The Relevance of Thales of Miletus in the Modern World
Thales of Miletus (born c. 624–620 BCE — died c. 548–545 BCE ) is included in the list of the seven ancient sages. Aristotle (364–322 BC) thought of him as the founder of Western Philosophy.
He has been attributed with constructing geometry theorems, providing mathematical means of calculating geographical distances, and predicting astronomical events like the solar eclipse. Unfortunately, no direct record of Thales’s work has survived and therefore the actual extent of his contributions is hard to determine. Some of his ideas now look preposterous, such as the thought that the Earth floats on water. But what is important is not the validity of his ideas, but the principles behind them.
Quoting from the Encyclopedia Britannica,
“ Thales’ significance lies less in his choice of water as the essential substance than in his attempt to explain nature by the simplification of phenomena and in his search for causes within nature itself rather than in the caprices of anthropomorphic gods.”
I find parallels between the importance of Thales and that of the Vienna Circle who promoted the logical positivism philosophy in the relatively modern early twentieth century. Like Thales’s ideas, the Logical Positivists based their ideas on causes within nature itself. However, the demonstrable sensory-based empirical evidence underpinning the logical positivism philosophy made that philosophy ultimately untenable. I still believe that its significance in the insistence on scientific evidence-based methods in the modern world was at par with the importance to that of Thales.
I also find it somewhat dismaying that even after many centuries since Thales, the debate between the scientific interpretation of the natural world and that based on faith and pseudoscience still rages on. But then again, perhaps that’s what makes life interesting!
The attached photo is from the exhibit on Ionian Renaissance in the Istanbul Archeology Museum. It shows one of Thales’s geometry theorems. Thales came from Miletus, which is in Western Anatolia in Turkey.
