Presocratic “Science”
The keywords or phrases selected are Anaximander obtained from the Presocratic lecture, Titans sourced from Hesiod, and Isocrates found in Rihll.
The new source found is; Blundell, Sue. The Origins of Civilization in Greek and Roman Thought (Routledge Revivals). Routledge, 2016.
Presocratic philosophers are the western thinkers preceding Socrates but encompassing some thinkers who were roughly contemporary with Socrates, like Protagoras. To the Presocratics, the application of the concept “philosophy” is typically different from how most people currently think of philosophy. The new source helps in understanding the Presocratic philosophers developed a new understanding of nature and natural philosophy as it depicts that the idea of nature as a means to explain the existence of the cosmos and the identity, development, and behavior of the entities within it emerged in Greek philosophers who precede Platos. Besides being antitelelogical, the Presocratic polysemous concept of nature serves a crucial initial step in the development of early n forms of purposiveness in nature into the more robust teleological conceptions found in Plato and Aristotle. Thus, the idea of nature gets more explicitly purposive during the Presocratic period.
The approach of the study of nature seen in Hesiod’s Theogony is mythological cosmogonies. Hesiod strives to make sense of natural phenomena by personifying them as gods. However, the approach to study in the new source is different since it is a scientific paradigm, and the philosopher addresses natural phenomena in a rational and scientific term. For instance, the author of the new source scientifically tries to analyze the origin of human beings, which is different from the approach of Herod, who mythically explains the origin of nature. According to the source, there is no specific reference to the creation of the human race, but it is assumed to exist.
The philosophers developed a new method to support understanding. They analyzed the mythology of the origin of nature and the human race and helped people understand the origin of the human race from a different perspective. For instance, scholars questioned why the Hesiodic myth ignored the physical creation of humans. The scholars help increase the understanding of the origin of nature and the origin of humans by improving people’s knowledge that there is a supernatural being behind human creation.
The philosophers taught their ideas using methods like asking thought-provoking questions in learning institutions. Thought-provoking questions were meant to challenge people’s underlying assumptions. The philosophers also taught their Rihll by writing philosophical texts.