The birth of philosophy and science

Though the architecture of Greece is one of its visible legacies, some of the most significant Greek contributions to the modern world cannot be seen: democracy, for instance, and philosophy. The latter word comes from two Greek roots that together mean “love of knowledge.” Originally, the term was applied to all forms of study. Even today, when a person completes a doctor's degree, the highest educational level in most disciplines, he or she most often receives a “doctorate of philosophy” degree, which is what the term “PhD” stands for in Latin.

The word philosophy is used in many ways, but in its purest sense it means a search for a general understanding of values and of reality. It is interesting to observe that in the century from 600 to 500 b. c., as Western philosophy was come into existence in Greece, Eastern philosophy had its birth with Confucius and Lao-tzu (low-TSOO). However, Eastern and Western approaches to thought are radically different from one another, so much so that they are rarely studied together. The concerns of Confucius and Lao-tzu, after all, were quite different from those of the first Western thinker, who sought to identify the underlying nature of the world.

The conclusion reached by Thales (THAY-leez; 625?-547? B. C.), who lived in the Ionian city of Miletus (muh-LEE-tuhs), was that “everything is water.” In other words, Thales thought that the whole world is in a fluid state, like water. Thales had first come to fame for predicting a solar eclipse on May 28, 585 b. c.; later he made several advances in the area of geometry (jee-AHM-eh-tree). He was the first true scientist: with his statement about water, he was developing the first hypothesis (hie-PAH-thuh-sis), a Greek word that means a statement subject to scientific testing for truth or falsehood.

Yet he was not talking only about the physical world, as scientists do, but also about what people in a later time would have called the mental or spiritual worlds—the realms of philosophy. In Thales's time, no one had any idea that there was a distinction between those worlds. Indeed, he was the first in a long line of thinkers (a line that has continued to the present day) concerned not only with philosophy, but also with mathematics and/or science.

Another great philosopher-mathematician was Pythagoras (puh-THAG-uh-ruhs; c. 580-c. 500 b. c.) Born in Samos (SAH-mohs), an island off the coast of Asia Minor, he settled at the other end of the Greek world, Crotona (kruh-TOH-nuh) in southern Italy (then called Magna Graecia). He is most famous for the Pythagorean Theorem (puh-thag-uh-REE-uhn THEE-uh-ruhm), which states that in a triangle with a right angle (i. e., a 90-degree angle), the square of the length of the hypotenuse (hie-PAHT-eh-noos), or longest side, is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. This was far from his only contribution to thought, however, and though none of his actual writings have survived, the record left by his followers shows that he had far-reaching ideas on everything from music to government.

The lack of surviving writings by Pythagoras is a problem common with many ancient Greek thinkers and writers: only a tiny portion of the plays by Greek dramatists, for instance, survive. Likewise, only fragments remain from Heraclitus (hair-uh-KLY-tuhs; c. 540-c. 480 b. c.) Instead of water, Heraclitus maintained that the world was made of fire—that everything is conflict and change. His most famous statement was: “You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are ever flowing on.”

Heraclitus has been compared with the Pythia because he was often so hard to understand. Parmenides (pahr-MEHN-eh-deez; born c. 515), who like several others was a scientist as well as a philosopher, was quite the opposite. He came from Elea (E-lee-uh) in southern Italy. Parmenides introduced the use of logic in philosophy. His thoughts survive primarily in two fragmentary poems contrasting “The Way of Opinion” with “The Way of Truth.” In the latter poem, a goddess states the central idea of Parmenides' work: “only Being is; not-being cannot be.”

In contrast to Heraclitus, Parmenides saw everything as part of a single, harmonious whole called “Being.” Because everything was part of everything else, in his view, nothing ever changed. His disciple Zeno of Elea (ZEE-noh; c. 495-c. 430) tried to prove this idea with his famous paradoxes (PAIR-uh-dahk-sehz). A paradox occurs when something seems contradictory or opposed to common sense but is in fact correct. Zeno's paradoxes, however, failed to proved that motion is impossible. Instead, they only proved the flexibility of logic and set off whole new debates. Even at this early stage in the history of philosophy, there were many schools of thought. Disagreement about the nature of the world would only widen as time went on.