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For the skipper butterfly genus, see 'Xenophanes (butterfly). A skipper is a Butterfly of the family Hesperiidae (superfamily Hesperioidea named after their quick darting flight habits A genus (plural genera from Γένος Latin genus "descent family type gender" is a low-level Taxonomic

Xenophanes of Colophon (Greek Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος([Xenophánes o Kolofoneos] (help·info)); 570 – 480 BC) was a Greek philosopher, poet, and social and religious critic. Colophon ( Greek) was a city in the region of Lydia in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Events and trends 579 BC — Servius Tullius succeeds the assassinated Lucius Tarquinius Priscus as the sixth King of Rome. Events By place Greece May — King Xerxes I of Persia marches from Sardis and onto Thrace Greece (Ελλάδα transliterated: Elláda, historically, Ellás,) officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language A poet is a person who writes Poetry. Etymology From the Ancient greek: ποιέω, poieō: "I make or compose" The word critic comes from the Greek el κριτικός ( el-Latn kritikós) "able to discern" which in turn derives from the word Our knowledge of his views comes from his surviving poetry, all of which are fragments passed down as quotations by later Greek writers. His poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism. Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although in practice it is also found in the graphic and Performing arts In satire human A pantheon (from Greek Πάνθειον - pantheion, literally "a temple of all gods " neut Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely Human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings natural and supernatural phenomena material states and objects See also List of deities A deity is a Postulated Preternatural or Supernatural Being, who is always He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while the Greek kind of songs survives. "[1]

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Philosophy

Xenophanes rejected the idea that the gods resembled humans in form. One famous, proto-sociological passage ridiculed the idea by claiming that, if oxen were able to imagine gods, then those gods would be in the image of oxen:

“ The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. The sociology of religion is primarily the study of the practices Social structures historical backgrounds development, universal themes and Oxen (singular ox) are Cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult castrated males NOTE This intro is the result of careful NPOV work Please do not make potentially controversial edits to it without first discussing on the talk page Thrace (Тракия Trakiya or "Trakija" or Trakia, Θράκη Thráki, Trakya is a historical and geographic area in southeast Europe
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,

And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own. [2]

 ”

Many translations of this passage have Xenophanes state that the Thracians were "blond".

Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and always present, Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion. For the Celtic Frost album see Monotheist (album In Theology, monotheism (from Greek grc [[wiktμόνος μόνος]] The term Western world, the West or the Occident ( Latin: occidens -sunset -west as distinct from the Orient) can have multiple meanings A religion is a set of Tenets and practices often centered upon specific Supernatural and moral claims about Reality, the Cosmos This vision is not undisputed; while it seems clear that Xenophanes differed markedly from the commonly held cosmology of his contemporaries, it is less clear that his ideas were congruent with monotheism per se, as he seemed to admit the existence of other gods ("among gods and men"), albeit different gods than the ones represented in the works of Homer and Hesiod. Cosmology (from Greek grc κοσμολογία - grc κόσμος kosmos, "universe" and grc -λογία -logia) is study Homer ( Ancient Greek:, Homēros) is a legendary ancient Greek epic Poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Hesiod ( Greek: Hesiodos) was an early Greek Poet and Rhapsode, who presumably lived around 700 BCE Final resolution of this question is unlikely barring new texts coming to light.

He also wrote that poets should only tell stories about the gods which were socially uplifting, one of many views which foreshadowed the work of Plato. Biography Early life Birth and family Plato was born in Athens Greece Xenophanes also concluded from his examination of fossils that water once must have covered all of the Earth's surface. FOSSIL is a standard protocol for allowing serial communication for Telecommunications programs under the DOS Operating system. Water is a common Chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of Life. EARTH was a short-lived Japanese vocal trio which released 6 singles and 1 album between 2000 and 2001 His epistemology, which is still influential today, held that there actually exists a truth of reality, but that humans as mortals are unable to know it. Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge The meaning of the word truth extends from Honesty, Good faith, and Sincerity in general to agreement with Fact or Reality Reality, in everyday usage means "the state of things as they actually exist" Therefore, it is possible to act only on the basis of working hypotheses - we may act as if we knew the truth, as long as we know that this is extremely unlikely. A hypothesis (from Greek) consists either of a suggested explanation for a phenomenon (an event that is observable or of a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible This aspect of Xenophanes was brought out again by the late Sir Karl Popper and is a basis of Critical rationalism. Sir Karl Raimund Popper ( July 28 1902  &ndash September 17 1994) was an Austrian and British Philosopher and a professor Critical rationalism is an Epistemological Philosophy advanced by Karl Popper.

Until the 1950s, there was some controversy over many aspects of Xenophanes, including whether or not he could be properly characterized as a philosopher. In today's philosophical and classics discourse, Xenophanes is seen as one of the most important presocratic philosophers. The Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers were active before Socrates or contemporaneously but expounding knowledge developed earlier It had also been common since antiquity to see him as the teacher of Zeno of Elea, the colleague of Parmenides, and generally associated with the Eleatic school, but common opinion today is likewise that this is false (see Lesher, p. Zeno of Elea (ˈziːnoʊ əv ˈɛliə Greek: Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεάτης (ca Parmenides of Elea ( Greek:, early 5th century BC was an Ancient Greek Philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of The Eleatics were a school of pre-Socratic philosophers at Elea, a Greek colony in Campania, Italy. 102).

Xenophanes approached the question of science from the standpoint of the reformer rather than of the scientific investigator. If we look at the very considerable remains of his poetry that have come down to us, we see that they are all in the satirist's and social reformer's vein. There is one dealing with the management of a feast, another which denounces the exaggerated importance attached to athletic victories, and several which attack the humanized gods of Homer. The problem is, therefore, to find, if we can, a single point of view from which all these fragments can be interpreted, although it may be that no such point of view exists. Like the religious reformers of the day, Xenophanes turned his back on the anthropomorphic polytheism of Homer and Hesiod. This revolt is based on a conviction that the tales of the poets are directly responsible for the moral corruption of the time.

Xenophanes found the weapons he required for his attack on polytheism in the science of the time. There are traces of Anaximander's cosmology in the fragments, and Xenophanes may easily have been his disciple before he left Ionia. Anaximander ( Ancient Greek:) (c 610 BC–c 546 BC was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus Geography Physical Ionia was of small extent not exceeding 90 geographical miles in length from north to south with a breadth varying from 40 to 55 miles but to this He seems to have taken the gods of mythology one by one and reduced them to meteorological phenomena, and especially to clouds. And he maintained there was only one god—namely, the world. God is one incorporeal eternal being, and, like the universe, spherical in form; that he is of the same nature with the universe, comprehending all things within himself; is intelligent, and pervades all things, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind.

He taught that if there had ever been a time when nothing existed, nothing could ever have existed. Whatever is, always has been from eternity, without deriving its existence from any prior principles. Nature, he believed, is one and without limit; that what is one is similar in all its parts, else it would be many; that the one infinite, eternal, and homogeneous universe is immutable and incapable of change. His position is often classified as pantheistic, although his use of the term 'god' simply follows the use characteristic of the early cosmologists generally. Pantheism ( Greek: πάν ( 'pan') = all and θεός ( 'theos') = God it literally means " God is All There is no evidence that Xenophanes regarded this 'god' with any religious feeling, and all we are told about him (or rather about it) is purely negative. He is quite unlike a man, and has no special organs of sense, but 'sees all over, thinks all over, hears all over' (fr. 24). Further, he does not go about from place to place (fr. 26), but does everything 'without toil (fr. 25). It is not safe to go beyond this; for Xenophanes himself tells us no more. It is pretty certain that if he had said anything more positive or more definitely religious in its bearing it would have been quoted by later writers.

(Before Xenophanes, the method of the natural philosophers was inductive. That is, their ideas were based on observations of the world. And, their proofs were empirical and direct. However, Xenophanes pointed out that these sorts of ideas were relative. That is, different people had different perceptions of the world; therefore, they had different ideas of the world. Their ideas about the world may be true, but they could not know it. So, according to Xenophanes, we cannot be sure that ideas about the world that are inductively derived are true. That is, we cannot be sure that ideas about the world that are based on our perceptions of the world are true. This posed a problem for the presocratics. This was first answered by Heraclitus. Heraclitus of Ephesus ( Ancient Greek: &mdash grc-Latn ''Hērákleitos ho Ephésios'' English Heraclitus the Ephesian) (ca He looked at what we can all agree to, that all is change. Inductively, if we look at the world, everything changes. But, this is still induction, based on our perceptions of the world. Parmemides came along and stated that the only truth is that that is deductively determined. Concluding therefore, inductive "truths" are only opinions. )

Notes

  1. ^ See Dalby, Andrew (2006), written at New York, London, Rediscovering Homer, Norton, ISBN 0393057887 p. 123.
  2. ^ Diels-Kranz, B, 16, 15

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Xenophanes

-proper noun

  1. A Greek philosopher and a poet
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