The Philosophy of Appollonius of Myndus

Alright, I need to tell you about someone who was right about something for two thousand years before anyone could prove it. Two. Thousand. Years. Imagine that. Imagine seeing something so clearly, understanding something so profoundly, that you’re correct about a fundamental truth of the universe and then humanity takes twenty centuries to catch up with you. That’s not just being ahead of your time. That’s being ahead of your entire civilization’s ability to verify what you’re saying. Here’s what I want you to picture: It’s a clear night in the 4th century BCE. You’re standing on the coast of Asia Minor what we now call Turkey and you look up at the sky. And there it is. A comet. This blazing streak of light with a tail, moving across the heavens in ways that nothing else does. Everyone around you is terrified. They’re whispering about what disaster this foretells. War? Plague? The death of a king? The gods are sending a message, and it’s not good. But there’s this one guy this philosopher named Apollonius and he’s calm. He’s observing. He’s taking notes. And he’s thinking something that would get him laughed out of every philosophical school in Greece. He’s thinking: “That’s not an omen. That’s not a message from the gods. That’s not even an atmospheric phenomenon like everyone says. That’s a celestial body. That’s a real, permanent object out there in space, following its own path through the cosmos.”