Magritte: Le Blanc Seing In the Spirit of "Nous" The character of the Gods of the old days were based on the assumption that the natural world possessed intelligences. But it was only when pre-Socratics like Pherecydes abstracted these intelligences somewhat into powers or forces in the Heptamychos that other philosophers later came to see these powers as intelligible. Pherecydes, said to be Pythagorus' tutor, wrote of a more abstract creative principle, Zas , rather than the human-like, Zeus . Zas existed in "time" ( Chronos ) on earth and Pherecydes was probably influenced not only by the Theogony of Hesiod and Homer's epic, but by Phoenician cosmology too. Having assumed that, not only was nature possessed of intelligences, but that these intelligences themselves were potentially intelligible, Thales, Anaximander, Pythagorus and later Anaximenes were now in a position to try and understand the natural world: to become
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head