Thales of Miletus (c. 624 - 546 B.C.

) was an early Pre-Socratic philosopher, mathematician and

astronomer from the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia (modern-day Turkey). He was one of the so-called
Seven Sages of Greece, and many regard him as the first philosopher in the Western tradition.

He was the founder of the Milesian School of natural philosophy, and the teacher of Anaximander. He
was perhaps the first subscriber to Materialist and Naturalism in trying to define the substance or
substances of which all material objects were composed, which he identified as water.

His innovative search for a universality in the disciplines of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy
have earned him the label the "first scientist".

Life

Thales (pronounced THAY-lees) was born in the Greek city of Miletus (on the Ionian coast of modern-day
Turkey) in about 624 or 625 B.C. (an estimate based on his age at death). The 3rd Century A.D. historian
Diogenes Laërtius reported that his parents were Examyas and Cleobulina of the noble Milesian family
of Thelidae (and descended from Agenor and Cadmus of ancient Thebes, Greece), although other
sources suggest that his parents may have been Phoenician (from the modern-day region of Lebanon,
Israel and Syria).

Details of his life are sketchy and often contradictory. Some reports suggest that he married and had a
son, Cybisthus (or Cybisthon) or possibly adopted a nephew of the same name, while other reports
suggest that he never married. Some say that he left no writings; others that he wrote at least two
works, "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox" (neither have survived). Some anecdotes suggest that
Thales was involved in business and politics, and at one point bought up all the olive presses in Miletus
after predicting a good harvest for a particular year (either to make money or merely to demonstrate
that he could use his intelligence to enrich himself if he had wanted to).

His involvement in local politics is also rather anecdotal in nature, but Thales apparently impressed both
sides of the ongoing conflict between the Lydians, Medes and Persians over the fate of the region of
Ionia, when he predicted an eclipse of the sun which brought fighting to a standstill. He was also
reportedly involved in the negotiations which followed the hostilities, and managed to obtain favorable
terms for Miletus.
Thales is said to have died of dehydration while watching a gymnastics contest in 546 or 547 B.C., at the
age of 78 (although other reports have him living to the age of 90).

Work

Back to Top

In retrospect it is difficult to separate history from legend, but he is usually considered one of the Seven
Sages or Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece, a group of 7th and early 6th Century B.C. philosophers,
statesmen and law-givers who became renowned in the following centuries for their wisdom. The
aphorism "Know thyself" has been attributed to Thales (as well as to at least six other ancient Greek
sages). Much of what we know of Thales' philosophy has come down to us from Aristotle and so may be
somewhat distorted by Aristotle's own views. Some sources say that he left no writings; others that he
wrote at least two works, "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox" (neither of which have survived).

The early Pre-Socratic philosophers (of which Thales was one of the very first) tried to define the
substance or substances of which all material objects were composed (as do modern scientists even
today, hence Thales is sometimes described as the first scientist). He searched for the "physis" (or
nature) of objects that cause them to behave in their characteristic way. He was one of the first Western
philosophers who attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world (Naturalism or Materialism)
without reference to supernatural or mythological explanations, such as the Greek anthropomorphic
gods and heroes. He explained earthquakes, for example, by hypothesizing that the Earth floats on
water and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves.

His most famous belief was his cosmological doctrine that water was the first principle (roughly
equivalent to Anaximenes' later idea that everything in the world was composed of air). He claimed that
water was the origin of all things, that from which all things emerge and to which they return, and
moreover that all things ultimately are water. He probably drew this conclusion from seeing moist
substances turn into air, slime and earth, and he clearly viewed the Earth as solidifying from the water
on which it floated and which surrounded it.

While considering the effects of magnetism and static electricity, he concluded that the power to move
other things without the mover itself changing was a characteristic of "life", so that a magnet and amber
must therefore be alive in some way (in that they have animation or the power to act). If so, he argued,
there is no difference between the living and the dead. If all things were alive, they must also have souls
or divinities (a natural belief of his time), and the end result of this argument was an almost total
removal of mind from substance, opening the door to an innovative non-divine principle of action.
Thales recognized a single transcendental God (Monism), who has neither beginning nor end, but who
expresses himself through other gods (Polytheism). His idea of justice included both the letter of the law
and the spirit of the law (e.g. adultery and perjury about it in court are equally bad). He had some
common sense moral advice: that we should expect the same support from our children that we give to
our parents; that we should not let talk influence us against those we have come to trust; and that we
should not do ourselves that for which we blame others. He believed that a happy man was one who
was "healthy in body, resourceful in soul and of a readily teachable nature".

His political views were generally in favor of a benign tyranny, rather than democracy (which most
thinkers of his time distrusted as an inefficient and unreliable system). He believed that men were
naturally better than women, and that Greeks were better than barbarians (non-Greeks).

Thales was known for his theoretical and practical understanding (and innovative use) of geometry,
especially triangles. He established what has become known as Thales' Theorem, whereby if a triangle is
drawn within a circle with the long side as a diameter of the circle then the opposite angle will always be
a right angle (as well as some other related properties derived from this).

He was also an important innovator in astronomy, and he had an effective theory of the path of the sun
from solstice to solstice and supposedly correctly predicted a solar eclipse. Some sources have
attributed him with the "discovery" of the seasons of the year and the 365-day year (consistent with his
determination of the solstices). While this may be an exaggeration, his questioning approach to the
understanding of heavenly phenomena arguably marked the real beginning of Greek astronomy.

Anaximander, (born 610 BCE, Miletus [now in Turkey]—died 546 BCE), Greek philosopher who was the
first to develop a cosmology, or systematic philosophical view of the world.

Only a short fragment of Anaximander’s work survives, so reconstructions of his philosophy and
astronomy must be based on summaries by later Greek writers, such as the 1st- or 2nd-century CE
compiler of philosophical opinions Aëtius, the 3rd-century theologian and antipope Hippolytus, and the
6th-century Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius. Anaximander is said to have been a pupil or associate
of the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus and to have written about astronomy, geography, and the
nature of things. Anaximander set up a gnomon (a shadow-casting rod) at Sparta and used it to
demonstrate the equinoxes and solstices and perhaps the hours of the day. He drew a map of the
known world, which was later corrected by his fellow Milesian, the author Hecataeus, a well-traveled
man. He may also have built a celestial globe.

In his thinking about Earth, he regarded the inhabited portion as flat, consisting of the top face of a
cylinder, whose thickness is one-third its diameter. Earth is poised aloft, supported by nothing, and
remains in place because it is equidistant from all other things and thus has no disposition to fly off in
any one direction. He held that the Sun and the Moon are hollow rings filled with fire. Their disks are
vents or holes in the rings, through which the fire can shine. The phases of the Moon, as well as eclipses
of the Sun and the Moon, are due to the vents’ closing up.

Anaximander held an evolutionary view of living things. The first creatures originated from the moist
element by evaporation. Man originated from some other kind of animal, such as fish, since man needs
a long period of nurture and could not have survived if he had always been what he is now.
Anaximander also discussed the causes of meteorological phenomena, such as wind, rain, and lightning.

In his cosmogony, he held that everything originated from the apeiron (the “infinite,” “unlimited,” or
“indefinite”), rather than from a particular element, such as water (as Thales had held). Anaximander
postulated eternal motion, along with the apeiron, as the originating cause of the world. This (probably
rotary) motion caused opposites, such as hot and cold, to be separated from one another as the world
came into being. However, the world is not eternal and will be destroyed back into the apeiron, from
which new worlds will be born. Thus, all existing things must “pay penalty and retribution to one
another for their injustice, according to the disposition of time,” as he rather figuratively expressed it.

While Thales had already dispensed with divine explanations of the world around him, he had not
written a book about his philosophy. Moreover, Anaximander went much further in trying to give a
unified account of all of nature. Although Anaximander’s primitive astronomy was soon superseded, his
effort to provide a rational explanation of the world had a lasting influence.

Anaximenes Of Miletus, (flourished c. 545 BC), Greek philosopher of nature and one of three thinkers of
Miletus traditionally considered to be the first philosophers in the Western world. Of the other two,
Thales held that water is the basic building block of all matter, whereas Anaximander chose to call the
essential substance “the unlimited.”
Anaximenes substituted aer (“mist,” “vapour,” “air”) for his predecessors’ choices. His writings, which
survived into the Hellenistic Age, no longer exist except in passages in the works of later authors.
Consequently, interpretations of his beliefs are frequently in conflict. It is clear, however, that he
believed in degrees of condensation of moisture that corresponded to the densities of various types of
matter. When “most evenly distributed,” aer is the common, invisible air of the atmosphere. By
condensation it becomes visible, first as mist or cloud, then as water, and finally as solid matter such as
earth or stones. If further rarefied, it turns to fire. Thus hotness and dryness typify rarity, whereas
coldness and wetness are related to denser matter.

ADVERTISEMENT

Anaximenes’ assumption that aer is everlastingly in motion suggests that he thought it also possessed
life. Because it was eternally alive, aer took on qualities of the divine and became the cause of other
gods as well as of all matter. The same motion accounts for the shift from one physical state of the aer
to another. There is evidence that he made the common analogy between the divine air that sustains
the universe and the human “air,” or soul, that animates people. Such a comparison between a
macrocosm and a microcosm would also permit him to maintain a unity behind diversity as well as to
reinforce the view of his contemporaries that there is an overarching principle regulating all life and
behaviour.

ADVERTISEMENT

A practical man and a talented observer with a vivid imagination, Anaximenes noted the rainbows
occasionally seen in moonlight and described the phosphorescent glow given off by an oar blade
breaking the water. His thought is typical of the transition from mythology to science; its rationality is
evident from his discussion of the rainbow not as a goddess but as the effect of sun rays on compacted
air. Yet his thought is not completely liberated from earlier mythological or mystical tendencies, as seen
from his belief that the universe is hemispherical. Thus, his permanent contribution lies not in his
cosmology but in his suggestion that known natural processes (i.e., condensation and rarefaction) play a
part in the making of a world. This suggestion, together with Anaximenes’ reduction of apparent
qualitative differences in substances to mere differences of quantity, was highly influential in the
development of scientific thought.
Heraclitus, also spelled Heracleitus, (born c. 540 BCE, Ephesus, Anatolia [now Selçuk, Turkey]—died c.
480), Greek philosopher remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle
of an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book he apparently wrote is lost. His
views survive in the short fragments quoted and attributed to him by later authors.

Though he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world around him, Heraclitus also stressed
the need for people to live together in social harmony. He complained that most people failed to
comprehend the logos (Greek: “reason”), the universal principle through which all things are
interrelated and all natural events occur, and thus lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. A
significant manifestation of the logos, Heraclitus claimed, is the underlying connection between
opposites. For example, health and disease define each other. Good and evil, hot and cold, and other
opposites are similarly related. In addition, he noted that a single substance may be perceived in varied
ways—seawater is both harmful (for human beings) and beneficial (for fishes). His understanding of the
relation of opposites to each other enabled him to overcome the chaotic and divergent nature of the
world, and he asserted that the world exists as a coherent system in which a change in one direction is
ultimately balanced by a corresponding change in another. Between all things there is a hidden
connection, so that those that are apparently “tending apart” are actually “being brought together.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Viewing fire as the essential material uniting all things, Heraclitus wrote that the world order is an “ever-
living fire kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.” He extended the manifestations of
fire to include not only fuel, flame, and smoke but also the ether in the upper atmosphere. Part of that
air, or pure fire, “turns to” ocean, presumably as rain, and part of the ocean turns to earth.
Simultaneously, equal masses of earth and sea everywhere are returning to the respective aspects of
sea and fire. The resulting dynamic equilibrium maintains an orderly balance in the world. That
persistence of unity despite change is illustrated by Heraclitus’s famous analogy of life to a river: “Upon
those who step into the same rivers, different and ever different waters flow down.” Plato later took
that doctrine to mean that all things are in constant flux, regardless of how they appear to the senses.

ADVERTISEMENT
Heraclitus was unpopular in his time and was frequently scorned by later biographers. His primary
contribution lies in his apprehension of the formal unity of the world of experience.

Parmenides, (born c. 515 BCE), Greek philosopher of Elea in southern Italy who founded Eleaticism, one
of the leading pre-Socratic schools of Greek thought. His general teaching has been diligently
reconstructed from the few surviving fragments of his principal work, a lengthy three-part verse
composition titled On Nature.

Parmenides held that the multiplicity of existing things, their changing forms and motion, are but an
appearance of a single eternal reality (“Being”), thus giving rise to the Parmenidean principle that “all is
one.” From this concept of Being, he went on to say that all claims of change or of non-Being are
illogical. Because he introduced the method of basing claims about appearances on a logical concept of
Being, he is considered one of the founders of metaphysics. Plato’s dialogue the Parmenides deals with
his thought