Talk:Pre-Socratic philosophy

message: The article is almost entirely silent about the origin and sources of pre-Socratic philosophy. Do we have to presume here that the world itself began with the pre-Socratics and thus, in one fine morning, after the creation of the world ex nihilo at around 7th century BC the pre-Socratics began asking philosophical questions and eventually became the "forerunners" of almost all the major disciplines of knowledge, including of course, the natural sciences?  Mosesheron (talk) 01:16, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: No, generally speaking, when there is silence on a topic, you do not have to presume anything. But your main point (silence on the origin and sources of pSp) stands true. We have to address this issue. If I recall correctly, AC Grayling mentioned something about it at his history of philosophy (2019). I will have a look at it as soon as I can. Cinadon36 08:41, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  Clement of Alexandria and Diogenes Laertius said some things about this which might be worth citing. Thomas McEviley's book, The Shape of Ancient Thought would also be a good resource. Teishin (talk) 13:54, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

text:  I added info about the Ionian Enlightenment to address this issue. Teishin (talk) 22:11, 19 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks about that. But we do need a citation. Evans' History of W. Philosophy and Grayling's history of philosophy do place Ionia as the place philosophy arose, but they do not mention Ionian Enlightenment. As far as I understand, Pre-Socratic Philosophy did not arose from Ionian Enlightenment, but pre-socratic philosophy was a part of Ionian Enlightenment. Awaiting your reply and guidance, Cinadon36 10:17, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'll try to do some more work on this in the next few days. I have on other philosophy topics run into problems with using Grayling's book as a source. It's a survey book that not only skims ancient philosophy thinly, it oversimplifies it to create a narrative to hold the reader's interest. It's not really a reference book. We need to be using sources that are more-specific to the era. Teishin (talk) 13:18, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: Yes, I get your point.Cinadon36 19:54, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

text: Grayling's "The History of Philosophy" skims the subject at a rate such that his chapters on individual subjects are shorter and less informative than our Wikipedia articles, and usually greatly so. What I've seen of it is that it aims to be entertaining. The publisher's own description of the book says so. So his breezy stories and narratives, stripped of a great deal of detail, all too often aren't really all that accurate. For parts of the subject matter I know well, I find reading that book to be nauseating because it so distorts its subjects by leaving so much out and over-generalizing and over summarizing. Teishin (talk) 11:44, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

text: How about the IEP  and the SEP  instead? Teishin (talk) 13:42, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok I will not use Grayling but certainly his book will be much more informative than our article will ever be. Chapter on presocratics covers many pages.(pp 9-57). Being entertaining and relatively easy to digest, is a fact but I cant see why this is a drawback. Thanks for the links, I am very fond of both IEP and SEP, but I am a little hesitant to use them since they are tertiary sources. Well, we ll see how it goes. Thanks for the advice. Cinadon36 17:58, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am of the exact opposite opinion regarding what source is more informative. It seems to me that Wikipedia is already a much better source than Grayling's book is. Yes, his chapter on the presocratics is about 46 pages, but it isn't appropriate to compare that linear text to just Wikipedia's article on the presocratics; it must be compared to Wikipedia's hypertext collection of articles on the presocratics, which includes all of the articles on the presocratic schools and all of the articles on the presocratic philosophers. I've previously compared what Grayling says in this book about the Hellenistic philosophies. It's full of serious omissions and quite a few errors. Wikipedia blows Grayling away as a reference. Wikipedia's only weakness with respect to Grayling's book is that it isn't as fun to read. Grayling's book happens to be a tertiary source, too. Use of the IEP and SEP for philosophy topics is fine.Teishin (talk) 19:43, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Got it. Cinadon36 11:50, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

text: Take it easy . Nobody is in a hurry here.Your back is far more important. Cinadon36 13:04, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the Origin of pre-Socratic philosophy 

message: A nice one.  Cinadon36 10:47, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: I have removed the following text from the article, since I felt it was not sited in the proper section. Must be added somewhere else. Diogenes Laërtius divided the physiologoi into two groups: the Ionian, begun by Anaximander, and the Italiote, begun by Pythagoras.Franco Orsucci, Changing Mind: Transitions in Natural and Artificial Environments, p. 14, . Note: Orsucci says "Ionian and Italiote headed by Anaximander and Pythagoras", as defined by Diogenes Laërtius, quoting H Diels & K Freeman in "Ancilla to the pre-socratic philosophers" Harvard University Press 1948 - not to be confused with Italiotes, the pre-Roman Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula, between Naples and Sicily 
Modern interest in early Greek philosophy can be traced back to 1573, when Henri Estienne collected a number of pre-Socratic fragments in Poesis Philosophica (Ποίησις Φιλόσοφος).Giannis Stamatellos, Introduction to Presocratics (2012).   p. 7. Hermann Diels popularized the term "pre-Socratic" in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics) in 1903. The term "pre-Sokratic"  was used as early as George Grote's Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates in 1865. Edouard Zeller was also important in dividing thought before and after Socrates. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, Karl Popper,The World of Parmenides, Essays on the Presocratic Enlightenment, 1998 and Friedrich Nietzsche.Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
References
I will think of it later on. Cinadon36 10:16, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text

message: I will try to find how RS are treating this matter. 
*Warren Jonathan, Presocratics (2014). Page 6 
 "I have also chosen not to extend my story to include the group of thinkers oft en referred to as “Sophists”, such as Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus and the like.8 Th eir interests are primarily political and ethical, and they oft en focus on questions of persuasion, rhetoric, justice and power. Although there are clear continuities between their thoughts and some of the philosophers I shall consider – Democritus, for example – they can also be seen as marking a new and distinct philosophical moment, and the most illuminating context in which to place them is among the familiar discussions of Athens in the classical period: its historians, playwrights and poets, and, most notable of all, Socrates himself.
Please do not answer this section yet. While studying other authors, I will add their opinions here, and when I am done, we can talk it over. Hopefully in a couple of weeks. Thanks. Cinadon36 14:39, 24 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should we include Sophists among PreSocratics? 

message: , I have noticed that you removed text, citing "removed uncited (and erroneous) claim)" . But it is obvious that there is a citation, it is in the next sentence. Now, being erroneous, I do not know, I am just transferring info from a RS. Also, for the next removal, it would be better to introduce the word "experiment" and "observation" as they are crucial advances of early philosophy, a chapter is dedicated in discussing these subject. Also, while it might be true that "there was not experiment as we know it, removing claim", experiments did happened, and the world is used by a RS to describe the advances of presocratics. Cinadon36 20:42, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The cited source itself contradicts what was in the text. In the first case it says "Thus Empedocles, Democritus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Alcmaeon, Philolaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus took an active interest in subjects we commonly associate with medicine". That's not a claim that these philosophers were physicians or even that they studied medicine. Those are erroneous claims. For example, I take an active interest in medicine, but I'm no doctor nor have I studied medicine. In the second case the source contradicts what was in the text, saying: "The use of the word ‘‘experiment’’ reminds us of that old question as to whether the Greeks had a concept of experiment and carried out experiments at any scale. Early medical writers certainly had no elaborate theory of experimentation". Saying that the pre-Socratics developed experimentation doesn't fit with our current concept of what that means. One would need to qualify such a statement. Teishin (talk) 21:48, 19 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent removals

message: Text of RS says: 
Text in the article: Many philosophers of the pre-Socratic and classical era were also physicians or studied subjects associated with medicine, such as Empedocles, Democritus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato, Aristotle and others" I do not find it very far from the article but I 'd make another suggestion. Would it be ok if we rephrase "Many philosophers of the pre-Socratic and classical era were explored medicine-associated fields, such as anatomy, physiology, diseases and others as a continuation of exploring nature" Cinadon36 04:39, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: First issue

message: ALlow me to explain that there is no contradiction. text of RS---> " 
The above text, does not exclude "experiments" from ancient greece. it just states that they were in a more primitive state than todays' the formal way of experimenting today. But they were experiments nonetheless. So the phrase ", allowed the first experimental observations" seems decent. How could we rephrase it to address your concerns? Cinadon36 04:55, 20 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Second issue

message: The article says, "The philosophical movements of Platonism, Cynicism, Cyrenaicism, Aristotelianism, Pyrrhonism, Epicureanism, Academic skepticism, and Stoicism, a philosophical era that stretched to 100 BCE succeeded the pre-Socratics." Notice there is no verb, or indeed any predicate to the sentence? I'm assuming the editor who wrote this meant to add a phrase like, "... represent the Second Age of Greek Philosophy." I don't want to change it without asking, because I'm not philosophy literate (and don't have a source, which really should be supplied).
Isn't Stoicism a Roman rather than Greek philosophy? IAmNitpicking (talk) 23:57, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks  for your comment. Is it better now?  Cinadon36 02:56, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. That's pellucidly clear. (I felt like being archaic.) IAmNitpicking (talk) 03:04, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Platonism et al are .. what? 

message: This article currently claims Anaximander and Parmenides were the first to claim the earth is spherical. Which was it? This should be addressed. -- LightSpectra (talk) 17:25, 27 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  which was the first to discover the earth is spherical?