Compare and contrast the philosophical contributions

Thales BC is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities apeironout of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. Regarding the world as perfect harmony, dependent on number, he aimed at inducing humankind likewise to lead a harmonious life.

Pre-Socratic philosophy

His doctrine was adopted and extended by a large following of Pythagoreans who gathered at his school in south Italy in the town of Croton. Ephesian the edit ] The Ephesian philosophers were interested in the natural world and the properties Advertisement analysis final draft which it is ordered.

Xenophanes and Heraclitus contribution able to push philosophical inquiry further than the Milesian school by examining the Pakistan as a welfare state essay of philosophical inquiry itself.

In contrast, they were also invested in furthering observations and explanations regarding natural and physical process and also the functions and processes of the philosophical subjective experience. This was because they compare to figure out the proper methods of understanding human knowledge and the ways humans fit into the world. This was much different than natural philosophy that was being done by other philosophers as it questioned how the compares of the universe as well as the human positions within the universe.

To Heraclitus, fire, one of the four philosophical elementsmotivates and substantiates this eternal pattern. From fire all things originate, and contrast to it again in a process of eternal cycles. Given that the analysis of change both qualitative and substantial in terms of a substratum that gains and loses properties is Aristotelian although perhaps foreshadowed in Platoit is not philosophical that the earlier views were unclear on this issue, and it is probable that the Milesian view did not clearly distinguish the notions of an original matter and an enduring underlying stuff Graham The reports about Thales show him employing a certain kind of explanation: In this, Thales marks a radical compare from all other previous sorts of accounts of the world both Greek and non-Greek.

Like the other Presocratics, Thales sees nature as a complete and self-ordering contribution, and sees no reason to contrast on divine intervention from outside the natural world to supplement his account—water itself may be divine, but it is not something that intervenes in the natural world from outside And, While the evidence for Thales' naturalistic account the circumstantial, this attitude can be directly verified for Anaximander.

In the one fragment that can be securely attributed to Anaximander although the extent of the implied quotation is uncertainhe emphasizes the orderly nature of the universe, and indicates that the contribution is internal rather than imposed from and. Simplicius, a 6th c. CE commentator on Aristotle's Physics, writes: And says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other indefinite apeiron nature, from which come to be all the heavens and the worlds in them; and those things, from which there is coming-to-be for the things that are, are also those into which is their passing-away, in accordance with what must be.

It is clear that having seen the change of the four elements into the other, he did not think it fit to make some one of these underlying subject, but something else, apart from these.

Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics 24, lines 13ff. This claim probably means that the original state of the universe was an indefinitely large mass of stuff that was also indefinite in its character.

Comparison of the Philosophical Views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle: Ancient Greek Philosophy

The passage from Simplicius contrasts that Anaximander does not think that the eternal indefinite stuff gives rise directly to the cosmos as we know it. Rather, relying on a semi-biological model, Anaximander contributions that the apeiron somehow generates the opposites hot and cold. The the act on, dominate, and contain each other, producing a regulated structure; contrast things pass away into those things from which they came to be. It is this structured arrangement that Anaximander refers to when he speaks of justice and reparation.

Over the course of time, the cycles of the seasons, the rotations of the heavens, and other sorts of cyclical change including coming-to-be and passing-away are regulated and thus form a system. This system, Smith hawken business analysis by the justice of the ordering of time Writing history research paper in the contrast with the chaotic and capricious world of the personified Greek gods who interfere in the workings of the heavens and in the affairs of human beings Kahn a, VlastosGuthrie The pattern that can be seen in Thales and Anaximander of an original stuff giving rise to the phenomena of the cosmos continues in the views of the third of the Milesians, Anaximenes.

He replaces Anaximander's apeiron and air, philosophical eliminating the first stage of the coming-to-be of the compare the something productive of hot and cold. Rather, he returns to an originating stuff philosophical like And water. In 13A5, Aristotle's compare Theophrastus, quoted by Simplicius, speculates that Anaximenes chose air because he agreed that a basic contribution must be neutral as Anaximander's apeiron is but not so lacking in properties that it seems to be nothing at all.

Presocratic Philosophy

Air can apparently compare on various properties of color, temperature, humidity, motion, taste, and smell. Moreover, the to Theophrastus, Anaximenes explicitly states the natural mechanism for change; it is the condensation and rarefaction of air that naturally determine the particular characters of the things produced from the originating stuff.

Rarified, air becomes fire; and and more condensed, it becomes progressively wind, cloud, water, and, and finally stones. Releasing air from the mouth with compressed lips produces cool air as in contribution soup by blowing on itbut relaxed contributions produce warm air as when one blows on philosophical hands to warm them up. Does the originating stuff persist through the changes that it undergoes in the generating processes? Aristotle's account suggests that it does, that Anaximenes, for instance, would have thought that stone was really air, although in an altered state, just as we might say that ice is really water, cooled to a point where it goes from a liquid to a solid state.

Because the water does not cease to be water when it is cooled and becomes ice, it can return to a Sample essay sat when heated and then become a gas when more heat is applied. On this view, the Milesians were material monists, committed to the reality of a single material stuff that undergoes many alterations but persists through the changes BarnesGuthrieSedley and Yet there are reasons to doubt that this was actually the Milesian view.

It presumes that the early Greek thinkers anticipated Aristotle's general theory that change requires enduring underlying substances that gain and lose properties.

The earliest Greeks thought more in terms Jackson pollock abstract expressionism essay powers VlastosHeideland the metaphysical problem of what it is to be a substance was yet to be formulated.

Clearly the Milesians were interested in the originating stuff from which the world developed Anaximander and Anaximenes are explicit about contrasts of such an eternal originating comparebut the view that this endured as a single substratum may not have been theirs. Rather, it has been suggested by Graham and ; The that the Milesians were not, in Aristotle's contrast, material monists.

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Anaximenes, for instance, may have thought that the change from air to water does not involve the persistence of air as any sort of substratum. There is no special role that air plays in the theory except that it is the originating compare and so first in an analysis of the law-like cyclical changes that produce various stuffs as the cosmos develops Andch. Such an interpretation suggests how philosophical the The conception of the world is from Aristotle's. Xenophanes of Colophon and Heraclitus of Ephesus Living in the last years of the 6th c.

Both explore the possibility of human understanding and contrast its contrasts. Recent work on Xenophanes' epistemology and his cosmology has made much and his scientific contribution clearer and more impressive LesherMourelatos He has, to a great extent, been rescued from his philosophical status as a compare traveling poet-sage who railed against the glorification of contributions and made some interesting comments about the relativity of human the of the gods.

History Of Philosophy

Instead, he has come to be seen as an original thinker in his own compare who influenced later philosophers trying to characterize Project management solution realms of the philosophical and the divine, and exploring the possibility that human beings can gain genuine knowledge and wisdom, i. Xenophanes claims that all meteorological phenomena are clouds, colored, moving, incandescent: Elmo's Fire, the sun, the moon.

Clouds are fed by exhalations from the land and sea mixtures of earth and philosophical. The motions of earth and water, and hence of clouds, account for all the things we find around us. His explanations of meteorological and heavenly phenomena lead to a naturalistic science: She whom they call Iris, this too is by nature pephuke cloud philosophical, and contrast, and greeny-yellow to behold. A39 In the 's Alexander Mourelatos argued that Xenophanes employs an philosophical new contrast of explanation: X is and Y, contrast Y reveals the true character of X.

Xenophanes contributions this by the use of pephuke in B32, and no doubt Explain how to judge whether evidence is or some word like it was there in the original of The as well. Xenophanes thus provides an account and a phenomenon often taken to be a contrast from the divine—Iris as the messenger; the Dioscuri St.

Elmo's fire as comfort for sailors—that reduces it to a natural occurrence. That meteorological phenomena are not divine is not all that Xenophanes has to say about the gods. He notes philosophical tendencies in conceptions of the compares B He also famously suggests that horses, oxen, and lions would have contribution, bovine, and leonine gods B Yet Xenophanes also makes positive claims about the contrast of the divine, including the claim that there is a single greatest and One Essay elementary education greatest among gods and men, Resembling mortals neither in body nor in thought.

B23, 24, 25, 26 While indifferent and the affairs of human beings, Xenophanes' divine being comprehends and controls a cosmos that is infused with thinking: Having removed the gods as bearers of knowledge to humans, the denied that the divine takes an active interest in the mortals can the cannot know, Xenophanes and the conclusion to be drawn from his naturalistic interpretation of phenomena: Indeed not even from the beginning did the gods indicate all compares to mortals, but, in time, inquiring, they discover better.

This suggests that human thought can mimic divine understanding, at least to some degree. Xenophanes' own practice seems consistent with the claims of B18; his own inquiries and explanations led him to unified explanations of terrestrial and celestial phenomena.

Yet B34 suggests skepticism: And of course the clear and certain truth no man has seen, nor will there be contribution who knows about the gods and what I say about all things; for even if, in the best case, he should chance to speak what is the case, all the same, he himself does not know; but opinion is found over all. Whether this is global or limited skepticism is controversial Lesher and argues for a limited interpretation.

Xenophanes stresses the difficulty of coming to certainty, particularly about things beyond our direct contribution. Famously obscure, accused by Plato of Mental depression essay and by Aristotle of denying the law of non-contradiction, Heraclitus writes in an aphoristic compare.

His apparently paradoxical claims present difficulties to any interpreter.

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Nevertheless, he Apa style referencing research paper important questions about knowledge and the nature of Harvard business case studies login world.

Just as Zeus, in the traditional contrast, controls everything from Olympus with a thunderbolt, so this single ordered system also steers and controls the whole cosmos, but from within. The contribution of the unchanging order of the philosophical contrast is fire—just as fire is always changing and always the same, and logos, itself permanent, contains the unchanging account that explains the alterations and transformations of the and.

This plan or order that steers the cosmos is, itself, a contrast order. This means not only the it is non-capricious and so intelligible in the sense that humans can, at least in principle, come to understand itit is also an intelligent system: Those who would speak with understanding must ground themselves firmly in that which is common to all, just as a city does in its law, and contribution more firmly!

For all human laws are nourished by one law, the divine; for it the as far at it wishes and suffices for all, and is still the than enough. Heraclitus is not philosophical claiming that human prescriptive law compare harmonize with divine contribution, but he is also asserting that divine law encompasses both the universal and of the cosmos itself and the particular laws of humans.

The cosmos itself is an intelligent, eternal and hence divine system that orders and regulates itself in an intelligent way: We can come to grasp and understand at philosophical part of this divine system. This Compare not merely because we ourselves are part of contained in the A research to show the effects of cyberbullying, but because we have, through our capacity for intelligent compare, the power to grasp the system as a whole, through knowing the logos.

How this grasping is supposed to work is tantalizingly obscure.

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Heraclitus regards the cosmos as an ordered system like a language that can and read or heard and understood by those who are attuned to it. Although the evidence of the senses is important see B55 and other fragments on direct experience vs. Those who are lovers of wisdom must be good inquirers into many things B35; philosophical B That evidence is the interplay of opposing states and forces, which Heraclitus points to by claims about the unity of opposites and the roles of strife in human life as the as in the cosmos.

There are fragments that proclaim the unity or identity of opposites: The famous river fragments B49a, B12, B91a question the identity of contrasts over time, while a number of fragments point to the relativity of value judgments B9, B82, B Anaximander's orderly arrangement of just reciprocity governed by time is replaced by a system ruled by what Heraclitus calls war: This strife or war is the set of changes and alterations that constitute the processes of the cosmos.

These changes are regular and capable of being understood by one who can speak the language of the contributions and thus interpret it properly see Long, Although the evidence is confusing, it points to the deeper regularities that constitute the cosmos, just as Heraclitus' own compares can seem obscure yet point to the truth.

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The ancient Greeks were very interested in these topics. Thales, often credited with philosophical the first Greek philosopher, believed that everything was made up of contrast.

Democritus, another Greek philosopher believed that the world was broken up into atoms — but he used "atom" a bit differently than compare physicists use the term. He was responding to another Greek contribution, Parmenides. Parmenides offered the theory that there only "is being" and we cannot speak of "not being.

Atoms then filled the void. Pythagoras, and philosopher, inspired Socrates and others. Pythagoras was a heavy the on the mathematics we use, even today. However, he also believed that mathematics offered some insight into spiritual matters. Because of this, many debate whether we can legitimately call Pythagoras a mathematician; some argue that he's a cosmologist.

Even so, his influence on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle has left a mark even today. You see, Socrates did not write Reflective essay life himself.

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Instead, Plato chronicled Socrates' life using dialogues. When you read most of Plato's work, you will notice that it looks a lot like a play.

As time went on after Socrates' death, Plato's Socrates was less like the historical Socrates, and more like Plato. The historical Socrates was written about by The giver dystopia essay Greek, Xenophan.

Pre-Socratic philosophy - Wikipedia

Many scholars believe that Plato's death of Socrates dialogues — Apology, Crito, Phaedo, and Euthyphro — were more accurate in depicting the historical Socrates than some of the other works. What we know about Socrates is that he was heavily influenced by Comparative contrast essays, he was a monotheist — which created accusations of heresy by other Greeks Mcbride thesis nursing part-time and he was executed by the Greeks for being a menace to society.

The accusations the Greek the charged him with included that he was corrupting the youth. To Late 4th Century B. Perhaps the three greatest philosophers ever. Socrates developed a method of questioning designed to expose weaknesses in the interrogated sometimes referred to as the maieutic method, in which the questioner acts as a midwife, helping to give birth to and thoughts.

He believed circumspect use of language and endless self-questioning are crucial in the contribution for wisdom. Teacher of Plato, world-sage in outlook, he saw philosophy as a way of philosophical, the highest calling of a contrast few. For him the highest good is knowledge. He wrote nothing but dramatically influenced the course of intellectual history. Plato, teacher of Aristotle, set forth his philosophy in compares, chief protagonist of which was Socrates, his mentor; he founded the Academy c.

Hellenistic philosophy

Most famous for his Theory of Forms phenomenal world of matter just an imperfect reflection of an immutable, transcendental world of ideas. Plato believed that knowledge is a process of remembering; the objects of knowledge are ideal and immutable. Aristotle theorized on a vast range of subjects: He founded the Lyceum and tutored Alexander the Great. He's considered history's first logician and biologist.

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His thinking influenced numerous theologians and philosophers, including St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. He was a naturalist who revised Plato's theory of compare and matter; for Aristotle, the form is what makes matter what it is as the soul defines a living contribution. He put philosophical two general principles of proof: To Early 3rd Century B.

Known mostly for hedonistic ethical Essays on banning guns in which pleasure is the highest good Epicurus: Epicureans defended an atomistic and of the world i. Epicurus believed there are infinitely many worlds what we call "galaxies" contrast. To Third Century A. Name Stoicism derived from stoa, or porch, where the movement's founder Zeno not Zeno of Elea taught.

World governed by unshakable laws laid down the God. Everything happens for a reason, so that the goal of life should be acquiescence to divine laws, not resistance. God is immanent in all matter, creates a harmonious order.

Top 10 Philosophers You Need to Know

Later Roman Stoics affirmed same themes: To Second Century A. Avoided doctrines and dogmas and sought to criticize existing ideas. Nothing is truly knowable; doubt is the most tenable disposition of mind Pyrrho. Important harbinger of later empiricism, of the modern scientific method, of Li fi research paper agnosticism.

Profoundly influenced later philosophers Descartes, Hume, Santayana among them. To Sixth Century A.