Creationism vs. Science in the PreSocratic Era

The growth of Philosophy into all that it is today was caused by one man's rejection of the blindly accepted status quo, and his subsequent rational inquiry about the nature of justification. This was not Plato's exploration of justice, but rather Thales' search for justification of previously accepted truths, such as the origin of the world.

Prior to Thales and the other preSocratics existed a group of intellectuals who, in their writings, invoked the Muses, which reflects an uncritical belief that there existed an objective source and an authority for their thoughts. No explanation, no logical proofs, and no rationale was necessary to first show that the Muses existed as their inspiration for certain grounded reasons. Rather, theogonists such as Hesiod used the Muses as their mouthpieces for their stories of creation. A substance, a method, and a motive for the gods' creation of the world were superfluous, because the Muses offered to Hesiod a divine warrant which was to be unquestioned.

Thales rejected this lack of rational explanation, and began searching for a more definite foundation for the existence of the world, rather than that the gods had just breathed it into being. The definite foundation he decided upon was water, of all things. He hypothesized that the (flat) earth floated on its surface, and that everything on earth was formed by water: water was the basic foundation of all materials on earth. Thales' supposed 'rational inquiry' into the origin of the world started with a belief  (see next paragraph) that the entire world floats on water. Anaximander, Thales' student, rejected his hypothesis and instead stated that the world was made of an unknown sort of boundless matter. Anaximenes in turn rejected Anaximander's hypothesis and decided that air was the thing that all things on earth were made up of. He improved upon his predecessors in the sense that he proffered methods (such as condensation and rarefaction) for air to do its work. Water, the boundless, and air, are a far cry from the atom, but what I find interesting is not their missing of the accurate mark, but their lack of an explanation as to why the earth was made. All three offered a substance and one offered a method, but no one offered a motive or cared to explain why the earth was formed or came into being. This seems, to me, to be the most important starting place in a quest for justification, which is what Thales claimed to be primarily concerned with, and which it is apparent he is concerned with, due to his immediate rejection of divine intervention as justification for the world's existence.

The irony is that Thales' logical hypothesis was actually still a belief. He had never observed with any of his senses water taking any permanent shape or form in the world, and he had never seen water conforming to the behavior he claimed it did. He chose to believe that his logic was True, even if he had never obtained any solid proof regarding its trueness.

Interestingly enough, centuries later we've still not reached a truly empirical answer for the absolute origins of the universe. I believe Thales' reaction to divine authority still pervades society to this day. Thales' refusal to use divine intervention as a warrant for the origin of the earth is reflected today in the fact that many scientists do not view creationism, or divine intervention by God, as a plausible or factual explanation for the existence of the world. After all, the early Philosophers were also the first scientists in that they were interested in the origins and tendencies of nature and life. It is shocking that we rarely hear about the preSocratics (after all, Plato and Socrates stole the thunder of the Philosophy world), yet they left a pervasive mark on the world that is still evident centuries later: "mere" belief is still not considered to be a plausible key to Truth, because it is not the sort of theory that can be justified empirically.

As if Truth were strictly empirical.