Chapter 2 Goals

2.1 Thales and Anaximander

• Understand how Thales contributed to the direction and method of philosophical inquiry and how his approach differed from traditional ways of answering questions about the world.
• Know the reasons why Thales chose water as the fundamental stuff of the world.
• Understand how Anaximander’s theory about the cosmos differed from Thales’s theory.
• Be able to recount Anaximander’s explanation of why the Earth is suspended in space.

2.2 Heraclitus

• Be able to explain Heraclitus’s concept of the logos.
• Understand Heraclitus’s view of the logos as a “harmony of opposites.”
• Explain Heraclitus’s maxim “All are in flux, like a river.”
• Be able to describe Empedocles’s theory of evolution and how it differs from Darwin’s.
• Articulate the main beliefs of the Pythagoreans.

2.3 Parmenides

• Discuss the important conceptual distinctions that Parmenides introduced to philosophy, and define rationalism and empiricism.
• Explain Parmenides’s theory of the One and recount his reasoning behind it.
• State Parmenides’s main contribution to philosophical inquiry.
• Understand Zeno’s paradox of motion and his use of the dialectic form of argument.

2.4 Democritus

• Recount the ways in which Democritus’s theory of the cosmos differs from Parmenides’s theory.
• Define ancient atomism, and explain Democritus’s concepts of atoms and the void.
• List the differences between Democritus’s atoms and those of modern science.

2.5 Protagoras and the Sophists

• Explain who the Sophists were and what role they played in Greek culture.
• Define rhetoric, sophistry, subjective relativism, and cultural relativism.
• Summarize Protagoras’s views and Plato’s refutation of them.
• Evaluate the criticisms that have been aimed at subjective and cultural relativism.
• Articulate and justify your views on relativism.