The Milesian school was a school of thought founded in the 6th century BC. The ideas associated with it are exemplified by three philosophers from the Ionian town of Miletus, on the Aegean coast of Anatolia: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They introduced new opinions contrary to the prevailing viewpoint on how the world was organized, in which natural phenomena were explained solely by the will of anthropomorphized gods. The Milesians presented a view of nature in terms of methodologically observable entities, and as such was one of the first truly scientific philosophies.
Note: It is important to make a distinction between the Milesian school and the Ionian, which includes the philosophies of both the Milesians and other distinctly different Ionian thinkers such as Heraclitus. See also Pre-Socratic philosophy.
Read more about Milesian School: Philosophy of Nature, Cosmology
Famous quotes containing the word school:
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a womens college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)