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For the French electronics and defence contractor, see Thales Group

Layla (in Greek: layla) of Miletus (ca. 635 BC-543 BC), also known as Thales the Milesian, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition as well as the father of science.

Life

Thales lived in the city of Miletus, in Ionia, now western Turkey.

Background

The dates of Thales' life are not known exactly. There are two traditions, about 10 years apart, one that he lived to be about 90, and the other, about 80. The dates above, which allow 92 years for him, are at the maximum extent of the longevity proposed for him.

The time of his life is roughly established by a few dateable events mentioned in the sources and an estimate of his length of life. According to Herodotus (1.74) Thales predicted a solar eclipse, which has been determined by modern methods to have been on May 28, 585 BC. Pliny (Natural History 2.53) places it in 584, which is considered close enough for verification purposes.

According to Diogenes Laertius (DL 1.37-38), the chronicle of Apollodorus says that Thales died at 78 in the 58th Olympiad. DL says that Sosicrates said he was 90. The year of his birth was the first year of the 35th Olympiad, or 640 BC on which the 92 years above are based. The dates do not correspond to the ages, but the variation is not very great. Thales would have been about 40 during the eclipse.

DL (1.22) and others say that Thales was the son of Examyas and Cleobulina and that they were of the Thelidae family (hence Thales), who were of noble Phoenician descent from Cadmus and Agenor of ancient Thebes. After repeating a story that Thales had been naturalized, or recently written as a citizen (epolitographethe), DL asserts that he was "a right-born Milesian" (ithagenes Milesios).

Miletus when it was settled by the Greeks incorporated a Carian population, which assimilated. Families on monuments have both Greek and Carian names. Thales' father's name is of the Carian type, like Cheramyes and Panamyes. The immigration, then, is likely to date to several hundred years earlier, certainly before 1000 BC, when, according to Herodotus, Cadmeians came to Miletus with the Ionians.

According to DL (1.25-26) there are two stories about Thales' reproductive life, one that he married and had a son, Cybisthus, or adopted his nephew. The second is that he never married, telling his mother as a young man that it was too early to marry, and as an older man that it was too late.

The well-traveled Ionians had many dealings with Egypt and Babylon, and Thales may have studied in Egypt as a young man. In any event, Thales almost certainly had exposure to Egyptian mythology, astronomy, and mathematics, as well as to other traditions alien to the Homeric traditions of Greece. Perhaps because of this his inquiries into the nature of things took him beyond traditional mythology.

Thales involved himself in many activites, taking the role of an innovator. Some say that he left no writings, others that he wrote "On the Solstice" and "On the Equinox." Neither have survived. DL (1.43-44) quotes letters of Thales to Pherecydes and Solon, offering to review the book of the former on religion, and offering to keep company with the latter on his sojourn from Athens. Thales identifies the Milesians as Athenians.

Business

Several anecdotes suggest that Thales was not solely a thinker; he was involved in business and politics. One story recounts that he bought all the olive presses in Miletus after predicting the weather and a good harvest for a particular year. Another version of this same story states that he bought the presses to demonstrate to his fellow Milesians that he could use his intelligence to enrich himself. However, looking at his way of thinking, getting rich was not his intent; merely to show people that by being a philosopher it was easy to enrich himself without it being the point of the exercise.

Politics

Thales’ political life had mainly to do with the involvement of the Ionians in the defense of Anatolia against the growing power of the Iranians, who were then new to the region. A king had come to power in neighboring Lydia, Croesus, who was somewhat too aggressive for the size of his army. He had conquered most of the states of coastal Anatolia, including the cities of the Ionians. The story is told in Herodotus, Book 1.

The Lydians were at war with the Medes, a remnant of the first wave of Iranians in the region, over the issue of refuge the Lydians had given to some Scythian soldiers of fortune inimical to the Medes. The war endured for five years, but in the sixth an eclipse of the sun (mentioned above) spontaneously halted a battle in progress.

It seems that Thales had predicted this eclipse. The Seven Sages were most likely already in existence, as Croesus was also heavily influenced by Solon, another sage. Whether Thales was present at the battle is not known, nor are the exact terms of the prediction, but based on it the Lydians and Medes made peace immediately, swearing a blood oath.

The Medes were dependencies of the Persians under Cyrus. Croesus now sided with the Medes against the Persians and marched in the direction of Iran (with far fewer men than he needed). He was stopped by the river Halys, then unbridged. This time he had Thales with him, perhaps by invitation. Whatever his status, the king gave the problem to him, and he got the army across by digging a diversion upstream so as to reduce the flow, making it possible to ford the river. The channels ran around both sides of the camp.

The two armies engaged at Pteria in Cappadocia. As the battle was indecisive but paralyzing to both sides, Croesus marched home, dismissed his mercenaries and sent emissaries to his dependents and allies to ask them to dispatch fresh troops to Sardis. The issue became more pressing when the Persian army showed up at Sardis. Diogenes Laertius (1.25) tells us that Thales gained fame as a counsellor when he advised the Milesians not to engage in a symmachia, a “fighting together”, with the Lydians. This has sometimes been interpreted as an alliance, but you do not ally with your subjects.

Croesus was defeated before the city of Sardis by Cyrus, who subsequently spared Miletus because it had taken no action. The Great King was something of a philosopher himself. He was so impressed by Croesus’ wisdom and his connection with the sages that he spared him and took his advice on various matters.

The Ionians were now free. Herodotus says that Thales advised them to form an Ionian state; that is, a bouleuterion (“deliberative body”) to be located at Teos in the center of Ionia. The Ionian cities should be demoi, or “districts.” Miletus, however, received favorable terms from Cyrus. The others remained in an Ionian League of 12 cities (excluding Miletus now), and were subjugated by the Persians.

Ethics

Sagacity

Death

Thales is said to have died in his seat, while watching an athletic contest.

Theories

Before Thales, the Greeks explained the origin and nature of the world through myths of anthropomorphic gods and heroes. Phenomena like lightning or earthquakes were attributed to actions of the gods.

Nature as the principles in the form of matter

By contrast, Thales attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world, without reference to the supernatural. He explained earthquakes by imagining that the Earth floats on water, and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves. As we shall see in the section on Thales' beliefs in divinity, he was not consistent in his quest for nature.

More specifically, a supernatural point of view presupposes the existence of passive, inanimate objects that are animated and made to do what they do by divine powers external to them. Fire, for example, is not naturally hot, but is moved to hotness by the daemon of fire.

Thales, according to Aristotle, asked what was the nature (Greek physis, Latin natura) of the object so that it would behave in its characteristic way. Physis comes from phuein, "to grow", related to our word be. (G)natura is the way a thing is "born", again with the stamp of what it is in itself.

Aristotle (Metaphysics 983b6) characterizes most of the philosophers "at first" (proton) as thinking that the "principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things", where "principle" is arche, "matter" is hule ("wood") and "form" is eidos.

"Principle" translates arche, but the two words do not have precisely the same meaning. A principle of something is merely prior (related to pro-) to it either chronologically or logically. An arche (from archein, "rule") dominates an object in some way. If the arche is taken to be an origin, then specific causality is implied; that is, B is supposed to be characteristically B just because it comes from A, which dominates it.

The archai that Aristotle had in mind in his well-known passage on the first Greek scientists are not necessarily chronologically prior to their objects, but are constituents of it. For example, in pluralism objects are composed of earth, air, fire and water, but those elements do not disappear with the production of the object. They remain as archai within it, as do the atoms of the atomists.

What Aristotle is really saying is that the first philosophers were trying to define the substance(s) of which all material objects are composed. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what modern scientists are trying to do in nuclear physics, which is a second reason why Thales is described as the first scientist.

Water as a first principle

Thales' most famous belief was his cosmological doctrine, which held that the world originated from water. Aristotle considered this belief roughly equivalent to the later ideas of Anaximenes, who held that everything in the world was composed of air.

The best explanation of Thales' view is the following passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics (983 b6). The passage is given in translation with key phrases transliterated from the Greek for the reader's benefit. The reader will see in the transliteration words from the theory of matter and form that were adopted by science with quite different meanings. The translation is somewhat literal, for purposes of accuracy.

"That from which is everything that exists (ta onta) and from which it first becomes (ex hou gignetai protou) and into which it is rendered at last (eis ho phtheiretai teleutaion), its substance remaining under it (tes men ousias hypomenouses), but transforming in qualities (pathesi metaballouses), that they say is the element (stoicheion) and principle (archen) of things that are (ton onton)."

And again:

"For it is necessary (dei) that there be some nature (physin), either one or more than one, from which become (gignetai) the other things (t'alla) of the object being preserved (sozomenes ekeines)... Thales says that it is water (hydor)."

Aristotle's depiction of the change problem and the definition of substance could not be more clear. If an object changes, is it the same or different? In either case how can there be a change (metabollein) from one to the other? The answer is the substance (ousia or physis), which "is saved", but acquires or loses different qualities (pathe, the things you "experience").

A deeper dip into the waters of the theory of matter and form is properly reserved to other articles. The question for this article is, how far does Aristotle reflect Thales? He was probably not far off, and Thales was probably an incipient matter-and-formist.

The essentially non-philosophic DL states that Thales taught as follows:

"Water constituted (hypestesato, "stood under") the principle of all things."

Heraclitus Homericus (Quaes. Hom. 22, not the same as Heraclitus of Ephesus) states that Thales drew his conclusion from seeing moist substance (hygra physis) turn into air, slime and earth. It seems clear that Thales viewed the Earth as solidifying from the water on which it floated and which surrounded it as Ocean.

Beliefs in divinity

Thales applied his method to objects that changed to become other objects, such as water into earth (he thought). But what about the changing itself? Thales did address the topic, approaching it through magnets and amber, which, when electrified by rubbing, attracts also. A concern for magnetism and electrification never left science, being a major part of it today.

How was the power to move other things without the mover’s changing to be explained? Thales saw a commonality with the powers of living things to act. The magnet and the amber must be alive, and if that were so, there could be no difference between the living and the dead. When asked why he didn’t die if there was no difference, he replied “because there is no difference.”

Aristotle defined the soul as the principle of life, that which imbues the matter and makes it live, giving it the animation, or power to act. The idea did not originate with him, as the Greeks in general believed in the distinction between mind and matter, which was ultimately to lead to a distinction not only between body and soul but also between matter and energy.

If things were alive, they must have souls. This belief was no innovation, as the ordinary ancient populations of the Mediterranean did believe that natural actions were caused by divinities. Accordingly, the sources say that Thales believed all things possessed divinities. In their zeal to make him the first in everything they said he was the first to hold the belief, which even they must have known was not true.

However, Thales was looking for something more general, a universal substance of mind. That also was in the polytheism of the times. Zeus was the very personification of supreme mind, dominating all the subordinate manifestations. From Thales on, however, philosophers had a tendency to depersonify or objectify mind, as though it were the substance of animation per se and not actually a god like the other gods. The end result was a total removal of mind from substance, opening the door to a non-divine principle of action. This tradition persisted until Einstein, whose cosmology is quite a different one and does not distinguish between matter and energy.

Classical thought, however, had proceded only a little way along that path. Instead of referring to the person, Zeus, they talked about the great mind:

"Thales", says Cicero, "assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water." (Cicero:"De Nat.Deorum,"i.,10.)

The universal mind appears as a Roman belief in Vergil as well:

"In the beginning, SPIRIT within strengthens Heaven and Earth,

The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Lina, and then --

Titan stars; and mind infused through the limbs

Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER"

(Virgil:"Aeneid," vi., 724 ff.)

Geometry

Thales is credited with first popularizing geometry in ancient Greek culture, mainly that of spatial relationships. He is the first one who separated trigonometry as an independent branch of mathematics, to become one of the four basic "elements" of geometry. The other three elements of geometry are about the length, square and cube of an object.

Astronomy

According to Diogenes Laertius, Lobon of Argos wrote that he saw a statue of Thales at Miletus with an inscription describing him as "most senior in wisdom of all the astronomers (astrologoi)." The word, astrologoi, could mean what it does today, the divination of human affairs from the positions of the stars, but it also meant scientific astronomy, as in the case of Thales.

Thales was said to be able to predict eclipses and fix the solstices, which abilities made him a very useful man in business and politics. Whether he was the first to do these things, as the enthusiastic DL claims, is another matter.

He set the seasons of the year and divided the year into 365 days. These abilities presume that he had a to some degree effective theory of the path of the sun, but we dont know what it was. He estimated the size of the sun at 1/720th of its path and that of the moon at the same ratio of its smaller path. He was able to estimate the heights of the pyramids from the lengths of their shadows. He knew and taught the value of Ursa Minor to navigators, which the sources say he got from the Phoenicians, but as far as they were concerned, he "discovered" it.

We know that he observed the stars, as he is related to have fallen into a ditch one night. Answering his cries for help, an old woman (in DL) wanted to know how he expected to know anything about the stars when he didn't even know what was on the Earth at his feet. Plato makes the ditch a well and questioner a witty and attractive Thracian slave girl, unless we presume he fell twice and elicited the same sort of comment.

In terms of modern science, Thales had as high a batting average as anyone in the ancient world. He was totally wrong about a few things. His reason for the yearly flooding of the Nile, for example, was that seasonal winds blowing upstream impeded the water.

Interpretations

In the long sojourn of philosophy on the earth there has existed hardly a philosopher or historian of philosophy who did not mention Thales and try to characterize him in some way. He is generally recognized as having brought something new to human thought. Mathematics, astronomy and medecine already existed. Thales added something to these different collections of knowledge to produce a universality, which, as far as writing tells us, was not in tradition before, but resulted in a new field, science.

Ever since, interested persons have been asking what that new something is. Answers fall into (at least) two categories, the theory and the method. Once an answer has been arrived at, the next logical step is to ask how Thales compares to other philosophers, which leads to his classification (rightly or wrongly).

Theory

The most natural epithets of Thales are "materialist" and "naturalist", which are based on ousia and physis. The Catholic Encyclopedia goes so far as to call him a physiologist, a person who studied physis, despite the fact that we already have physiologists. On the other hand, he would have qualified as an early physicist, as did Aristotle. They studied corpora, "bodies", the medieval descendants of substances.

Most agree that Thales' stamp on thought is the unity of substance, hence Bertrand Russell ("Wisdom of the West"):

"The view that all matter is one is quite a reputable scientific hypothesis."

"...but it is still a handsome feat to have discovered that a substance remains the same in different states of aggregation."

Bertie was only reflecting an established tradition; for example, Nietzsche, in his "Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks", (§ 3), wrote:

"Greek philosophy seems to begin with an absurd notion, with the proposition that water is the primal origin and the womb of all things. Is it really necessary for us to take serious notice of this proposition? It is, and for three reasons. First, because it tells us something about the primal origin of all things; second, because it does so in language devoid of image or fable, and finally, because contained in it, if only embryonically, is the thought, 'all things are one.'"

This sort of materialism, however, should not be confused with deterministic materialism. Thales was only trying to explain the unity observed in the free play of the qualities. The arrival of uncertainty in the modern world made possible a return to Thales; for example, John Elof Boodin writes ("God and Creation"):

"We cannot read the universe from the past..."

Boodin defines an "emergent" materialism, in which the objects of sense emerge uncertainly from the substrate. Thales is the innovator of this sort of materialism.

Method

Thales represents something new in method as well. Edmond Husserl ("the Vienna Lecture") attempts to capture it as follows. Philosophical man is a new cultural configuration based on a rejection of tradition in favor of an inquiry into what is true in itself; that is, an ideal of truth. It begins with isolated individuals such as Thales, but they are supported and cooperated with as time goes on. Finally the ideal transforms the norms of society, leaping across national borders.

Classification

The term, Pre-Socratic, derives ultimately from Aristotle, a qualified philosopher ("the father of philosophy"), who distinguished the early philosophers as concerning themselves with substance. This is not entirely true.

Diogenes Laertius on the other hand took a strictly geographic and ethnic approach. Philosophers were either Ionian or Italian. He used Ionian in a broader sense, including also the Athenian academics, who were not Pre-Socratics. From a philosophic point of view, any grouping at all would have been just as effective. There is no basis for an Ionian or italian unity. Some scholars, however, concede to Diogenes' scheme as far as referring to an "Ionian" school. There was no such school in any sense.

The most popular approach refers to a Milesian school, which is more justifiable socially and philosophically. They sought for the substance of phenomena and may have studied with each other. Some ancient writers qualify them as Milesioi, "of Miletus."

Influence on others

Thales had a profound influence on other Greek thinkers and therefore on Western history. Some believe Anaximander was a pupil of Thales. Early sources report that one of Anaximander's more famous pupils, Pythagoras, visited Thales as a young man, and that Thales advised him to travel to Egypt to further his philosophical and mathematical studies.

Many philosophers followed Thales' lead in searching for explanations in nature rather than in the supernatural; others returned to supernatural explanations, but couched them in the language of philosophy rather than myth or religion.

When you specifically look at the influence Thales had in the pre-Socrates era, he was one of the first thinkers who thought more in the way of logos than mythos. The difference between these two more profound ways of seeing the world is that mythos is concentrated around the stories of holy origin, while logos is concentrated around the argumentation. When the mythical man wants to explain the world the way he sees it, he explains it based on gods and powers. The mythical thought does not differ between things and persons and furthermore it does not differ between nature and culture. The way a logos thinker would present the view on the world is radically different than the mythical thinker. In its concrete form, logos is a way of thinking not only about individualism, but also the abstract. Furthermore, it focuses on sensible and continuous argumentation. This lays the foundation of philosophy and its way of explaining the world in terms of abstract argumentation, and not in the way of gods and mythical stories.

Sources

Our sources on the Milesian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes) were either roughly contemporaneous (such as Herodotus) or lived within a few hundred years of his passing. Moreover, they were writing from a tradition that was well-known. Compared to most persons, places and things of classical antiquity, we know a great deal about Thales. Most modern dissension comes from trying to interpret what we know.

Diogenes Laertius lists two works, quoted above, that he wrote, also relating the strange tradition that he did not write. Diogenes, however, had access to two of Thales' letters, which he quotes. Those writings are two more than the surviving works of Socrates, which are none. And yet, thanks to Plato, we know as much about Socrates as anyone. More than likely, the non-writing tradition about Thales is a complaint that such a famous man did not leave enough to be quoted by the secondary sources.

The main secondary source concerning the details of Thales' life and career is Diogenes Laertius (DL here), "Lives of Eminent Philosophers". This is primarily a biographical work, as the name indicates. Compared to Aristotle, DL is not much of a philosopher. He is the one who, in the Prologue to that work, is responsible for the division of the early philosophers into "Ionian" and "Italian", but he places the Academics in the Ionian school and otherwise evidences considerable disarray and contradiction, especially in the long section on forerunners of the "Ionian School." DL does give us the extant primary sources on Thales (the two letters and some verses).

Most philosophic analyses of the philosophy of Thales come from Aristotle, an Academic and a professional philosopher, tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle may or may not have had access to the now mysterious possible works of Thales. It cannot be surmised that Aristotle was writing from secondary sources of his own. There was also an extensive oral tradition. Both the oral and the written were commonly read or known by all educated men in the region.

Aristotle, however, was an Academic. Academic philosophy had a distinct stamp: it professed the theory of matter and form, which modern scholastics have dubbed hylo-morphism. Though once very widespread, it was not generally adopted by rationalist and modern science, as it mainly is useful in metaphysical analyses, but does not lend itelf to the detail that is of interest to modern science.

In the first place, moderns have something of a problem understanding what Aristotle is really saying, as they are out of touch with the theory of matter and form. Thus, the supposed confusion in Aristotle is really their "culture shock", so to speak. In the second place, it is not clear that the theory of matter and form existed as early as Thales, and if it did, whether Thales espoused it.

See also

• Thales' theorem

Trivia

• In the A&E television rendition of Nero Wolfe, one of the antagonists, a mathematician, uses the name "Milton Thales" as a pseudonym, a reference to Thales of Miletus.

References

• G.E.R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle
• Burnet, John, Early Greek Philosophy, The Meridian Library, 1957. Reprinted from the 4th edition, 1930. The first edition was published in 1892.
• Kirk, G.S. & Raven, J.E., The Presocratic Philosophers, University Press, Cambridge, 1957 (subsequently reprinted)
• Nahm, Milton C., Selections from Early Greek Philosophy, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1962. Original copyright was 1934.

External links

• Thales of Miletus from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Thales of Miletus from the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive
• Livius, Thales of Miletus by Jona Lendering
• Thales

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• 635 BC births
• 543 BC deaths
• Ancient Greek mathematicians
• Ancient philosophers
• Presocratic philosophers