Paul Valery remarked somewhere that only the person who possesses a passion for the future can conceive the substance and value of the past. What is the value and meaning of today’s thinking man becoming involved with the developments of the Greek spirit? Is it the wonder or is it the respect for the unalloyed clarity of a deep spirit capable of penetrating with a unique combination of intuitive and rational power the profoundest problems, the solutions to which will thereafter challenge mankind? M. Heidegger observed that the origin of all philosophic inquiries is to be found in the Presocratics. And what of the answers they provided? Did they simply establish the beginnings of European rationality? Or were they inspired by a timeless critical and logical vision that continues today to cast light on contemporary human issues of freedom, the environment, philosophy, and the natural sciences, together with its most advanced theories regarding symmetry, chaos, force, interaction, basic particles, the creation of the universe, dualism, holism, et al.?
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Vamvacas, C.J. (2009). Introduction. In: The Founders of Western Thought – The Presocratics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 257. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9791-1_1
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