In class, we talked about different "physicists" that dealt with the nature of physical reality. At first glance of that, I was confused. Then I understood it when you told us the explaination. These "physicists" use nature as an element in the physical reality. These four elements of nature are: water, earth, fire, and air. They use these elements as a boundless substance. (I hope I understood this clearly. Can you explain more of this in class or write a comment in my blog.) Thales used water as stages of changes. As you know, water can changed into solid, liquid, or gas depends on what temperature it is on. The stages of changes of water has motion. For example, it has a flowing sentation when it is a liquid and has an orangic shape to it. Heraclitus used fire as stages of changes. Fire can changed into smoke and then ash. This process called catalysation, which is a change through heat. Just like water, fire has motion. Fire has an orangic shape that spreads out everywhere. (I think I got the basics of this, but just in case, can you give me a brief explaination. I appericate it.)
Also, we talked about Empedocles, where he dealt with all of the four elements. Earth is a solid substance, water is a liquid substance, air is gas, but also as permance eternality "spirit", and fire is heat and a source of change (catalysis). Primary, theres four is made up of change of change. Earth changed into fire, fire changed into air, and so on. These elements are linked together that plays a role of nature. ( Can you give a brief explaination of this, I am not sure if this is right. Anaxagoras said that "Everything is mixed." It is mind acts upon earth, water, fire, and air. This leads to our homework assignment. What kind of mind Anaxagoras is talking about? I have no idea. I am clueless. I think I have a guess. I think the four elements has a mind of its own. In the past, we had weather disasters that dealt with nature elements. For example, we had hurrcaines, tsumanis, mudslides, and so on. These disasters sometimes come out of nowhere and destroy everything in its path. It is out of control and spreads out everywhere. It seems to me, they do have a mind of their own. I think this is nature's doing, to have chaos, but at the end, everything is restored and in order once again. I do not know if my guess is right or not, but I hope to learn more about this with my fellow classmates as well as you, Mr. Achtermann.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I may have spoken of the physicists "using" nature, but if so I meant only that they used the TERM "nature" (in Greek, "physis", hence the name for this group of philosophers, "physicists"). What they were curious to know was what underlies all of our experience of physical reality, of matter, of the substantial world we touch, taste, smell, hear, see. They offered a variety of standpoints on this matter.
Thales talked about the fundamental substance as "water". Whether he meant water literally, H2O that is, or whether he meant that the fundamental substance changes in the same way that water changes, I can't say for certain.
Heraclitus suggested that the fundamental substance was fire, and again, we may well wonder whether he meant combustion or any type of alteration in which one substance is transformed into another.
("Catalyzation" [more properly, catalysis], incidentally, does not refer only to heat, but to any modification, particularly an increase, in a chemical reaction brought about by something which itself is unchanged at the end of the reaction. Inasmuch as heat might remain constant through a chemical reaction which it nevertheless alters, it may be a catalyzing force.)
As you say, Empedocles introduced the notion of the four elements. For him, although these elements were linked to each other through transformations, they were not mixed. The elements of earth, air, fire, and water, each led into the other, and that movement from one to the other was the basis of all perceivable reality.
Anaxagoras accepted these four elements, but argued that it was their blending, not their alteration, that gave rise to the world as we perceive it. But this mixing is not chaotic, it is not random: it is orderly, and this argues for an organizing force. For Anaxagoras this was mind, but clearly this cannot mean "brain", because a brain would only exist AFTER the blending of the elements had occurred. His "Mind", then, must mean an intelligent power which nevertheless is not itself material, but exists outside of time and space.
Socrates and Plato further developed this idea by supposing that the world is structured by "forms" -- "idea" in Greek: ideas, collectively the mind, are more real that the matter upon which they act and through which ideas construct the objects we perceive with our senses.
Post a Comment