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    Thales of Miletus was considered the first philosopher and helped establish the Milesian School of thought. He was the first to describe natural phenomena without referring to mythology and gods. Thales studied in Egypt and Babylonia, learning geometry and astronomy. He made several important discoveries in these fields and introduced them to Greece. Thales was curious about the natural world and proposed that all things developed from one source, believing water was the origin of all things in nature.

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    Thales of Miletus was considered the first philosopher and helped establish the Milesian School of thought. He was the first to describe natural phenomena without referring to mythology and gods. Thales studied in Egypt and Babylonia, learning geometry and astronomy. He made several important discoveries in these fields and introduced them to Greece. Thales was curious about the natural world and proposed that all things developed from one source, believing water was the origin of all things in nature.

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    Thales of Miletus was considered the first philosopher and helped establish the Milesian School of thought. He was the first to describe natural phenomena without referring to mythology and gods. Thales studied in Egypt and Babylonia, learning geometry and astronomy. He made several important discoveries in these fields and introduced them to Greece. Thales was curious about the natural world and proposed that all things developed from one source, believing water was the origin of all things in nature.

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    15 views3 pages

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    Dev Patel
    Thales of Miletus was considered the first philosopher and helped establish the Milesian School of thought. He was the first to describe natural phenomena without referring to mythology and gods. Thales studied in Egypt and Babylonia, learning geometry and astronomy. He made several important discoveries in these fields and introduced them to Greece. Thales was curious about the natural world and proposed that all things developed from one source, believing water was the origin of all things in nature.

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    1 Thales of Miletus (ca 624–546 BCE)

    Thales of Miletus is considered to be the first philosopher by


    Aristotle and others. Bertrand Russell identifies Thales as the
    starting point of Western philosophy. The followers of Thales,
    Anaximander and Anaximenes, also hailed from Miletus, Ionia.
    They were the founders of the Milesian School (also known as the
    Ionian School) of thought.

    In the episode Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still of the series Cosmos:


    A Spacetime Odyssey, first aired in May 2014, the host Neil
    deGrass Tyson pointed out that the ancient Greeks brought us the
    theater and democracy. But the most important contribution was
    that Thales was the first person to describe natural
    phenomena without reference to the gods of mythology. Events
    such as earthquakes were not punishment of the gods for
    something one did that displeased the gods but rather was due to
    natural material processes. As might be anticipated in an
    emerging field, many of the explanations were wrong. The
    influence of Thales toward the understanding of Nature is not in
    his explanations, but the fact that he was the first to ask questions
    about things as they really are and not wondering about the
    mythical origin of the world!

    Most of what is known about Thales comes from the writings of


    Herodotos. Thales was an engineer, astronomer, financier, and
    politician. He was the first named Sage (wise man) of the Seven
    Sages of Greece. After a career in politics, Thales turned to the
    study of natural phenomena and introduced the study of nature to
    the Greeks. Aristotle wrote that Thales was the founder of natural
    philosophy.

    Thales traveled to Egypt, where he learned of geometry. Among


    his contributions, Thales was the first to prove that a circle was
    bisected by its diagonal, the first to inscribe a right triangle inside
    a circle, and recognized that the base angles of an isosceles
    triangle were equal and that the angles of the vortex of
    intersecting lines were equal. He measured the height of pyramids
    by the length of the shadow they cast. Thales introduced
    geometry to Greece.

    Thales also visited Babylonia, where he learned about astronomy.


    According to Burnet (1920, p. 41), the most remarkable statement
    of Herodotos was that Thales predicted a solar eclipse during the
    war between the Lydians and the Medes. What is remarkable is
    that Thales did not know the cause of solar eclipses, and that
    therefore Thales could not have known exactly where solar
    eclipses may occur. Astronomers today give May 28, 585 BCE,
    as the date of the eclipse.

    Thales was the first to discover the period of one solstice to the
    next. He discovered the seasons, which he divided into 365 days.
    He was the first to state that the size of the Sun was 1/720 part of
    the solar orbit just as the Moon was 1/720 part of the lunar orbit.
    To appreciate these accomplishments one must go back in time to
    this period and what was known about the solar system. It was
    obvious by observation that both the Sun and the Moon orbited
    about the fixed Earth.

    Thales wanted to know why things behaved the way they do.


    Thales was the founder of the philosophy that all of Nature had
    developed from one source. According to Heraclitus Homericus
    (540–480 BCE), Thales drew this conclusion from the
    observation that most things turn into air, slime, and earth. Thales
    thus proposed that things change from one form to another.
    Thales observed that water was important in everyday life. Most
    things were moist. Life needed water for nourishment, and many
    things lived near water. Thales believed that water was the origin
    of all things in Nature. To explain earthquakes, he envisioned the
    earth floating on water. The waves of the water virtually “rocked
    the boat,” thus causing earthquakes.

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