The Milesians were an
ancient Hellenic peoples,
inhabitants of the
Anatolian
city of
Miletus, now part of
Turkey. Their
influence extended across the
region, via their
exercise of
seafaring power.
Thales,
Anaximander, and
Anaximenes were all
philospophers arising out of this
civilization, and so are, as well, sometimes collectively referenced as "The Milesians." They were
identified by Francis Edward Peters, perhaps the preeminent
Professor of
Middle Eastern and
Islamic Studies and
History at
New York University, as the originators of the idea of
pandeism (contrasting their insights against the view of the
psyche in the
Pythagorean tradition), also known for being
pioneers of
pantheism.
Sometimes named as the
father of philosophy, Thales was claimed to have proposed that all things were simply reorganisations of the same fundamental type of thing --
water. No writings of Thales survive, but he was succeeded by Anaximander, who at least left fragments showing that he followed that
conception -- extending them to the
insistence that scientific principles could demonstrate the basis of matter in an undefined "
apeiron."
Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of Anaximander viewing "...all coming-to-be as though it were an
illegitimate emancipation from eternal being, a wrong for which
destruction is the only
penance."
Anaximander's
student Anaximenes, third to come amongst this trio, placed the fundamental substance as
air, characterising at as an intermediate form between water and fire, based on the observation of air condensing into
mist, supposed by him to give way to further condensation into water, then into
mud,
soil, and
stone;
Heraclitus of
Ephesus, though not a Milesian, followed this line of reasoning as well, concluding that all was
fire. His break with the Milesians was in the determination that there was no real
stability, but rather that all was in
chaos, in
flux, eternally.