Ancient philosophers and modern scientists

It is now fashionable to talk about the similarity of modern science and Taoism or Indian philosophy. Not surprising. Eastern philosophy is very popular, and in popular culture it is preferred western. In my opinion unfair. As far as I know, the Indian philosophy was subordinated to religion, and this is not very useful for science, which requires maximum freedom of thought. In China, philosophy has almost always been subordinated to ideology, and this is just as bad. Maybe I'm wrong, in that case I am waiting for objections. And now I would suggest to look, that from “wisdom of the West” was the predecessor of our modern scientific ideas. In fact, it’s just amazing how far Greek thought has come in understanding the world. The Greeks even had all the knowledge to make a steam engine and start the industrial revolution thousands of years before the British. Why not done - this is another question. This is usually associated with slavery and unfortunate natural conditions. Many modern scientific ideas were also known to people of antiquity. As a rule, the Ancients had reasons to believe in them of a completely different kind than ours. In many cases, the argument was more than naive, sometimes completely wrong, and sometimes quite modern. I would like to talk about a few of those who have always impressed me, examples. In addition, I hope this article will be useful to those who study on technical specialties and study the course of general philosophy, which must be admitted often taught in the most boring manner.

The picture of Raphael shows an Athenian school — one of the first universities in history.

Thales

Thales is the first of the philosophers of antiquity, who were called physicists (besides them there were also ethics and dialectics). In general, philosophy begins with it. He was a representative of the Milesian school, and he was also ranked among the Seven Sages — very ancient thinkers who were considered great. All of the seven said some clever phrase. Specifically, Thales said: "water is the best." He assumed that everything was made of water. Of course, from our point of view, this is quite naive, but one should not forget that the ancients did not have chemistry or microscopes at that time, and the idea of ​​the unified nature of all material was very progressive. At the beginning of the 20th century, something like this seemed like quite a serious idea. At the first stages of the atomic theory, it seemed that everything was made up of hydrogen.
Thales also studied astronomy. They say he died when he went to watch the stars at night and fell into a well he had forgotten about.
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Anaximander

Anaximander is another representative of the Milesian school. He was not satisfied with the idea that everything consists of water, so he assumed that everything consists of an apeiron, which turns into all other substances. Apeiron is infinite, eternal and "embraces all worlds." Anaximander believed that there are many worlds except ours, which in fact was not uncommon for the Greeks. As if when Macedonian learned from Anaksarch that there are many worlds, then he was upset that he had not even won one. For Giordano Bourne, such an idea ended in failure (there was not only this, but that was another story).
Anaximander imagined that there is a struggle between the natural elements that are formed and the apeiron, but the universal law of justice returns everything to order if one element (fire, for example) passes its measure, so that conservation laws are fulfilled in its physics. The worlds in this cosmology arose naturally as a result of the chaotic movement of the elements, and this idea will be developed by Democritus, and then Kant will tell you that the Solar system has arisen from the vortex of cosmic dust. Living creatures according to Anaiskandra originated under the influence of sunlight from a water element, and man and all other animals evolved from fish. Once a man was not at all like this. Anaximander argued this by saying that the baby could not survive on its own in nature, which means that once it had to be adapted for independent survival. Yes, this is the theory of evolution, only without natural selection. However, we'll talk about the selection.
But Anaximander represented the Earth in the form of a cylinder. Well, even great thinkers are mistaken! A few hundred years later, they will laugh at us for our ideas about the Universe. Another Milesian was Anaksimen, he believed that everything was made of air and also represented the earth in the form of a cylinder.

Empedocles

I mentioned Anaximenes only to go to Empedocles, who decided that one basic element was small and offered four: water, earth, air and fire, of which everything is folded, like " " the wall is made of bricks and stones "." And also there is love and enmity - two forces or elements that control the behavior of others, connecting them and sharing. Love and enmity have distinct physical properties, so these are not just metaphors. Everything in the world happens by chance and necessity. In general, it is quite modern, name the first 4 elements as fermions, and love and enmity by bosons and here you find something similar to the Standard Model.
Empedocles was also a religious leader. I will not talk about his religious ideas, they have nothing to do with his scientific ones. Here the term "cognitive dissonance" is appropriate. I note only that in the end: "The great Empedocles, with an ardent soul, jumped into Etna and roasted whole ." He did this to go to the gods, to which he ranked himself.
His main scientific discovery is that air is a special substance. It was not just a speculative conclusion, he really established it empirically, observing various natural phenomena. And yes, he came up with natural selection! True, very strange. At first, it was as if there were quite different creatures like a head with hands or a nose with legs, all hermaphrodites and other monsters of which only the adapted ones survived in the end. Empedocles believed that the moon shines with reflected light and was right, and that the sun also shines and was not right, as you might guess. He knew, perhaps, from Anaxagoras, about which a little further, that eclipses are caused by the passage of the Moon between the Earth and the Sun. He also thought that the light travels at a very high but finite speed. And where could he have thought of this? The next person I knew, who thought about and decided to test this idea, was Leonardo da Vinci, but he did not succeed.

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras is one of those philosophers who suffered for their beliefs. Because he taught that the Moon resembles the Earth and there are mountains on it and creatures live, and the Sun is a hot stone more than the Peloponesus, he was persecuted by the leaders of Athenian democracy, who first drafted the relevant law. However, it was probably connected with the fact that he was a friend of the ruler of Athens Pericles, against whom the political struggle had just begun. Yes, some things do not change over time. Unlike Socrates or Bruno, Anaxagoras survived and moved to a more supportive town. Later, the day of his death was announced, according to his will, on school holidays.
Anaxagoras believed that all things are infinitely divisible (it seems, alas, a somewhat marginal fractal theory of matter). He called what the matter of homeomerism consists of and I never fully understood what it is. Homeomerism is indestructible and infinitely small. All bodies contain substances of all kinds, and our perception depends on what prevails. So, let's say, in meat there is a homeomerism of fire, bone, water, wood and everything else, but there is more homeomerism of meat. When we eat meat we grow bones - because they are contained in meat. The snow is white, but there is a bit of soot in it, so the snow is a bit black. The only thing that is not present in everything is the mind, nous. He is part of only living things. The mind, by the way, leads to the initial movement of matter. Nous is the same everywhere. In a cow, he is as good as in a man, but a cow has no hands, so nus does not provide her with the same results as a man. In general, Anaxagoras invented a mechanical explanation for everything. As far as is known, he was an atheist.

Heraclitus

We talked about those who believed that everything consists of water and air. Was there really no one who thought that everything was made of fire? Yes, there was such a philosopher. His name was Heraclitus and, they say, he was a very gloomy man. In the painting “The Athenian School,” he sits, gloomily supporting his head with his hand. Heraclitus left the people and lived in a desert area, and before his death he was smeared with manure. Or maybe he was treated for dropsy. About all his predecessors, he spoke with sarcasm and criticism. He praised only Tevtama, perhaps due to the fact that Tevtam believed that "many are bad." Heraclitus is considered extremely great because he invented the dialectic, which Hegel then developed, and Marx used. Everything flows, everything changes - Heraclitus said, unity is born from opposites, and one cannot enter the same river twice, the war is the king of everything and the father. Everything in the world consists of an ever-changing fire capable of passing into different states. "Everything is exchanged for Fire, and Fire for everything, as for gold, goods, and for goods, gold." Heisenberg noted that if we replace the word fire with the word energy in the writings of Heraclitus, then we get (almost) modern physics. The universe is governed by the law - the logos. If it seems to you ridiculous idealism that the law of nature can exist separately from matter, then you should read Vilenkin’s book The World of Many Worlds.

Parmenides

If Heraclitus believed that everything changes in the world, then there was someone who believed that nothing changes. Nothing at all. His name was Parmenides. He said that being is eternal, unchanging, infinite, one, material and has the shape of a ball, and emptiness does not exist. I do not list the arguments in favor of this, they are not very interesting from the point of view of physics. Parmenides is a very important and deep philosopher, but here I put him because his idea resembles the static world of the general theory of relativity, where space and time are a single four-dimensional variety. Just as quantum mechanics and GRT do get along very well now, so, once, Parmenides' philosophy also brought great trouble to other philosophers. In addition, he very sharply raised the question of time and, it seems to me, new interesting thoughts about time will not appear soon after him.

Democritus

Another person expressed ideas opposing the views of Heraclitus - Democritus. He was an atomist and dialectically complemented Heraclitus. In the future they were often portrayed in pairs: laughing Democritus and weeping Heraclitus. So, everything consists of indestructible atoms, of which there are infinitely many and which are subdivided into an infinite number of different types. There is also a space in which they exist. The space is discontinuous and formed by (conditional) "elements of space". Naturally, time also consists of indivisible pieces. There is always a distance between any two atoms, because if there were no distance between the two atoms, it would be one atom. But one atom cannot be divided, and therefore two cannot join.
Atoms are very small and inaccessible to the eye, but their effect can be seen, for example, when you look at the movements of dust particles. But it was with the help of the Brownian motion that Einstein later confirmed the existence of atoms!
Atoms are always moving. How exactly is not entirely clear. Epicurus and the poet Lucretius, who wrote the poem “On the Nature of Things”, assumed that they initially move “downward” and here the heavier ones catch up with the lighter ones and, as a result of collisions, lead them astray. Well, then went running. Democritus, however, believed that there is no top or bottom in a vacuum, and it seems that atoms move randomly in different directions, as in the modern kinetic theory of gas.
The atoms interact mechanically, for example, they cling to each other. Gods are made up of hooked atoms, so they live longer than humans and are less vulnerable. The soul consists of smooth, slippery, moving atoms that set our body in motion. In the world of Democritus, everything is mechanical and rational. There is no spirit, no mind, no logos. Gods are ordinary material beings. There are no actions at a distance (someone from the quantum mechanics must smile slyly) - all the effects are manifested due to carrier particles. Love arises due to the outflows of atoms from the body, which act on the senses. Also hate.
There are an infinite number of worlds, similar and unlike ours, and some are destroyed, while others arise. By the way, there are exact copies of our world. And how can you not remember Everett or other multi-world concepts! The earth, alas, has the shape of a disk, hollow inside, it used to be very wet, and then dried. If you think that none of the Greeks knew the correct shape of the Earth, then you will be mistaken, the Pythagoreans knew that the Earth was in the shape of a ball and rather accurately calculated its size. They believed that everything is a number and the same way physicist Max Tegmark thinks.

Plato

Plato (in the picture he is to the right of Socrates, I think, where Socrates you guess) inherited much from the Pythagoreans. He came up with the perfect world of pure ideas. In this world there is mathematics and, in general, all general ideas. This is remotely similar to the Max Tegmark “mathematical universe”, only that one has nothing but an ideal world. In addition, it is similar to the theory of the holographic universe. In it, the universe is simply a hologram recorded on its walls, and in Plato it is just a “hologram” of the ideal world. But most of all, this is similar to the idea of ​​Roger Penrose, who believes that there is a world of (mathematical) ideas that influence ours through the special laws of physics.
Plato was not an atomist, but he believed that everything consists of atoms of mathematical nature. More precisely, the atoms themselves - a cube (earth), a tetrahedron (fire), an icosahedron (water) and an octahedron (air) consisted of triangles, and those of points and lines. And the universe itself has the form of a dodecahedron. It is absolutely incredible that after one of the analyzes of the WMAP data, just such a version was offered. However, it is probably not confirmed.