themselves to Metaphysics, the inquiry into the nature of existence, being and the world). They
were Materialists who believed that all things are composed of material and nothing else) and were
mainly concerned with trying to establish the single underlying substance the world is made of
without resorting to supernatural or mythological explanations. For instance, Thales thought the
whole universe was composed of different forms of water; Anaximenes concluded it was made
of air; Heraclitus thought it was fire; and Anaximander said it was some unexplainable substance
usually translated as "the infinite" or "the boundless".

Another issue the Pre-Socratics wrestled with was the so-called “Problem of Change”, how things
appear to change from one form to another. At the extremes, Heraclitus believed in an on-going
process of perpetual change, a constant interplay of opposites; Parmenides, on the other hand, using a
complicated deductive argument, denied that there was any such thing as change at all, and argued
that everything that exists is permanent, indestructible, and unchanging. This might sound like an
unlikely proposition, but Parmenides' challenge was well-argued and was important in encouraging
other philosophers to come up with convincing counter-arguments. Zeno of Elea was a student
of Parmenides and is best known for his famous paradoxes of motion the best known of which is that
of the Achilles and the Hare, which helped lay the foundations for the study of Logic.
However, Zeno's underlying intention really was to show, like Parmenides before him, that all beliefs
in plurality and change are mistaken and, in particular, that motion is nothing but an illusion.

Although these ideas might seem to us rather simplistic and unconvincing today, we should bear in
mind that, at that time, there was really no scientific knowledge, and even the most common of
phenomena (e.g. lightning, water freezing to ice, etc.) would have appeared miraculous. Their
attempts were, therefore, important initial steps in the development of philosophical thought. They
also set the stage for two other important Pre-Socratic philosophers: Empedocles, who combined
their ideas into the theory of the four classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water), which became
the standard dogma for most of the next two thousand years; and Democritus, who developed the
extremely influential idea of Atomism: that all of the reality is actually composed
of tiny, indivisible, and indestructible building blocks known as atoms, which form different
combinations and shapes within the surrounding void.

Another early and very influential Greek philosopher was Pythagoras, who led a rather bizarre
religious sect and essentially believed that all of the reality was governed by numbers and that its
essence could be encountered through the study of Mathematics.

Reference:
A quick history of philosophy. (n.d.). In The Basics of Philosophy.
http://www.philosophybasics.com/general_quick_history.html

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