Advantages and Disadvantages of the Materialism Essay

Greek Philosophy materislistic attempt of the presocratics prefers and disadvantagesThe advantages and disadvantages of the man sortinglyistic memory access of the pre Socratic philosophers. Please support your flushs by referring to the texts in Kirk and Raven, and treat at to the lowest degree three philosophers . The pre Socratic philosophers marked an epoch in human ideas. Although it susceptibility seem stupid to suggest that everything is made of water or that the human race floats on a cushion of air, these ideas came from the people who are responsible for the flair we see the ground today. The advances that the cautious orgasm of the pre Socratic philosophers made to arts understanding of temper was considerable to say the least. This essay will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the materialistic approach of the pre Socratic philosophers. It will start by mete outings with Thales who Aristotle c bothed the first philosopher. He can be seen as the c atalyst of school of thought in ancient Greece. The essay will also deal with Thaless friend and student Anaximander time and fin ally it will discuss Heraclitus. precisely first a look at something at the cutting acuteness of modern science that the pre Socratics paved the way for.At a station receiptn as Cern in Geneva at that place is a clip called a large hydron collider. A machine that is expected to detect the Higgs Boson or God Particle as it is a good deal called. This is the only standard determine particle not yet to be observed and one opined to let off the origin of mass in the universe. You might wonder how this ties in with school of thought in 624 B.C., but it was here that people began their search for the Higgs Boson, although we did not know it by that name at the time. It was the pre Socratics who suggested that in that location was a basic stub from which all things are made and they who tried to explain what this basic sum of money was. Consider ing the lack of facility in virtually 500 B.C. to experiment and lift what this material is made of, it is nothing short of astounding to see how nigh to the truth some of these philosophers got by using reason and their intellect.The idea that there is a single substance out of which everything is sourced known as material monism. It claims that the source of nature is somethingphysical and that there is only one such thing. It was in Ionia that material monism began.The IoniansWithin the space of a century Miletus produced Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, from each one dominated by the assumption of a single primary material, the closing off of which was the most important step in any systematic measure of reality1 The first of the Ionians was Thales of Miletus. The advantages of Thaless materialistic approach were as follows He revolutionised the way the ancient Greeks thought. He got them to recognize sharp argument all over all other sorts of authority and separate d the innate(p) ground from the necromantic world.2 Before Thales explanations of natural events were merited on aesthetic sensibility. The authorities for knowledge were poets homogeneous Homer who explained natural events with mythology.They claimed that elysian muses inspired them and people believed that divine humanoid creatures known as the gods controlled nature3. Thales however understood that there were laws and routines that nature abided by and that events in the natural world could be predicted by observant the nature and using the information you receive understand it. Thaless far-famed prediction of a solar eclipse convinced people to believe that there were patterns in nature which came about from natural events that could be rationalised. bingle of Thales main philosophical concerns was to find out what the basic substance of the world was. He believed it to be water. Why he believed this can only be speculated. We might see this as nave butFrom Thales onward , all doubtfulness into the nature of phenomena tended towards one end The suffice to the question, what is the nature of the whole? That is, what is the nature of the reality behind the phenomena? For Aristotle and therefore for us also, science and metaphysics bulge out unneurotic with Thales, the first man to have attempted to answer this question, and attempt an answer to this question, and therefore the first man known to have posed it4To begin the search for a rational behind the natural world as Thales did was a giant leap for man kind. His ideas were refined by other Ionian whowas probably a student of Thales. A man called Anaximander.Anaximander took the basic frame of Thaless thought and put his own ideas into it. By this I mean he also believed that there was a source substance. so far Anaximanders materialistic approach had an advantage over Thaless by separating his explanatory entity from the entities that need explaining5. Anaximanders physis did not face some o f the problems that Thaless did, such as how is fire explained if everything is water? His explanatory entity was the focal point of his thought. He called it the unbound or apeiron. We cannot observe the Unbound but its population Anaximander infers because of its explanatory role. This idea of the Unbound had solutions to two problems faced by Thaless physis 1) How does the basic substance give rise to the plurality of objects we observe around us? and 2)How does the world maintain itself?.His solution to problem 2) was the natural reflection of physical law, imposing a lawfulness upon continually struggling opposites, and thereby maintaining equilibrium within the cosmos6. And 1) In Anaximanders system the apeiron is both(prenominal) the source out of which everything derives and also the unifier within nature7. I would analogous to also note startling evidence of Anaximanders genius is his work in zoogony. His intelligent observation that man (with nine months gestation and numerous years helplessness) could not have survived the primitive conditions without protection of some kind8 Shows for sight to Darwins theory of evolution.HeraclitusThis essay will now deal with Heraclitus as his approach to answering what the nature of the universe was slightly different. The advantage of his philosophy was that it shed light on ideas that hadnt been considered before. Heraclitus theory was that there was a law by which all things abided which he called the logos. He believed that everything was in opposition the strife between these opposites was what kept balance making all things one. He also claimed that everything was in a constant state of change, like a river is constantly flowing or in constant combine it is always the same river but always completely different. Heraclitus thought possess a comprehensive unity which seems completely new. Practically allaspects of the world are explained systematically, in relation to a central discovery that natural cha nges of all kinds are regular and balanced, and that the cause of this balance is fire, the common region of things that was also termed their countersign.9 It is this idea of fire being that is the main disadvantage of Heraclituss approach. It is like taking a step forward with the logos and wherefore going to steps back to the idea that one of the elements is the basis of all things. Although the idea of an all consuming fire does describe his Logos healthful it works better as a metaphor to describe the Logos than fire being the Logos itself.ConclusionTo conclude the materialistic approach of the pre Socratics had many advantages. It was the catalyst for modern thought and it can be seen as the beginning of philosophy and science as we know it today. The use of rational argument over super-natural forms of authority showed that peoples thoughts could be progressed and alter by people to come after them. It is true that philosophy is a continuous dialogue that continues throu gh the generations which has created a subject that can be said to define humanities search truth. The progression of thought because of this approach has lead to how we think today. The essay has outlined how Thales, Heraclitus and Anaximander made observations about the world that showed rational approaches to describe what the temporal world is. We still use this approach to find the Higgs Boson however we have the equipment to test our theories. It was a disadvantage of the pre Socratics that their theories were often far beyond their means of testing. But in conclusion the materialistic approach of the pre Socratic philosophers was a step in the right worry for philosophy.Bibliography Kirk and Ravin, The pre-Socratic Philosophers A Critical History With A Selection of Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1957SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009) Kathleen Freeman The Pre -Socratic Philosophers A Companion to Diels, Fragmante der Vorsackratiker (Oxford common basil Blackwell 1946) Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers Vol. 1 Thales to Zeno (Routledge and Kegan Ltd 1979)1 Kirk and Ravin, The Presocratic Philosophers A Critical History With A Selection of Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1957) .p.73 2 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009). 3 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009). 4 Kathleen Freeman The Pre-Socratic Philosophers A Companion to Diels, Fragmante der Vorsackratiker (Oxford Basil Blackwell 1946) 5 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009). 6 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. htt p//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009). 7 SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on Presocratics. SparkNotes LLC. n.d.. http//www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/presocratics/ (accessed October 23, 2009). 8 Kirk and Ravin, The Presocratic Philosophers A Critical History With A Selection of Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1957) .p.142 9 Kirk and Ravin, The Presocratic Philosophers A Critical History With A Selection of Texts (Cambridge University Press, 1957).p.212