Thales: life, philosophy, and contributions to ancient thought

Naturalists and Materialists

Philosophy is credited to the Ancient Greeks. Historians, sociologists, and modern philosophers have traced the origins of philosophy to this period in history. The philosopher's position was as the community thinker, the people of the community who would sit around and think. Their jobs were to think about the best ways to improve society and to understand through thinking and concentration the principles of humanity. Philosophers attempted to use certain thoughts and concepts of understanding to come to some larger conclusion about the human condition as a whole. Socrates is argued to be the greatest of the philosophers and his way of thinking is believed to have shaped the ideas of centuries of philosophers to come. Before him, there were other great thinkers who, although they might not have had the same overreaching and lasting importance as Socrates, nonetheless contributed monumentally to the development of philosophical thought and to man's understanding of the universe. One of these first philosophers, a man named Thales of Miletus, came up with the first "Grand Unified Theory," a hypothesis which endeavored to explain the whole of the universe and its mysteries. In addition, he and his cohorts were responsible for some of the first philosophical arguments, theories, and potential solutions to life's mysteries. Thales' era is considered to have been the birth of philosophy as this was the time when the first thinkers were focusing not just on singular questions but to the larger mysteries of the universe, laying the groundwork for the likes of Socrates still to come.

The most celebrated philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, give credit for their writings and ideas to the men who came before them (Allen 25). Thales was one of these early progenitors of philosophical thoughts. None of his actual writings is known to exist, but Aristotle wrote on him frequently and through this we know about his work and his influences on future thinkers. He was an intelligent man who, when he had a mind to it, could participate in the world of business, but the majority of his interest was in the stars and the skies and what they might mean about the earth on which humanity lived. Philosophers before Thales had attempted to explain away some of the natural phenomenon that occurred on earth and before them story tellers gave the explanation that the gods caused all the mysteries which they themselves did not have the scientific knowledge to understand. Thales was, however, the first person to try to give an explanation as for the heavens and the earth in juxtaposition to the visible outer space beyond, showing his fellow philosophers that they did not have to be bound to what was merely around them but could extend hypothesis to realms which could not yet be either proven or disproven by science.

In his oratories, Thales declared that the universe was geocentric rather than heliocentric, and that it was flat. He also asserted that the earth is somewhat immersed in an unseen body of water. Thales knew that water begat life as in plants, animals, and in humans. Therefore, he argued, the entire earth which is full of life must be born of water. He stated that the earth "stays in place through floating like a log or some other such thing (for none of these rests by nature on air, but on water" (Allen 28). Of course modern science has allowed human beings the evidence to know that the earth does not rest in water or on air but in a space which cannot be defined in either of those terms. His logic behind his assertion, though we now know it to be incorrect makes sense. He utilized the concept of logos in his argument, which is one where the viewpoint is created using logical thought, critical thinking, and physical evidence. Thales used observational data to support his theories. For example, he argued that earthquakes were caused by waves within the water that the earth sets on (33). Without having seismographs and plate tectonics to counter this assumption, it was a perfectly logical conclusion for the man to reach and he used it as proof of the water on earth hypothesis. As he employed all of these in his theory, Thales has to be credited with perhaps the first established scientific theory about the workings of the universe.

Besides this "Grand Unified Theory," Thales was also involved in the burgeoning of several philosophical ideologies. He is credited with the first uses of monism in philosophical thought. At the core of all human existence, he argued was a sense of shared community. Even more, this unity somehow impacted every living things that existed on the planet. Humans, animals, plants all shared this unity which was unseen and even largely unfelt except in the cases of close kinships such as family or friends. Those we hate even are part of this universal united entity within. Everything was somehow connected with everything else on the planet by a soul or some kind of a life force. The world itself, he believed, was a living entity and so what was life and what was matter were inseparable concepts.

More than just humanity and nature, Thales was interested in knowing to define what it was which made up all material objects. He wanted to know what it was within an object or a living thing which gave it the properties and characteristic normal to that item. In this too he eventually determined that the basis of all matter was in water. Humanity has taken this philosophy and expanded it. For example, scientists have agreed that in interplanetary exploration looking for sources of water will indicate life on these distant planets. A theory that was discovered millennia ago still has merit within a far more technologically advanced age. This is just one example of how both pre- and post-Socratic philosophers impacted the rest of humanity.