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When I learned a little about philosophy, I found a very interesting thing, there are a lot of important philosophical thoughts in history, they continue one after another, it is a process of constantly breaking through the philosophical views of the previous generation, like soap bubbles, one after another.
The Miletus school of ancient Greek natural philosophy, the philosophical ideas of the three philosophical sages is a good example.
The three great sages were Thales, Anaximande, and Anaximene.
Among them, Thales was the teacher of Anaximande, and Anaximander was the teacher of Anaximene.
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The Three Sages of the Miletus School
1. Thales said that water is the source of all things (to understand Thales, please look back: Greek natural philosophy, why Thales can become the founder of Western philosophy), that is, everything comes from water, and returning to water is a positive expression.
2. Then Anaximander objected that water is a finite thing and cannot be the source of all things (to learn about Anaximander please see: An Important Milestone in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Anaximander and his "Apyran").
Anaximander believed that there was an infinite thing behind the water, and it was that thing that gave birth to water, and Anaximander gave that thing the name "Apéran", which belongs to an intangible, infinite thing, but it is not clear what exactly this "Apéran" is.
3. Anaximenes then continued Anaximande's line of thought, injecting a definite attribute "qi" into "Apéron", a name that still sounds very nihilistic, but already has connotations, and is equivalent to a fusion of Thales and Anaximande's ideas.
In general, the simple understanding is:
Thales believes that "water is the source of all things";
According to Anaximande, "Apyran is the source of all things";
Anaximenes believed that "qi is the source of all things."
The first two have been specifically written and described, and today's protagonist is the third.
Anaximeni
Anaximenes (Greek: Ava € lp 6 v bark; c. 585 BC – 525 BC), nearly twenty years younger than Anaximande, was the last important representative of the Miletus school.
There is no record of his life and actual activities, except that he wrote a book that was later seen by Aristotle's disciples, but by now, only a little fragment remains.
Anaximande's greatest insight was that "nothing tangible can be the source of all things," because anything tangible has a prescriptiveness that is destined to lead from one tangible thing to another, just as trees cannot become stone.
Therefore, Anaximander said that the origin of all things must be an intangible, non-prescriptive, infinite thing, and only with such properties can it give birth to all things and be qualified to be the origin of all things.
His underlying logic is that everything in the world is a "finite" thing that arises from "infinite" things, that is, "infinite" gives birth to "finite";
To put it more simply, "nothing" gives birth to "have";
To put it simply, "nothing" is the origin of all things.
Thales' greatness lies in "freeing himself from the shackles of God to study existence", turning mankind from creationism to naturalism, leaving behind the ancient saying "water is the source of all things";
The greatness of Anaximander lies in challenging Thales "nothing tangible can be the origin of all things", and the inquiry of origin from the study of tangible and finite things to the study of "intangible and infinite", laying the direction and foundation of philosophical research, leaving the famous "Apyron".
Anaximenes' philosophical ideas are in line with those of his teacher, and it is on this basis that he gave his understanding of the origin of all things, which he believed to be "qi".
Qi is the source of all things
On the surface, the phrase "qi is the source of all things" seems to have regressed from the definition of amorphous form as his teacher Anaximander said.
But in fact, Anaximenes was a big step forward, believing that the teacher's "nothing tangible can be the origin of all things", but his teacher did not explain what this "apéran" was, but only gave the concept in a negative way.
Anaximene's clear statement that "the origin of the world is qi", in fact, this is a continuation of his teacher's identity, and it is a clear statement to "Apera", which is equivalent to saying that "Qi" is "Apera".
The attribute of "qi" is that it is invisible, intangible, and amorphous, but it has its own internal prescriptive natural substance.
In our common sense, nature is full of "qi", but none of us can see or touch it, that is, we admit that we have this thing, but we cannot clearly say what it is.
In this sense, Anaximenes fused Thales with the ideas of his teacher Anaximande, a substance that possesses Thales' "intrinsic prescriptiveness" and conforms to what Anaximander called "amorphous and infinite."
It is equivalent to being able to affirm the expression and deny the expression, which is a typical dialectical way of thinking, and it makes sense to say it.
Just like the Huashan faction in the Xiaoao Rivers and Lakes, it was divided into two factions, "Sword Sect" and "Airbender", the former focused on practicing tricks, the latter focused on practicing internal skills, disobeyed each other, and finally was unified by Ling Hu Chong's "Dugu Nine Swords".
Anaximenes' "qi" is equivalent to creating an original "Dugu Nine Swords" on the basis of the two predecessors, unifying the theories of Thales and Anaximande.
Before that, Thales's "water" could only be expressed affirmatively, Anaximande's "Apiron" could only be negative, and Anaximene's "chi" dialectically combined them.
Therefore, the theory that "qi is the source of all things" can be regarded as unifying the theories of Thales and Anaximande.
"Thinning" and "cohesion"
In explaining the power of mutual transformation between the "qi," the origin of all things, and all things, Anaximenes added two more movements to his teacher.
Let's first see how his teacher explained the mutual movement between "Apailang" and all things.
Initially, in addition to proposing that "water is the source of all things", Thales also believed that "everything has a soul", but what Thales said about the soul only refers to a function connected with matter.
In Anaximande, he developed the interaction between Thales' soul and matter into an important opportunity for the mutual transformation between "Apiron" and all things--"hot and cold + wet and dry".
In his philosophy, "Apailang" itself has two opposing forces, "cold and hot" and "dry and wet", and it is these four attributes that separate everything from "Apailang" through different combinations.
For example, in his concept, the combination of "cold" and "dry" produces the element of earth, the combination of "cold" and "wet" produces the element of water, the combination of "hot" and "dry" produces the element of fire, and the combination of "hot" and "wet" produces the element of air.
It was then fateful that all things emerge from Apyran and eventually return to Apailang.
On the basis of the teacher's "cold, hot, dry and wet", Anaximenei removed "dry and wet" and replaced them with "thin" and "condensed", and he felt that qi itself has the two properties of "cold and hot".
When cold works, the qi begins to condense, forming wind and clouds;
Further condensation, it becomes water;
When the water re-agglomerates, it becomes earth and stone.
Conversely, when heat acts, earth is sparsely dispersed into water, water is thinned into gas, and gas is sparsely dispersed into fire.
His principle is that under the different effects of hot and cold, "qi" can be transformed into all things, and then from all things back to qi.
Through this principle, he connected the most basic elements of water, fire, earth and qi through the fusion of hot and cold.
His principle contains two very important meanings.
First, if "qi" becomes "fire" after being heated and diluted, it means that "fire" is something thinner than "qi", and the thinner thing has the characteristics of amorphousness, so that it can be deduced that "fire" is a material element more original than "qi".
Later, the philosopher Haolaclitus proposed that "fire is the origin of all things".
From this, we can also see that the context of philosophical thought is not a hypothesis and reasoning out of thin air, but is all based on a solid framework of predecessor theories or doctrines.
Thales' "Water is the source of all things" is based on theology;
Anaximande's "Aperan", based on Thales's "Water is the source of all things";
Anaximene's "Qi is the source of all things" is based on Anaximande's "Apairan";
Haolacrit's "Fire is the Source of All Things" is based on Anaximenes' "Qi is the Source of All Things."
Philosophy is always like this, one link after another, interlocked, in order to understand the thoughts of a philosopher, you must first understand what he is discussing and studying;
To know what he is discussing and studying, we must first understand what theoretical framework his knowledge is based on.
The layman looks lively, and the reason why he can't understand philosophy when he is new to philosophy is largely because he didn't understand it from scratch.
The "director" behind things
Well, then again, let's look at the second meaning.
Another implication of the theory of cohesion and dilution has a more thought-provoking revelatory effect.
In the process of transformation of qi into all things, the degree of condensation (thickness) and thinness (thinness) determines the nature of things.
In the words we are more familiar with today, that is, "the prescriptiveness of quantity" determines "the nature of things".
The transformation from fire to air, to water and earth, is determined by the degree of heat and cold, or dispersion.
There is a very deep idea in this, that is, behind the things that are transformed on the surface, there is something that does not appear, and this non-appearance determines those things that appear.
Here, water, fire, earth, and air actually become actors, and the real decision of their fate is the director who does not appear, and this director is the "degree or quantity of hot and cold gathering".
"It" really determines the development of the entire plot. Therefore, "the degree of hot and cold dispersion" and "the number between hot and cold dispersion" are the real "origin of all things", which determines the dispersion clutch and mutual transformation between all things.
It is this insight that implies another way of thinking about the origin of the inquiry, that is, "to find the form or essence behind the phenomenon", which later became "metaphysics".
It was also in this ideological context that the founder of Greek metaphysics, "Pythagoras", appeared.
He and Anaximenes were contemporaries, and for a time studied at Anaximenes, but later took a completely different philosophical path from Anaximenes.
But in theory between the two of them, some hidden similarities from the same lineage can still be seen.
Grounded in cosmology
In fact, about Anaximeni, it is worth writing a lot about.
In ancient Greece at that time, he used "qi", a more empirical and empirical substance, to fuse Thales' symbolic "water" with Anaximande's overly abstract "indeterminacy".
This is a substance that we ancient Chinese thinkers also regarded as the origin and fundamental composition principle of the world. It can be seen that at the earliest philosophical level of Eastern and Western thought, the thinking of research and inquiry is generally the same.
Moreover, Anaximeni not only integrated the ideas of his predecessors, but also made a more in-depth study of the internal mechanism of world change with the origin of "qi".
The "condensation" and "evacuation" of "qi" that he mentioned are important to the concept also because it goes deep into the internal dynamic mechanism of the change of things, portrays how opposites generate and transform each other from a dynamic point of view, and pushes dialectical thinking to a new height.
Later natural philosophy, as long as it talks about the generation of things, is to use this pair of concepts, but more refined and reasonable, people have more verifiable methods and tools.
The "opposition and struggle" connotations in Heraclitus' "fire" and "logos" are actually an extension of this idea of Anaximenes.
Including the "elemental theory" and "combination and separation of elements" of Anaxagora and Empedocles, they are all evolutionary manifestations of Anaximeni's "condensation and evacuation of qi", the basic cosmic change mechanism;
The "union and separation of atoms" discussed by the atomist school is also a further development of the basic mechanism of Anaximeni's "condensation and evacuation of gas".
Anaximeni uses "qi" and the "condensation" and "evacuation" mechanism of "qi" to explain the formation and change of everything in the universe, which is more basic than heat and cold;
The formation and change of all things in the universe is achieved on the basis of highly variable qi, through the evacuation and condensation of qi, which of course cannot but be said to be a further deepening and development of the early Greek cosmological ideas.
At this point, Anaximeni used "qi" and the "condensation" and "evacuation" mechanisms of "qi" to lay the theoretical model of "cosmogenesis", which had a far-reaching impact on later natural philosophy and cosmology.
Of course, in addition to the laying of this basic theoretical model, Anaximeni also used this theoretical model to give a preliminary and completely "scientific" explanation of various natural phenomena.
For example, he spoke of the causes of wind, rain, hail, and snow, and it is clear that his model of evacuation and condensation is very easy to explain these causes.
He put it this way: "When the air becomes thicker, clouds are created, when more gather rain is squeezed out, and once the falling water gathers together, hail is formed, and when something windy is contained in the water, snow is formed." ”
Even at the level of modern meteorology, there are many rational elements of this explanation.
Challenge God's position
But the question now is, if everything in the world, all natural phenomena, can be explained by qi, through the evacuation and condensation of qi, then where is God?
Because, in the past, these things were God's patent, and God was their cause.
But now, they all come to a reasonable explanation through something that can be grasped entirely empirically, so do people still need God?
So, from this interpretation of Anaximenes, it is easy to deduce a world of complete atheism, and this is a great advance in the history of Greek reason.
In fact, Anaximeni himself boldly came to this conclusion.
Augustine wrote of Anaximenes' thoughts in The City of God:
"Anaximenes attributed all the causes of things to infinite qi and did not deny the existence of gods, or ignore them in silence; But he does not believe that qi is created by them, but that they arise from qi. ”
In this way, not only are the gods no longer the cause of all things, but they themselves are to be explained by qi.
Anaximenes even asserted, "Qi is God."
Looking at the further development of this theory in the later schools of natural philosophy, and the great panic it caused to the religious convictions of ordinary people in Greece, one can understand the revolutionary significance of Anaximenes' thought.
The three philosophers of the Miletus school, as the beginning of ancient Greek philosophy, laid the philosophical tradition of Greek cosmological genesis with their in-depth study of the changes in the world.
In particular, Anaximenes made a fundamental theoretical elaboration of the internal mechanism and principles of the entire cosmic change, and the later Greek cosmogeny theory was carried out by drawing on such basic principles and models laid down by him.
For example, the elemental theory of Empedocles and Anaxagoras;
the atomism of Lyukipo and Democritus;
However, due to the gradual formation of the metaphysical ontological line of thought beginning with Parmenides, these later theories stood on a completely new position and had a completely different philosophical vision from the earlier cosmogenics.
This was the revolution of sanity in the Greek world, represented by the school of Miletus, that took place in the 6th century BC.