THE PRESOCRATIC SOPHOS Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world or to their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded. Heraclitus

As early Greek civilization became increasingly refined and sophisticated, a new kind of thinker emerged known as sophos, from the Greek word for “wise”. These wise men asked increasingly sophisticated questions about all sorts of things, but specially about natural processes and the origins and essence of life, these philosophers were noted for their attempts to use reason and observation to figure out for themselves how the world works.

FROM SOPHOS TO PHILOSOPHER In his earliest incarnations, the western sophos was predominantly a ‘”sage or wise man”, he was not a professional thinker, that is, he did not charge people fees to study with him or to accompany him. His relatioships with his students were personal, complex and long lasting. In many cases his pupils were more like disciples than like paying students. The sophos (sage or wise men) was seen as a kind of prophet- priest-theraphist, the philosopher, who is in love with wisdom but not necessarily wise, was seen as an unusual sort of thinker and truth seeker.

THE SEARCH FOR A COMMON PRINCIPLE The earliest Western philosophers are reffered to as the Presocratics because they appear prior to Socrates, the first mayor figure in the western philosophical tradition. Some of the Presocratic philosophes were described as proto- scientists, because they initiated the transformation of mythology into rational inquiry about nature and the cosmos.

RATIONAL DISCOURSE Traditionally the first Western philosopher is said to have been Thales. Thales lived in the city of Miletus, part of a Greek colony on the Asian coast in an area known as Iona. For most of his life, it seemed that Thales devoted himself to his studies, devoting a minimum effort to his financial affairs. Philosophically, Thales is significant for his attempt to find a common source, a single substance underlying all things. For him this basic “stuff” was water. Aristotle says that Thales “observed” that “the nutrient of everything is moist, and that…..the seeds of everything have a moist nature,….. And that from which everything is generated is always its first principle’’.

The real force of Thales insight was not his specific conclusion that all things are water but, rather, his reduction of all things to one substance. The name for such single –substance philosophies is monism, the belief that reality is essencially one- either one reality, one process, one substance, one structure, or one ground. Thales’ assertion that everything is composed of water was a mayor move beyond mythological accounts of nature because it rested on systematic, rational evidence and careful observation, rather than on mythical stories and poetic images.

The resulting interplay of carefully argued ideas is known as rational discourse, which is the use of reason to order, clarify, and identify reality and truth according to agreed- upon standards of verification. As Thales ideas became known, other philosophers offered rational explanations and modifications of his claims. For example Thales claimed that the earth floats on water. But what holds up the water? A pupil of Thales, Anaximander, who was also from Miletus made another contribution to philosophical reasoning by offering a rational explanation for what holds the earth in place, he argued that he could not percieve the earth in its entirety or observe whatever held it up.

Anaximander reasoned that the earth stays where it is because it is at the precise center of the cosmos, “not supported by anything but resting where it is because of its equal distance from everything”. Aristotle said that Anaximander’s reasoning rested on the principle that nothing happens without a reason, today that princple is known as: Principle of Sufficient Reason: The principle that nothing happens wihout a reason. According to Aristotle, Anaximander argued that there was no reason why the earth should move in one direction rather than in another direction.

Anaximander also claimed that in the beginning the earth was a fluid and that an external source of heat dried some of it, the dried sections became land. Variations in temperature caused winds, and living organisms arose at varying states of this drying out process.

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE Thales` direct legacy culminated in Anaximander`s pupil Anaximenes, the third of the presocratic Milesian philosophers. Anaximenes` notion that the first, universal, underlying element is air or pneuma which is the ultimate, pervasive spirit that holds the world together. Just as Anaximander identified problems in Thales` thinking, Anaximenes recognized a search for a common principle with the introduction of the argument that qualitative differences can result from quantitative changes.

Anaximenes proposed two opposing processes of Exchange: Condensation and Rarefaction. In Anaximenes cosmology, air is invisible in its pure, original state. Pure air becomes progressively denser through the process of condensation, in the following stages: air-fire-wind-cloud- water-earth-stone. Matter becomes progressively lighter during the process of rarefaction: Stone-earth-water-cloud-wind-fire-air. Thus the ongoing cosmic and natural cycle of generation and destruction provides a single underlying world order, that itself stays the same throughout all change: air-fire-wind-cloud-wáter-earth- stone.