The recognized ancestor of western philosophy is Thales of Miletus, who was the first to attribute the origin of everything in the world to a substance-water. He said that "the earth floats on water" because he saw that all life needs water to nourish it, and water is the life element for all things to grow. At the same time, the water god is also the oldest in Greek mythology. In addition, Hegel said that the ancient Greeks had the custom of pointing to the river to call names. Although Thales' explanation seems absurd, it was quite valuable more than two thousand years ago. First of all, it shows that he has begun to explain nature in a philosophical way rather than a mythical way. Secondly, it also expresses a simple concept of early natural philosophers: origin is amorphous. According to the latter, anaximander, his student, put forward the theory of "uncertainty", arguing that the creation of everything is the differentiation of "uncertainty", while the extinction of everything returns to "uncertainty". Anaximander said this because he saw that the diversity of everything in the world could not be attributed to a specific material form and attribute, so he put forward the theory of "uncertainty" under the amorphous nature of "water". In anaximander, Anaximenes, a student, combined the concreteness of water with the uncertainty and infinity of water and put forward the theory of "Qi". This is the development process of Miletus school, from which we can see that they all believe that everything has a source and admit that everything is moving and changing.

Contrary to Miletus School, Pythagoras School was founded by Pythagoras. Pythagoras put forward the original theory of "number", defined the attributes of "number" as justice, soul and rationality, and thought that everything was the stipulation of "number". When Bi Pai took mathematical relations as the basis of everything, he established the principle that only in thinking can we correctly understand the essence of things. It is the progress of human abstract thinking to attribute the origin of concrete perceptual things to a supersensitive number with abstract significance. People try to grasp the origin of things by thinking beyond perceptual things. The unit of "number" is "one", which is extremely poor and cannot be a real ideological category.

Heraclitus, on the other hand, absorbed and integrated the views of Miletus School and Pythagoras School, came up with an original "fire" theory and put forward a "logic" theory. It is believed that everything is the origin of the "fire" period from the external form, and everything is like fire from the internal nature, following the eternal principle-LOGIS. In this way, Heraclitus not only reduced everything to concrete natural things, but also made abstract provisions on its nature. The word "logic" plays an important role in the history of western philosophy. It not only marks the emergence of the language spirit of western philosophy, but also has the dual meanings of objective law and subjective rationality.

At the same time, the "Elijah School" in Arya put forward the opposite view to Heraclitus. Parmenides, its main representative, put forward the "ontology" which influenced the next two thousand years, and thought that "existence" was the origin of the world. In a sense, what parmenides wants to ask is not the oldest beginning and domination (the essence or origin of all things in the world) asked by natural philosophers, but the logically prior world essence. He said, "the existence of this existence, he can't exist; He doesn't exist, and he can't exist. "People who can think are the same as those who exist." He first put forward the view that thinking and existence are unified. At the same time, like other natural philosophers, he believes that the essence of the world is an object in time and space, which is neither the essence beyond time and space nor the intangible spirit. It's just that at the beginning, it can be grasped through perceptual intuition, while "existence" can only be grasped through rational speculation, which reached the highest level of early natural philosophy. Parmenides defined "being" as the object of philosophy, which turned philosophy from cosmogenesis to ontology. "Being" has also become the central category of metaphysics.

Please refer to:

/s/blog _ 4ac 67 a 140 1000 bi 7 . html