PHIL 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Anaximander, Falsifiability, Rarefaction
3 May 2018
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HAP 9.05.17 Lecture Notes
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
Create a short list of the features of mythographic approaches to the world
- Moralizing, can be didactic
- Explains natural phenomenon
- Personifies nature
- Supernatural aspects
- Unites a culture/region of people
- Orally passed down
- Usuall siilar to people’s ature ad ehaiors
- Muses usually summoned to justify the story
Milesians – the earliest Western philosophers
- Ionia: region in the middle of Asia Minor
- Miletus actually as’t o ailad Greee
- Miletus was a trading city
- Polis: independent city-states that
- Miletus had relative freedom of thought, especially speculative thought
o No monolithic centralized religion or politically prescribed belief system
o Was enough wealth to sit around and thing
o Widespread literacy
Thales
- What kind of person is Thales?
o Curious – learned geometry from the Egyptians, learned to navigate from the
Phoenicians
o Credited as the father of philosophy
o Uses observations to come to conclusions
o Astronomy – eclipses (he predicted one)
o One of the Seven Sages, contributed in various ways to culture and politics
o Was the first to propose physical theories about phenomena in the world
▪ Gods are not an explanatory device
▪ Appealed more to the observable world
- Is it right to sa that Thales’s eplaatios for atural pheoea are etter tha
Hesiod?
o Thales’s theories are falsifiale; Hesiod does’t reall ake a preditios
o Thales tries to use logi for soe thigs, ore sietifi, also dras o the
knowledge of different peoples
o Purpose of explanation?
▪ Help us know how to intervene in the natural system to make things
happen
o No definitive answer to the question
- P2: Bias was a politician
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Document Summary
Create a short list of the features of mythographic approaches to the world. Usuall(cid:455) si(cid:373)ilar to people"s (cid:374)ature a(cid:374)d (cid:271)eha(cid:448)iors. Muses usually summoned to justify the story. Ionia: region in the middle of asia minor. Miletus had relative freedom of thought, especially speculative thought: no monolithic centralized religion or politically prescribed belief system, was enough wealth to sit around and thing, widespread literacy. What kind of person is thales: curious learned geometry from the egyptians, learned to navigate from the. Is it right to sa(cid:455) that thales"s e(cid:454)pla(cid:374)atio(cid:374)s for (cid:374)atural phe(cid:374)o(cid:373)e(cid:374)a are (cid:271)etter tha(cid:374) P20: (cid:862)god(cid:863) is (cid:449)ater, a tool to e(cid:454)plai(cid:374) (cid:373)otio(cid:374: not the usual conception of god. P34-37: where does the motion, the causal power that makes things happen, come from: drives the causal power into the element of water in order to explain motion. Credited with the invention of the sundial, the map. Some believe he is the father of philosophy.
