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In Ionia of the |
Thales seems that he was familiar with the achievements of the Egyptians and Chaldaeans, but his philosophy was never completely detached from the practical problems of his time. He considered water a primary element, in which the world floats. By that he followed a tradition already expressed in Homer in a mythological way. If we accept the information about Thales, from a poet of the |
Anaximenes, the student of Anaximander, believed air to be the primary substance of the world. According to his theory, the alternation of natural forms and conditions was owed, to heating or cooling and the condensation or dilution of air. In his cosmological pattern the earth was flat and shallow, whereas the firmament was a kind of transparent membrane, onto which the stars were nailed. |
Heraclitus, another Ionian philosopher, supported, developed and enriched these materialistic principles of the natural philosophy with dialectic elements. |
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