Credited as the first
philosopher of Ancient Greece, and therefore the founder of Western
philosopher, Thales hailed from the Ionian seaport of Miletus, now in modern
Turkey. Miletus was a major centre of development for both science and
philosophy in Ancient Greece. Thales, probably born somewhere around 620 BC is
mainly remembered as the pre-Socratic philosopher who claimed that the fundamental nature of the world is
water. Aristotle mentions him, as does Herodotus, and these are really our
only accounts of Thales’ background. However, his significance as a philosopher
is not so much what he said, but his
method. Thales was the first thinker to try to account for the nature of
the world without appealing to the wills and whims of anthropomorphic, Homerian
gods. Rather, he sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he observed by
appealing to a common, underlying principle, an idea that is still germane to
modern scientific method. He is also credited by Herodotus with correctly predicting
that there would be a solar eclipse in 585 BC during a battle between the Medes
and the Lydians. As such, Thales can with some justification be thought of as the first natural scientist and analytical
philosopher in Western intellectual history.
Thales had other modern
traits, for it also seems that he was something of an entrepreneur. According to
one story, Thales made a fortune investing in oil-presses before a heavy olive
crop – certainly he would have had to be wealthy in order to devote time and
thought to philosophy and science in seventh century BC Ancient Greece.
According to his
metaphysics, water was the first principle of life and the material world.
seeing that water could turn into both vapour by evaporation and a solid by
freezing, that all life required and was supported by moisture, he postulated
that it was the single causal principle behind the natural world. In a crude
anticipation of modern plate tectonics, Thales professed that the flat earth
floated on water. Aristotle tells us that Thales thought the earth had a buoyancy
much like wood, and that the earth floated on water much like a log or a ship. Indeed,
many floating islands were said to be known to the sea-farers of Miletus, which
may have served as either models or evidence for Thales’ theory. He even
accounted for earthquakes as being due to rocking of the earth by subterranean
waves, just as ship may be rocked at sea. From the port of Miletus he would
have been familiar with the phenomenon of sedimentation, possibly believing it
to be the spontaneous generation of earth from water, an idea held as recently
as the 18th century.
Having sought to give a
naturalistic explanation of observable phenomena, rather than appealing to the
wills of gods, Thales claimed that god
is in all things. According to Aetius, Thales said the mind of the world is
god, that god is intermingled in all things, a view what would shortly appear
contemporaneously in a number of world religions, most notably Buddhism in
India. Despite his metaphysical speculations being clearly mistaken, it seems that Thales was a modern thinker
in more ways than one, pre-empting many ideas in religion, philosophy and
science.
[Summarized from Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers by
Philip Stokes, 2012. Also watch Thales of
Miletus in 5 Minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiyGnaBnIqk]
Lord, Give
Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)
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