Ancient Greek natural philosophy
As we all know, the primitive form of western philosophy is the natural philosophy of ancient Greece. In this embryonic period of western philosophy, philosophers mainly focus on the discussion of the nature of the universe. Most of their works are titled "On Nature", and they are usually called natural philosophers. When early Greek philosophy explained how all natural things came into being and existed, it always regarded the unity of infinite diversity of natural phenomena as self-evident, and looked for this unity from something special.
The natural philosophy of early Greece had a strong scientific spirit from the beginning. The earliest Greek philosopher and the first batch of scientists. On the other hand, because this philosophy has just been born from myth, it is inevitably branded as the mother. But on the whole, natural philosophers insist on explaining the nature of the universe from nature itself, and begin to get rid of the mystery of the creation myth of the universe, which marks the initial awakening of human scientific thinking. For example, Heraclitus inherited the materialistic tradition of Miletus School, and thought that everything contained opposition, pointing out: "Nature also pursues opposition, and it produces harmony from opposition, not from the same thing." [2] The Pythagorean school also regards "harmony" as the best thing in the world and a virtue of life, which reflects its school's grasp of the "number" of the unity of all things in the universe and its pursuit of the ideal state of moral perfection and social equality. From here, we can find the initial germination of exploring the natural view of the universe and the historical view of life.
Even the existential philosophy of Elijah School in early Greek philosophy, though highly speculative, actually answered the original question of the creation of all things in the world in the form of natural philosophy. The category of "being" put forward by parmenides is a philosophical abstract generalization of nature. In On Nature, he deepened the basic proposition of natural philosophy by logical argumentation and speculation.
Democritus's atomism is the highest achievement of ancient Greek natural philosophy. After parmenides, the characteristic of natural philosophy is to regard things as a composite and begin to explore the deeper internal structure of matter. Democritus's atomism holds that the origin and internal structure of everything are atoms and "void", and puts forward the view that atoms move by themselves, trying to reinterpret some natural phenomena that early naive materialists can't explain. In these explanations, democritus emphasized that "everything is produced by necessity" [3], that is, he clearly put forward the causal inevitability of natural phenomena and expressed materialistic determinism. However, democritus separated the relationship between inevitability and contingency, simplified and exaggerated causal inevitability, and denied the objective existence of contingency. His determinism is mechanistic.
In this regard, Aristotle criticized: "democritus ignored the reason of purpose and attributed all the functions of nature to inevitability." [4] But it is worth noting that democritus skillfully used atomism to explain the composition of the soul, and linked the soul theory with the wisdom of life, which made his view of history reach a high level. In his remaining works, there are many proverbs that reveal the meaning of life: "Those who look forward to the goodness of the soul pursue sacred things, while those who pursue physical happiness have only one advantage, that is, they are easily disillusioned." [5] "We should be enthusiastic about doing things according to morality, not talking about morality." [6] "untimely happiness produces disgust." [7] "It is justified to pursue beauty without blaspheming it." [8] He added, "Ignorance of goodness is the reason for making mistakes." [9] "Always inventing beautiful things is a sign of the sacred mind." [10] "Ill-gotten wealth is harmful to morality." [1 1] In short, democritus's exploration of the true meaning of life taught people to pursue truth, goodness and beauty, and to abandon falsehood, ugliness and evil, thus leaving people with many things worth thinking about.
Of course, the philosophical form before Socrates is basically natural philosophy. Generally speaking, natural philosophy explores the mysteries of nature, pursues the origin of all things, and tries to unify the world with perceptual things. Socrates believes that natural philosophers are actually unreliable based on what the senses see, but they blind the eyes of the soul. He advocated that "it is better to seek help from the spiritual world and go there to seek the truth of existence." [12] In Socrates' view, the object of philosophy is not nature, but the mind, which is to know the goodness in oneself, that is, human virtue. This is Socrates' conclusion from his criticism of natural philosophy, which changed the research direction of ancient Greek philosophy, that is, from paying attention to the natural view of nature to the historical outlook on life.
In other words, Socrates' philosophy no longer pays attention to nature, but to life, that is, to seek a universal thing in ethics. However, Socrates did not completely separate the common things from the individual things. Plato advanced along this line of thought, not only separating the two, but also treating common things as the idea of independent existence. Plato believes that all concrete things experienced by human senses are constant, which has been proved by Heraclitus' rheological theory. The existence or non-existence of "unchangeable" phenomenon is relative, unstable and temporary. Absolute, stable and eternal ideas are the only real existence, and individual things are just imitations and shadows of ideas. Because of this philosophical understanding of the world, Plato dualized the real world in which phenomenon and essence were integrated, that is, he constructed an ideal world outside the perceptual world. Ideas are the basis of perceptual things, and perceptual things are the derivatives of ideas. Plato's theory of ideas, as an objective idealism system, is completely absurd; As a development link in the history of western philosophy, idealism is meaningful to deepen the discussion of individual and universality, sensibility and rationality, phenomenon and essence.
Aristotle was a master of ancient Greek philosophy. Ancient Greek philosophy started from Humily DuDu School, and put forward and discussed the origin of all things. According to Aristotle's understanding, the so-called "primitive" or "original" means that everything is made up of it, produced by it first, and finally returned to it. Before Aristotle, there were obviously two opposing views on what was the origin of all things: one thought that the origin was the material element of things, from water, fire, earth and gas to "root", "seed" and atom; The other holds that origin is a universal category and principle, such as Pythagoras' number, the existence of Elias school and Plato's idea. On the basis of summarizing the early Greek natural philosophy, Aristotle turned the problem of primitivism into the problem of ontology, which is a progress in philosophical thought.
From the theory of origin to ontology, it embodies the deepening of human philosophical feelings of seeking the foundation of living and living. The so-called ontology is the ultimate existence. Aristotle called the study of "existence as existence" or the study of existence itself "the first philosophy", that is, metaphysics. In Aristotle's view, philosophy is different from other sciences not only in the research object, but also in the research purpose. Learning philosophy is to pursue wisdom, not practicality. Philosophy is the only "free learning" in the world. Aristotle believes that philosophy studies "existence as existence", which is the most universal and universal existence without any specific "existence" characteristics. Aristotle divides this most general existence into two categories: one is the "existence" of movement and the time, space, finiteness and infinity related to movement, which are the research objects of natural philosophy; One is the unchangeable "being", which is the research object of the first philosophy.
Physics is Aristotle's most important natural philosophy work. Aristotle's physics is physics in a broad sense, and its original meaning is nature. He defined "nature" as "the origin of movement and change" in physics [13]. Nature is moving and changing, and the root of movement and change is nature itself. In order to highlight the position of natural philosophy, Aristotle divided "things that exist" into two categories: one is things that exist because of nature; One is something that "exists for other reasons" [14]. The former things, such as all kinds of animals, plants and simple objects (earth, fire, gas and water), are characterized in that everything in this category has a source of movement and stillness within itself; The latter is man-made things, such as beds, clothes, houses, etc. It is characterized by obvious traces of human activities, so the driving force for change is not within itself. Judging from the distinction between natural things and all things related to people, in Aristotle's philosophy, "nature" can also be said to be the inherent self-movement ability and inherent essential characteristics of all things in the universe.
Aristotle classified the forms of movement as early as in Category. He believes that "there are six kinds of movements: generation, elimination, increase, decrease, change and displacement." [15] In physics, he more concisely divided motion into three categories: "qualitative motion, quantitative motion and positional motion." [16] In other words, what can be generated is being generated, and its nature, quantity and position can be changed. This is sports. Philosophically speaking, the concept of movement is related to the concepts of time and space. On the basis of the concept of motion, Aristotle also investigated the problems of time and space. In the fourth chapter of Physics, he pointed out that "things that exist always exist in a certain place" and "the most common and basic form of motion is spatial motion (which we call displacement)." [17] Therefore, we have to admit the existence of space. Space is the direct surrounding of a thing, that is, all objects are defined by three dimensions: length, width and height. Space is not a part of an object, and space can be separated from the objects it contains. On the issue of time, Aristotle also studied it with the concept of movement. "Movement occupies time" [18], and everything that exists exists exists in time. Time is neither movement nor separation from movement. "It is to make motion something that can be calculated." [19] The characteristic of time is the scale of motion, which is the number of times of motion with the beginning and the end as the unit. Time is continuous and separable. Time is continuous because of "now" and divided because of "now". "'Now' is an intermediate point, combining the starting point and the end point-on the one hand, it is the starting point of future time, on the other hand, it is the end point of past time-therefore, time must exist forever" [20], that is, time is eternal.
Aristotle's philosophy is not only rich in natural thoughts, but also has profound historical implications, and its historical view is embodied in ethical thoughts. Before Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and others discussed ethical categories such as goodness and happiness. Aristotle also regards the issues of goodness and happiness as the central topic of his ethical system. In Nico Kyle Ethics, which marks the final formation of Aristotle's morality, he pointed out: "All technologies and research, like all actions or choices, seem to tend to some kind of goodness, so goodness is reasonably regarded as the goal pursued by all things" [2 1]. Different things are pursuing different purposes, and the purpose pursued by human beings is "the best". As the best, the best is the ultimate goal of human behavior, so it is complete. Aristotle believes that all virtues are based on a certain natural ability, but only under the guidance of philosophical wisdom can they become worthy of the name. The happiness and perfection of human beings lies in activities that conform to virtue.
Epicurus and Lucretius, the late Greek philosophers after Aristotle, are outstanding successors of democritus's atomism. Epicurus' view of nature further revised, enriched and developed democritus's atomism, put forward the theory of atomic motion deviation, corrected the inevitability of democritus's philosophy, and gave contingency its due position. Epicurus' view of history is reflected in his hedonistic ethics. He thinks that a wise man should not hate life and should not be afraid of death. The purpose of our life is to pursue happiness or happiness, and happiness is divided into two categories: one is physical happiness; One is spiritual happiness. When we say that happiness is the ultimate goal of life, we mean not physical happiness, but spiritual happiness. A wise man should decide his own actions in order to obtain physical health and peace of mind. Inner peace depends on living a noble and upright life. When a person diligently thinks about the ultimate meaning of the universe and nature, he can reach the philosophical realm of spiritual peace. These thoughts, like clear springs, can really inspire people's philosophical wisdom. Lucretius's contribution to philosophy lies in using atomism as a weapon to explain natural phenomena and spiritual essence, and criticizing the prevailing religious superstitions at that time. His long philosophical poem "On Matter" written in Latin is full of passion and great momentum, and Marx called him "a real Roman epic poet". [22]
The Middle Ages in Western Europe is a special historical era. In the long Middle Ages, there was a huge contradiction between religious belief and scientific understanding. The original and comprehensive natural philosophy of the Greeks is the general knowledge about nature, which generally outlines a generally correct picture of the universe. Aristotle reached the peak of the primitive synthesis of Greek philosophy and science, and his views on nature and history had a dual impact on medieval philosophy: on the one hand, Aristotle's philosophy was named as ideological authority by the church; On the other hand, Aristotle's natural philosophy works also had a great influence on the theological view of nature in the Middle Ages. The natural philosophical issues such as "the world is eternal" left by Aristotle have become the subject of heated debate in Christian godfather philosophy.
Nominalism and realism of scholasticism adopt the conceptual analysis method of Aristotle's formal logic. The religious purpose of the debate about the general and the individual, the * * * phase and the special phase is to demonstrate how God exists, but the epistemological problem it contains is the transitional link from ontology to epistemology in modern philosophy.
/kloc-The Renaissance humanism movement that originated in Italy in the 0/4th century led to the disintegration of scholasticism. In the struggle against theological idealism, Bruno, the most outstanding representative of Italian natural philosophy in the late Renaissance, inherited and developed the natural philosophy of Nicola of Coussa and Tresho of cosenza, and expounded the materialistic view of nature in the form of pantheism. Bruno shifted the object of philosophical research to nature, that is, he took the cause, origin and unity of natural things as the main topic of his philosophical research.