Sept.

23, 2010
PHL 201

Many ancient philosophers became concerned with how to account for all the
similarities as well, as the distinct differences, that occur in the natural world.
Philosophers began attempting to pinpoint an underlying arche that could explain this
problem of the many and the one. At the port of Miletus, a number of thinkers posited
their own ideas for an arche that could account for this occurrence. These philosophers
became known as the Milesian Monist, for they all suggested this arche was one
individual substance that was the basis for reality. Thales, for instance, came to name
water as the underlying source of all that is. A student of Thales, Anaximander, named
the arche as apeiron, which can be loosely translated as the infinite or indefinite.
Apeiron is not a material substance such as water, but rather an immaterial substance
that which is the driving force behind all things, and all the change that is observed.
Anaximander believed the apeiron could account for the differences in the world more
effectively than water.
Another bold attempt at finding an arche was that of Anaximenes. Anaximenes
names the naturally occurring substance air as the underlying substance of reality. His
theory was radically different from other Milesian Monist of his time. While like Thales in

naming a natural substance as the arche, Anaximenes also has a rationally account of
how change occurs. Ands unlike Anaximander, who relied on an immaterial and abstract
substance to account for change, Anaximenes suggested that all things are air, simply
in different stages. Rarefaction and condensation is how Anaximenes accounts for the
different stages that air goes through. Air condenses into water, dirt, and rock, while is
rarefies into steam and fire. Everything that is in existence today is simply a
consequence of the rarefaction or condensation that air has went through. With air
being the underlying substance in all things, Anaximenes was more able to account for
the problem of opposites. According to Anaximenes everything is simply air at a different
point on a continuum of hot and cold.
Off all the Milesian Monist, Anaximenes posited the most sound theory for an
arche. He built upon the example Thales set by naming a natural substance as the
arche, and like Anaximander he had a mechanism to account for change. He based his
arche on natural observations and did not rely on immaterial or supernatural things in
naming an Arche of Reality. Anaximenes was the closest philosopher of his time to
come to solving the problem of the many and the one.