1 - Everything is Full of Gods: Thales

Posted on

In this episode, Peter Adamson of King's College London introduces the podcast as a whole, and the thought of the early Greek philosophers called the Presocratics. He also discusses the first Presocratic philosopher, Thales of Miletus.  

download-icon
.

Themes:

Further Reading

K. Algra, "The Beginnings of Cosmology," in A.A. Long, The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 45–65

D.W. Graham, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)

E. Hussey, “The beginnings of epistemology: from Homer to Philolaus,” in Epistemology, ed. S. Everson [Companions to Ancient Thought: 1] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11-38

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presocratics/

Comments

In reply to by Joó Gábor

Peter Adamson on 29 January 2024

Thales

Thanks! Yes that makes sense but I'd probably be more cautious and ascribe this breakthrough to the early Presocratics more generally rather than Thales in particular. It's highly dubious that he thought everything comes from water the way that the Stoics think everything comes from fire, though maybe this kind of "material monism" does emerge somehow amongst the Presocratics that come prior to Parmenides. It's really Aristotle who tries to fit Thales into that sort of picture. Also worth noting is that it seems to be an idea we can find in non-Mediterranean cultures, e.g. in the Upanisads (see the episodes on that in the India series...).

In reply to by Peter Adamson

Joó Gábor on 29 January 2024

"I'd probably be more…

"I'd probably be more cautious and ascribe this breakthrough to the early Presocratics more generally rather than Thales in particular."

- yeah I agree, this sounds like a more cautious approach. I guess we could say it was a cluster of thinkers who broke with traditional cosmology then? 

Thanks for the reply, I'll definitely check out the episode on the Upanisads!

In reply to by Joó Gábor

Peter Adamson on 29 January 2024

Material monism

Yes, exactly. Anaximines actually seems to be a good candidate with his account based on air, which sounds more like air is actually transforming into the other elements. But it seems to have been an intituion driving all the Milesians and also Heraclitus (in his case, fire).

dukeofethereal on 11 November 2024

Cosmology, God(S) and Soul and the self theme (Thales)

This episode should have three additional themes

 

1. 'Cosmology' (his ideas on water). 

 

2. Soul and the self - regarding magnets

 

3. God(S) - "all things are full of Gods" - regarding magnets

 

I'm re-listening to the series from the beginning and will jot down anything you might have missed

In reply to by dukeofethereal

Peter Adamson on 12 November 2024

Themes

Great thanks - I have taken most of your suggestions on these first few episodes. One can tell that the Themes function was invented much later so we didn't tag early episodes very thoroughly.

In reply to by Peter Adamson

dukeofethereal on 13 November 2024

Regarding usage of themes early on

I've notice that you added more tags  to episodes around the time you reached 14th century Latin Christendom thus your earlier episodes on Greco-Roman/'Islamicate' world philosophy (philosophy under the political rule of Islam) and pre 14th century Latin Christendom had fewer tags as you weren't using it as often.

 

I'll give you a hand to whenever a tag is needed and you can use your judgement to see if I was correct professor. I like re-listening to your series and I tend to listen it to your website.

 

 

In reply to by dukeofethereal

Peter Adamson on 14 November 2024

Tags

It's having the side benefit of prompting me to add alt text to the images on each page; when I set up a new page I always do that now but a lot of the old pages are missing it.

Add new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.