Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus (Ancient Greek: Θαλῆς ὁ Μιλήσιος Thalḗs or Milḗsios; Miletus, c. 624 BC – ibid., c. 546 BC) was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, geometer, physicist, and lawgiver.

He lived and died in Miletus, a Greek polis on the Ionian coast (today in Turkey). Aristotle considered him as the initiator of the Miletus school, to which Anaximander (his disciple) and Anaximenes (disciple of the former) also belonged. In ancient times, he was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece. No text of his is extant and it is probable that he left no writing at his death. From the 5th century BC. C., important contributions are attributed to him in the field of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, etc., as well as an active role as a legislator in his hometown.

Thales is often credited with breaking away from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, changing instead to natural explanations through naturalistic theories and hypotheses (logos), and considered the initiator of Greek scientific and philosophical speculation and western, although his figure and contributions are surrounded by great uncertainties. Like most pre-Socratic philosophers, Thales explained that the original principle of nature and matter was a single ultimate substance (arche): water.

Although tradition insistently credits Thales with having begun to use deductive thinking applied to geometry, there is absolutely no document to support such a thing, nor can he be credited with developing the two geometric theorems that bear his name.

Biography

The biographical data of Tales of Miletus are a mixture of opinions, facts attributed to him, and quotes with a greater or lesser degree of credibility, collected from various authors of much later times, reinterpreted and exposed in the light of the narrator's mentality. He was born and died in Miletus (Greek: Μίλητος, Turkish: Milet) c. 624 BC C., an ancient city on the western coast of Asia Minor (in what is now the province of Aydin in Turkey), near where the Menderes River empties. Most historians present him as a genuine Milesian (although, according to the Greek doxographer Diogenes Laertius, he was admitted to the Ionian city of Miletus on the Aegean Sea after being expelled from Phenicia along with Nileus). Regardless of whether or not he was born in Miletus, it is clear that he resided in that city and that it was there that he developed his philosophy, his scientific research, and his political interventions.

He was the son of Euxamias (or Examius) and Cleobulinas (or Cleobula), both of whom were natives of Phenicia and descended from Cadmus and Agenor. Since the Ionians frequently traded with Egypt and Babylon, it is likely that Thales visited Egypt at some stage in his life, and there he could, on the one hand, have received teachings from the priests, who zealously recorded every exceptional astronomical or meteorological event for religious reasons and who therefore possessed copious information about it; and, on the other, having acquired mathematical knowledge, which the Egyptians had developed on a practical level in order to measure and delimit the plots of land whose limits used to be erased by the continuous flooding of the Nile River.

They could have been his fellow students Solon and Ferécides de Siros. In addition, a source links him to Pythagoras, whom he would have recommended to travel to Egypt and educate himself with the priests of Memphis and Diospolis. However, these data are not reliable, since they come from sources far removed from Thales' time. From the Babylonians he may also have obtained scientific knowledge. Yes, it is more certain that the philosopher Anaximander was his disciple, as well as Anaximenes his.

Both Herodotus (I, 170) and Diogenes Laertius (I, 25) point to him as a wise political adviser to the Ionians and Lydians.

Among the anecdotes that are told about Thales, Herodotus recounts (I, 75) that he managed to divert the river Halys so that it would be crossed by the army of Croesus (Herodotus himself disbelieves this, but modern specialists do not completely rule out its veracity). Aristotle, for his part, tells in his Politics(I, 11, 1259a) how once, having been reproached for his poverty and his lack of concern for material matters, and having foreseen, thanks to his astronomical knowledge, that there would be a prosperous harvest of olives the following season, he bought during the winter all the oil presses of Miletus and Chios and rented them at harvest time, accumulating a great fortune and thus showing that philosophers can be rich if they wish, but that their ambition is quite different. Perhaps the best known anecdote of Thales is the one that Herodotus tells us: that he predicted to the Ionians the year in which a solar eclipse would take place (which has been known since 2005 to have been due to the knowledge of a Babylonian eclipse cycle), towards the year 585 BC C. The eclipse did indeed occur in the midst of a battle,

It is also well known what Plato tells, through the mouth of Socrates, in his dialogue Theaetetus (174 A): that, when Thales fell into a well for looking at the movement of the stars, a Thracian peasant woman laughed while the philosopher excused himself saying "that he longed to know the things of heaven but that what was... right at his feet eluded him "

Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states that he died at the age of seventy-eight; Sosícrates, that died in the LVIII Olympiad, at the age of 90. Another date in which it is affirmed that he died is given in the year 585 a. C., although it is currently accepted that he died around the year 546 a. c.

Plays

Simplicius of Cilicia wrote: he left nothing written, except the so-called Nautical Astrology (Ναυτιχῆς αστρολογίας) ".

On the other hand Diogenes Laertius writes: «According to some, he left nothing written, since they say that the nautical astrology attributed to him is from Foco Samio [...] But, according to others, he wrote two works: On the solstice and On the equinox ».

Thus, there are three lines of opinion: that he only wrote Astrology, that he only wrote On the solstice and On the equinox, and that he wrote nothing. In any case, the truth is that, if he had written anything, his writings were soon lost, and, with regard to the few sources that quote alleged sayings of Thales, it cannot be determined with certainty whether such sources were in their hands or actually written by Thales. Such either secondary sources or if they only repeated oral traditions.

Math

Several mathematical discoveries recorded in Euclid's Elements are attributed to Thales: the definition I. 17 and the propositions I. 5, I. 15, I. 26 and III. 31.

Also well known is the legend about a shadow comparison method that Thales would have used to measure the height of the Egyptian pyramids: the Milesian realized that the exact height of the pyramids could be known by measuring their shadow at the time of the day when his shadow was about the same size as his body. This method was later applied to other practical purposes of navigation.

It is also assumed that Thales already knew many of the basics of geometry, such as the fact that any diameter of a circle would divide it into identical parts, that an isosceles triangle necessarily has two equal angles at its base, or the relational properties between the Angles formed by cutting two parallel lines by a third straight line.

The Egyptians had applied some of this knowledge to the division and division of their land. This need arose as a result of the fact that the Nile, with its constant floods, erased the dividing lines of the cultivated fields, for which a way to measure the land again was necessary. But, according to the few data available, Thales would have devoted much less to space (surfaces) and much more to lines and curves in Greece, thus reaching a higher degree of complexity and abstraction in his geometry.

Philosophy

Thales of Miletus is considered the first philosopher of the West for having been the one who attempted the first rational explanation of different phenomena in the world that is known in the history of Western culture. In his time mythical conceptions still predominated, but Thales was looking for a rational explanation, what is known as "the passage from myth to logos ", where the Greek word logos alludes in this context to "reason", one of its meanings in Spanish..

It is very likely that he was one of the first men to bring geometry to the Greek world, and was considered by Aristotle to be the first of the φυσικόι or 'philosophers of nature'. Many of these ideas seem to stem from his Egyptian upbringing. Similarly, his idea that the earth floats on water may have sprung from certain Near Eastern cosmogonic ideas.

Sources

The philosophy of Thales of Miletus is not known at first hand, as no writing by Thales has survived (in fact, it is not even certain that he wrote anything). The recorded claims attributed to him have probably reached the transmitters by second hand or even by oral tradition; Among the ideas attributed to him, it is not possible to establish with certainty how much of what Thales really said, nor if Thales expressed himself in the same terms in which his ideas have been transmitted. As for his philosophy, we have the important contribution of Aristotle, who, in his description, differentiates the sayings attributable with some certainty to Thales himself ("Thales said that...") from the doubtful facts ("they say that Thales he said that...") and of his own opinions ("perhaps Thales meant that..."). Aristotle considers itMetaphysics, Book A) as the first to devote himself to investigating first causes and first principles, thus marking him as the first philosopher and founder of natural philosophy.

It should be noted that in their time, these first philosophers (the pre-Socratics) did not deal with ethics, politics or morals, in fact they are considered physicists because they rationally theorized about the origin of the universe, they dedicated themselves to the study of nature and began to study the field of mathematics, geometry and arithmetic.

Thought

The universal and rational explanation that Thales held was that water is the origin of all things that exist, the first element:Most of the early philosophers considered that the principles of all things were only those that have a material aspect […] As for the number and form of such a principle, they do not all say the same thing, but Thales, the initiator of this type of philosophy, affirms that it is the water, for which he also declared that the earth is on the water. Perhaps he conceived this supposition to see that the food of all things is moist and because from the moist it is born of its own heat and by it lives. And it is that what they are born from is the beginning of all things. That is why he conceived such an assumption, as well as because the seeds of all things have a moist nature and water is the principle of nature for moist things.Aristotle, in

Metaphysics.

As for the soul, he considers it as a giver of life, movement and divine. As in the time in which she lives, she still did not differentiate between living and non-living beings. Thales attributes life to water, because as water moves by itself (see seas or rivers), it must have a soul, since the soul is what makes things move. And it is also divine (it is full of gods) because the soul is divine for him. "Thus, therefore, water for Thales is the origin of everything, it is full of gods and has its own life." And just like with water, he reasons with lodestones. Since they move on their own, he thinks they are alive, or that "there is something alive in them."Some affirm that the soul is intertwined in the whole. Possibly for this reason, Thales thought that everything was full of gods.Aristotle, in

About the soul.It seems that Thales also, according to what they say, supposed that the soul was something capable of producing movement, if indeed he affirmed that the lodestone has a soul because it moves iron.Aristotle.

And finally, again Aristotle in On the sky and Seneca in Natural Questions affirm that Thales held that the earth on which we walk is a kind of island that "floats" on the water in a similar way to a log and therefore the earth sometimes it trembles. As it is not supported on fixed bases, but as it is floating on the water, it makes it wobble.

Importance of your work

With all this, it can be clearly understood why Thales of Miletus is considered the first philosopher of the West, and it is that, as we have already said, he was the first Western man (of whom we know) who tried to know the truth of the world through rational and not fantastic or mystical explanations, as until then was done in Ancient Greece through myths. And therefore Thales is important to the history of Western philosophy. He was the initiator of it and with it, he created a legacy of search and love of wisdom, which will continue immediately with Anaximander and Anaximenes, and which will reach its splendor in Ancient Greece; more than a century later with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: three philosophers who have become the pillars of the thought that we know today under the name of Western philosophy.