History of Philosophy: The Milesian School

It is said that modern, western philosophy started with Thales. Thales was the individual who founded what historians call the Milesian School. The Milesian School is a grouping of three important philosophers who are thought to have succeeded one another from Thales to Anaximander to Anaximenes. It should be noted that, especially regarding the pre-socratic philosophers, they are often grouped together for convenience by geographical location and not necessarily by common philosophies though there are a few similarities in their way of thinking. In makes sense though as in ancient times there were definite limits on the speed and capability of information transmission so it should be no surprise that we can find microcosms of thought. Now, where did this Milesian School begin you may ask? That would be in the city of Miletus in ancient Ionia which is on the coast of the Aegean Sea in modern day Turkey. 

Thales is largely shrouded in mystery and historians have had a difficult time attributing definite facts to him. Thales was born (probably) in Miletus and lived circa 624 BC – 546 BC. There is also evidence to suggest that he had traveled to Babylon and Egypt where he learned astronomy and mathematics respectively. Due to the fact that many details of his life are largely unknown, I’d like to instead share two well-known stories which I found interesting. First, is the story of the olive press. The story goes something along the lines of due to his strong knowledge of astronomy and his observant nature of the natural world, he made the prediction that there would be more rain and favorable agriculture conditions in the coming year. In order to prove a point and add some validation to his philosophizing, he bought up as many olive presses as he could get his hands on. And he waited. That year the olive cultivation did extraordinarily well and people were in desperate need of additional olive presses to handle the surplus. He then was able to loan out the presses he previously purchased at a considerable profit. Now, what’s the point? We can’t be sure if it really happened or not but I believe we can derive a broader meaning and implication from this story. I believe the underlying lesson is that careful thought and observation lead to advantages in life. This is significant once you really start to think about it. The ancients certainly were not dumb but historians have good reason to believe that much of what they observed in the natural world was attributed to anthropomorphized gods (powerful deities with human-like characteristics). This point of interest then can help represent the shift in perspective which the Milesian school undertook to understand the natural world by methodical observation. 

Whether or not Thales really outplayed the olive market, this step which occurred in human thought had profound effects which we may find difficult to wrap our heads around while living in modern times. This shift in perspective, a shift to try to understand nature in a more manageable way, is on the same level as the realization that earth is not the center of the known universe. Perhaps, in modern times, it would be on the level of if we found definite proof of other intelligent beings in the universe (I’m trying to think out of the box here) because that would be an event where afterwards we would never be able to look at things the same way again. A complete paradigm shift. Perhaps from here, we started on the quest to first understand and then to command nature. We continue with this train of thought in the second story when we consider the Eclipse of Thales. There are a number of ancient references which purport that Thales predicted a solar eclipse. It appears in an epic context in The Histories by Herodotus where the event is so monumental that it stops a battle and facilitates peace negotiations. Unfortunately, historians have their doubts about this. What Historians can be relatively certain of is that there was likely a solar eclipse visible on 28 May 585 BC with Thales presumed location within the margin of error. The only problem is that even if Thales did predict this eclipse: it was dumb luck. So, if true, that would potentially make him one of the luckiest guys of the millennia. This is due to the fact that solar eclipses compared to lunar eclipses are much harder to predict due to the geocentric parallax, or the diurnal parallax, which is “the difference in the apparent direction or position of a celestial body as observed from the center of the earth and from a point on the surface of the earth.” The Babylonians had figured out how to predict lunar eclipses but solar eclipses were a whole other animal. This story, however, runs with the theme of the newfound power of natural observation so kick started by the Milesian school. Solar eclipses certainly would perplex anyone if they did not know the cause of it so to predict one must have signified extraordinary power and foresight. Whether or not it is true, I am a proponent of the overall representation of the significance of natural observation which must of took off somewhere around the time of Thales if not by his own doing. It represents a major step forward in human cognition. 

Does this mean we hit the ground running with our observations of the natural world? Well, not exactly but in a way yes. It seems that the individuals in the Milesian school all had their various ideas about what the world was made of. In other words, what is the quintessential substance which all things are made of? As it turns out, physicists are still trying to figure this question out to this day. As for Thales, he believed that everything was made of water. It makes a lot of sense since everything seems to need water and it takes different states. It evaporates to supply the heavens and then rains to supply the earth. It may seem somewhat ridiculous to us but as Terence Mckenna might say- the important thing is that the idea [was] there. Nietzsche pointed out that the most important aspect of this idea by Thales was it unified everything. It made the world into all one thing. At least cognitively speaking. From my point of view, it seems we understand things by their connection and when we unify things that is a step toward understanding our surroundings in a brighter light. Thales allegedly also took the position that the earth is floating on water and that an earthquake was due to waves or a disturbance in that water. This idea, which sounds ridiculous in our times, makes a lot of sense if you think about it. What other conclusion can you draw when you look out over the vast ocean? The important step is taking in observations from the surrounding world and attempting to make sense, order and understanding of what exactly is happening or how it’s happening. 

One idea which purportedly comes from Thales and the Milesian school in one shape or form is Hylozoism. Hylozoism is the philosophical view that all matter is in some way alive. Thales apparently took it a step further to believe that magnets were alive, had a soul or had gods inside them because of their ability to move iron. Personally, when I read “gods inside them” it feels like a step back to delegating inexplicable things to a God or divine intervention which is train of thought the Milesian school started to break from. At this time, it seems the idea was prevalent that movement equated a soul. That’s how the movement of animals was explained and why the planets may have been seen as Gods as they traversed the firmament. But, a magnet moves itself or other in a way that can’t be seen and in a way unlike any other animal or plant. Thus, I believe I can see why a magnet was signaled out as a higher point of interest in their hylozoist ideas. At some point or another some years ago, I had become aware of an idea from a source I cannot remember that suggested the possibility that everything, all matter, was on some level conscious. That everything was only separated by degrees of consciousness. For some reason it struck a chord with me and it seems to be a modern take on this idea. I think when we take into the account the idea of movement with souls and that much of our environment moves or can move, a hylozoist perspective is the natural conclusion. In our world things change shape and new things arise, there seems to be indefinite potential on an infinite timescale.  

Anaximander is widely believed to have been the successor of the Milesian school after Thales. He delved in a broad range of fields and is thought to be one of the first ancient philosophers to write down his findings. Anaximander was also very interested in the origin of life and he makes the first attempts historians are aware of to explain the origin of man. It is possible too that he was master to or influenced Pythagoras but not many sources make this claim as historians have a difficult time determining the exact dates of his life. Nonetheless, Anaximander really seems to take the teachings of Thales to another level to push the Milesian school forward in thought and many more of his ideas are made available through later philosophers. 

Notably, Anaximander made improvements on Thales’ idea that water was the primary substance from which everything is made. Here, we come to what Anaximander called “aiperon” (/əˈpirɒn/). Aiperon “is a Greek word meaning “(that which is) unlimited,” “boundless”, “infinite”, or “indefinite”. It is pretty interesting how Anaximander came up with this idea too. He says that everything is made up of a primary substance that is eternal, indestructible which produces all things and where all things return to. This would mean that, from his point of view, it could not be one of the primary known elements because their properties would eventually consume and take over all things. Aristotle quotes his idea as: “They [the elements] are in opposition one to another—air is cold, water moist, and fire hot—and therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. Phys. Γ. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b).” 

A fascinating part of Anaximander’s cosmology is that he very well may have been the first to conceive of the earth as a fixed-free floating object which is not falling or in need of props. This allowed the idea in Greek astronomy of the firmament of stars passing “under” the earth and some believe, Karl Popper namely, that this revolutionary idea was the starting point of the scientific process. Even though it was just a guess, an idea or shot in the dark- he turned out to be sort of right without knowing if or how. The magnificent aspect of this idea is how out of the box and creative it is. For a person in ancient times to able to even conceptualize that something like the earth could float, notably without contributing it to divine intervention, deserves some attention and the significance cannot be understated. 

Anaximenes was the last philosopher of significance (I presume) of the Milesian school. He continued his thinking in the overall form of the school’s pursuits but of course with his own touch. For him, the primal substance was not Anaximander’s apeiron or water but air. He saw everything in the world as air in some form of condensation or rarefaction. Rarefaction being the reduction of an item’s density so to Anaximenes fire was in fact rarefied air. On the opposite end, earth and rocks were air which was condensed much more than the air we breath or the air that formed the winds and then the clouds. Where Anaximenes made progress was not so much in the detail of his philosophy but in the fact that he continued the Milesian School’s overarching ideas. His idea that air was the primal substance was significant because he proposed that the fundamental substance could change forms (essentially from fire to rock) which provided a novel framework for others to perceive the world.  

Why is the Milesian School important? First and foremost, they were innovators of human thought (of course, as much as we can tell since not much from the period survives) in the sense that they sought to understand and perceive the natural world in ways that did not follow the will of anthropomorphized gods. They sought to understand the natural world by methodical observation and deliberation. They also asked important questions in metaphysics and cosmology such as; What is the quintessential substance? What is the earth’s position in the universe? These questions helped kick start more than two millennia of philosophical and scientific inquiry. The fact that they still aren’t really answered, the former especially being elusive, shows us just how big the ideas they were trying to tackle are.