Natural Philosophy
Natural philosophy is the orderly investigation of the phenomena of the universe through the use of experimental observation and/or logical reasoning. It was introduce by Alexander the Great in his creation of the Library of Alexandria. This gave consent to the pursuit of knowledge and, since Alexander was taught by a natural philosopher, to the study of natural philosophy. In Ancient Greece (480-323 BCE), natural philosophers observed particular things like the phenomena of the natural world, along with abstract things like the nature of reality. These natural philosophers looked for universal principles by which phenomena could be explained, which among these philosophers included Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Plato. The philosopher, Heraclitus (ca. 545-475 BCE) of Ephesus, believed that flux, or change, was the basic principle of the universe. Parmenides (ca. 515-440 BCE), Heraclitus’ successor, believed that Being is rational, that only what can be thought can exist. Since “nothing” cannot be thought, without thinking of it as something, there is no nothing, there is only Being. Plato (427-347 BCE), who was one of the most powerful thinkers in history, emphasized the immortal and unchallengeable consciousness over
One of the most powerful thinkers in history, Plato, emphasized spiritual values and makes ideas, rather than matter, the basis of everything that exists. He supported the invisible world of the Forms, or Ideas, in opposition to the physical world. Plato was born in 427 BCE in Athens from an Aristocratic family. He received the finest education Athens had to offer from Sophocles. Plato “argued for the existence of an ideal world” (Donley). Plato recognized two worlds, the world of Forms, or Ideas, which is the ideal world and the world of Particulars, which is the world we see it as. He saw the particular world, and the things in it, as imperfect copies of the world of Forms or Ideas. These forms are unchangeable and perfect, and are only comprehensible by the use of the intellect or understanding, whereas as the particular world is constantly changing. But indeed, in the particular world, the particular objects we see around us bear only a dim resemblance to the more ultimately real forms of Plato's world of Forms. Since he reasoned that what we learn about physical objects empirically by means of the senses, we look at them, taste them, listen to them, and so on, he thought that sense experience are not a valid mean. None of the information we gain in this way is reliable or trustworthy, therefore, we don’t have real knowledge of the visible world, just mere opinion. Whereas we learn about the Forms, not by means of the sense, but by means of reason. We don’t need to look at the Forms or listen to them, indeed we cannot do so, we figure out what they are by thinking about them. In a sense knowledge of the forms also enables us to better understand the visible world. When we understand the Forms, we know what the visible world is a pale imitation of. Plato also understood that our physical bodies are a part of the in the world of particular world. Our sense organs, by means of which we learn about the visible world, are also part of our physical body. But our souls a
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