The Milesians Essay, Research Paper

Notes for Class Thirteen: The Milesians

I. Thales of Miletos (c. 580 BC) was the first thinker in the West to provide a rational explanation of things. By claiming that everything can be explained in terms of water, he proposes that there is a way to make sense of our experience of changes in the world. Behind the appearance of change, he suggests, is something constant (a one behind the many) in terms of which everything is to be understood.

This turn from myth to reason is significant in three ways: it focuses on a natural rather than a supernatural explanation, it suggests that reality is different from appearances, and it describes not only the fundamental nature of reality (as water) but also how things in nature change (as a result of internal forces).

II. Anaximander of Miletos (c. 545 BC) disagrees with Thales about the fundamental material principle of reality because, he argues, it does not make sense to say that something that is the opposite of water–namely, that which is dry–must be explained in terms of water. Instead of saying that any contrary must be explained in terms of its opposite, Anaximander says that the ultimate principle of being must have no discernible characteristics or properties: it is “the Unlimited” or “the Indeterminate” (the apeiron). It is the substance of which everything is made but it is never experienced by itself. It appears as various combinations of earth, air, fire, and water, whose changes are regulated according to rhythms or harmonies that correct the injustice created by extremes of contrary qualities such as hot-cold, wet-dry, rough-smooth, light-dark. Anaximander moves beyond Thales in two ways: he describes ultimate reality abstractly, in terms that are not tied to what one sensually experiences (thus elevating the mind over the senses); and he accounts for observed natural changes in terms of law-like necessity.

III. Anaximenes of Miletos (c. 545 BC) rejects Anaximander’s notion of the Unlimited, claiming that since nothing definite can be said about something that has no discernible characteristics, nothing can be said about the Unlimited–even that it is the ultimate principle of sensible reality. Air, on the other hand, does have identifiable characteristics and, like water, might be seen as having the capacity for different forms of material expression. But more importantly, air gives life to living beings and is the formative force that “breathes” existence into inanimate beings as well insofar as things are differentiated in terms of how densely air is compacted: individual things are thus distinguishable insofar as they express the condensation or rarefaction of air. Very fine air is fire, very condensed air is stone; wind, clouds, water, and earth are stages in between that indicate increasing condensation.

Anaximenes’ ideas contain three significant advances: First, his doctrine of condensation and rarefaction makes the distinction of things quantifiable and provides a mathematical basis for talking about nature. Second, his hierarchical arrangement of reality indicates that there is a definite progression in nature and a reason why things are related to one another in an order of higher and lower forms of complexity. Third, living beings are distinguished from inanimate beings in virtue of the rarefaction of air that defines them, not some supernatural soul or mystical force; and the condensation and rarefaction of their air is also what explains their activity. By means of this third point, Anaximenes is able to join the quantifiable basis for distinguishing things to the force that moves them.

IV. Together, these three Milesians represent the development of the distinctive way of thinking we identify as “metaphysical.” They highlight the distinction between appearance and reality, search for what is constant beneath what we experience as change, challenge the reliability of our senses, and indicate how the examination of reality is an on-going development. All three adopt a materialist metaphysics, one in which reality is understood primarily in physical terms. The mythic elements that survive in their thought are often ignored or rejected by later materialists.