1.Thales ThalesPublic Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia. The founder of natural philosophy, Thales was a Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher from the Ionian city of Miletus (c. 620 - c. 546 B.C.). He predicted a solar eclipse and was considered one of the 7 ancient Sages. 2. Pythagoras Bust of Pythagoras at the Vatican Museum, in Rome.Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia. Pythagoras was an early Greek philosopher, astronomer and mathematician known for the Pythagorean theorem, which geometry students use to figure the hypotenuse of a right triangle. He was also the founder of a school named for him. 3. Anaximander Anaximander was a pupil of Thales. He was the first to describe the original principle of the universe as apeiron or boundless and to use the term arche for beginning. In the Gospel of John, the first phrase contains the Greek for beginning -- the same word arche. 4. Anaximenes Anaximenes was a 6th century philosopher, a younger contemporary of Anaximander, who believed that air was the underlying component of everything. Density and heat or cold change air so that it contracts or expands. For Anaximenes, the earth was formed by such processes and is an air-made disk that floats on air above and below. 5. Parmenides Parmenides. From School of Athens, by Raffaello Sanzio.Public Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia. Parmenides of Elea in southern Italy was the founder of the Eleatic School. His own philosophy raised many impossibilities that later philosophers worked on. He distrusted the evidence of the senses and argued that what is cannot have come into being from nothing so it must always have been. 6. Anaxagoras AnaxagorasPublic Domain. Courtesy of Wikipedia. Anaxagoras, who was born in Clazomenae, Asia Minor, around 500 B.C., spent most of his life in Athens where he made a place for philosophy and associated with Euripides (writer of tragedies) and Pericles (Athenian statesman). In 430 Anaxagoras was brought to trial for impiety in Athens because his philosophy denied the divinity of all other gods but his principle, the mind. 7. Empedocles Empedocles was another very influential early Greek philosopher, the first to assert the four elements of the universe were earth, air, fire, and water. He thought there were two contending guiding forces Love and Strife. He also believed in transmigration of the soul and therefore vegetarianism. 8. Zeno Zeno is the greatest figure of the Eleatic School. He is known through the writing of Aristotle and Simplicius (A.D. 6th C.). Zeno presents 4 arguments against motion which are demonstrated in his famous paradoxes. The paradox referred to as Achilles claims that a faster runner (Achilles) can never overtake the tortoise because the pursuer must always first reach the spot the one he seeks to overtake has just left.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Mar 2014 03:18:40 +0000
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