The
conceptual
excellence since the
greek
School of Miletus
(7th
to 5th centuries BC)
In a connected way to the advent of the antique Greek city
(polis) where were henceforth promoted, particularly by the impulse of the
archon legislator Solon, the
equality of citizens in front of the law (isonomy), their
solidarity, and a decent regulation of debts, the physicist philosopher Anaximander had developed with
the milesian philosophical school a preeminence of wisdom (sophia)
over traditional belief (doxa), and over the supernatural, in break
with a theistic explanation of the origin of the world (theogony, or
theogeny). From then on, there were in it the essential ingredients to
begin to edificate a modern human civilization, profitable to every human groups, based
on reason, science, cohesion, and justice.
The quality of the "logos" used by the
Milesian school was even such that, twenty-four centuries before Darwin
and Newton, Anaximander could already profess that a natural interaction
of water with telluric materials, in a warm temperature, had produced
embryos of life, then fish-like animals, which had evolved, up to human
beings. And he exposed the idea of a founding principle (apeiron)
characterizing the indefinite and unlimited universe in which human beings
lived.
Other philosophers have extended and broadened this way. In addition, Heraclitus explained by a concept of
energy (which he represented by the caloric power of fire) the numerous
possible modifications of matter, a matter that Democritus and Leucippus
described from their part in an atomistic conception, all things which
will be confirmed by modern science twenty-four centuries later.
The exemplary quality of the contributions of these pioneers, political,
philosophical, and scientific reformers, constituted the historical starting point of a fundamental
process of conceptual and societal excellence, a process which will be improved then
from century to century, and which eco-humanism still contributes to
protect and to pass on in the service of the civilized human whole (the
human House).
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