Index
- 00:44 - No society prior to the Greeks had philosophy as a discipline, they only had it by implication.
- 01:30 - Philosophy (as a discipline) began in 6th century BC Greece.
- 01:37 - Prior civilisations did not develop philosophy in the same way as they did not believe the world to be intelligible/operated by gods (supernaturalist cultures).
- 02:40 - Another reason for prior civilisations not developing philosophy is that they believed life/earth itself to be unintelligible and evil.
- 03:38 - Ultimately, taking religion seriously is what caused these cultures to fail in developing philosophical ability.
- 04:15 - Greeks were able to develop philosophy as they had a higher degree of political freedom.
- 04:42 - “Wherever government remained strong, philosophy never took root”.
- 04:58 - The religious beliefs of the Greeks also was a contributing factor to them being capable of developing philosophy. They did not see gods as supernatural creators who ruled over them, but that they were simply superior beings who had to live by the same rules of the universe. They also believed that the universe always existed, and was a natural phenomenon. They generally thought that the world and life was a good thing.
- 07:11 - Due to those reasons they saw knowledge as being possible, and worth seeking.
- 07:34 - Greeks were first interested by the topics of Change and Multiplicity.
- 11:38 - Thales of Miletus is the “Father of Philosophy”. He was the first to try to answer the questions surrounding the topics of Change and Multiplicity.
- 12:24 - Thales’ idea was that there was one fundamental entity that everything in the universe was based on, a view that would become known as “monism”.
- 13:02 - Thales reasoned that the relationships between all things in the universe could be explained by this idea of a fundamental thing that everything else was made of. This idea could also explain change, because when one thing turns into another, it is really just one fundamental thing changing forms rather than one object changing into a completely different one.
- 13:30 - What is important is not the idea that Thales came up with, but his approach, as it was a scientific approach. He was trying to find a common denominator, the “one in the many”; the “permanent amid the changing”.
- 15:01 - Thales posited that the world stuff was water (“hydro-monism”).
- 15:18 - His reasoning was water was the only thing he observed that could take on many forms (solid, liquid, gas). Water was found in many places, and water could have life in it.
- 16:14 - The approach that Thales took to the world was naturalistic. He did not use religion or gods to explain away his questions.
- 16:46 - Thales suggested that sensory observation was the precondition for discovering the nature of reality.