ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

THALES OF MILETUS

C.625-C.547 BCE

hales of Miletus is often considered to be the first philosopher and the father of Western philosophy, who founded the pre-Socratic Ionian school. At the time, the Greeks explained the origin of the world and natural events through myths and the supernatural, but Thales sought naturalistic explanations. According to Aristotle, Thales believed that water was the beginning of all things and that the Earth was a flat disk floating on an ocean. The historian Herodotus claimed that Thales, a polymath, predicted the solar eclipse that occurred