The Great Milesian Debate: Thales Vs. Anaximander

Though Thales and Anaximander adopted a materialistic framework for the origin of the Universe, Anaximander more reasonably determined what this "origin" is. Both philosophers asserted that there must be a first principle, which they called the "arche" out of which all things come to be and into which all things perish. In other words, this "arche" is the origin of the world and all its multitudinous beings. While Thales held that the arche is water - a limited substance, Anaximander more effectively demonstrated that the arche must be an unlimited or indefinite substance.

Thales, the world's first philosopher, challenged the mythological preconceptions of his day and set the precedent for utilizing reason and argumentation to explain matters. Such is the conflict between muthos (myth) and logos (rational explanation). It was precisely Thales' reliance on the latter which brought about his philosophical account of the Universe. Thales used his senses to collect data and draw conclusions, culminating in his logos. Therefore, Thales was an empiricist. This was how Thales arrived at the conclusion that the arche must be water. As Aristotle informs us,

maybe he [Thales] got this idea from seeing that the nourishment of all things is moist...and also because the seeds of all things have a moist nature; and water is the principle of the nature of moist things (9).

This statement encapsulates the role of the philosopher entirely. What Thales did was to look at the world using the most basic tools available -his senses - to formulate hypotheses. We can imagine Thales walking around Miletus one day and noticing a flower petal encumbered with drops of dew or a cow slurping up water from a trough or the Aegean Sea, vast and endless. It would only be reasonable for Thales to conclude that water plays a pivotal role on Earth. All living things require it, even immobile things such as plants seem to attract it, and the world itself seems to be surrounded by it. Thales would have further argued that hard things, or earthly things such as rocks, come from ice or solid water. Fire and hot things come from vaporized water. Air or misty things come from water that is somewhere between its liquid form and its vaporized form. In short, water is the primordial stuff on which all things depend and from which all things derive.

Though reasonably sound, Thales' logos is painfully ambiguous. Thales never specified whether he believed that water comprised all things or whether all things somehow derive from water. In other words, did the Universe spring from water, differentiating into different parts and different materials? Or, does water comprise all things? The problem with either proposition is that water is a thing and things have finite properties. For example, water is tasteless, colorless, at times wet, at times hot, at times solid, at times liquid and so on. This contradicts Thales' description of the arche as "the substance persisting but changing in its attributes" (9). Water must remain water, yet change its properties to become other things. But the only way we know water is still "water" and not a cat, is to examine its properties. Thus, there is no way that water can persist and change its attributes, because it would cease to be water. The arche never becomes nor perishes, it always is. Thus, one major flaw with Thale's philosophical framework is the problem of becoming.

Anaximander, in keeping with his predecessor's teachings, adopted a materialistic view of the Universe. He certainly accepted that the first principle needs to be one thing and this thing would comprise the Universe or the Universe would be derived from it. Anaximander obviously challenged Thales because as Simplicius relates, "logos is blind to the clandestine nature of the observable world, logos is superior to empirical observation.

Anaximander's revision of Thale's philosophy is also rife with problems. The major issue here is still becoming. Thales did make an intelligent assumption: the arche must be a material substance. Water is certainly a material substance. As the arche, water must somehow form other material substances. However, in Anaximander, we see that the arche is something supra-material, or beyond material. The indefinite itself is not a material substance, it is merely a theoretical construct. How can something with no material properties, an indefinite, unintelligible substance form intelligible, material things? This kind of conundrum is reminiscent of Hesiod, who said "at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth" (Retrieving, 14). Chaos, like Anaximander's "indefinite" is unintelligible, and immaterial yet finite, knowable, material substances derive from it. Anaximander is not able to explain how his indefinite arche makes a divine leap into the realm of the definite world.

What we now face are two diametrically opposed conceptions of the first principle- the origin of the Universe. Thales argues that the first principle is something material, definite, and intelligible: water. Anaximander argues instead that the first principle must be something indefinite, unknowable, merely a theoretical and not an observable entity. The real power in Anaximander's rationalistic account of the arche is that it cannot be limited. Water, as we know is a thing and is therefore limited. The arche must be the source of infinitely many things. All we have to do is engage in a simple thought experiment. If I pour water into a cup, the water conforms to the shape of the cup. In a sense, the cup controls the water because the cup dictates the shape of the water and the volume of the water. If the cup (which is a being supposedly derived from water, according to Thales) controls water, then water is subordinate to it. The first principle is supreme; out of it comes all things come to be and into it all things die. Yet how can a mere cup control or subjugate the first principle? This is an impossibility. Water can be controlled by cups and cannot be the first principle because the first principle must become infinitely many things. Anaximander's "indefinite," however, is a much more attractive candidate. I cannot pour something indefinite into a cup; the cup therefore has no control over something indefinite or infinite. Because it is indefinite, it can provide for the infinitely many beings in the Universe. Yet how it provides for the infinity of beings is the problem only later philosophers will tackle.

Anaximander does not refute Thale's ideas, but rather he expounds upon them. Anaximander, like all other philosophers criticizes his predecessors dialectically, and in turn later philosophers will criticize him. By rejecting the idea that the arche is water, Anaximander opened the door to rationalism in Western thought. His "indefinite" is an appeal to pure reason, an idea which will be attractive in later thinkers, especially Parmenides and the 5^th Century Elementalists. Anaximander did not solve the enigma concerning becoming that Thales faced, but by making a simple objection and drawing a reasonable conclusion, philosophy itself proceeded.