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
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“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)