Searching for Arche
...all things. This critique of the Milesian debate outlines the main ideas and beliefs of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes in addition to whether or not searching for an arche helps explain the nature of the world. Thales, being the first to philosophize, began the desertion of allowing mythological concepts (muthos) to shape our belief systems and embarked on a journey of exclaiming rational accounts (logos) while taking full responsibility for their conclusions and explications. Unfortunately, all of Thales' doctrines have been lost or destroyed, and therefore, all we know of Thales, his ideas, and his teaching are what is said about them from other philosophers. Consequently, Aristotle provides Thales' "most significant contribution to the history of western culture" (Roochnik 17) in a statement made in an "A" fragment revealing the first thoughts of an arche, Being, and Becoming. Radically changing the predominant worldview, Thales, among others, pushed the idea that there is an arche, or first principle, that is bound to...