Practice question · Multiple choice
What makes the Milesians the first philosophers rather than simply early scientists or theologians?
Hints
- Ask what changed in the KIND of explanation offered, not in the conclusions reached.
- Earlier accounts explained by telling stories about agents; the Milesians did not.
Show the answer
B. They replaced explanation by divine agency with impersonal principles operating uniformly
Why
The break is in the form of explanation. Systematic natural observation predates them, prose writing does not define the philosophical shift, and Thales at least still spoke of gods, making them immanent in matter rather than strictly atheist. Replacing agents with uniform impersonal principles is the move every science since has repeated.
Practise The Milesians
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More questions on The Milesians
- 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.
- Thales famously asserted that 'all things are full of gods'. Given the overarching Milesian shift away from…
- Complete the account of Anaximander’s argument for the apeiron.