The First Sophist
All historians, ancient or modern, include Thales of Miletus (c. 624 BC to 546 BC) among the seven wise men of ancient Greece. He often tops the list, not just because he was first amongst them all. He deserved every bit of it, as the originator of philosophy which evolved into natural philosophy and then science. In those days terms, like philosophy (love of wisdom) and philosopher did not exist. People like Thales were simply sophists (wise men).
Unfortunately, everything that we know about Thales, the first sophist, is through writings of others, and that too is sketchy. We only know that young Thales was a merchant, and travelled to Egypt where he presumably learnt geometry, and Babylonia, where he learnt astronomy. He was noticed for his wisdom much later (after 582 BC?) and was sought after by people and kings alike (to teach children or for advice) a la modern professor/ consultant!
Sayings attributed to him are mysteriously close to the oriental thought. We cannot read more into the fact that Thales was a contemporary of Gautam Buddha in India and Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Chaung Tzu in China, and that he was a trader/ traveller in his early life. His one-liners, ‘Know thyself’, ‘Nothing in excess’, ‘Everything in good measure’, ‘Everything is full of divinity’, ‘A soul is one that possesses power of eternal motion’ all sound so familiar! But unlike his oriental counterparts, he was interested in the physical world around, and helped understand it.
In geometry, he was the first to express concepts of a line with zero thickness, and a perfectly straight line. Some claim that, like geometry, he even borrowed these concepts from Egyptians. Yet, he was certainly the first to state such ideas in clear terms. He discovered that diameter divides a circle into two equal halves, and that base angles of isosceles triangle are equal. Such discoveries are not feasible with lines drawn in sand or on wax, for obvious reasons. He was aware of similarities of triangles, and its implications. Some credit him with the method of arguments that progresses from the known to unknown; later developed by Pythagoras and perfected by Euclid.
In astronomy, Thales was the first to assert that moon shone because of reflected light. He accurately predicted a solar eclipse in 582 BC, but this was knowledge acquired from Babylonians who knew it at least two centuries earlier. Yet, the Greeks were thoroughly impressed that the eclipse occurred in the very year it was predicted! Aristotle called this event as beginning of philosophy in Greece.
His contributions to understanding the physical world around us are seminal. Although he was not the first to ask questions about the origin of this universe, he was certainly the first to offer some definitive answers. We may laugh at his claim that everything is made of water, or his explanation that earthquakes occur because earth floats on water. Yet, more than the answers, his act of searching answers in the world around us without invoking mythology, or an omnipotent God, set the tone and path for future thinkers. Philosophers of Science regard this to be the most important contribution of Thales to natural philosophy, rather than his prediction of eclipses.
Though grossly wrong in detail, Thales concept is not too far off the modern day knowledge. In Thales’ argument, replace water with quarks and we obtain what modern physicists claim – every substance is made of quarks. In effect Thales provided a thought process and a paradigm that is valid even today. Similarly Thales was not too far off the fact that earth’s crust floats on liquid magma and earthquakes occur due to disturbances therein.
Plato, who wrote a few generations later, tells how Thales fell into a stream while gazing upwards to observe stars. A girl passing by derided him because in seeking events in the heavens he overlooked what lay at his feet. (Philosophers were absentminded even then!) Yet, he was not an ordinary philosopher. He knew how to apply what he knew. For example, he used the similarity of triangles to measure the height of tall structures like pyramids by measuring their shadows, when length of his shadow equalled his height. During the war with Persia, he showed how to build a dam to divide a river into two smaller streams that are easier to cross or build bridge on. When criticized for being so wise yet so poor, he showed his business acumen. The year he anticipated that olive crop is going to be better, he bought all the olive oil presses in the region. When the bumper crop indeed arrived he grew rich in just one season, because of his monopoly. Having proved his point, he abandoned business and returned to the world of the mind! He also displayed a political acumen to unite the pan Ionian colonies against the Kingdom of Lydia. Ionians could ward off the Lydians for nearly a century, presumably due to the unity forged by Thales of Miletus.
Thales created such a deep impact that Ionians began to pursue philosophical speculations at the cost of technological developments. For example, Ionians neglected Thales’ younger contemporary Eupalinus, an expert builder of aqueducts and tunnels. Imagine, at 600 BC, he could dig tunnels starting simultaneously from two ends and meet at the center with an error less than a few feet. Yet we know far too less about him than what we know about Thales. Ionians paid the price for such a neglect of Engineering/ technology in due course. They lost independence and were displaced to Greece and Italy!
Vishwas D. Mundale
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