SCIENCE  AND  PHILOSOPHY

                         PANDEMONIUM  BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS.

       Merida, Venezuela, 1999.    COPYRIGHT: Franz J. T. Lee.
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To Learn About Life, For Life

Let us continue displaying the natural habitat and social environment of Thales of Miletus. Before, we explained the essence  a n d  existence of philosophic gnomes. Generally, as we understand this term, making it our own, a gnome should express historically the essence  a n d  existence of the science  a n d  philosophy of a specific natural  a n d  social actor  a n d  thinker: for example: pánta rhei (Everything Flows! - Heracleitus) or omnia mecum porto mea
(All I have I carry with me. - Bias); also, our gnome: Do  a n d  Think
AND  Excel, All Of, By and For Yourselves, Not Here, Not Now, But Anywhere, Anynow, Anyhow! Thus, similarly, Thales formulated his own  sententia: ariston men hydor (The Best is Water).

Of course, for us as scientists  a n d   philosophers, in the Patria, many of these wise gnomes are praxically  a n d  theoretically valid; after all: non scholae, sed vitae discimus, we learn not for the school, but for life, for our life. However, we have to be watchful; "wise", formal-logical statements like "What Will Be, Will Be" , "Everything Is Possible" and  "I believe that ...", after a while, have an ideological tendency to become, not watchwords, but catchwords, to become petrified slogans, losing all their specific dynamite or dynamism, that is, if they ever had something of the like. Definitely, naked theories or intellectual nudities cannot grasp a multilogical cosmic  a n d  ontic "reality", they cannot historicize or emancipate patrian class-ridden living circumstances and conditions. There are no capitalistic, industrial "extracts" for the Relation "Cosmos  a n d  Einai", "Nature  a n d  Society" or "Praxis  a n d  Theory";  no Nescafe, no Nesphilosophy can substitute Thinking and Thought. The latter can never ever be produced as "Intellectual Property" in a Factory of Platonic Education, not in an industrial society, not in a post-industrial mode of creation, nowhere where human greed, egoism and megalomania, where Labour, Capital and Profits reign. Nowhere else, except in History, in Emancipation, this wise, ontic don, this free, invisible, invincible, invulnerable gift has its dialogical natural  a n d  social modus operandi  e t  vivendi.

Aristotle's story

But, let us return to our epicentral philosophic venture; the precise, concise, original formulation of the Thalian gnome is not preserved. Only through second-hand information we know about its existence. It was Plato
(427-347 B.C.), Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) who
have informed us about its philosophic existence.

In his Metaphysics, Aristotle stated that Thales had taught that the arché
was water. Concerning his historic life, Herodotus (I. 75 and 170) told us that Thales had prophesied the total eclipse of the sun of May 28, 585 B.C., at the time of the Ionian Wars between Lydians and Medes. Besides similar fragmentary information, we know very little about him, it is not even sure whether he ever had written anything.

Aristotle has explained to us his philosophic method of reasoning. According to him, how did Thales come to the philosophic gnome that Water is the Original, Archaic Principle? By using his simple "common sense", he argued, because "wood swims on water", consequently, "the earth rests on water"; furthermore, because a magnet can move iron, hence it must have a psyche,
a moving force.

We could smile at this type of simple philosophical logic, but we cannot deny its childlike, not childish, auroralike nature. Still in the 20th Century, the general natural scientific hypothesis was prevalent that hydrogen is the arché;  this element forms two-thirds of water, and water forms about four-fifths of the human body. Relevant for us is that Thales did not explain the Cosmos as a divine product, neither as a gift of Olympus, nor as a material excrement of the World Spirit or Absolute Idea, but he tried to explain Being-Out-Of-Itself, Cosmos-Out-Of-Itself. He was not the first in human history to do this, however, as far as Western philosophy is concerned, he is the father of hylozoism and panpsychism.  That he postulated only Being, a sole Being, only Water, a Single Principle, that is another story, which we will relate elsewhere.

Plato's Story

Plato reminded us that Thales was a sophos, "an able craftsman", the originator of "many skilful discoveries in the arts and other activities". In modern terminology, Thales was the following, all in one: engineer, navigator, mathematician, geographer, meteorologist, chemist, physicist, viticulturer, panpsychologist, merchant and statesman, et hoc genus omne. **** Well, no problem, this is precisely what a philosopher should be, and surely, still much, much more. At least, it was still a relatively young Milesian patrian time, when philosophía did not yet become feudalist, absolutely royal, not yet religious and aristocratic, not yet the theological "Queen Of All Sciences", not yet seated in the "Ivory-Tower" of the Orwellian "Republic Of Intellect And Reason".

All sophia, gnosis and episteme, all science  a n d  philosophy, were still represented in the hylozoistic "Democratic Commonwealth of Knowledge". Those were still the "good", old, patrian days, before Humpty Dumpty fell from the Wall.  The industrial epoch of Charlie Chaplin scientifically putting caps on Coca-Cola bottles, of being master of this one and only trade, was still far away off. But, as we were told, the viticulturer Thales very carefully had mixed the necessary pecuniary ingredients of science and philosophy with those of the ancient olive industry, and with superb marketing success, he had already indicated how Intellectual Labour could improve financial profits. Ab ovo, even Thales, launching intellectual labour, was already on the dawning, primitive capitalist Information Highway! He transmitted a transhistoric deja vu to us, to explain, in the final analysis, what Logos, Deus, Ratio and Geist, what Western philosophy, are all about.

Demythologization of the Princes of Darkness

The Labour Process, at the level of Ancient Greek Slave-Owning "Society", necessitated a new ideological superstructure, innovative Intellectual Labour, a brand new "Philosophy". Thales had the "historic" task to introduce this intellectual novelty, to erect its philosophic, materialistic base. Later Plato would decorate the idealistic deck for this future kleptocratic, megalomaniac Ship of State. The primitive accumulation of Capital in the Ancient Mediterranean Region could not prosper under the outdated, pre-Ptolemaic, cosmogonic ruling world outlook of Homer and Hesiod, under obsolete relations of production. A new geocentristic Weltanschauung was urgently needed. Earthly money, chthonic exchange values, were already on the order of the day in the ancient Greek colonies; hylozoism, cryptic materialism had to reflect this flourishing, ocean bound, commercial economy in its ideological superstructure. The slave-owning logos, ideal Intellectual Labour, that abhorred manual slave labour, had to hold water, had to express itself in a maritime philosophic fashion.

Mythological chimeras and phantasmagorias, dwarfs and goblins, were no more suitable to explain the functions and objectives of a "modern" Milesian fleet of trading ships and its protective "invincible" navy. In everyday life, no manna or nectar was raining from topos ouranios, from heaven, from the Olympus; on the contrary, hard cash was flowing, and so did the rivers and the seas, in one word, everything was flowing, money coins were everything, were everywhere, and in Ionia, in Miletus, they were flowing like water. Small wonder that "ariston men hydor"!

WATER: IN A NUT-SHELL!

What did Thales discover, think? Exactly that what a child of his "time", a healthy body  a n d  a sane mind logically would deduce in his era of primitive accumulation of capital, in the commercial whirlpool of exchange money and values. In the philosophic field, sensuously Thales had noted that water is wet, is damp, and that seeds germinate in dampness; that what seeds, insects, plants and animals nourish on are usually damp and wet; it is water which gives rise to wetness, to dampness, which brings about ice in rivers, which evaporates as "air", it is water which comes from the heavens, and from the bowels of the earth, from the womb of the mother, in which a child is born. What a keen, a key, a scientific observation, void of sacred things, holy ghosts, evil devils, divine saints, angels and gods! It is filled with Agatha Christie and Sindbad The Sailor. Western Labour still at its "aristos", at its best: water, water, everywhere!

Obviously, for the Patria, and therewith also for us, Thales is exceptional: he laid the foundation for the One and Only, for the Unomnia, for the Hen kai Pan, for the One Great God, the One Great Idea, the One Great Man, the One Great Race, the One and Only "Chosen People".  He taught us unilogically how to identify, to affirm; to perceive non-relations, to sense things at rest, moribund relations.

Why is Thales consecrated as the "Father of Philosophy"? Simply because of his intrepid patrian statement that the arché is unitary, uniform, unique, universal, only flowing in itself, in flux at rest, alive in death. Motion, Change, can only come from Inside, from Repose, from the Status Quo. He is the Father of Political Reformism, of Capitalist Democracy, which only progresses from within, moves from within, which forever evolves and revolves on the very same spot, in the very same moment. He laid the cornerstone of a Single Unitary Being, a Unified One Principle, for all patrian philosophers, for all future Roman Catholic "Latin Lovers", for all A-Men, here and now, and forever more: Amen!

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