Socrates is often quoted as one of the most brilliant and insightful philosophers in human history. His approach to solving problems has been an inspiration to many, inspiring philosophical and scientific inquiry that approaches a measure of organization and methodical investigation. However, how does he fare to those who came before him? Also, do his theories represent a great leap forward from what preceded him, or had others thought of the same things also? In this presentation, we compare Socrates to two of his most important predecessors: Thales of Miletus and Anamixander. While Thales approached the world with a similar methodical precision as Socrates, Anamixander was content to keep his answers somewhat more vague.
One of Socrates' most cherished philosophies is the Socratic method. This was a dialectic method in which problems were solved by breaking them down into a series of questions. By doing this, it was possible to answer each question in turn, and by extension eliminate certain possibilities that would be contradictory. Once these contradictions were eliminated, a reasonable and tangible solution would be reached.
One example of this is in Plato's Republic, in which Glaucon asks Socrates to find a way to prove that justice is something that should be sought after to the point where it is desired in and of itself and for whatever consequences may arise. Socrates retorts with a vision of justice that splits it into two types, the kind for man and the kind for the state, or polis. Cities are more important and larger in scale than a man, with many different facets of justice, including political. He forms a perfectly ideal and just city for his hypothesis, and looks at how justice enters into this city. Through this city, he builds on his thesis in order to determine the best way for justice to thrive for its own sake. His work influenced the scientific method in a very direct and meaningful way.
However, what did the people who came before Socrates think? One of these masters was the philosopher Thales of Meditus (624-546 BCE). He was essentially the 'first philosopher' and one of the Seven Sages, a mathematician and an engineer; though he did not leave any writings, he is known far and wide as one of the first philosophers to use scientific reasoning to come to conclusions about the origin of things. His philosophy was that "the Many are related to each other by the One"; everything in the world is bound to a similar origin of design or existence. Russell, 1945). There is one element - in Thales' perspective, water - that contains the foundation of what constitutes the physical reality of the world. By reasoning himself into this kind of uniformity and relationship between objects, he questioned the nature of the world in a very scientific manner, similar to Socrates.
Despite the similarities between Socrates and Thales, there were some philosophers who took a much different approach to figuring out the world. For example, Anaximander, one of Thales' pupils and the author of On Nature, states that all matter that is physical comes from a boundless and infinite world. In essence, there is an unending stock of basic material by which everything is created, but the individual objects are tangible and discrete. This was a vague and questionable method of quantifying the world, a far cry from the specificity of Thales and Socrates. Considering Socrates' relationship to these predecessors, it is clear that he was a man ahead of his time, extending the thoughts started by Thales and creating a whole new method of scientific and philosophical inquiry.
References
Plato. (2009). Republic.
Russell, B. (1945). The History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster.
