Which of the following ancient ideas of the Cosmos do you like the most?

[Kyriakos]

A poll about the presocratic (7th-5th century BC) ideas of the origin or form (or other) of the Universe (Cosmos)

Poll question is the one in the title:

Which of the following ancient ideas of the Cosmos do you like the most?

Poll options are:

1) Anaximander: The Cosmoi are born from the Infinite, seperated from it, return to it to be again destroyed.

2) Pythagoras: God always calculates geometrically, the Cosmos is math-based.

3) Parmenides/Xenophanes: The actual Cosmos is also the God, and is not to be known by humans, but it is a perfect sphere, infinite in division, and a Oneness.

4) Heraklitos: The actual Cosmos is forever unknown by virtue of being hidden beyond the limit of the infinite changes in the progressions it caused.

5) Anaxagoras/Protagoras: The Cosmos is only viewed from the human mind, and thus any truth is merely reflected on human thinking, creating a model of the Cosmos which is in meters of our own making and significance.

*

I mostly love 4 and 5. The options are placed in chronological order, by the way I'll probably vote for Heraklitos

And let's just all be happy with the words of Thales of Miletos:

I am thankful to have been born a Human and not an Animal, a Man and not a Woman, and a Greek and not a Barbarian.

Happy voting...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Where's the "none of the above" option?

 

[Kyriakos]

^Cancelled by the 'which of the following' i suppose?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't like any of them at all, so it's pointless to ask which one I like most.

 

[Borachio]

I think I like them all equally.

 

[Kyriakos]

..

I was hoping the poll would generate some discussion..

 

[Berzerker]

I went with 1, sounds like repeating universes - big bangs and big bounces

but these guys were thinking of this stuff in the context of existing mythologies, and those mythologies were not talking about the universe imo, just our solar system.

Heaven and Earth were preceded by something else... water according to Genesis.

 

[Kyriakos]

I went with 1, sounds like repeating universes - big bangs and big bounces

but these guys were thinking of this stuff in the context of existing mythologies, and those mythologies were not talking about the universe imo, just our solar system.

Heaven and Earth were preceded by something else... water according to Genesis.

Water was also argued by 'the first philosopher' (according to Aristotle), Thales, to be the origin ('Arche') of the cosmos. Others claimed other elements as the primordial one (earth, fire, air, aether) As for the meaning of 'cosmos', that is a very good note, although it should be pointed that astronomy was already a practised order since Anaximander in the early 6th century BC, and by the mid 5th century BC there were views about the Sun being a massive fiery formation, very distant to the earth (Anaxagoras). And - of course - the scientific view of the earth being not the center of the solar system came about in the early hellenistic era.
But it is unlikely those presocratics were thinking of a Cosmos in the limited sense of a single star-system anyway; the debate between them (and most clearly between the Eleatics and Democritos and his atom theory) seems to mostly be about the senses causing (or not) the impression that the material world is something finite and to be examined by humans.
And this has implications far beyond a single material star system

 

[Borachio]

I am thankful to have been born a Human and not an Animal, a Man and not a Woman, and a Greek and not a Barbarian.

It's this sort of thing that gives Ancient Greece a bad name.

I agree with him up to "I am thankful to have been born". The rest is plain anthropocentric, misogynist, nationalistic xenophobia.

 

[timtofly]

I went with 1, sounds like repeating universes - big bangs and big bounces

but these guys were thinking of this stuff in the context of existing mythologies, and those mythologies were not talking about the universe imo, just our solar system.

Heaven and Earth were preceded by something else... water according to Genesis.

Would you say that scientist today work in context with current science fiction writings? It seems to me that the Greeks were in the process of writing down their own versions of science fiction and fantasy and it may have been influenced by religion or even in spite of religious beliefs. That does not rule out that hard science should be lumped into the same pot. It seems there was not a consensus on the topic and no one had any means to test out theories and come to some conclusion. They should not have been confused by some writings that people thousands of years earlier had left for them to decipher. What we call Greek mythology was being written and formed within the same time frame.

 

[classical_hero]

I don't like any of them at all, so it's pointless to ask which one I like most.

S you want to go with a random process that somehow produced a finely tune universe we live in?

 

[Berzerker]

did Democritus report back to his fellow Greeks after visiting Egypt and Mesopotamia that there are more planets than can be seen with the eyes?

take a look at cylinder seal va 243, its >4000 years old and shows what looks like a star surrounded by 11 orbs and matches up with the Enuma Elish.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

S you want to go with a random process that somehow produced a finely tune universe we live in?

Why not?

 

[Takhisis]

1) Anaximander: The Cosmoi are born from the Infinite, seperated from it, return to it to be again destroyed.

2) Pythagoras: God always calculates geometrically, the Cosmos is math-based.

3) Parmenides/Xenophanes: The actual Cosmos is also the God, and is not to be known by humans, but it is a perfect sphere, infinite in division, and a Oneness.

4) Heraklitos: The actual Cosmos is forever unknown by virtue of being hidden beyond the limit of the infinite changes in the progressions it caused.

5) Anaxagoras/Protagoras: The Cosmos is only viewed from the human mind, and thus any truth is merely reflected on human thinking, creating a model of the Cosmos which is in meters of our own making and significance.

Could we have a more detailed explanation of each?

 

[Kyriakos]

Could we have a more detailed explanation of each?

You can.. The second circle of the seminars begins in the local libraries in mid September. See you there

 

[gay_Aleks]

You can.. The second circle of the seminars begins in the local libraries in mid September. See you there

All in the universities of Sofia/Ljubljana! You could theoretically work at both.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not Ljubljana again That has the beardo* philosophy eu-pal professor, doesn't it? The one with the nonstop tic-induced rapid hand movements.

*As mentioned, from beard(ed) + weirdo.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Far as I believe, every university comes with a bearded weirdo professor. Maybe it comes in package with the university, and I can imagine in the Bologna university, the rector yelling at another professor "Oh, Fernando! What did I tell you about this whole "cogito ergo sum"?!" a millennium ago.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes, no university is truly that without a bearded weirdo among the teaching staff.

 

[Snorrius]

I've picked up Heraclitus though Anaxagoras is almost as good.