PHILOS 1A03 Lecture 2: January 8.docx
23 Feb 2015
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Arche principle, meaning both origin (beginning) and cause. Ionia athenian colony, eastern aegean coast of asia minor. Miletus city in ionia, home of thales and anaximander. He abandoned poetry- started writing about scientific. When a thing perishes, it returns to the materials it was of. Every birth is an injustice for everything that has to die: first scientific treatise- before his time, any writing was always about poetry, first theory of arche. The arche is the aperion, the unbounded, unlimited, or indeterminate: first purely theoretical explanation, first programme of natural inquiry, first philosophical rationalism. He says the earth doesn"t move because it cannot move precisely because it is located at the very centre- no reason for the earth to move in one direction other than the other. There"s no reason for the movement therefore, it doesn"t move. What is reasonably (rational) really must be and what is irrational cannot to be (western rational)
