Search for the Arche
Since the beginning of time, man has found reasons for what made things and made things occur. For many centuries, the Greeks, Egyptians, and other early civilizations believed that the cause of these occurrences and events were gods, or divine intervention. However, the earliest philosophers, all from the port city of Miletus began to rationalize these occurrences. These philosophers, the earliest known, were Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They were the ones that triggered and asked all the questions that were later to be studied for thousands of years. These three believed that the world was comprised of four different elements: earth, fire, water, and air. However, they also believed that there was a source from which these elements came from. It was the force that drove and created everything in the universe, not the mythological gods. This force is what they referred to as the arche or the “first principle”. Such principles were to be later seen in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. Thales, the earliest of the three, was the first to come to the realization that the gods could not be the driving force behind all of nature. He states, “All things are full of gods”. Some have interpreted t
Being made finer it [air] becomes fire, being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest comes into being from those. He, too, makes motion eternal, and says that change, also comes about through it. Like Thales, he believed fire came from that source, for he believed that fire was rarefied air. He also asked the questions “how do human beings live”? They breathe. He believed that all living things take in air to breathe, a requirement of living. It is through breathing that we gain life as well as strength. He writes: ‘As our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so does wind [or breath] and air enclose the whole world.’ Anaximenes also drew his argument from Anaximander. Anaximander believed that the universe was created and composed of opposites in nature in conflict. Anaximenes, however, argued that it is all actually a continuum; that all the elements lead to another element. The fact that air can condense into mist or even water, led Anaximenes to believe that air served as an intermediate stage between fire and water. He argued that air holds the world together, and itself contains an infinite number of worlds. Anaximander, another philosopher who lived at the time of Thales, argued with Thales’ theory. He believed that no matter could come from something as ordinary as water, the
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Approximate Word count = 952
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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