Similar to how Anaximander presented a series of questions to Thales’ theory that remained unanswered, most philosophical debates never lead to a certain conclusion. The reason behind this is that once they ask ‘What supports this?’, it leads to an incessant chain of ‘Then what supports that?’. Let’s take Anaximander’s question here ‘If the Earth is supported by water then what supports the water? And ‘If something supports the water then what supports that thing?
This pattern is known as infinite regress and is characterized by arguments that involve cause and effect as their base reasoning. Many philosophers concluded that this chain of questions shows that the universe is eternal, however many philosophers criticized such an idea and suggested that there must be a prime cause without any origin behind it – today this idea is symbolic in The Big Bang theory. In most cases, this prime cause or ‘prime mover’ was considered a phenomenon beyond human reason, but for religion and theology, this prime mover is God – the basis of Thomas Aquinas’ cosmological argument.
