Pre-Socratic Philosophy - Science, Nature, and Ethics

The early Greek philosophers, from Ionia, (Asia Minor) and southern Italy, saw the world around them and asked questions about it. Instead of attributing its creation to anthropomorphic gods, they sought rational explanations. This was the beginning of natural philosophy. See Pre-Socratics and Greek Mythology.

Mythological Explanations

There are various Greek myths to explain the origins of the universe and of man. Three generations of immortal creatures vied for power. The first were personifications of such things as Earth and Sky, whose mating produced land, mountains, and seas. One Greek mythological concept of man tells of an earlier, happier time -- a Greek Garden of Eden.

• Creation Myths
• 5 Ages of Man

Pre-Socratic Explanations of the Universe

One idea the Pre-Socratic philosophers had was that there was a single underlying substance that held within itself principles of change. This underlying substance and its inherent principles could become anything. One candidate for the substance was water. Within water there might be such principles as evaporation and condensation, so it could become gaseous or solid. However, there were problems with considering water the underlying principle. Air was another contender. Heraclitus thought it was fire.

Atomist and Pluralist Philosophies

From such revolutionary, if problematic ideas, they came up with the idea that the underlying substance must be very small, like an atom.

• Atomism
• Atomist Philosopher - Democritus
• Atomism Founder - Leucippus

Another idea was that there wasn't a single underlying substance, but several elements, specifically, earth, air, fire, and water, which were associated by the medical followers of Hippocrates with the four humors of the body. In varying proportions, these four elements were thought to have created everything in the world.

While we may laugh at these ideas, they are not really that different from modern science which posits atoms and quarks, etc. as the underlying building blocks of matter, and the periodic table of the elements.

Expanding Focus of Philosophy

In addition to looking at the building blocks of matter, the early philosophers, some of whom were actually poets forcing their observations into the strict dictates of poetic meter (try explaining the world around you in Haiku), looked at the stars, music, and number systems. Numbers were used for counting and measuring. Measuring was made of distances on earth, around the earth, or to heavenly bodies. The study of the measure of earth is geo- (earth) + metry (measure). Thales of Miletus (fl. 1st quarter of the 6th century) is credited with bringing geometry to Greece from Egypt, where it was implicit in the construction of the pyramids.

Pythagoreans

Probably the most famous of the early Greek philosophers from Ionia (known collectively as the Pre-Socratics) is the 6th century B.C. philosopher Pythagoras, who may have actually lived and may have invented the theorem named for him -- or not. The Pythagorean Theorem says that the square of/on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of/on the two sides, but what Pythagoras would have demonstrated is not something complicated involving a square roots table. Instead, he would have shown that if you position 3 squares of specific dimensions so that they form a right triangle in their center, there is a sum of squares relationship between the hypotenuse and the other two sides.
Not all squares put together will produce this remarkable arrangement. It depends on the relationship between the length of a side of each of the three squares. There are other numbers that behave oddly. The Pythagoreans deduced that certain numbers have special properties.
Incidentally, a 3rd century B.C. Greek mathematician, Eratosthenes, living in Alexandria, Egypt (the site of the famous library) used geometry to estimate (reasonably well) the circumference of the earth. His measurement presumes a spherical globe, contrary to any medieval idea of a flat world.

• Pythagorean Numbers
• Pythagorean Theorem
• Philolaus - Pythagorean Philosopher
• Libraries of the Ancient World

The school of Pythagoras concerned itself with other aspects of the world besides natural philosophy. They developed rules for behavior. For instance, since they believed in transmigration of the soul or progressive reincarnations, they thought it was wrong (a sort of cannibalism) to eat meat, echoed lated by Empedocles. Later philosophers focused entirely on conduct or ethics. Instead of asking what made the world, they asked what was the best way to live. Should people be involved in public life or not? Should they attempt to experience the greatest pleasure or should they seek to avoid all highs and lows? Is wealth good? Should someone seeking to be good (i.e., philosopher) give up all the material trappings of life and get all he needs to survive by begging? Such a lifestyle was later adopted by Christians, especially mendicant monks. Philosophy was capable of being used as a tool by the dominant powers or it could be private, a source of consolation. A good emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, is known for writing his philosophical meditations.

• Stoic Philosophy
• How Can I Be Happy? A Stoic and Epicurean Perspective - Guest Feature
• How To Live Like an Epicurean
• Epicurus and His Philosophy of Pleasure
• Ataraxia
• Boethius and the Consolation of Philosophy

Philosophers were thought of as sages. Thales was considered one of the 7 greatest sages. Beards were part of their appearance. Emperor Julian the Apostate was more an erudite philosopher (and bearded) than simply a pagan believer in the old stories, which made his religious preferences no more desirable than Christianity. There were also (beardless) women philosophers, although not many are known. The Pythagoreans accepted women into their school and Hypatia of Alexandria (a neo-Platonist) and Aspasia of Miletus (another Ionian) taught other, male philosophers.