PHILOS 1A03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Monism, Christian Mortalism, Xenophanes
Document Summary
Their work was just as much science as philosophy. Philosophers revolutionized thinking because they asked why these things happened, whereas poets simply explained these phenomena with gods. Philosophers were rationalists, wanted to explain nature in terms of forces which are still active in nature and not superstitions. One philosopher proclaimed everything in the universe comes from water, the meaning of life can be explained with water. Doesn"t begin by invoking gods or making assumptions about god. The arche must be balanced aka aperion. His idea is that the source of anything in nature cannot lie in one thing that is already in nature. Everything in nature is born and dies and has a beginning and an end. The source cannot go by these rules. Only the boundless has no beginning, which makes it suited for the rule of absolutely no beginning. Aperion is infinite, eternal, inexhaustible, moving, and alive, The earth is in the center of the universe.