C. Pre-Socratic throughts

Pre-Socratic thoughts prevailed during the Ionian Times and freed thoughts from mythology and irrationality

This voyage due to a desire for love always takes place in a landscape having attributes no where else to be found. They are barren grounds, infertile fields because of trees having been burned down until soil erosion made the rocks become blank due to the winds, yet there is a goat and a hurling sound not like that of a discus, but an anguish about man struggling to be free, to step out of darkness, fear thereof and live in the light, the light of honesty, beauty and truth. By attempting to live, and not only merely survive, another kind of fertility is bestowed upon the land connected to the sea. It is really the combination of the two, nature and thoughts about man's life on this earth, that marks the beginning of a new form of civilization. In philosophy, this phase is named the epoch of pre-Socratic thinkers. It is already no longer the road through nature, but the discussions take place in real urban settings. These thoughts lead the way to the Polis.

First came the Milesian philosophers: Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, and then followed Pythagoras, Heracleitus of Ephesus, Parmenides of Elea and Empedocles of Acragas as the noteworthy thinkers of that time. They are discovers of new orders, including of the logic of numbers once certain definitions have been given to them that unlock their properties. It is an unwritten world, or rather it adds man's own knowledge to the 'cosmos' already experienced. The difference now is that this experience does not base itself so much on wonder, or even mystified thoughts, as on compound ideas, logical sequences and the belief that there is a solution to everything.

Consider the effects and nature of Number according to the power residing in

the Cedac. It is great, comprehensive, all-sufficing, being the first principle of

divinity and of humanity, guiding all things. Without it all things are without

limit, obscure, indiscernible. For the nature of Number is to be a standard of

reference, of guidance, and instruction of every doubt, throwing light on

everything that is unknown. For were there no Numbers and their essences,

then nothing that exists would be made clear, either in themselves or in

relation to other things.......Therefore it follows that it is in the nature of Number

to work on divine and supernatural existences as well as on human activities

and thoughts everywhere, and in all handicrafts and in music.

written by Philolaus some fifty years after the death of Pythagoras

Ancient Greek thought, and foremostly poetry, is indeed free from religion insofar as the ancient Greeks created mortal Gods or Gods with human attributes in which their own mortality as human beings can reflect itself as a belief in human knowledge. Religion meant to them much more practical morality. It includes the theatre as much as a special kind of argumentation which the philosophers would call 'reasoning'. As a style of life it meant to reflect one's thoughts not like Narcissus in the water as a fake mirror, but in the opinions of the others so that nothing was done prior to having found sound reason. The latter depends upon philosophical reasoning being persuasive enough, so that the thoughts could be made accessible to everyone who cared to listen. This condition upheld not so much the critical dimension of being understandable or not, for a stranger by definition could not understand what moves man, but rather the emphasis was upon belonging or not to the Polis for this pertained to the right to give recognition to what was going on. As such it meant the pre-city form of existence was still a closed society.

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C. Pre-Socratic throughts