'Looking At Philosophy' By Donald Palmer: Chapter Analysis
808 Words4 Pages
Alejandra Velez
Philosophy 201
Professor Ausmus
20 January 2015
Certification Essay In the textbook "Looking at Philosophy" written by Donald Palmer, Palmer began the chapter by talking about the pre-Socratic philosophers. Palmer mentioned they were active philosophers in Greece towards the ending of the seventeenth century B.C.E and around the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. The pre-Socratic philosophers were known to create their "theories of the cosmos", or theories of the world, by applying observations and reason in the creation of these theories to explain the secrets of the world's appearance. Many of these philosophers believed that one of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire; were one of things everything came down to. The first pre-Socratic philosopher Palmer spoke of was Thales, he was…show more content… It was interesting knowing there were a variety of theories and only one was significantly close to today's theory; even though there was no unified theory. The theory I found to be a bit unordinary for the thoughts of the philosophers of this era was the belief that motion was an illusion, by Parmenides. He also believed that motion did not exist and nothing ever changed. The reason I found this theory to be surprising was because of the way Parmenides had two contradictions and intended to make sense of them. According to Palmer, "Parmenides believed that Being is rational, that only what can be thought can exist. Since 'nothing' cannot be thought (without thinking of it as something), there is no nothing, there is only Being." In order to have made sense out of this, I had to read it more than once, but I eventually understood what he was saying. It does make sense in a strange way; if you try to think of nothing you technically are thinking of