Pre-Socratics

Question 1

Name every Pre-Socratic in Order

Answer 1

Thales
Anaximander
Pythagoras
Heraclitus
Parmenides
Zeno
Protagoras & the Sophists

Question 2

What did Thales think stuff was made of?

Answer 2

Water

Question 3

What did Pythagoras believe would give a correct understanding of the world?

Answer 3

Math

Advocated to understand the world as “Number”

Question 3

What did Anaximander think stuff was made of? Provide a brief explanation.

Answer 3

Air

Fundamental thing is:
- not experience but something that we derived logically.
- Eternal and unchanging
- Has no opposite
- Can be built upon and changes

Question 4

Who was the first philosophers?

Answer 4

Thales

Question 5

Pythagoras was religious. Did he believe in a soul?

Answer 5

Yes be believed in a soul that would regularly come back to the earth in a new form

Question 6

What is Logos? How is Logos a part of change

Answer 6

Divine rational intelligence of the world.

The world runs on rules. A rule is that all things change. Logos is the logic of change.

Question 7

If ‘things’ are not the base of reality for Heraclitus what is?

Answer 7

For Heraclitus process is at the core of reality

Question 8

Why does Parmenides believe nothing changes?

Answer 8

Something cannot come from something nothing therefore everything that has been and will be have been there from the start. They are all a part of the same being, thus change is an illusion since no new things are created.

Question 10

How does Democritus rescue change from Parmenides using atoms?

Answer 10

Atoms are being split up and in space. Atoms thus have always been but not always in the same state. Change is the movement of these atoms

Question 10

Describe Democritus’ mechanistic determinism

Answer 10

Democritus believed that everything happens for a reason, aka causality, and that the motion of atoms is caused by a chain of previous events. Thus everything is predetermined by the motion originally set in place