FYSM 1208 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Marine Biology, Four Causes, Northern Greece
15 Oct 2018
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Of the pre-socratics, we discussed the empiricists, thales and anaximander. They worked like scientists, making observations, gathering data, and then developing theories about natural events, such as eclipses. We also discussed the rationalists, parmenides and zeno. They thought that observation and data are misleading/useless and that philosophers should focus on ideas in the mind. Then we reviewed socrates, a man who made philosophy public and social. One of socrates" followers, plato, became a rationalist like parmenides and zeno. One of plato"s students, aristotle, became an empiricist like thales and anaximander, continuing a common pattern of philosophers rebelling against their teachers, or influences. This rebellion involves either switching focus from ideas to things, or from things to ideas. Eg. rationalism empiricism, or empiricism rationalism. Everything that exists is an imperfect and constantly changing version of the type of thing it is. Consider how all triangles that exist in the real world are flawed in some way if we look hard enough.
