Democritus
Democritus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. Democritus was born in Abdera, around 460 BC, although there are disagreements about the exact year, his exact contributions are difficult to disentangle from those of his mentor Leucippus, as they are mentioned together in texts. Their speculation on atoms, taken from Leucippus, bears a passing and partial resemblance to the 19th-century understanding of atomic structure that has led some to regard Democritus as more of a scientist than other Greek philosophers. Ignored in ancient Athens, Democritus is said to have been disliked so much by Plato that the latter wished all of his books burned, he was well known to his fellow northern-born philosopher Aristotle. Many consider Democritus to be the "father of modern science". None of his writings have survived. Democritus was said to be born in the city of Abdera in Thrace, an Ionian colony of Teos, although some called him a Milesian.
He was born in the 80th Olympiad according to Apollodorus of Athens, although Thrasyllus placed his birth in 470 BC, the date is more likely. John Burnet has argued that the date of 460 is "too early" since, according to Diogenes Laërtius ix.41, Democritus said that he was a "young man" during Anaxagoras's old age. It was said that Democritus's father was from a noble family and so wealthy that he received Xerxes on his march through Abdera. Democritus spent the inheritance which his father left him on travels into distant countries, to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, he traveled to Asia, was said to have reached India and Ethiopia. It is known that he wrote on Meroe, he himself declared that among his contemporaries none had made greater journeys, seen more countries, met more scholars than himself. He mentions the Egyptian mathematicians, whose knowledge he praises. Theophrastus, spoke of him as a man who had seen many countries. During his travels, according to Diogenes Laërtius, he became acquainted with the Chaldean magi.
"Ostanes", one of the magi accompanying Xerxes, was said to have taught him. After returning to his native land he occupied himself with natural philosophy, he traveled throughout Greece to acquire a better knowledge of its cultures. He mentions many Greek philosophers in his writings, his wealth enabled him to purchase their writings. Leucippus, the founder of atomism, was the greatest influence upon him, he praises Anaxagoras. Diogenes Laertius says, he may have been acquainted with Socrates, but Plato does not mention him and Democritus himself is quoted as saying, "I came to Athens and no one knew me." Aristotle placed him among the pre-Socratic natural philosophers. The many anecdotes about Democritus in Diogenes Laërtius, attest to his disinterest and simplicity, show that he lived for his studies. One story has him deliberately blinding himself, he was cheerful, was always ready to see the comical side of life, which writers took to mean that he always laughed at the foolishness of people.
He was esteemed by his fellow citizens, because as Diogenes Laërtius says, "he had foretold them some things which events proved to be true," which may refer to his knowledge of natural phenomena. According to Diodorus Siculus, Democritus died at the age of 90, which would put his death around 370 BC, but other writers have him living to 104, or 109. Popularly known as the Laughing Philosopher, the terms Abderitan laughter, which means scoffing, incessant laughter, Abderite, which means a scoffer, are derived from Democritus. To his fellow citizens he was known as "The Mocker". Most sources say that Democritus followed in the tradition of Leucippus and that they carried on the scientific rationalist philosophy associated with Miletus. Both were materialist, believing everything to be the result of natural laws. Unlike Aristotle or Plato, the atomists attempted to explain the world without reasoning as to purpose, prime mover, or final cause. For the atomists questions of physics should be answered with a mechanistic explanation, while their opponents search for explanations which, in addition to the material and mechanistic included the formal and teleological.
Greek historians consider Democritus to have established aesthetics as a subject of investigation and study, as he wrote theoretically on poetry and fine art long before authors such as Aristotle. Thrasyllus identified six works in the philosopher's oeuvre which had belonged to aesthetics as a discipline, but only fragments of the relevant works are extant; the theory of Democritus held that everything is composed of "atoms", which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible. Of the mass of atoms, Democritus said, "The more any indivisible exceeds, the heavier it is". However, his exact position o
Canadian English
Canadian English is the set of varieties of the English language native to Canada. According to the 2011 census, English was the first language of 19 million Canadians, or 57% of the population. A larger number, 28 million people, reported using English as their dominant language. 82% of Canadians outside the province of Quebec reported speaking English natively, but within Quebec the figure was just 7.7% as most of its residents are native speakers of Quebec French. Canadian English contains major elements of both British English and American English, as well as many uniquely Canadian characteristics. While, broadly speaking, Canadian English tends to be closest to American English in terms of linguistic distance, the precise influence of American English, British English and other sources on Canadian English varieties has been the ongoing focus of systematic studies since the 1950s. Phonologically and American English are classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that the vast majority of outsiders other native English speakers, cannot distinguish the typical accents of the two countries by sound alone.
There are minor disagreements over the degree to which Canadians and Americans themselves can differentiate their own two accents, there is evidence that some Western American English is undergoing a vowel shift coinciding with the one first reported in mainland Canadian English in the early 1990s. The term "Canadian English" is first attested in a speech by the Reverend A. Constable Geikie in an address to the Canadian Institute in 1857. Geikie, a Scottish-born Canadian, reflected the Anglocentric attitude that would be prevalent in Canada for the next hundred years when he referred to the language as "a corrupt dialect", in comparison with what he considered the proper English spoken by immigrants from Britain. Canadian English is the product of five waves of immigration and settlement over a period of more than two centuries; the first large wave of permanent English-speaking settlement in Canada, linguistically the most important, was the influx of Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, chiefly from the Mid-Atlantic States – as such, Canadian English is believed by some scholars to have derived from northern American English.
Canadian English has been developing features of its own since the early 19th century. The second wave from Britain and Ireland was encouraged to settle in Canada after the War of 1812 by the governors of Canada, who were worried about American dominance and influence among its citizens. Further waves of immigration from around the globe peaked in 1910, 1960 and at the present time had a lesser influence, but they did make Canada a multicultural country, ready to accept linguistic change from around the world during the current period of globalization; the languages of Aboriginal peoples in Canada started to influence European languages used in Canada before widespread settlement took place, the French of Lower Canada provided vocabulary, with words such as toque and portage, to the English of Upper Canada. Studies on earlier forms of English in Canada are rare, yet connections with other work to historical linguistics can be forged. An overview of diachronic work on Canadian English, or diachronically-relevant work, is Dollinger.
Until the 2000s all commentators on the history of CanE have argued from the "language-external" history, i.e. social and political history. An exception has been in the area of lexis, where Avis et al's Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, offered real-time historical data through its quotations. Historical linguists have started to study earlier Canadian English on historical linguistic data. DCHP-1 is now available in open access. Most notably, Dollinger pioneered the historical corpus linguistic approach for English in Canada with CONTE and offers a developmental scenario for 18th- and 19th-century Ontario. Reuter, with a 19th-century newspaper corpus from Ontario, has confirmed the scenario laid out in Dollinger. Canadian English included a class-based sociolect known as Canadian dainty. Treated as a marker of upper-class prestige in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, Canadian dainty was marked by the use of some features of British English pronunciation, resulting in an accent similar to the Mid-Atlantic accent known in the United States.
This accent faded in prominence following World War II, when it became stigmatized as pretentious, is now never heard in contemporary Canadian life outside of archival recordings used in film, television or radio documentaries. Canadian spelling of the English language combines American conventions. Words such as realize and paralyze are spelled with -ize or -yze rather than -ise or -yse. French-derived words that in American English end with -or and -er, such as color or center retain British spellings. While the United States uses the Anglo-French spelling defense and offense, most Canadians use the British spellings defence and offence; some nouns, as in British English, take -ice while matching verbs take -ise – for example and licence are nouns while practise and license are the re
Determinism
Determinism is the philosophical idea that all events, including moral choices, are determined by existing causes. Determinism is at times understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do, it can be called hard determinism from this point of view. Hard determinism is a position on the relationship of determinism to free will; the theory holds that the universe is utterly rational because complete knowledge of any given situation assures that unerring knowledge of its future is possible. Some philosophers suggest variants around this basic definition. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations; the opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism. Determinism is contrasted with free will. Determinism is taken to mean causal determinism, which in physics is known as cause-and-effect, it is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state is determined by prior states.
This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Other debates concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems. Numerous historical debates involve many philosophical varieties of determinism, they include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic and incompatibilistic. Determinism should not be confused with self-determination of human actions by reasons and desires. Determinism requires that perfect prediction be possible. "Determinism" may refer to any of the following viewpoints: Causal determinism is "the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature". However, causal determinism is a broad enough term to consider that "one's deliberations and actions will be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about.
In other words though our deliberations and actions are themselves determined like everything else, it is still the case, according to causal determinism, that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating and acting in a certain way". Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe; the relation between events may not be the origin of that universe. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe, uncaused or self-caused. Historical determinism can be synonymous with causal determinism. Causal determinism has been considered more as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions. In the case of nomological determinism, these conditions are considered events implying that the future is determined by preceding events—a combination of prior states of the universe and the laws of nature, yet they can be considered metaphysical of origin.
Nomological determinism is the most common form of causal determinism. It is the notion that the past and the present dictate the future and by rigid natural laws, that every occurrence results from prior events. Nomological determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon. Nomological determinism is sometimes called'scientific' determinism, although, a misnomer. Physical determinism is used synonymously with nomological determinism. Necessitarianism is related to the causal determinism described above, it is a metaphysical principle. Leucippus claimed there were no uncaused events, that everything occurs for a reason and by necessity. Predeterminism is the idea; the concept of predeterminism is argued by invoking causal determinism, implying that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. In the case of predeterminism, this chain of events has been pre-established, human actions cannot interfere with the outcomes of this pre-established chain.
Predeterminism can be used to mean such pre-established causal determinism, in which case it is categorised as a specific type of determinism. It can be used interchangeably with causal determinism—in the context of its capacity to determine future events. Despite this, predeterminism is considered as independent of causal determinism; the term predeterminism is frequently used in the context of biology and hereditary, in which case it represents a form of biological determinism. Fatalism is distinguished from "determinism", as a form of teleological determinism. Fatalism is the idea that everything is fated to happen, so that humans have no control over their future. Fate has arbitrary power, need not follow any causal or otherwise deterministic laws. Types of fatalism include hard theological determinism and the idea of predestination, where there is a God who determines all that humans will do; this may be accomplished either by knowing their actions in advance, via some form of omniscience or by decreeing their actions in advance.
Theological determinism is a form of determinism that holds that all events that happen are
Supernatural
The concept of the supernatural encompasses anything, inexplicable by scientific understanding of the laws of nature but argued by believers to exist. Examples include immaterial beings such as angels and spirits, claimed human abilities like magic and extrasensory perception. Supernatural entities have been invoked to explain phenomena as diverse as lightning and the human senses. Naturalists maintain that nothing beyond the physical world exists and hence maintain skeptical attitudes towards supernatural concepts; the supernatural is featured in paranormal and religious contexts, but can feature as an explanation in more secular contexts. Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, descendants of the modern English compound supernatural enters the language from two sources: via Middle French and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin. Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis; the earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue.
The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. The term referred to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean'belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings. Obsolete uses include'of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics'; as a noun, the term can mean'a supernatural being', with a strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism. For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man corporeal and immaterial.
Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world.
And sometimes too, that most we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of. And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others, as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill. We say that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; the term "supernatural" is used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural — the latter limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.
Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" and "which are non-physical in nature", it is used to cover both extrasensory perception, an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sens
Sariputta
Sāriputta or Śāriputra was one of two chief male disciples of Gautama Buddha along with Moggallāna, counterparts to the bhikkhunis Khema and Uppalavanna, his two chief female disciples. He became an arhat renowned for his teaching and is depicted in the Theravada tradition as one of the most important disciples of the Buddha. Sariputta is regarded as the disciple of the Buddha, foremost in wisdom. Śāri was his mother's name and is the name of the Indian myna bird. Putra means son, he was called Upatissa. This name came from Tissa. In the Japanese language he is called Sharihotsu. Sāriputta was the eldest son of a noblewoman, he was the eldest of brothers, Upasēna, Maha Chunda, Rēvata, his sisters Chāla, Upachālā and Sīsupachālā. According with the Chinese version of the Mūlasarvāstivādin vinaya, Sāriputta came from a Brahmin family, had embarked on life as a spiritual ascetic when he encountered the teachings of the Buddha. Sāriputta had another wandering ascetic, they both renounced the world on the same day, became disciples of the sceptic Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta before converting to Buddhism.
After hearing of the Buddha's teachings from a monk named Assaji, Sāriputta sought out the Buddha and became an adherent to his teachings. These two are depicted together with the Buddha, several sutras regard interactions between Sāriputta and Moggallāna. Sāriputta preached with the Buddha's approval and was awarded the title "General of the Dharma" for his propagation of the teachings and is regarded as the founder of the Abhidharma tradition. However, the Buddha lightly reprimanded Sāriputta on occasion when he did not explain the Dhamma to a prince, or when he allowed a group of novice monks to become too loud. Sāriputta was one of the most praised disciples and on at least one occasion the Buddha declared him to be a true spiritual son and his chief assistant in "turning the Wheel of the Dhamma": "If a person, rightly saying it of anyone, were to say,'He is the Blessed One's son, his offspring — born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma, created by the Dhamma, his heir in the Dhamma, not his heir in material things,' he would be rightly saying it of Śāriputra if he were to say:'He is the Blessed One's son, his offspring — born of his mouth, born of the Dhamma, created by the Dhamma, his heir in the Dhamma, not his heir in material things.'
Sariputta, takes the unexcelled wheel of Dhamma set rolling by the Tathagata, keeps it rolling rightly." According to the Pāli Canon, Sāriputta died peacefully on the full moon day of Kartika a few months before the Buddha, having achieved Parinibbana, when Sāriputta's assistant, gave the news to Ananda, Ananda was distressed. He passed the news along to the Buddha, who remained at peace, chastised Ananda's reaction: But, haven't I taught you the state of growing indifferent with regard to all things dear & appealing, the state of becoming separate, the state of becoming otherwise? What else is there to expect? It's impossible that one could forbid anything born, fabricated, & subject to disintegration from disintegrating. Just as if the largest limb were to fall off a great tree composed of heartwood, standing firm. What else is there to expect? It's impossible that one could forbid anything born, fabricated, & subject to disintegration from disintegrating. Sāriputta went to his native home, Nalaka, a Brahmin village, as he wanted his mother, still a non-Buddhist to be shown the correct path and faith.
He died at the village after being able to convert his mother and make her a path winner. After his body was cremated the bones were taken to the Buddha by Cunda and on the Buddha's instruction handed over to King Ajātaśatru. Ajātaśatru enshrined these relics in a Stupa, venerated by the followers. In 261 BCE, King Dharmasoka opened the stupa on instructions received from Moggaliputta-Tissa, who indicated the Third Buddhist council. While depictions of Śāriputra in the Pāli Canon are uniformly positive, showing Śāriputra as a wise and powerful arhat, second only to the Buddha, his depiction in some Mahayana sources has been much less flattering, serving as a counterpoint. In the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, Sāriputra is depicted as the voice of the Hinayana or Śrāvaka tradition, presented in the Mahāyāna sūtras as a "less sophisticated" teaching. In this sutra, Śāriputra is unable to grasp the Mahayana doctrines presented by Vimalakīrti and others, is rebuked or defeated in debate by a number of interlocutors, including a female deity who refutes Śāriputra's "Hinayana" assumptions regarding gender and form.
Here Sāriputta questioned why, if she is so capable, the deva has a female body. The deva proceeded to teach a lesson in nondualism by switching their sexes, stating, "in all things, there is neither male nor female."However, in the Lotus Sutra, Buddha does predict that Sāriputta will become a fully-awakened Buddha one day named "Flower Glow Tathāgata", at which Sāriputta's mind is said to "dance with joy". A dialogue between Sāriputta and Avalokiteśvara is the context of the Heart Sutra, a brief but essential Prajñāpāramitā sūtra in Mahayana Buddhism. Moggallāna Sammaditthi Sutta – a Pali Canon discourse attributed to Sāriputta Sariputra in the Jatakas Sanchi Bhadda Kundalakesa, a fo
Gorgias
Gorgias was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, rhetorician, a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists, he was an itinerant that practiced in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to ask miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies." He has been called "Gorgias the Nihilist" although the degree to which this epithet adequately describes his philosophy is controversial. His chief claim to recognition is that he transplanted rhetoric from his native Sicily to Attica, contributed to the diffusion of the Attic dialect as the language of literary prose. Gorgias was born sometime between 490 and 480 BC in Leontinoi, a Chalcidian colony in eastern Sicily, allied with Athens.
His father's name was Charmantides. He had a brother named Herodicus, a physician, sometimes accompanied him during his travels, he had a sister, whose name is not known, but whose grandson dedicated a golden statue to his great uncle at Delphi. It is not known whether Gorgias had children. Gorgias is said to have studied under the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles of Acragas, but it is not known when, for how long, or in what capacity, he may have studied under the rhetoricians Corax of Syracuse and Tisias, but little is known about either of these men, nor is anything known about their relationship with Gorgias. It is not known what kind of role Gorgias may have played in the politics in his native Leontinoi, but it is known that, in 427 BC, when he was around sixty years old, he was sent to Athens by his fellow-citizens as the head of an embassy to ask for Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans. After 427 BC, Gorgias appears to have settled in mainland Greece, living at various points in a number of city-states, including Athens and Larisa.
He was well known for delivering orations at Panhellenic Festivals and is described as having been "conspicuous" at Olympia. There is no surviving record of any role he might have played in organizing the festivals themselves. Gorgias's primary occupation was as a teacher of rhetoric. According to Aristotle, his students included Isocrates.. Additionally, although they are not described as his students, Gorgias is thought to have influenced the styles of the historian Thucydides, the tragic playwright Agathon, the doctor Hippocrates, the rhetorician Alcidamas, the poet and commentator Lycophron. Gorgias is reputed to have lived to be one hundred and eight years old, he won admiration for his ability to speak on any subject. He accumulated considerable wealth. After his Pythian Oration, the Greeks installed a solid gold statue of him in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, he died at Larissa in Thessaly. The philosophies of the pre-Socratic Greek Sophists are controversial among scholars in general, due to their subtle and ambiguous writings and to the fact that they are best known as characters in Plato's dialogues.
Gorgias, however, is frustrating for modern scholars to attempt to understand. While scholars debate the precise subtleties of the teachings of Protagoras and Prodicus, they agree on the basic frameworks of what these thinkers believed. With Gorgias, scholars disagree on the most basic framework of his ideas, including over whether or not that framework existed at all; the greatest hindrance to scholarly understanding of Gorgias's philosophy is that the vast majority of his writings have been lost and those that have survived have suffered considerable alteration by copyists. These difficulties are further compounded by the fact that Gorgias's rhetoric is elusive and confusing. Many of Gorgias's propositions are thought to be sarcastic, playful, or satirical. In his treatise On Rhetoric, Aristotle characterizes Gorgias's style of oratory as "pervasively ironic" and states that Gorgias recommended responding to seriousness with jests and to jests with seriousness. Gorgias blurs the lines between serious philosophical discourse and satire, which makes it difficult for scholars to tell when he is being serious and when he is joking.
Gorgias contradicts his own statements and adopts inconsistent perspectives on different issues. As a result of all these factors, Scott Porter Consigny calls him "perhaps the most elusive of the polytropic quarry hunted in Plato's Sophist. Gorgias has been labelled "The Nihilist" because some scholars have interpreted his thesis on "the non-existent" to be an argument against the existence of anything, straightforwardly endorsed by Gorgias himself. Nihilism is the belief that nothing can be known or communicated, it is associated with pessimism and
Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian and social and religious critic. Xenophanes lived a life of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 and continuing to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years; some scholars say. Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by Greek writers. To judge from these, his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including Homer and Hesiod, the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism, he is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, never die while the Greek kind of songs survives." Xenophanes was a native of a city in Ionia. Some say he was the son of Orthomenes, others the son of Dexius, he is said to have flourished during the 60th Olympiad. His surviving work refers to Thales and Pythagoras, he himself is mentioned in the writings of Heraclitus and Epicharmus.
In a fragment of his elegies, he describes the Median invasion as an event that took place in his time referring to the expedition of Harpagus against the Greek cities in Ionia. He left his native land as a fugitive or exile and went to the Ionian colonies in Sicily and Catana, he lived for some time in Elea, since he wrote about the foundation of that colony. According to an elegy reputedly composed when he was 92 years old, he left his native land at the age of 25 and lived 67 years in other Greek lands. According to biographer Diogenes Laërtius, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and composed elegies and iambics against Homer and Hesiod. Laertius mentions two historical poems concerning the founding of Colophon and Elea, but of these, only the titles have been preserved. There is no good authority; the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius writes that he had never met with the verses about the earth stretching infinitely downwards though he had access to many philosophical works. Several of the philosophical fragments are derived from commentators on Homer.
It is thus that the philosophical remarks of Xenophanes were expressed incidentally in his satires. The satires are called Silloi by late writers, this name may go back to Xenophanes himself, but it may originate in the fact that Timon of Phlius, the "sillographer", put much of his own satire upon philosophers into the mouth of Xenophanes. Xenophanes' surviving writings display a skepticism that became more expressed during the fourth century BC, he satirized traditional religious views of his time as human projections. He aimed his critique at the polytheistic religious views of earlier Greek poets and of his own contemporaries: "Homer and Hesiod," one fragment states, "have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft and mutual deception." Sextus Empiricus reported. Xenophanes is quoted, memorably, in Clement of Alexandria, arguing against the conception of gods as fundamentally anthropomorphic: But if cattle and horses and lions had handsor could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,horses like horses and cattle like cattlealso would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodiesof such a sort as the form they themselves have....
Ethiopians say that their gods are snub -- blackThracians that they are pale and red-haired. An additional criticism of the gods is found in the quote The gods have not, of course, revealed all things to mortals from the beginning. Other passages quoted by Clement of Alexandria that argue against the traditional Greek conception of gods include: "One god, greatest among gods and humans,like mortals neither in form nor in thought." "But mortals think that the gods are bornand have the mortals' own clothes and voice and form."Regarding Xenophanes' theology five key concepts about God can be formed. God is: beyond human morality, does not resemble human form, cannot die or be born, no divine hierarchy exists, God does not intervene in human affairs. While Xenophanes is rejecting Homeric theology, he is not questioning the presence of a divine entity, rather his philosophy is a critique on Ancient Greek writers and their conception of divinity. There is the concept of God being whole with the universe controlling it, while at the same time being physically unconnected.
Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God is one, supreme among gods and men, not like mortals in body or in mind." He maintained. God is one eternal being, spherical in form, comprehending all things within himself, is the absolute mind and thought, therefore is intelligent, moves all things, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind, he is considered by some to be a precursor to Spinoza. Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men", abstract, unchanging and always present, Xenophanes is seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion, although the quotation that seems to point to Xenophanes's monotheism refers to multiple "gods" who the supreme God is greater than. Physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein identified Xenophanes as
