We are dwarfs. But dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of giants (the ancients)….
-Humberto Eco
Anaximander…asserted that the source and element of the existing things is the”infinite”….it is neither water nor any of the other so-called “elements”…(it is that) from which all the heavens and the world-orders in them arise.
…innumerable world-orders arise and perish again into that from which they came.
He says further that in the beginning man was born from animals of a different sort,
arguing from the fact that whereas animals are soon able to fend for themselves, the young of humans are dependent for a long period of time. Hence, if man had been in the beginning as he is now, he would have never been able to survive.
Thunder and lightning are caused by wind; for when wind that has been shut up in a dense cloud bursts forth…the discharge produces the thunderclap…
Was there a time before motion began? – a time before which it had no existence?
Does it cease again, so that nothing moves . Or is it the case that motion neither comes into existence nor passes away, but always was and always will be, is a deathless and unfailing source of existing things – the life, as it were, of all things constituted by nature?
-Anaximander (~600B.C.E.)
The Ethiopians made their gods snub-nosed and black; the Thracians make their gods gray-eyed and red-haired. And if oxen and horses and lions had hands, and could draw with their hands and do what man can do, horses would draw the gods in the shapes of horses, and oxen in the shape of oxen, each giving the gods bodies similar to their own.
One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or mind….He sees all over, thinks all over, hears all over….He remains always in the same place, without moving….But without toil he sets all things in motion by the thought of his mind.
– Xenophanes (~ 571 B.C.E.
The way up and the way down are the same
To those who are awake the world-order is one, common to all, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
We ought to follow what is common to all, but thought the logos is common to all, the many live as though their thoughts were private for themselves.
Nature loves to hide.
Eternity is a child at play
-Heraclitus (~500 B.C.E.)