[PHI 3301] The Milesians

It is really interesting to read something about the Milesians, the "earliest" philosophers. Maybe for us, who study philosophy, interested in philosophy or just curious about philosophy, the value of the Milesians is not their thoughts, but how they think and how they proved their thought.

I really like the story which is about Thales fell into a hole while thinking. It is funny in some aspects, and also it reminds me about what the philosophy is, and what a philosopher does. Different from the ordinary people, philosophers always think about something seems to be useless. Nevertheless, just these useless thinking built the fundament of philosophy. As what we read from the book, the original philosophy is born from the observation. Through the observation of the natural phenomenons and human activities, Thales believed that the basic stuff was water, and Anacimander though the originating point of the world was apeiron. Different from both of them, Anaximenes do not believe that the basic stuff was aer. And they employ their basic stuff to try to explain the world and the relationship among phenomenons. Their thoughts moved from the living to a more abstract and more unrealistic subject: How does the world construct?

It is obvious that the Milesians conducted their thoughts from the real world. They were more about explaining. And philosophy in that era was a combination of various subjects, which is definitely different from the philosophy we say today.