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This 3 page paper considers the idea of arche (first principles) in pre-Socratic philosophy, and how it later developed in Socratic, Platonic and Aristotelian thought. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HV1stPrn.rtf
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"origin" or "command" or sometimes together: "the commanding origin" (Protevi, 1998). The pre-Socratic philosophers were looking for arche, which they considered would do two things, "simplify and unify" (Protevi, 1998).
Principles (arche) simplify things by providing simple explanations for complex processes; and they unify things by reducing many divergent explanations into one common one (Protevi, 1998). There were many pre-Socratic
philosophers who worked on the problem of finding arche, but Protevi mentions three in particular, who are old friends: Thales, Anaximander and Heraclitus. Weve seen them before: Thales and his
theories of water being the basis of everything; Anaximader and his "Boundless" material that was the foundation of the world; and Heraclitus and his ideas of logic, embodied in fire-their
thinking seems a bit silly today, but the fact remains that they were trying to find rational explanations for the way the Universe worked, and they were doing so without
relying on the idea of gods and goddesses as arche. They were looking for something else. Thales idea of water as the basic matter from which the universe is made
is not as silly as it sounds; water and land "intermingle in the Eastern Mediterranean" and the human body contains fluids that are vital for survival (Protevi, 1998). Given this,
water becomes a logical choice for the basis of the universe. But Thales went even further: he stated that "the principle of all things is water," and in so doing,
"went beyond describing the properties of things to articulate a principle explaining things" (Protevi, 1998). (Protevi also tells us that Thales fell down a well while looking at the stars,
a walking definition of the absent-minded philosopher.) Anaximanders candidate for the first principle was far less familiar than water; he "proposed the unlimited as his candidate for basic principle"
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