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The Ionian school, a type of Greek philosophy centred in Miletus, Ionia, in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, is something of a misnomer. Although Ionia was a center of Western philosophy, the scholars it produced, including Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, and Diogenes of Apollonia,〔American International Encyclopedia, J.J. Little Co., New York 1954, Vol VIII〕 had such diverse viewpoints that it cannot be said to be a specific school of philosophy. Aristotle called them ''physiologoi'',〔Aristotle, ''Metaphysics'', 986b.〕 meaning 'those who discoursed on nature', but he did not group them together as an "Ionian school". The classification can be traced to the second-century historian of philosophy Sotion. They are sometimes referred to as cosmologists, since they were largely physicalists who tried to explain the nature of matter. While some of these scholars are included in the Milesian school of philosophy, others are more difficult to categorize. Most cosmologists thought that, although matter could change from one form to another, all matter had something in common which did not change. They did not agree on what all things had in common, and did not experiment to find out, but used abstract reasoning rather than religion or mythology to explain themselves, thus becoming the first philosophers in the Western tradition. Later philosophers widened their studies to include other areas of thought. The Eleatic school, for example, also studied epistemology, or how people come to know what exists. But the Ionians were the first group of philosophers that we know of, and so remain historically important. ==Thales== (詳細はThales (Greek: Θαλῆς, ''Thalēs'') of Miletus (ca. 624 BCE - 546 BCE) is regarded as the earliest Western philosopher. Before him, the Greeks explained the origin and nature of the world through myths of anthropomorphic gods and heroes. Phenomena like lightning and earthquakes were attributed to actions of the gods. By contrast, Thales attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world, without reference to the supernatural. He explained earthquakes by imagining that the Earth floats on water, and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves. Thales' most famous belief was his cosmological doctrine, which held that the world originated from water. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ionian School (philosophy)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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