Practice question · Multiple choice
Thales famously asserted that 'all things are full of gods'. Given the overarching Milesian shift away from mythological narrative, what does this claim signify for early cosmology?
Hints
- What traditional explanatory role did active, divine agents play before the Milesians?
- If an archē must change and generate the cosmos on its own, what capacity must matter possess?
Show the answer
B. It conceives of matter as possessing its own internal power of movement
Why
Reading Thales as devout misinterprets his vocabulary; the Milesians stripped away divine whimsy to explain natural change from within physical reality itself, foreshadowing dynamic material principles rather than establishing pantheistic worship.
Practise The Milesians
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More questions on The Milesians
- What makes the Milesians the first philosophers rather than simply early scientists or theologians?
- Which considerations plausibly supported Thales’ choice of water as the archē?
- Anaximander argued that the earth remains at the centre of things because it is held up by symmetry, having…
- Arrange the Milesian thinkers in chronological order and note how each responds to the one before.
- Sort each explanatory move by whether it is characteristic of mythological or Milesian explanation.
- Complete the account of Anaximander’s argument for the apeiron.