ORIGINS OF PHILOSOPHY IN COMPETITION BETWEEN NATURALISTS, THEOLOGIANS(Pseudoscience), AND MYTHICISTS(PseudoHistorians)
The Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi (Greek: ??????????; in English, physical or natural philosophers). Aristotle was the first to make a clear distinction between these physiologoi or physikoi (“physicists”, after physis, “nature”) who sought natural explanations for phenomena, and the earlier theologoi (theologians), or mythologoi (story tellers and bards) who attributed these phenomena to various gods.
Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups: Ionian, led by Anaximander, and the Italiote, led by Pythagoras.
IT BEGINS IN 635 BC
But they begin in 635BC with Thales, who was a greek citizen, but may or may not have been a descendent of the Phoenicians, who may or may not have originated on the Red sea, which may or may not refer to the civilization that developed on the trade route between africa and yemen in that region south of what is today ethiopia, but continues across the south of the arabian peninsula, and to the trade routes with India. It is this trade route as much as the mediterranean that accounted for much of the wealth of the levant.
Engineering and construction, and Commercial transactions encourage the development of contract, reason and calculation – because of risk, investment, and liability.
So Thales evolved his thought Just as there is a competition today between literary and theological authors, and scientists, and commercialists. The law has no competitor except religion.
And its possibly important to note that it was the borderland peoples who invented reason, not the urbanites in Athens. Why? Density encourages civic deceit. Objective analysis of civic deceit produces reason.
Thales bought all the olive presses in Miletus after predicting the weather and a good harvest for a particular year. Another version of the story has Aristotle explain that Thales had reserved presses in advance, at a discount, and could rent them out at a high price when demand peaked, following his prediction of a particularly good harvest. Aristotle explains that Thales’ objective in doing this was not to enrich himself but to prove to his fellow Milesians that philosophy could be useful, contrary to what they thought, or alternatively, Thales had made his foray into enterprise because of a personal challenge put to him by an individual who had asked why, if Thales was an intelligent famous philosopher, he had yet to attain wealth. This first version of the story would constitute the first historically known creation and use of futures, whereas the second version would be the first historically known of creation and use of options.
But his theoretical insights are from geometry.
|CAUSALITY| Commerce(Finance) > Engineering > Geometry > Science.