Some brief-ish info about the Greek philosophers

After reading up to chapter 18 of the HWP book, I sort of know what it's talking about.

Pre - Socratic philosophers

These men came from Miletus, Ionia; this was a very prominent region of Ancient Greece, not only because of it's good trade links, but also because it had contact with some of the ideas of the 'Near East'.

It was Thales who believed that everything was made from water, however he did not mention the Gods in his accounts.

Anaximander, another philosopher of the Milesian school disagreed with Thales' theory and said that everything comes from a single primal substance - but not water or any of the other substances that we know of.  According to HWP this substance 'encompasses all the worlds' and according to Anaximander, there were many worlds and that our's was just one of them.  One of his other theories was that the earth was formed by the condensing of cold and wet whilst the hot and dry formed the moon, sun and stars, the heat then shrank the seas and dried the earth.  This theory seems strange at first, however it was one that used natural explanations.

Pythagoras (who I only knew until recently to just be a guy who came up with a theory about triangles, and not philosophy) used maths to explain the world's 'order', he emphasised form and not matter - unlike Thales and Anaximander.  Another one of Pythagoras' ideas was his idea of society, which says that all men and women should be equal....interesting.

Parmenides apparentley invented the concept of logic, although what he supposedly invented was 'metaphysics', Bertrand Russell uses this example: That because I'm writing about George Washington and you're reading about him,we're both thinking about him at this very moment - therefore he must exist.  However, he doesn't exist anymore, so it's sort of untrue!!!  Good idea all the same though.

The last of the Pre - Socratic philosophers was Empedocles, he was a mix of philosopher, scientist and a prophet.  He thought that he could control the elements and was some sort of God, to prove this, he jumped into the crater of the volcano Mount Etna...  In the words of a poet (from the HWP book): 'Great Empedocles, that ardent soul, Leapt into Etna and was roasted whole.'

Socrates

Socrates did not provide much specific knowledge as such, he was more interested in how arguments and debates could resolve issues - as you will know, it has been proved over the years that this contept doesn't work!  According to Plato, Socrates' method of teaching usually consisted of talking to his pupils, they would give a certain view and then he would question their beliefs.

The ideas raised from his discussions exposed some of the most basic questions of philosophy and many of these are still discussed today.

All done blogging for today, however they're is one question I would like to raise as I look at the BBC's football website, 'Why hasn't Sam Allardyce used the 4-4-2 formation yet?'

TB 2011