Monday, 4/11/11
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1. Considering the beliefs of the pre-Socratic philosophers: what are the basic building blocks of life? What are examples to prove that these items are the basic building blocks? What are examples to disprove that these are the basic building blocks?
2. How can 21st century science be used to prove that Heraclitus or Parmenides were correct? Is it "cheating" in your opinion to use modern day science to evaluate the philosophies of the Ancient Greeks?
Write a minimum of a full paragraph to answer of the prompts above. Don't just state your opinion - SUPPORT it. You are trying to make a persuasive argument.
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17 comments:
FIRST!
I do not believe that there is one particular sort of "building block" for life, but because science has improved, we now can see how atoms work and know that they make up everything. Water and oxygen are important, of course, but they aren't the most basic form. Water and oxygen both need atoms, and water is in mostly everything, but it isn't what makes up the whole world.
Thales, the Founder of the Ionian school of philosophy, believed that water was the basis of how things are different but similar. In his day many factors supported this theory: for example, if one digs deep enough, a water resevoir will be reached. Secondly, water is needed for survival so without it, all things cease to exist. Unfortunately for Thales, he didn’t have science but his arguments could still be countered philosophically. His student, Anaximander, argued that if everything were made of water then everything would also be wet. The world is also varied in composition and therefore impossible to deem all things made of one familiar thing.
2. 21st century science can do a lot to prove or disprove the philosophies of Heraclitus or Parmenides. Heraclitus strongly believed in change, and stated "You cannot step twice into the same stream." Parmenides had the opposite belief. He believes in "the way of truth," and the "what-is" factor. We can test these beliefs by experimenting with change, and the idea of a single reality. I don't think that it would be "cheating" if these philosophies were tested using modern day science. It is important that modern civilization can form its own beliefs, and make sure that what is believed to be true is actually true. We should continue to keep ourselves informed, and practice making humanity as knowledgeable as possible. If we don't test the philosophies of early philosophers, and they were wrong, this would be a loss for our civilization.
According to pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Thales, there is an underlying basis that makes up our world. According to Thales, this is water. He argued this by saying that water is needed to maintain life, which is true. This is also true of fire and air, other necessities of life. Knowing what we know now, we realize that it is impossible for everything in this world to be made up of water, air or fire. Everything is made up of something, and that something is atoms. What I do find very interesting about one of Thales' theories is his views on the 'stuff' of this world. He believed that gods didn't live in the stuff of this world, but that the stuff has the power to cause change. I think this is true in many ways. The different objects that are around today (and that really DO make up the building blocks of today's society) make a daily difference in the lives of the citizens of this planet.
In the minds of the pre-Socratic philosophers, all the universe was composed of one or all of the four elements, Fire, Wind, Water and, Earth, in addition to the idea of love. These four elements were thought to be mixed as paints on a pallet to bring about all the myriad objects which the philosophers minds percieved. This idea has a ring of truth to it, as science has examined and found the elements of which the world is comprised, but even deeper levels exsist beyond the elements, in the additional elementary parts of the atom. Yet even these basic elements are not the true bulding blocks of reality, they are merely thought to be composed of the true building block, the God Particle, a single type of matter, from which all other things are created. But in truth, this is still not the only thing contained within our universe. this theory does not include energy, neither what it is, nor how it works. So ultimately the theory of elements is true, but not in the way they so imagined, but a division between matter and energy.
2. How can 21st century science be used to prove that Heraclitus or Parmenides were correct? Is it "cheating" in your opinion to use modern day science to evaluate the philosophies of the Ancient Greeks?
Science is a beneficial tool that advances philosophical understanding in a promising and “non-cheating” manner. As explained by Jeffrey Olen, science is a branch of understanding that developed from philosophical pursuit of knowledge in order to develop concrete proof from methodical testing of the sensory world. By utilizing science to test philosophical theories we can have confidence in our knowledge which is lacking in typical philosophical theorizing. Criticism of science as “cheating” by looking at the way the world actually works depends on the flawed notion that philosophy is confined to an academic and impractical sphere, where any theory must be untestable in order to be legitimate. These are exactly the flawed conditions that open philosophy to derision by those pursuing more concrete studies: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/philosophy.png
I do not believe that 21st century science can be used to prove or disprove Heraclitus and Paramenides. Because both were without the scientific knowledge necessary to evaluate change and motion, they could not define it accurately. All they had was their perception. It would be unfair to look back on their conclusions with a 21st century mindset because our perception of reality also has changed. Ancient Greek philosophies regarding the composition of our physical surroundings also should not be proven or disproven by modern sciences. Because philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes didn't have electron microscopes and advanced biological knowledge, it would be unfair to judge their conclusions as "inaccurate." They took their observations and made judgments based on them.
The belief of what basic building blocks of life are varied from philosopher to philosopher, yet each used the ideas of their predecessors to reach their conclusions. Thales believed it was water, since it existed deep in the earth. Anaximander believed it was not a physical thing but the boundless. Anaximenes thought it was air and Pythagoras came closer to most with his belief that it was made up of numbers and patterns. Heraclitus and Parmenides, despite their lack of understanding modern science, came up with two ideas that are accepted by science today. Heraclitus compared the basic stuff to fire, which means that it is not a thing so much as it is a process. Parmenides searched for the distinction between reality and appearance and came to the conclusion that reality is eternal, therefore nothing comes in or out of existence. These ideas correlate directly to the ideas of atoms, which rearrange themselves and are not created nor destroyed. Atoms are the real building blocks of matter, but without the modern sciences we have today, it is miraculous that philosophers at their time could reach such conclusions!
Thales believed that water was the “basic stuff” that made up everything. It makes sense that he would think this because water is everywhere. Water makes up a huge percentage of the Earth’s surface, a large percentage of humans, and it is in the sky, on land, and underground. Thales’ idea can be disproved because there are things that exist with the absence of water since dried cherries and raisins exist, even though they don’ have water in them. Anaximander thought that the “boundless” made up everything, and that the “boundless” had no characteristics but was instead able to become things that had their own unique properties. Very small things like atoms can create very large things like steel buildings and trees, but we know that atoms have their own individual characteristics. Anaximenes disagreed with Thales, and believed that air was the “basic stuff” that made life. Air is necessary for living things so it is reasonable to think that it makes life, but not everything on Earth is comprised of just air, so it cannot be the basic building block.
I believe that there is in at least some form a single basic unit that all things in the universe can be reduced to but I don't think that my basic comprehension or even modern day techniques are close finding it. It seems like everything is infinitely derivable for example molecules to atoms to charged particles etc. and this makes me hesitant to commit to any one possibility.
Thales believed that the objects we see and interact with in this world are made up of water. He thought that this would explain the relative stability and order in the world. Another defining reason that he thought this was because h20 is of prime importance to the maintenance of life. I don’t agree with this view. Not because we know scientifically that everything is in fact not made of water, but because it seems as though he is suggesting that everything contains a living aspect to it. Naturally and organically this makes sense, I would agree that plants, trees, and other sources of nature have a living condition to them. But I have trouble convincing myself that man made substances could have that characteristic. Perhaps his views were illustrating more organic substances. I agree more on the lines of Anaximander’s views in that the world is far too varied to be composed of any one familiar stuff.
Well depending on who you talk to you’d get a pretty varied answer. Thales was convinced that water was the basis of everything, while Anaximenes figured it was air, and Anaximander thought it was nothing familiar at all. The seemingly random diversity of conclusions is surprising at first but each is supported with a reasonable train of thought. Thales saw water’s omnipresence in the sea and well digging, and its important to life as evidence. Anaximenes viewed air as the basic element only changing out of recognizable air as it thickened, as with condensation. Anaximander believed the stuff couldn’t be anything familiar otherwise it would have the qualities of that familiar item, ie. if everything is basically water why are some things dry.
As some other people have mentioned these early deductions bare a lot of similarities to scientific discoveries to come, ie. atoms, and paved the way for the questioning of the world we live in and experience by philosophers thereafter. Pretty cool for some dead guys!
Modern science and it’s findings can be used to support, not prove, either Heraclitus’ or Parmenides’ beliefs. Parmenides believed that nothing is changing and that our sense of change is illusory. This can be shown by the fact that everything is made of a couple basic building blocks: mainly protons, neutrons, and electrons. More support for Parmenides belief is that we have found that the universe is governed by a couple unchanging laws, and while we may not have found all of the laws or understand how they all work, we do know that if we trip gravity is going to pull us down. Heraclitus believed that the world was in constant flux and nothing was ever the same. Support for Heraclitus’ theory also comes from the microscopic world, because all molecules are in constant motion because that is what heat is, and the only way that a molecule can stop moving is if it is cooled to absolute zero, which is impossible. This constant motion means that everythings composition is always changing and never the same. Also, the electrons that orbit the nucleus are never in the same position and the current model for them, the electron cloud theory, only shows where an electron probably will be because they are changing position so much and they can do weird things. While the world is made up of some very basic building blocks, how they are put together and how those interact with each other are constantly changing. I wouldn’t say it is cheating to use 21st century science to look at their ideas, because their ideas are timeless. I don’t think there will ever be a time when we can say definitively whether there is no change or if there is only change and be able to prove it, because if there is no change, how could we prove that there is none because that would change things? And if there is only change, couldn’t the fact that there is only change itself change? Some of the arguments they had may seem foolish now, but their ideas are still valid and always will be... That is unless something changes.
The pre-Socratic philosophers had varied theories as to what the basic building blocks of life were. Thales believed that water made up the basic building blocks of life. His reasoning stemmed from the fact that water was the most important thing to many living things and that water was everywhere. His theories were disproved however because if everything was made of water, how could dry stuff be explained. Anaximander believed that the world was made up of an uncharacterizable entity which he called “the boundless.” Anaximines believed that world was made up of varying densities of air. Pythagoras believed that the world was made up of rational numbers; his theories were later disproved with the discovery of irrational numbers.
Thales believed everything was made of water. To support this, he had a few lines of thought. First, he reasoned that since all life we know of needs water to survive, that it must have a special significance beyond being an ordinary substance. Secondly, he observed that if you dig down far enough, you’ll reach water in the ground, and thought this might perhaps be some sort of fundamental decay or something similar. One critic of this idea named Anaximenes thought that it did not make sense that, if everything was made of water, there existed object that were not wet. Anaximenes believed that everything was made of air, which resulted in different characteristics via state changes. Another pre-Socratic philosopher, Pythagoras, believed everything was made up of numbers, or physical manifestations of numbers that manifested as patters. Two other philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, believed in small, fundamental building blocks of all matter, called atoms.
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