How To Create Philosophy From Scratch

Text From: Discovering Philisophy by Thomas I White

[A] - Putting Yourself in the Right Frame of Mind

One good way to approach the concept of reality is to look at how the first people who wondered about it tried to explain it. To understand what these thinkers say, however, you should be in the same frame of mind they were in. So be patient and try to - imagine the following scenario - it's all for a good purpose.

[ You are on a tropical cruise ] and you're having a terrific time. The people are friendly and the weather is great. On the last night of the cruise, however, you have too good a time and drink too much champagne at the captain's farewell party. You decide to take a walk around the deck to clear your head. As you stagger along, the ship unexpectedly runs into heavy winds and rough seas.

The ship lurches - and you fly across the deck. As you try to get up, a huge wave crashes over the ship. The ship pitches again - and you are washed overboard. Unfortunately, no one realizes you're gone until the ship returns to port. Your disappearance is a mystery.

The good news is that when you were thrown overboard, you grabbe hold of a log in the water, and the winds and currents carried you to a small island nearby. You are safe. The bad news is that you don't have the faintest idea where you are. In fact, your head hit a stanchion before you went overboard, and you have a ferocious headache and complete amnesia. You do not know who you are, where you came from, or anything about your past. Worse than that, you remember almost nothing of what you learned through your years of schooling. You know you need food and water, but beyond that, your mind is blank. It works, but it's empty. Really empty!

  So here you are, a sentient, intelligent creature surrounded by a complex world. 

• Light turns into darkness as a disc in the sky that is too bright to look at moves across the sky and sinks into the waves. When this happens, 
• the sky sometimes changes into different colors. 
• Then countless smaller lights appear that move very slowly. 
• After what seems like a set period, the darkness goes away and the bright circle returns-but from the other side of the island. 
• The sky is usually blue, the breeze warm and comfortable. 
• But sometimes for no reason dark gray objects cover the blue, and drops of water, loud noises, hard winds, and lines of light come from the sky. 
• Then the blue returns. 
• Food grows on the trees, and even replaces itself. 
• You also see other living beings, but they are different from you. Some live in the water, others fly through the air. What does it all mean?

If you can imagine this situation, you can imagine your confusion and fear. You are in an exceedingly complicated place. And because you have a human mind, you also wonder about everything that is happening. Your fear is mixed with curiosity.

[B] - Explaining Your New World

Having come this far, now try to imagine how you would understand this world you know nothing about. 

• First, you would probably attempt to find some order in what you see. 
• You would distinguish between the things around you that move (animals, birds) and those that stay put (plants, rocks). 
• You would distinguish patterns-light (day) followed by dark (night). 
• You would also see that much about what happens is unpredictable-the weather, for instance. 
• Eventually you would develop some sense of what your world consists of.

But describing things would not be enough for you. You would want to understand what goes on, and why. How would you do that? How would you explain, for example, the fruit on the trees, the passing storms in the sky, and the coming and going of the bright disk? Think about that for a minute.

 - - An Anthropomorphic Explanation  - - 

An anthropomorphic account of something explains it in human terms. For example, an anthropomorphic interpretation of reality explains things in terms of who is responsible for them, not simply what happened. Such an account regularly appeals to the notion of divine beings.

Chances are your first explanation would be neither philosophical nor scientific. The human animal is by nature very nervous, and you would probably feel fear and awe at the great powers you witness in action around you. 

Feeling pressed to calm yourself and to make some sense of what you see; 

• You would start interpreting your world in the only terms you know-your own human ones. 
• You would probably believe that other living beings cause what happens. 
• You would personify things, imagining that everything you see is alive like you, with a will and a personality of its own. 
• You would come to think that the winds blow, the clouds move, and the plants grow because they want to. 
• You might even conclude that these natural occurrences express the will of one or more superior, incomprehensible being whose actions may be benign, or hostile, or completely arbitrary and indifferent.

Whichever explanation you come up with, your account of reality could be called anthropomorphic - that is, your account would be given in human form. ("Anthropomorphic" comes from two Greek words: anthropos, "human," and morphe, "form.") 

Such an interpretation of reality explains things in terms of who is responsible for them, not simply what happened. And to the extent that your explanations consist of stories about divine beings, this kind of thinking is also called mythic. (Mythos is the Greek word for "story.") 

The anthropomorphic, mythic mode of explaining reality obviously leads more in the direction of religion than science, and 

this was essentially the direction taken by the earliest human societies.

Notice what all this means for your understanding reality on your island. I come to you and say, "Tell me, what exists, what is real?" 

• Your answer would not be that of 20th century Westerners - "what is real is what I perceive with my senses." 
• It would probably be more like, "First, there is what I can see-the trees, the water, the animals, and the sky. Then there is what I cannot see-the powers that bring the storms and make the light come and go." 

Your conception of reality would include material and nonmaterial things, you may very well project human characteristics onto either, and you might even imagine some of them as the equivalent of gods.

 - -  A Natural Explanation  - - 

You'd probably start with an anthropomorphic, mythic account of reality. But eventually some questions occur to you. 

• You attempt to test the wind, the sea, and the trees on your island, 
• You try some "experiments" to see if particular actions anger or please the gods that rule them. 
• Eventually, you conclude that what you do doesn't affect things, that you cannot communicate with them, or at least that they do not respond. 

Perhaps you decide these gods do not exist. Now your thinking might go in a different direction. 

• You might consider the possibility that you and the events around you are all part of the same system of natural, impersonal forces. 
• You hypothesize that everything that happens has a cause, and that these causes somehow lie within the events themselves. 
• Exactly how isn't immediately apparent, but, you think, if you looked long and hard enough, you could figure it out. 
• You assume that the nature of the world around you can be grasped by your mind. 
• In essence, you opt to explain your world in terms of some concept of nature. 

When you take this path, you are following the steps of the first philosophers.

[C] - Before Philosophy, Mythic Explanations

The earliest human beings found themselves barraged by experiences they did not know the meaning of, much as you were on the island. Some of what happened was wonderful; some was terrifying. Along with their fear and confusion, however, these people also had a basic impulse to try to make sense of the world around them. We are curious creatures, and we naturally want to understand what is happening around us. That's why we're called Homo sapiens-"thinking man."

The first explanations we came up with about the world were anthropomorphic and mythic, just like yours on the island. 

For about 2000 years before the Greeks tried their hands at explaining the world, a number of major cultures in Egypt and Mesopotamia had invented their own elaborate, but decidedly unphilosophical, explanations of reality. 

These ancient cultures wove their myths into highly organized religions. Every event was the product of actions taken by a variety of gods and goddesses.

The ancient Egyptians personified and deified the world of nature itself. 

• The sun is one expression of Ra, king of the gods; 
• The air is the god Shu; 
• The sky is the goddess Nut. 
• The Nile is not a river that ebbs and flows according to natural forces, but a being in its own right that causes its own actions. 
• Every year about the time the river rose to flood crest, the pharaoh, who was also a god, offered it gifts of thanks.

We find a similar phenomenon in Mesopotamia. 

• The sky is Anu, the chief god, and 
• The storm is Enlil, another divinity. 

Items we think of as ordinary and lifeless are even thought to have personalities and wills of their own. 

• Salt, for example, although not a god, is personified as an agent that might help a victim of witchcraft. 

There was even a proper way to ask its help:

O Salt, crested in a clean place,

For food of gods did Enlil [father of the  

Sumerian gods) destine thee. 

Without thee no meal is set out in Ekur, 
Without thee god, king, lord, and prince do not smell incense.

I am so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, 

Held captive by enchantment, 

Held in fever by bewitchment. 

O Salt, break my enchantment! Loose my spell!

Take from me the bewitchment.—And as My Creator 

I shall extol thee.

  - - "Reality" in Myth  - - 

The first human attempts to explain the world see reality as having both tangible and intangible forms. 

• trees, rivers, houses, and palaces exist. 
• but so do divinities. 

In fact, the invisible reality of immaterial gods and goddesses is superior to the visible reality of the material world. 

• crops grow in the field and are harvested. 
• men and women are born, and they die. 
• but the gods are immortal.

The deities are also in charge. Humans are inferior creatures subject to their will-or whim. 

Not even the world of nature moves by its own power. Everything is under the sway of the gods. The Mesopotamian god of the earth, Enki, controls whether crops grow, pastures flourish, and orchards bear fruit. The world of nature is simply an expression of the desires of gods and goddesses.

  - -  Modern Mythic, or Anthropomorphic, Explanations  - - 

Mythic explanations of the world characterize all ancient, prephilosophical civilizations. But that does not mean that myth disappears with the advent of philosophy. Indeed, 

• mythic and anthropomorphic accounts of reality are a consistent part of human history, persisting to the present day. 

Most contemporary religions, like those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, offer essentially anthropomorphic and mythic explanations of reality. In addition to the physical world of our senses, religions tell of a spiritual dimension which is unseen and superior to anything material. This is true of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. 

It is important to realize that when we label a certain kind of thinking as "mythic," we are not saying that it is "false" or "imaginary." 

• Mythic thinking is essentially "story-like," so it may express "truth" in a different way than science or philosophy-more figuratively than literally.

Once again, notice that this thinking presupposes that reality is both material and nonmaterial, and that the latter is in every important way superior to the former. So if you believe that something cannot exist if it can't be examined with our senses, think again. To billions of people on this planet, the things we cannot see are more real than the things we can see.

[D] - Reality Versus Appearance

Although we will probe the anthropomorphic, mythic understanding of reality no further, you should by now see that mythic, or religious, interpretations of existence underscore clearly and dramatically a very important point about the nature of reality, that is, the distinction between reality and appearance.

In essence, a mythic, or religious, explanation explicitly holds that the world is not at all what it seems to be. Things appear one way, but in reality they are something else entirely. When we look around, it appears that all that exists are the physical, material objects we can sense. Myth tells us that in reality other unseen beings and forces not only exist but also exert powers far greater than anything we can experience with our senses-or, perhaps, even imagine. To us it appears that the natural world operates according to inherent and predictable cycles. Mythic, or anthropomorphic, thinking tells us that in reality these events are controlled by invisible powers.

The question of whether things are as they seem to be lies at the heart of every discussion about the nature of reality. We may start with the world we observe with our senses. But in one way or another, accounts of the nature of existence usually claim that behind the appearance is a different reality. Myth and religion make this claim. And so do philosophy and science-only in a different way.

Discovering philosophy / Thomas I. White. --Brief ed.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0135080037/ 

[3] - THE NATURE OF REALITY AND THE MILESIANS

It's a far cry from the Egyptian belief that the sun is a god to the modern scientist's view that it is a natural body composed of hot gases. What made the transition from myth to science possible? The ancient Greeks.

It will remain one of the great mysteries of human history why mythic thinking did not dominate Greece the way it did the rest of the ancient world. To be sure, religion, with its rites, its temples, and its pantheon of deities played an important role in Greek culture. The Greeks also had more than their share of superstitious people who were frightened when their beliefs were challenged. (Remember, one of the charges that led to Socrates' execution was impiety.) But something about ancient Greek culture also fostered intellectual inquiry, providing fertile soil for a totally new approach to understanding reality-what we have come to call "philosophy."

The main characteristic of early philosophy is that it is not anthropomorphic and mythic. For the first time in human civilization, people do not explain reality in human or superhuman terms. The first philosophers refused to project human characteristics onto the world around them. Instead, they tried to meet the world on its own terms. As a result, they took events as part of a natural, not a supernatural, system. Nature replaced the gods as the most important force in reality.

This is not to say that the first philosophers were atheists. Most of them worshipped the gods of their city in particular and the gods of their culture in general. But when they tried to understand what they saw in the real world around them, they were essentially nontheistic. They may have believed in their gods privately, but they did not use them to explain reality.

From our point of view in the twentieth century, this may not seem very important. We take a scientific outlook for granted, and we have devised ways to harmonize it with religion. But giving up supernatural for natural explanations of reality was then an intellectual revolution of the first order. As look at the first steps they took toward this revolution, do not expect elaborate philosophical explanations. We start with some fairly simplistic accounts of reality. More important than the details of these ideas and whether or not they are correct is the astonishing fact that rational, natural explanations of existence were offered at all.

Philosophy begins in ancient Greece, but not in the streets of Athens. The intellectual revolution starts in a place called Miletus, a Greek colony in a land then called Ionia (now modern-day Turkey). A busy seaport, Miletus conducted trade with Egypt and Persia as well as Greece, and it was perhaps the richest and most highly civilized Greek city of its time. More than a century before Socrates starts questioning his fellow Athenians about virtue, Miletus gives us three philosophers who try to understand the nature of reality-Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. These three thinkers offer competing theories, but each teaches us something important about how the mind copes with the problem of understanding existence.

A) Thales

Not one of the three Milesians was a professional philosopher. Thales seems to have been a man of incredibly varied talents, the sort we today call a "Renaissance person." Thales, who lived around 600 B.C., is said to have been an engineer, a statesman, and an astronomer, as well as a deep thinker. He devised ways of determining the height of the Egyptian pyramids by measuring their shadows, and he wrote a treatise telling sailors how to navigate by the stars.

Two famous stories are told about Thales. In one, Thales falls into a well when he stares so intently at the stars that he forgets to look where he is going-the first absent-minded philosopher. The other is a favorite among philosophy professors whose friends and relatives ask, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" Confronted with the same taunt, Thales came up with a great response. His knowledge of plants and climate enabled him to predict a bumper crop of olives, and in the off-season he cornered the market in olive presses. When the huge harvest came in, everyone interested in making olive oil had to deal with Thales, and he made a large profit. He did this, he said, to show that philosophers could easily be rich if they felt like it, but that was not what they were interested in.

- Thales' Account of Reality

Thales is the first thinker we know of to try to explain reality in terms of natural phenomena rather than as a manifestation of the gods. To understand Thales, put yourself back onto the island where you were marooned. Still a victim of amnesia, you do not know anything but what you have figured out there. Now you are trying to understand the nature of reality without believing that everything is alive-animism-or that gods cause everything that happens. You have observed that everything real can be put into one of four basic categories: earth, air, fire, and water. (This is what the Greeks thought before philosophy came along.)

But you, like Thales, simply have a hunch that something more basic than four elements must exist. You are very much aware of the difference between appearance and reality. When you first started studying your island, you thought that the water in the oceans, the steam rising from the hot springs, and the ice and snow on the mountains were all different substances. But you learned that they only appear to be different; in reality, they are all the same element, water. So, you reason, although it appears that there are four different elements, there is really only one.

Think about a rational, philosophical conclusion to this question. If you had to pick the most basic element from earth, air, fire, and water, which would you go for?

- Water, or "the Moist"

Thales' choice was water, or, more accurately, what he calls "the moist." After studying reality, Thales came to the conclusion that "the first principle and basic nature of all things is water."

This answer makes some sense. Nearly everything contains moisture in some way. If you hold a piece of glass over a flame and see condensation form, even fire looks as if it has water in it (even if it doesn't). Water can be liquid, solid, or gas, and if we take the time and trouble to set up the right conditions, we can watch it change form. Water falls from the air as rain and then sinks into the earth. So there is something quite astute about Thales' suggestion that earth, air, fire, and water are simply different manifestations of the same element.

This account also has the virtue of explaining reality by reference to some material substance. After all, the physical world is the reality most obvious to our senses. It seems unquestionably present and permanent. Explaining reality in terms of one of the basic material elements, then, seems to make sense.

- The Dynamic Character of Existence: Change

Thales' answer to the question "What is reality?" at first seems to amount to saying, "Reality is material, and apparently different substances are all ultimately reducible to moisture." The claim that water is the basic element of everything also suggests that different things are similar. This would give reality an underlying unity and stability. But Thales and the other Milesians also looked at the world around them with clear eyes. Change, rather than stability, impressed them as the most basic fact of life. Thus, they also had to explain the dynamic character of existence.

Thales realized that no inert material substance could account for change. So his explanation of reality includes-more than just "the moist." Thus, he says, "The magnetic stone has soul because it sets the iron in motion," and "All things are full of gods."

Exactly what Thales means by "soul" and "full of gods" is not clear (Unfortunately, only fragments of the original work of the early philosophers have survived, and we do not have full explanations of these remarks.) He does seem to say that reality cannot be explained in terms of substance alone We must also account for the power that gives life to objects and propels them into motion.

Because Thales represents very early philosophy, only one step away from myth, we might expect that the power he has in mind may indeed be supernatural. But Thales may also be searching for a way to express the insight that a natural power somehow inheres in material objects. We can interpret his belief that a magnetic stone has "soul" and that everything is "full of gods" as saying that natural objects are self-contained and have an inner power. Matter somehow possesses the capacity to move, to change, and to grow in particular ways.

So while we may not know exactly what Thales means, he clearly suggests that accounts of reality must include some kind of force as well as a substance. Despite his reference to gods, he puts the gods and the souls that inhere in things-perhaps simply his symbols for the power of nature-inside the things themselves. That is, he does not see the "gods" as independent, omnipotent beings who pull the strings and make the rest of us jump on command.

- The Inquiry into Reality: Thales' Contribution

Thales asked the same basic questions that we must ask as we search for the nature of reality. It should help us, then, to review the nature and the importance of his insights.

1. Thales first asks, Are the mythic and religious explanations of reality correct?

Our first step in any inquiry should be to ask whether the common-sense explanation we usually take for granted is really correct. In Thales' time, most people accepted mythic accounts, so Thales had to ask, "Is the world the direct expression of powerful superior beings?"

Thales, of course, answers that the mythic accounts are incorrect. His idea that a magnetic stone has "soul" or that all things contain "gods" may incorporate some supernatural elements into his understanding of reality. But overall, he rejects myth. Instead, he approaches reality as something with its own integrity, as basically a natural and not a supernatural system. He sees what he can make of it strictly in terms of physical observation, intellectul deduction, and philosophical speculation. In essence, he claims that we can give an account of reality that understands material substance on its own terms because the natural world has a logic of its own and operates under its Own power.

In your own thinking about the nature of reality, then, your first step is to decide what basic presuppositions and modes of thinking are acceptable. (Is myth allowable? Must we be materialists?) What is the relationship between philosophical and religious accounts of reality?

2. Once Thales rejects myth, he asks a second basic question, Is the nature of reality what it appears to our senses to be?

Like the first question, this one also challenges "common-sense" truths- here, beliefs too obvious even to doubt. We all take for granted that our senses give us an accurate picture of reality. But by now you know that it is very important for us to check out precisely those things we take for granted.

In this case, Thales answers that our senses mislead us when they suggest that there are many different substances. Conventional Greek wisdom holds that these are reducible to four elements. In reality, argues Thales, there is only one element-the moist, or water.

It's easy to find examples where our senses tell us something wrong about reality. Optical illusions, for example, are common. If you put a stick into a lake, your eyes tell you that the stick bends. Mirages suggest that something exists in a place that is actually empty. Look at the chair, or the bed, or the floor you're sitting on. It certainly looks and feels as if it's a solid object. But if you accept the atomic theory of matter, you believe that although that chair feels solid, it is really made up of millions of tiny particles, much too small to be seen, with space between them. In fact, the chair is not solid at all.

As you can see by now, this question brings Thales up against the issue of appearance versus reality. Although existing objects appear to be composed of various different elements, in reality, he concludes, the world is very different from what our senses suggest it to be. In your own investigations, then, you must determine how to draw the line between reality and appearance. You must also decide how much to trust each of the different sources of information at your disposal-your senses, your intellect, and your intuition.

3. Once Thales concludes that reality is not what it appears to be, he still faces a third question: How do we describe reality?

We can infer from what Thales says that a complete explanation of the nature of reality has to account both for the "stuff" of which everything is made and for the dynamic quality of existence, that which causes it constantly to change. It has to deal with forces, or power, as well as substance. Thus, Thales proposes water as the basic element, but he also suggests that matter contains some kind of inner power which accounts for its ability to move or cause movement.

The lesson here is that you simply have to do the best you can in coming up with a theory that covers the largest numbers of bases. You may not be able to prove your case, but you have to commit yourself to a position Your explanation, however, should not miss anything obvious. For instance if Thales had told us only that reality is "water" and stopped there, without attempting to account for change, or any other force in nature, his theory would have a gaping hole in it. Coming up with the kind of thinking that covers all known aspects of a problem can become highly speculative, and you may have to use your imagination. But the important thing is to offer as complete an explanation as you can.

- Is Thales Right?

Twentieth-century scientists are so confident of their sophisticated picture of reality that we probably all assume that any theory from the sixth century B.C. must be wrong, or at least too simple. But we owe it to Thales, as the first pioneer in this area, to see how close he came.

First, Thales is right that we can explain reality without reference to supernatural forces. Even if there is a God or some other spiritual entity or entities, the natural world makes sense on its own terms.

Second, Thales correctly saw that reality is not what it appears to be. This fundamental insight has been proven over and over as philosophy and science have developed.

Third, to the best of our knowledge Thales was wrong to say that water is the basic element. As far as we know, ordinary matter does not have a "soul" or "gods" within it either. We should give him credit, however, for recognizing both the stable and the changing character of existence and for recognizing that these states have material causes. Twentieth-century physics may describe reality in terms of a different substance and different forces, but even without the benefit of knowledge accumulated over 2600 years, Thales was at least on the right track. Subatomic particles may be a lot smaller than drops of water, but both are material substances, not supernatural entities.

All in all, then, this is a commendable early try at a philosophical account of the nature of reality.

B) Anaximander

Anaximander is the second philosopher from Miletus. He was about fifteen years younger than Thales, and it is fairly certain that they knew each other-They were similar kinds of men-both were engineers, statesmen, and travelers, and both were abundantly curious about natural science, astronomy, and geometry. Anaximander was the first Greek to make a map of the known world and a sundial for telling the seasons.

With Anaximander we see Greek thinking moving farther away from mythic terms and closer to what we now call philosophy and science. Not only did Anaximander speculate about the nature of reality, he also tried to draw his conclusions on the basis of observation. For example, he uses fossils he has discovered to support his theory of the earth's history. And he uses a theory of evolution, not a theory of divine creation, to explain the origin of humanity. As one ancient writer reports,

"[Anaximander] sags, too, that in earliest times men were generated from various kinds of animals. For whereas the other animals can quickly get food for themselves, the human infant requires careful feeding for a long while after birth; so that if he had originated suddenly he could not have preserved his own existence."

This is a logical conclusion drawn from astute observations.

- Anaximander's Account of Reality

Anaximander disputes Thales' explanation of the nature of reality. He agrees that some single material element underlies all of reality. Thus, he shares Thales' rejection of mythic explanations and his assertion that reality is material. But he rejects the idea that the fundamental substance is water. He even believes that the fundamental substance has no specifically identifiable qualities. As the sole fragment of Anaximander's writings explains,

"The Unlimited is the first-principle of things that are. It is that from which the coming-to-be \of things and qualities] takes place, and it is that into which they return when they perish."

Anaximander's word for the basic substance out of which everything is made can be translated as "the Unlimited," "the Unbounded," or "the Indefinite." This "unlimited" substance has no specific properties of its own, and indeed it cannot be bounded by definite characteristics because it must be able to take on all qualities. To its ability to take on any quality, Anaximander adds only that the Unlimited is eternal and indestructible.

Don't think, however, that this is some kind of magical, spiritual substance. Like Thales, Anaximander offers a natural, not a supernatural, explanation of reality. The Unlimited is certainly a special kind of material substance, but it is material.

- Anaximander and the Unlimited

Thales and Anaximander may agree that appearance and reality differ, and that everything real can be reduced" to a single material substance. But that's where they part company. There are major differences in the basic substances they suggest and in how they arrive at their conclusions. We can experience water with our senses, and Thales' argument makes a certain kind of sense because we can find moisture in virtually everything. But it is impossible to know what a lump of Unlimited is like.

With his concept of the Unlimited, Anaximander offers a very different understanding of the world of our senses than Thales does. For Anaximander, the great variety of things that we experience with our senses, the four basic elements of earth, air, fire, and water-all of that is simply appearance. All these various substances are really different amounts of the Unlimited that have taken on the size, shape, color, touch, taste, and smell of a particular thing. True reality, therefore, is something we can never encounter with our senses. Once we experience something, it is no longer "unlimited" but "limited" or "defined" by size, shape, color, and so on. So we can only imagine, as Anaximander does, the Unlimited as some substance without properties.

This is a dramatically different way of looking at the nature of reality from what we found in Thales' work. Anaximander may concur with his predecessor that there is one fundamental substance. But this substance cannot be experienced directly. The most elementary "stuff" of existence is real, but forever beyond the reach of our senses. And that makes the Unlimited very different from water.*

*Note that Anaximander's explanation of reality is much more like our own century's explanation of reality than Thales' explanation. We believe that atomic and subatomic particles are the "real" constituents of material things, but we can never directly observe these particles with our ordinary senses.

- Anaximander and the Intellect

Unlike Thales, Anaximander can arrive at his idea of the Unlimited exclusively by thinking. Starting with Thales' proposition that "the moist" is the universal element, Anaximander faces the question of how water, which is already defined by specific properties, can take on all other characteristics, particularly those of its opposite. How can dryness, for example, be made up of moisture? For that matter, how can any particular substance be the most basic element? No matter what we pick, we always have its opposite to explain. Anaximander solves this simply by positing something logically prior to "a substance with properties"-that is, "a substance without properties," the Unlimited. This conclusion cannot be observed in real life. It is the result of a purely intellectual process.

By working in this manner, Anaximander elevates the mind far above the senses. Our senses tell us that reality consists of a variety of specific substances. Even Thales' idea that moisture is the first principle of reality can in a general way be made to fit with our sense experience. But to reject all this for an explanation like "the Unlimited" is to place more trust in the mind's eye than the body's. This may surprise you when you recall that Anaximander used evidence offered by the physical world to draw his conclusion that human beings are the products of evolution. But Anaximander obviously feels that Thales' material explanation of reality is not sufficient for the job.

Relying on thought processes-the activities of the mind-is characteristic of philosophy. It is precisely this trust in the intellect that allows Greek thought to break free from mythic and religious explanations. Some later philosophers reject the senses as inferior instruments for learning about reality and they rely totally on the mind. Anaximander doesn't go that far. But his contribution here, the assertion of the primacy of reason, even in philosophy's earliest days, cannot be underestimated.

- The Regulation of Change

In rejecting Thales' ideas, Anaximander automatically makes understanding the nature of reality more complicated. For one thing, Anaximander's basic substance is much more sophisticated than Thales'. For another, Anaximander's vision of the forces that cause matter to change is more complicated than Thales' idea that matter contains "soul" or "gods." As Anaximander expresses it:

"The Unlimited is the first-principle of things that are. It is that from which the coming-to-be [of things and qualities] takes place, and it is that into which they return when they perish, by moral necessity, giving satisfaction to one another and making reparation for their injustice, according to the order of time."

This must seem like a misprint when you first read this passage. "Moral necessity"? "Giving satisfaction" and "making reparation" for "injustice"? This is a strange way to describe the process of physical change. We can never be sure what Anaximander means here because virtually everything he wrote is lost, but he seems to suggest that the changes that characterize the world are governed by some kind of abiding natural order. In the absence of his whole theory, we have to leave "moral necessity" and "injustice" hanging somewhat loose. We cannot say exactly what they mean.

We can say that Anaximander seems to presume some fundamental order to reality, some force that ensures a rhythm, or balance, between contrary qualities. Anaximander was powerfully impressed by the fact that reality is divided into pairs of opposites: hot/cold, wet/dry, rough/smooth, light/dark. He describes each extreme as a kind of "injustice" that is counterbalanced over time by the appearance of its opposite. We can see this in the daily cycle of day and night, with the "injustice" of light yielding by "moral necessity" to darkness, which again yields to light, and so on. Similarly, the hot,

dry summer "makes reparation for" and balances off the cold, wet winter.

This process seems to reside in nature itself. Clearly, Anaximander makes no reference to the gods. This power, or law, is itself invisible, although its effects are tangible. It is also quite real.

- Describing Reality Figuratively

Anaximander's references here to "justice," "giving satisfaction," and "making reparation" may puzzle you. Philosophers do not usually use legal and moral notions to describe the workings of nature, and we should look at this for a moment.

Remember that Anaximander lived in a time before there was much, if any, philosophical discourse. Thus, he didn't have at his fingertips anyone else's basic concepts or a ready-made vocabulary to cover new ideas. This situation is much like yours when you were washed ashore, remembering nothing of your former life, on an unknown island. What concepts and language did you have to describe this totally new experience?

Or imagine that in your present everyday life you suddenly have a totally new and different experience. You're out jogging, casually mulling over the meaning of life. All at once you have a brilliant insight about the order and purpose of the universe. In a flash you understand the deepest secrets of the nature of reality in a way that has eluded every other human being. How would you describe something unique like this? How would you explain it to other people?

The answer is, of course, that you would not have the right language to express it. That leaves you only two choices: either you invent new concepts with new names, or you describe it by saying it is "something like" this or "something like" that. Actually, these two choices amount to essentially the same thing, because in order to define any new terms, we have to refer to ones we are already familiar with. In other words, the only way to explain a totally new insight is by way of something we already know.

This is surely what happened to Anaximander. He arrived at a new understanding of a harmony that underlies the opposites we observe everywhere. He saw that the unpredictability and chaos so characteristic of nature were part of a larger process that led to harmony. In some way, what was going on in the apparent chaos was that things were being set right. Anaximander had no concept at his disposal to capture what he thought, but he could at least approximate that notion by borrowing the legal concepts of justice and reparation. A stranger to our society who came upon a marshal with a court order seizing someone's property or upon a police officer arresting a mugger might easily mistake these actions for theft or cruelty. But what is actually happening is that things are somehow being made right. The property will be sold so that creditors can be paid. Someone who attacks other people is deprived of his freedom. Anaximander borrows these ideas from the law and uses them to describe reality.

In so doing, Anaximander switches from speaking literally to figuratively, that is, saying in this case that the regulative principle of nature is like justice. Describing things figuratively is less precise than speaking literally. But if it's the best you can do, and if the simile, metaphor, or analogy you use is accurate, it's an acceptable way of conveying philosophical insights.

The ultimate trick, of course, is to tease out the full meaning inherent in a good figurative image. Anaximander's image suggests a basic order and purpose in the way the natural world operates. Yet the scientific "law" that "every action produces an equal and opposite reaction" is just a more precise way to express Anaximander's insight. Seen this way, the Greek philosopher's reference to "moral necessity," "injustice," and "satisfaction and reparation" make sense.

There is another lesson in this, too: If you run across a philosophical idea that strikes you as strange at first, don't dismiss it before you think about it for a while. Instead of thinking that it's too strange to understand, ask if it makes more sense when interpreted figuratively. If you try out some interpretations, you'll probably find that you understand the idea much better.

- Anaximander and Thales

Like Thales, then, Anaximander believes that any full explanation of the nature of reality must account for both stability and change. The Unlimited is the substance that unifies reality, that makes it ultimately all one. And some sort of natural law is the force that governs the changes that we observe in real things. 

Anaximander marks a significant advance over his philosophical predecessor, however, by proposing a more abstract theory to explain the basic substance and the forces that shape reality. Unlike Thales, Anaximander envisions a basic element that we ultimately cannot experience with our senses. His natural law of moral necessity, justice, and balance is also an idea we only infer. We can see the results of its workings, but natural law itself is beyond our experience. So on both fronts Anaximander gives us a more abstract concept of what is "really" real.

- The Inquiry into Reality: Anaximander's Contribution

Thales' questions about the nature of reality gave us some important guidelines to follow in our own search to understand reality. You saw that any attempt to distinguish reality from appearance must begin by questioning all your basic beliefs. An adequate theory of the nature of reality must also account for both the stable and the dynamic character of existence.

Does Anaximander add any important questions? And if so, what im-portant insights can we gain?

1. Anaximander's primary addition to this inquiry is probably the question, Must we be able to experience reality's basic nature directly with our senses? With the concept of "the Unlimited" as the basic element, Anaximander answers this question with a "no." This puts the investigation on a more abstract level than that of Thales' account, and it makes the intellect a much more important tool than our senses. It does not change the fact that reality is essentially material; but it does mean that the nature of that reality must be uncovered with our intellect, not with our senses.

What does this tell us for our own inquiry? Clearly, the emphasis on thinking diminishes the importance of everyday, concrete reality as a source of ultimate truth. To explore this issue as fully as necessary, then, we apparently have to acknowledge that the data our senses present us with do not accurately represent the nature of reality.

This is an extremely hard admission to make, of course. It's difficult to believe deep down that what we experience with our senses is not really the case. After all, physical reality is the most immediate part of our experience, the dimension we live in. To say that it is all merely appearance, and that appearance is illusion, asks us to disbelieve everything our senses tell us is self-evident.

Yet Anaximander says that this is precisely what we have to do. Thales maintains that reality is not exactly what it appears to be to our senses, but the essence of that reality can still be captured by the senses. According to Anaximander, we must give up even that. We thus face the irony that an accurate account of the world we experience with our senses does not derive from any perception of that world.

2. Anaximander's approach raises another important point, because his figurative account raises another basic question, Must our description of reality be literal? Anyone who describes the cycles of nature in terms of injustice and reparation surely does not feel tied to a strictly objective manner of expression. Anaximander's figurative image does point up two things to keep in mind, however.

First, in order to "push the philosophical envelope," as it were, we have to be creative. We have to look for ideas wherever we can get them- even if they might not at first make sense to other people. When Anaximander described natural cycles in terms of morality and the law, it must have sounded peculiar to his contemporaries. (It even sounds strange now when you first read it.) But when you think about it, it makes sense. So when you have trouble describing something, think creatively; think expansively, not narrowly. Look for likely and unlikely comparisons. They just might work.

Second, the fact that Anaximander's analogy between justice and the balance and harmony of nature works as well as it does tells us that we should use a very broad understanding of truth. Strictly speaking, Anaximander's analogy is false. But in a loose, literary way, it does convey a truth, a truth that is easier to express figuratively than literally. So especially when welre working the frontier of thought, we should not automatically assume that stories, or figurative language, or any other kino of imaginative thought, is necessarily false. It may be extremely useful in describing the unknown.

- Is Anaximander Right?

Do any of Anaximander's ideas hit the target? Anaximander, like Thales, has abandoned myth as an explanation of reality. He, too, appreciates the difference between reality and appearance. But has he added anything to the form or content of philosophical thought?

First, Anaximander's concept of the Unlimited has at least something in common with contemporary scientific explanations of reality. We do not believe in an eternal, amorphous mass of substance being converted into books, chalk, laboratory equipment, footballs, and cheerleaders, of course. But we do see a unity to all matter in that its structure is all reducible to subatomic particles. And we can say that Anaximander's insight-that in order to account for every conceivable property in existence, a basic element would have virtually no characteristics of its own-is nothing short of brilliant.

Second, we can also agree with Anaximander that we do not perceive the ultimate nature of reality with our senses, but with our minds. Furthermore, as much as we may learn about physical reality in the future, we can be reasonably certain that its ultimate explanation will remain abstract, something that we can grasp only intellectually.

Third, allowing for the approximate accuracy of analogy, we can probably say that the world of nature is indeed governed by underlying cycles that in some significant ways do resemble the principles of justice, harmony, and balance.

Once again, as with Thales, we find a thinker at the dawn of philosophy giving us some very sophisticated and thought-provoking ideas about the nature of reality.

C) Anaximenes

The work of Anaximenes, the last of our Milesian trio, shows that philosophy does not necessarily progress in a constant fashion. While Anaximenes takes one step forward beyond Anaximander, he also takes another step back to thinking like Thales. Philosophical theories, then, are just like the people who make them up, combinations of brilliant insights and human error.

- Anaximenes' Basic Substance: Air

About Anaximenes we know only that he lived in Miletus and probably knew Anaximander. Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes is concerned with the nature of reality, which he sees more as Thales does. Rejecting Anaximander's idea of a basic matter of indefinite qualities, however, Anaximenes returns to the original four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, and chooses air as the basic substance. By giving up Anaximander's insight that a basic substance must have few or no properties in order to account for the great variety of opposing qualities and substances we find around us, Anaximenes returns to the idea that everything can ultimately be reduced to a known material element.

Air is not an implausible suggestion. Sometimes air feels hot; other times cold. After looking at blue skies, multicolored sunsets, and the black of the night sky, we might conclude that air has the capacity to change color. Some days you can barely feel air, but when a hot, dry wind blows in the desert, air is as tangible as a two by four. Air does seem to take on a variety of qualities. So air is a reasonable choice as a basic element. It's just that in comparison to Anaximander's idea of the Unlimited, it is a less sophisticated concept.

- Air and Breath

No one knows why Anaximenes went in this direction, but we have to believe that he thought that it led to a better explanation of the nature of reality. His reasoning, therefore, at least deserves a look. The best clue to his thinking comes from this fragment of his writing: "As our souls, being air, hold us together, so breath and air embrace the entire universe."

Here Anaximenes makes an interesting connection between air, breath, and life. Think about it this way. What is the difference between someone alive and dead? Live people breathe. We take in and give out air. When air stops being drawn into the body, it dies and decays. To use Anaximenes' phrase, the body stops being "held together" by the soul. After seeing that air, in the form of breath, is so characteristic of living things, Anaximenes might very well think that air has an intrinsic connection with the very essence of life.

If Anaximenes thinks that breath somehow contains the force of life itself, then air is a natural for reality's basic element. It makes a certain sense, then, to imagine that in one of its manifestations, air takes the form of those material objects that are alive. In other manifestations, objects exist but are inanimate. And if we consider reality in general, it is plausible for Anaximenes to suggest, as he does in his fragment, that air is as much at the core of all reality as a soul is to an individual body. Air has the power that makes it possible for things to exist and to live.

This intriguing notion shows Anaximenes addressing an aspect of reality that his two predecessors had more or less ignored. After all, one of the most basic observations we can make about reality is that some of it is alive and some of it is not. Anaximenes' theory about air reminds us that as we ponder the nature of reality, we should give some thought to the basis of this difference.

Anaximenes may indeed have taken a step backwards in claiming that air is the basic element underlying reality. But it's a step backwards with an interesting twist.

- Progress: Condensation and Rarefaction

It is one thing to say that all of reality is at base water, the Unlimited, or air. But we also need some theory of how a single basic substance can account for very different things-say, rocks and clouds. Clearly this process has to be explained, and this is where Anaximenes makes his mark on the history of philosophy.

Anaximenes' most important accomplishment as a thinker is to offer a solution to this problem based on the concept of density. His reasoning goes like this. Everything is made of air. But how densely compacted the air is determines exactly what kind of thing it is. The more air we have in a given amount of space, the more visible and harder the object is. The less air per cubic inch, the lighter and more transparent the object will be.

For example, air in its natural state cannot be seen or felt. But as it becomes more dense, it first becomes wind, which can be felt, but not seen. Next it is cloud, which is visible and its moisture palpable but lighter than the ground. More dense still, air becomes water, which is heavier than air, but liquid; then it becomes earth, which is more solid than liquid; and finally air becomes stone, which is completely solid. On the other hand, when air becomes less dense than it is in its natural state, it becomes fire. (The natural upward motion of fire must have made it seem lighter than air.) Anaximenes says, then, that the two natural processes of condensation (air being made more dense) and rarefaction (air being made less dense) thus determine why things are what they are.

- Reality and Number

Anaximenes' explanation contains two important insights. First, by saying that the amount of air in a given volume determines an object's character, Anaximenes is the first Western thinker to suggest that reality is in some way quantifiable-that is, countable, or associated with numbers. By doing this, he anticipates the basic assumption of modern science that mathematics is the language of nature, that is, that we cannot understand the nature of reality without talking about quantities, or numbers. We can see a simple example of this in the fact that chemistry describes different elements in terms of the different number of subatomic particles that make them up.

- A Hierarchy of Nature

The order in which Anaximenes arranges reality, that is, fire-air-wind-cloud-water-earth-stone, is also important because this amounts to saying that reality is arranged in a clearly defined progression. This arrangement has a top and a bottom with a specific reason for why things fall where they do along a continuous line in between.

This kind of arrangement is called a hierarchy, and it appears in contemporary scientific accounts of reality as well. Biological hierarchies rank "higher" and "lower" organisms on a scale of complexity. Chemical hierarchies enable us to break substances down into their elements, molecules, atoms, and so on down the line.

In constructing his hierarchy, Anaximenes suggests that reality is not random. Substances do not possess their characteristics by accident. Rather, they express an abiding natural order.

- The Inquiry into Reality: Anaximenes' Contribution

Does Anaximenes add any useful questions to those of his predecessors?

1. The connection Anaximenes makes between air, breath, and life tells us that he has asked a very astute new question: How do we explain the difference between living and nonliving things in reality? Anaximenes apparently accounts for life (and nonlife) by whether or not the air of which a thing is made takes the form of life-infusing breath. This explanation may not be correct, but it does underscore the point that any account of reality should explain why some things that exist are "alive" and some aren't.

Anaximenes' work takes on an added dimension when we see that he also asks: Is life a natural or a supernatural property? Mythic and religious accounts of life usually hold that it involves a natural physical body infused by a supernatural spirit or soul. Like the other Milesian thinkers, however, Anaximenes sees life as a natural property that is perfectly consistent with the natural element of which everything is made.

We can credit Anaximenes, then, with his focus on the problem of accounting for both living and nonliving matter. •.

2. All three Milesians identify a basic substance of reality and a force that governs change. With his ideas about condensation and rarefaction and his vision of the natural hierarchy these processes imply, Anaximenes expands the definition of reality to include order and number. The fact that the density of air within a particular volume can be quantified and ranked establishes an intrinsic hierarchy, or order, to nature.

In doing this, Anaximenes adds a new property-order, or hierarchy to the two existing factors, substance and force. Indeed, order, or arrangement, is so fundamental that it must be part of any explanation ot nature, no matter what substance or force we say that reality consists of. Anaximenes shows us, then, that in trying to understand the nature of reality, we have to look beyond basic elements and forces.

That physical reality can be quantified, that is, described numerically) and that it submits to an ordered hierarchy are both critical insights. Had Anaximenes not looked beyond the conceptual boundaries set by his predecessors, he would have missed them completely. You can apply this same principle to your own thinking by taking a step back, assessing your conclusions, and asking, "Have I missed anything?" In particular, you must examine your basic assumptions to see whether they've blinded you to something new. Anaximenes' work shows us that we should always ask whether the way we phrase our problems causes us to miss something.

Take the simple question, "Who discovered America?" Your answer, of course, is "Christopher Columbus," or maybe "the Vikings." What's wrong here? For one thing, an enormous fallacious assumption underlies the verb "discovered." You cannot "discover" something that is already known, so the question assumes that America, or the New World, was unknown. But considering all the native American civilizations already well established from the Bering Strait to the Cape of Good Hope, this assumption is inaccurate, to say the least. Yet we easily fall into this unintentional error just by using the concept of "discovery."

In trying to determine the nature of reality, we also have to guard against being misled by the concepts, or models, or even just the language we use. Take the question, "How do we explain the motion of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the planets?" As long as thinkers assumed that this "motion" was the movement of those celestial bodies around the earth while the earth stood still, they were bound to come up with a mistaken picture of reality. But as soon as they understood that this "motion" included the movement of the earth as well, both its rotation around its axis and its travel through an orbit around the sun, they could arrive at a more accurate understanding of reality.

The lesson, then, is simple but hard. Always ask, "Is there anything I'm missing because of the way I phrase my questions?"

- Is Anaximenes Right?

Anaximenes' prescientific speculations are largely wrong in their particulars. Reality cannot be explained by the condensation and rarefaction of air. But his larger, more theoretical insights hold up well today. He is right about the quantifiable character of reality. Contemporary science shows that mathematics is basic to the process of understanding the universe. Modern science has also confirmed Anaximenes' sense of order and hierarchy among things that exist. If Anaximenes was wrong about the particulars, what does it matter? The concepts themselves are workable and working today.

In general, then, even though we find Anaximenes taking a step backward by calling air the universal element, his contributions to theory earn him an important place in the development of Western philosophy and science.

D) The Milesians' Overall Significance

These are the West's first three philosophers, the first people we know of who struggled to free themselves from the presuppositions and constraints of myth and think in a new way. Each man makes important progress in the development of rational thought. And even if vestiges of mythic, anthropomorphic, or religious explanations remain in their accounts of reality, their breakthrough was nonetheless revolutionary. After all, it's no small accomplishment to start philosophy.

The Milesians are probably right about the nature of reality on all the big points. Reality is indeed not what it appears to be. It can be accounted for naturally and rationally without recourse to supernatural explanations. Everything is made up of the same basic particles. And the mind is ultimately a better tool for understanding reality than the senses.

This is a very impressive achievement. Think again about being washed ashore on that island. Stripped of the knowledge you've so far acquired from your schooling and faced with the mysteries of the nature of reality on your own, could you have come as far as any of these thinkers? Certainly we have to give them credit for what they accomplished.

But ultimately, the most significant contribution of these three thinkers lies in their method of attacking the problem. First, they identify the most fundamental issues. They show us the importance of distinguishing reality from appearance, of accounting for both the stable and dynamic qualities in reality, of questioning the reliability of our senses, of accepting the truth of figurative explanations, and of identifying the most fundamental properties of existence.

Even more important, the Milesians demonstrate that the task of developing a new approach to reality is a long, slow process of methodically questioning "truths" that seem so obvious that one feels ridiculous doubting them. The great accomplishment of these first philosophers is that they started with a world view that made sense to most people, they doubted it, and they invented a new way of thinking that revealed the nature of reality more accurately.

For centuries, the myths and religious stories of Egypt and Mesopotamia had satisfied many intelligent people. These were advanced societies with impressive technological and intellectual achievements. These people were not stupid. Furthermore, the idea that our senses give us good information is not crazy either. If we can examine a rock outside and inside, it is sensible to conclude that it's actually a solid object. If someone says to you, "A rock isn t solid at all. It only looks solid. It's actually made up of millions of tiny particles with space between them," that is what sounds crazy. Doubting things that seem so self-evident is very difficult. Yet this is precisely what these thinkers did. They doubted the "obvious"-the apparent evidence of their senses and the accepted way of interpreting reality in their age. And they turned out to be right.

The Milesians show that progress in philosophy can be made only by questioning the most obvious "truths." This skeptical stance is something that you should learn from them and imitate. In our own attempt to understand the nature of reality, or anything else, then, the first step is to say in the manner of the Milesians, "Maybe things are not what they seem. Is there another way to explain them? What might that be?"

Ultimately, however, one of the Milesians' major contributions has to do with the part of their thinking that is most debatable. Although the three Milesians differ in the details of their theories, they share what is called a materialist outlook. That is, in their claim that reality is ultimately comprised of a particular material substance, they anticipate the empirical point of view of modern science. It does, however, set them apart from another major Greek thinker who takes up the issue, Plato. As you will now see, Plato completely rejects materialism and proposes a radically different conception of reality.

Discovering philosophy / Thomas I. White. --Brief ed.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0135080037/ 

Thomas I. White