Thales' philosophy can be summarized in one sentence: "Everything is aquatic, and everything belongs to water". He thinks that the world is water. The seven sages of ancient Greece each had a particularly famous motto. His motto was: "Water is the best".
Thales learned to observe floods from the Egyptians. He has a lot of experience. He carefully read the records of the annual flood and ebb of the Nile and witnessed the phenomenon of the river retreating.
He found that every time the flood receded, not only fertile silt was left, but also countless tiny germs and larvae were left in the silt. He combined this phenomenon with the primitive Egyptian myth that God created the universe and came to the conclusion that everything is made of water.
For Thales, water was the first basic element in the world. Egyptian priests claimed that the earth rose from the bottom of the sea, while Thales thought that the earth was floating on the water.
Heraclitus believes that the world is a living fire that burns forever.
Heraclitus argued that fire and everything can be transformed into each other, but did not explain how this transformation was carried out. This reflects his philosophical obscurity and mysticism. He believes that the burning of fire has a certain scale and logos thought.
Heraclitus believes that the origin of all things is fire and the universe is an eternal living fire. His basic starting point is that this orderly universe was not created by God or human beings.
The universe itself is its own creator, and the order of the universe is stipulated by its own logos. This is the essence of Heraclitus' theory and the inheritance and in-depth development of the simple materialism of the ancient Miletus school.
3. According to China's ancient Five Elements Theory, Jin Mu's fire, water and earth are the five basic elements that produce everything.
The Five Elements Theory is a philosophical thought created by ancient people in China. It takes five elements in daily life, namely gold, wood, water, fire and earth, as the basis for the changes of all things in the universe and various natural phenomena.
The meaning of the five elements includes five basic trends in the evolution of Yin and Yang: water (moistening the lower part), fire (burning the upper part), gold (converging), wood (prolonging) and earth (neutralizing).
Ancient philosophers in China used the theory of five elements to explain the formation of all things in the world and their relationships. It emphasizes the whole and aims to describe the movement form and transformation relationship of things. Yin and Yang are ancient theories of unity of opposites, and the five elements are primitive system theories.
4. The atomism of democritus and Epicurus in ancient Europe.
Democritus discussed the structure of matter and put forward the viewpoint of atomism. He believes that the origin of everything is atoms and nothingness. Atoms are the last indivisible particles of matter. Their basic property is "fullness", and each atom has no gap. The essence of void is emptiness, in which atoms can move, which provides conditions for atomic movement.
Dalton? In order to make the concept that matter is made up of atoms a reality and a useful hypothesis, he gave symbols to elements and combined them into compounds, and made the atomic scale of 14 elements.
5. Qi monism in ancient China.
Qi monism means that everything in heaven and earth is born in one breath, and everything in heaven and earth is nothing more than Qi monism. And there is another key, heart, heart right, heart empathy. Carelessness is heavy, cold heart has air conditioning, subtle heart has subtle gas, turbid gas can make the heart turbid, and impetuous gas can make the heart impetuous.
Although it has broken through the limitation of attributing the origin of the world to a certain material form to a certain extent, it still belongs to the category of simple materialism.
Baidu Encyclopedia-ancient naive materialism