Ionian school

Ionian school

Ionian school, pre-Socratic group of Greek philosophers of the 6th and 5th cent. B.C.; most of them were born in Ionia. Its members were primarily concerned with the origins of the universe—the forces that shaped it and the materials of which it is composed. Thales, his successor Anaximander, and Anaximenes were all from Miletus. Other prominent members included Anaxagoras, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Archelaus. It is also known as the Milesian school.

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ionian School

 

a spontaneously materialistic trend in ancient Greek philosophy that arose and developed in the Ionian colonies in the sixth through fourth centuries B.C. The school originated in the city of Miletus and was represented by the philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes (the Milesian school), and Heraclitus of Ephesus. It is customary to contrast the Ionian school to the Pythagorean, Eleatic, and Athenian schools. Among the fundamental ideas first advanced by the Ionian philosophers was that of the unity of everything that exists, the origin of all things from a single prime principle, which was understood as one or another material element (water in Thales, air in Anaximenes, and fire in Heraclitus) or as the “unlimited,” from which the fundamental opposites warm and cold emerged (the apeiron of Anaximander). The works of the Ionian philosophers were written in the Ionian dialect, in contrast to the Athenian dialect of the works of Plato and Aristotle.

REFERENCE

Mikhailova, E. N., and A. N. Chanyshev. Ioniiskaia filosofiia. Moscow, 1966.

A. O. MAKOVEL’SKII

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.