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One of the world’s first philosophers
was a man called Thales. He lived in
Miletus, which is on the coast of
present-day Turkey. Thales was born
around 2,600 years ago. He was a
smart guy. He predicted a solar
eclipse in 585 BCE (no easy task, ed) ,
and he worked out the diameters of
the Sun and Moon. According to the
stories, he was also a bit of a
daydreamer. One day he was
wandering about ancient Greece
staring at the sky when he fell into a
well (imagine what trouble he
would have got into had he owned
a smart phone, ed) . Fortunately for
the future of civilisat ion, he managed
to climb back out again.
Water world
Thales is not only famous for his
astronomy and his unlucky accidents
involving wells. He is also known as
the founder of Greek philosophy.
Thales was puzzled by the complexity
of the world. It is full of an amazing
number of things: pot-plants, ducks,
books, boats, apples, mountains…
hats! Thales wondered if there was
something simpler underpinning this
complexity. He asked himself what
this might be, and he came to the
conclusion that the principle
underlying everything is water. In
other words, everything is made
of water.
This seems to us like a weird idea. We
now know that Thales was wrong. But
at the time, it wasn’t such a crazy
thought. After all, water is
everywhere. Life depends on it. It can
change form from liquid to gas to
solid. And Thales lived by the sea, so
life in Miletus was probably pretty
soggy a lot of the time. As a candidate
for something simple underlying the
complexity of existence, water must
have seemed pretty convincing.
In saying everything was made of
water, Thales was trying to find a
natural explanation for how the world
was instead of relying on
supernatural tales about
cantankerous gods. He saw that
although things might seem complex,
when we look beneath the surface,
they may be much simpler. This is a
big insight: the search for simple
principles behind complex things is
often seen as the beginning
of science.
Wannabe the
wisest
Once people in Greece got started
thinking about philosophy, they
couldn’t stop. Lots of philosophers
followed Thales. Of all of them,
probably the most important was
Socrates. He was born in the city of
Athens more than a hundred years
after Thales died. Socrates worked as
a stonemason. He was scruffy,
grumpy, and famously ugly (bet his
mum and dad didn’t think so, ed) .
He was interested in principles too,
but in the principles underlying
things like goodness and badness,
justice and injustice.