Pre-Socratics

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Pre-Socratics

• Many scholars would say that Philosophy as we
  know it, started in the 5th century BCE and in

GREECE
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Thales

• He is the first man claimed to be wise.
• He predicted the solar eclipse in 585 BCE
• Was not interested in myth but KNOWLEDGE
• Thought that, maybe in the beginning everything
  was made of water

WOW!
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Anaximander

• Believed the world was freely suspended in space
• All creatures arose from water
• Men evolved from fish
• There is a single primal substance
• There is a natural law which exerts itself in the
  world, maintaining a balance between different
  elements

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Pythagoras (Genius, but with a few screws loose)

• A very famous Mathematician..numbers to him,
  were the answer to everything
• He discovered if you half the length of a string
  on a lyre you produce a note one octave higher.
• All harmonies represent ratios of whole numbers
• First to be systematic about deductive reasoning.
• The soul is an immortal thing that is transformed
  into other living things.
• Whatever comes into existence is born again.
• Must abstain from beans
• Dont eat from a whole loaf

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Pythagoras most famous for.
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Heraclitus

• Argued everything was in a state of flux
• There is a cosmic justice that maintains
  equilibrium in the world
• The one primary element is FIRE
• You cannot step in the same river twice

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Parmenides

• He thought Heraclitus not only had a very
  unfortunate name, he thought he was totally
  mistaken.
• Change is an illusion the universe is a frozen,
  unchanging object.
• Nothingness cannot be real.because we cannot
  even conceive it. Therefore change cant exist

Get it?
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Zeno
It is eye, Zeno, not Zero.not Zorro, but Zeno.
You cant run from me.you will never get to that
point!!!

• A student of Parmenides. He agreed with his
  professor stating,
• a runner cannot move from one point to another.
  For to do so, he must first get to a point
  half-way across, and to do this, he must get
  half-way to the half-way point.and so on for an
  infinite number of spaces.
• Motion is therefore an illusion.

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Empedocles (nutbar)
Oops, I guess I wasnt a god.

• Next the strange empedocles of agracas
• Experimenting with a water-clock of brass
• He wrote in verse, discovered air
• He thought he was god- so there
• He argued that there were four elements in all
• That plants had sex, the earth was like a ball
• That change took place by love and strife
• And historic cycles ran through life
• When called upon to prove his deity
• He sneered at all the waiting laity
• Great empedocles, that ardent soul
• Leapt into etna and was roasted whole

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Leucippus and Democritus

• They proposed innumerable tiny solid particles
• Atoms
• The ever changing world was explained as a
  ceaseless rearrangement of the unchanging atoms
  into different shapes
• This theory stood the test of time until 1800CE
  when the chemist Dalton came up with a better
  theory.

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Sophists

• They were more interested in the mechanics of how
  a man could do things for himself
• This led them to teaching people how to write,
  make speeches and be good debaters (they knew how
  to twist an argument)

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In the East..
Brahman is Neti, neti!!!!

• In the Vedas it states..

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Therefore in the Upanishads it states.

• The only true self is.

ImATMAN!
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Therefore.
BrahmanAtman And AtmanBrahman