Greece & Rome · c. 585–525 BCE
Milesian school
Everything is made of one underlying stuff, and nature can be explained by natural causes rather than the whims of gods.
What is the world ultimately made of?
Miletus was a rich Ionian trading port in contact with Egypt, Babylon and Lydia, where myths of the gods’ origins sat beside practical astronomy and geometry. Thales and his successors began asking for the archē, the single origin or principle behind the many things we see, and answered with reasons that others could argue against.
Things change into one another: water freezes and evaporates, food becomes flesh. If change is transformation rather than creation from nothing, something must persist through it. Thales proposed water, Anaximander an unbounded “apeiron”, Anaximenes air that thickens and thins.
- There is a single underlying principle (archē) of all things.
- Nature runs by regular processes, not divine caprice.
- Change is one substance transforming, not something from nothing.
It began the Greek habit of explaining nature by stated, criticisable reasons, the common root of Western philosophy and natural science.
Thinkers
c. 624–546 BCEThalesSage of Miletus, traditionally the first Greek philosopherc. 610–546 BCEAnaximanderThales’ successor, credited with the first Greek world mapc. 586–526 BCEAnaximenesThird Milesian, who made air the first principleKey texts
What it led to
Carried on byPythagoreanismThe Pythagoreans kept the Ionian search for a single principle of the cosmos but found it in number and harmony rather than in a material stuff.Opposed by
Eleatic schoolParmenides argued that the Milesian picture of one stuff becoming many things requires what is not to come into being, which he held impossible.Carried on by
PluralistsThe pluralists kept the Milesian elements, such as water, air and fire, but made them several eternal ingredients instead of one transforming stuff.