Why were the first philosophers called physicists? List the physes arrived at by Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus.
Magic, mysticism and superstition are the three major factors that dominate the understanding of the nature in the past century of history. It was a biggest step to think about the human thought was offering supernatural powers. Thus, the wise philosophers were called physicists because they were considered as the early Greeks to give explanations about the academic histories of biology, physics and psychology and transform their ideas that form the foundation of the phenomena of physicists.
Thales concluded that water was considered as physis. Life entirely depends on water that is present in several forms such as hail, steam, clouds, snow, fog, dew and ice and some amount of water is also present in every living things.
Anaximander proposed that physis was something that had the potential of becoming anything. This “something” is called the indefinite or the boundless.
Heraclitus propounded physis to be fire because the fire has the capability to transform everything into something else. Also, he considered as the world was also ever nothing, rather everything is “becoming”.
Parmenides assumes that physis was logic and he believed ability to speak or thinking of something finite level by continuously thinking of something that does not exist in the nature.
Pythagoras considered as the mathematical formulas and principles, mathematics, music, medicine and cosmology as the biggest source of physis.
Empedocles suggested fire, earth, air and water as the four basic forms of physis from which everything is to be made and two major forces, love and strife that alternately separate and synthesize those elements.
Anaxagoras postulated to be the physis as an infinite number of elements (seeds) from which everything is to be derived. He also believed that everything contains all the elements and the individual’s identity is determined by the predomination of elements.
Democritus suggested atoms to be considered as physis. He explained that everything in universe, including humans, was suggested in the terms of atoms and their refined activities.