Near Eastern Influence on the Ionian Thinkers
Knowledge from the ancient Near East influenced the Ionian thinkers, just as it had
influenced Greek artists of the Archaic Age. Greek vase painters and specialists in
decorating metal vessels imitated Near Eastern designs depicting animals and luxuriant
plants; Greek sculptors produced narrative reliefs like those of Assyria and statues
with the stiff, frontal poses familiar from Egyptian precedents; Egypt also gave
inspiration to Greek architects to employ stone for columns, ornamental details, and,
eventually, entire buildings. In a similar process of the transfer of knowledge from
east to west, information about the regular movements of the stars and planets developed
by astronomers in Babylonia proved especially important in helping Ionian thinkers reach
their conclusions about the nature of the physical world. The first of the Ionian
theorists,
Thales1 (c. 625 - 545 B.C.) from the
city-state of
Miletus2, was said to have predicted a solar eclipse in 585 B.C., an accomplishment
implying he had been influenced by Babylonian learning. Modern astronomers doubt Thales
actually could have predicted an eclipse, but the story shows how influential eastern
scientific and mathematical knowledge was to the thinkers of Ionia. Working from
knowledge such as the observed fact that celestial bodies moved in a regular pattern,
scientific thinkers like Thales and
Anaximander3 (c. 610- 540 B.C.), also from Miletus, drew the revolutionary conclusion that
the physical world was regulated by a set of laws of nature rather than by the arbitrary
intervention of divine beings.
Pythagoras4, who
emigrated from Samos to south Italy about 530 B.C., taught that the entire world was
explicable through numbers. His doctrines inspired systematic study of mathematics and
the numerical aspects of musical harmony.
