Thales of Miletus:
One of the very first Philosophers
Dear Classical Wisdom Kids,
Welcome to another exciting week of ancient learning. Today we will go all the way back to one of the very first Greek philosophers of all time: Thales of Miletus.
Thales has a lot of great credits to his name... but one of the most important was that he tried to understand his world in a new way. He rejected superstition and tried to find rational and natural answers to explain the world around him.
Many, most famously the Greek philosopher Aristotle, regarded him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. While there were many amazing contributions from the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, especially in the fields of astronomy and mathematics, there wasn’t always a distinction between "rational science" and magic.
As such, Thales is often referred to in the West as the Father of Science because he is historically recognized as the first individual known to have entertained and engaged in scientific philosophy. His influence on the Greeks and subsequent thinkers and cultures around the world has been huge!
So please enjoy learning about this extraordinary thinker.
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Anya Leonard
Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom and Classical Wisdom Kids
Thales of Miletus: One of the very first Philosophers
Do you know what a ‘philosopher’ is? The word comes from ancient Greek and means ‘lover of wisdom’. A philosopher is someone who thinks hard about life and how to live it. Lots of famous philosophers came from ancient Greece and Rome.
Thales of Miletus was one of the first philosophers there ever was. He made lots of important discoveries. He was a scientist and an astronomer as well as being a philosopher!
He wanted to understand better how the world worked. He studied very hard and thought about things very deeply, and his ideas amazed the other Greeks. He was so highly thought of, they listed him as one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece.
This means that they thought he was one of the wisest men to ever live.
Thales traveled very far across the world. One of the places he visited was Egypt, where he saw the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Pyramids were giant triangular structures built by the ancient Egyptians.
They were very, very big, and Thales did something no one else had been able to do – work out exactly how tall they were! He did this by measuring its shadow. He realized that if he measured the shadow, he could use math to discover just how tall the pyramids really were.
Thales always thought of original ways to approach problems!
Something else that amazed people was when Thales was able to predict an eclipse. An eclipse is when the sun gets blocked out for a little while by something else, like the moon. All of a sudden, day can become as dark as night time!
Thales was an astronomer, meaning he liked to watch the stars and planets in the sky. He watched how they moved. From watching them, he could work out where they were going to be, and this let him work out when the eclipse would happen.
An eclipse is a very unusual event and can be quite scary! People didn’t understand them, but Thales was able to predict one. A great battle was happening on the same day as the eclipse Thales predicted. Both sides were so surprised and scared by the sudden change that they decided to stop the fighting and be at peace with each other.
But the Greeks remembered that Thales had predicted it would happen.
Another dramatic event was when the army of King Croesus was blocked by a river. The army couldn’t go any further because there was no bridge! Thales was able to think up a solution. He was able to use math to work out how to redirect the water so that the army could pass by. He worked out where to dig to get the river to flow differently. Soon, the army was able to travel again!
The Greeks had made an expensive bowl to be given to the wisest of the Greeks. It was given first to Thales, and then passed around each of the Seven Sages. Finally, it was given to Thales again. He was the only one of the Sages to be given it twice!
Afterwards, Thales gave it to the Temple of Apollo at Didyma. The fact that they gave it to him twice shows just how much the Greeks respected him.
The reason Thales was able to do so many amazing things was through his understanding of math and science.
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