Ancient and Medieval Philosophy by Ralph McInerny: 1. Before Socrates

Recorded in 1999.

From the course lessons found at catholicthinkers.org:

"The world around us is a world of change, of things coming into being, changing while they are, and ultimately ceasing to be. Thus the Ionian philosophers are seen as providing accounts of nature, physis, the coming into being of things. Thales is understood as having said that water is at the source of the things around us. Puzzling over this, it is noted that moisture seems to be a feature of the germination of seeds and that drying up is a sign of decay and ceasing to be. This is, of course, a construction of the meaning of those enigmatic claims attributed to Thales. Anaximenes saw air as basic, and rarefaction and condensation were the processes whereby air took on different forms which in turn it lost. Heraclitus, in this taxonomy, is thought to have cited fire as the nature or source of the things we experience."