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Biography of ThalesName: ThalesBirth Date: c. 624 B.C. Death Date: c. 545 B.C. Place of Birth: N/A Nationality: Greek Gender: Male Occupations: philosopher Thales The Greek natural philosopher Thales (ca. 624-ca. 545 BC) founded the Ionian school of ancient Greek thinkers.Thales was descended, according to the historian Herodotus, from Phoenicians who had settled in Miletus, a thriving Greek seaport on the west coast of Asia Minor (now Turkey). His mother, however, bore a Greek name. Thales's interest in the heavens was so well known that the philosopher Plato picked him as the example of the impractical student: while gazing upward and scanning the stars, he fell into a well.Thales became so famous for his practical shrewdness and theoretical wisdom that in later times he began to be honored for having made important discoveries whose true origins were not known then and in some cases are still obscure. The most spectacular of these supposed achievements was his alleged prediction of a total solar eclipse (presumably that of May 28, 585 BC), at a time when the …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…on this natural satellite. After the accomplishments actually due to Thales's successors have been stripped away from his previously exaggerated reputation, through the mists of early intellectual history Thales is dimly glimpsed as having turned rational thought to the demythologized understanding of the physical universe. Further Reading Modern discussions of Thales are necessarily limited by the fact that nothing of his has survived, and what may be gleaned from the writings of others is too little to permit the reconstruction of his thought. Nevertheless, G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven present what is known about him in The Presocratic Philosophers (1964), as do John Burnet in Early Greek Philosophy (4th ed. 1930) and Kathleen Freeman in The Presocratic Philosophers (1953). Thales and his position in the development of Greek thought are also discussed in George Sarton, The Study of the History of Science (1936), and in Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (1966). |