In their attempt “to explain the world in terms of its own inherent principles” (1), the first philosophers mainly dealt with cosmological problems, but also ethical and theological ones. Why exactly? Firstly, because their desire to know knew no boundaries. Secondly, because they believed these questions were interconnected, just as all existing things were. In doing so, they were again the inheritors of another particular aspect of mythical thinking, which was keen to detect analogies and explain interactions between the natural and the supernatural realms.
Before we go any further in this little account, in which the emphasis is placed on the innovative aspect of philosophy, it may be useful to recall that ancient Greek philosophy never ceased, throughout its history, to measure itself against mythical thought, sometimes to criticize and reject it, but also, like Plato did, to borrow from it something of its evocative force, and share in its power to grasp the mysterious depth of things. That said, it’s undeniable that a group of perceptive men has forced the Greek people to drastically change its outlook on the divine.
This group of inquisitive minds comprised all Presocratic thinkers, including the very first ones, who lived in Miletus. In the 6th century BC, Miletus was a prosperous coastal city of Asia Minor (Present day Turkey). Between c. 640 and c. 523, three important philosophers/scientists (the distinction between science and philosophy didn’t yet exist) lived there, making this port of Ionia the cradle of Greek philosophy.
Their names were Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. The three of them attempted to answer the same question, based on the same method of examination of the physical world. That question was: “What “single enduring material stuff” (2) is nature made of?” The idea was that, starting with an acute observation of the natural world, one could rationally determine what basic element every natural creature was made of.
The question the Milesians asked was revolutionary. It implied that there was not only a chaotic plurality of things and causes in the universe, but rather that what they called the “cosmos” (the Greek word for “order [of the universe]”) was characterised by its fundamental unity and harmony. Which means, firstly, that all things were forming an orderly and beautiful totality (i.e. a single, though complex, entity) and secondly, that this one entity was explicable by one single systematic physical cause. To better appreciate its scope, we can rephrase the Milesian interrogation like this: “What is the primary physical cause of all what is in nature, understood as a unified and harmonious, though complex, orderly system?” Thus began the history of science.
The three Milesian philosophers diverged in their proto-scientific responses. Thales concluded that all things were made of water, since water is absolutely vital to all living things. Anaximander had a more abstract and complex approach, when he suggested that the archè (i.e. the first principal, the root cause of everything) had to be construed as an “undefined” (we’ll get back to that somewhere else). Ananximenes, for his part, put forward the idea that “air” was the material cause of all natural realities, since all living things were sustained by a “breath” (a “pneuma”, in Greek). These physical explanations, based on the study of the elements, shouldn’t lead us to the conclusion that Milesians were “materialists” in the modern philosophical sense of the word.
Unlike some Modern scientists, they never held it to be true that the world was made of matter alone, to the exclusion of any other principle. Their views were “materialists” in the sense that their inquiry, (guided by some fundamental methodological options) relied on empirical research, and therefore on the examination of matter. In order to explain a physical effect, they looked for a physical cause. But one must never overlook the fact that their cosmological theories, however “materialistic” they may appear to us in comparison to mythology, “encompass what we today call physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology, astronomy, embryology, and psychology (and other areas of natural inquiry), as well as theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.” (3)
This remark helps us understand why Thales, for instance, also shared the view that “all things are full of gods”, thus acknowledging that the divine was everywhere at work in the physical world. The same also thought that the “psychè” (the soul) was “mingled” to everything that is. Beyond nature and beneath the surface of matter, non-physical “forces” were at work, he assumed. This is why we cannot describe him or others Presocatics as proto-scientists whose theories have anticipated those of the atheistic positivists of the 19th and 20th centuries. And this is why a fair presentation of the Presocratics must always highlight both the embryonic or unfinished aspect of their views, and the complexity (and sometimes confusion) we find in them.
Consequently, we cannot declare one-sidedly that theological matters didn’t matter anymore because of the new Presocratics approach. A more systematic and methodological use of reason, characteristic of the philosophical endeavour, and it’s demythologizing effect, only opened the way to the development of a new type of knowledge about the divine. Through their sometimes very surprising and bizarre reflections of the world, the Presocratic enquiries progressively shaped both the way later thinkers would formulate the problem of God and the way rational answers would be given to it. Their pioneering works gave birth and contributed tremendously to the development of a specialist branch of philosophy traditionally labeled as "natural theology".
From this turning point in the history of Western thought, the desire for God - a desire “written in the human heart” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church - takes more and more clearly the form of an ever deeper and purer empirical, logical and rational quest, aimed at acquiring knowledge about this "first principle" we name God. After an exclusive reliance on mythos, the logos becomes the privileged instrument of this search. Up until Aristotle's culminating speculations, collected in his Metaphysics and in his Ethics, the desire for God will have the countenance of reason. And contemplation (“theoria”, in Greek), will be defined as the ultimate form of human activity, thus preparing the way to the coming Christian spiritual life.
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Quotes (1) (2) and (3) are from Prof. Patricia Curd’s presentation of the Presocratics we find in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presocratics/#Bib)