In existographies, Thales (c.624-546 BCM) (IQ:180|#92) (Cattell 1000:914) [RGM:84|1,500+] (Eells 100:62) (Stokes 100:1) (EvT:1|21+) (ACR:23) (GPhE:#) [CR:91], aka "Thales of Miletus", was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher (see: Greek philosophy), first Egyptian-trained scholar, the teacher of Euclid and Pythagoras (Ѻ), considered, according to Aristotle, as the “father of Greek philosophy”, the oldest of the "Ionian school", contemporarily famous for his prediction of the eclipse of the sun, noted generally for his “everything is water” philosophy, and is attributed as having been the first to make theoretical observations on amber (electricity) and loadstone (magnetism).

“The principle behind all things is water. For all is water and all goes back to being water.”

— Thales (c.570BC) (Ѻ)

Thales noticed that amber attracts straw and that loadstone attracts metal, and therein ferret out the first rudimentary ideas on electromagnetism.

“The lodestone has soul [anima, psyche, spirit, or life] as it is able to move the iron.”

— Thales (c.590BC) general view; discussed by Aristotle in On the Soul (405a19) (Ѻ) [1]

“Thales held that ‘all things are full of gods’. Aristotle also explained that Thales believed a magnet had a soul since it can move iron, and Aristotle supposed that this was what Thales had meant when he said that ‘soul is diffused throughout the whole universe’, meaning that that the forces that were gods were very much like the magnetic force.”

1. Heliopolis creation myth | 3100BC
2. Memphis creation myth | 2800BC
3. Hermopolis creation myth | 2400 BC
4. Thebian creation myth | 2050 BC
5. Amarnan creation myth | 1300BC
6. Thebian creation myth / Canaan creation myth | 1200-400BC
7. Alexandrian creation myth | 300BC
8. Roman creation myth | 300AD

“All things are full of gods.”

— Thales (c.600BC), attributed

“Thales said that water was the first principle, and that god was the mind that fashioned all things from water.”

“Can gods exist without feelings? Why did he associate mind with water, if the mind can exist independently without body?”

“The statement that ‘god was the mind that fashioned all things from water’ misleads; Thales will have argued not that mind was an external agent working on water, but an immanent and dynamic force within it.”

“Thales’ ocean had no room for Poseidon.”

— Steven Weinberg (2001), Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries

“Thales foretold an eclipse”

— Heraclitus (c.495BC), Fragment 38 (Ѻ) (translator: John Brunet)

“Let those philosophers disappear, who attribute natural corporeal principles to the intelligence attached to matter, such as Thales, who refers everything to water, Anaximenes to air, the Stoics to fire, Epicurus to atoms, that is to say, to infinitely small objects that can neither be divided nor perceived.”

— Augustine (c.420 ACM)

A depiction of Thales water philosophy, according to which the earth was conceptualized flat (or a flat disc), which floated on water.

“Thales asserted water to be the principle of things. For he saw that matter was principally dispensed in moisture, and moisture in water; and it seemed proper to make that the principle of things, in which the virtues and powers of beings, and especially the elements of their generations and restorations, were chiefly found. He saw that the breeding of animals is in moisture; that the seeds and kernels of plants (as long as they are productive and fresh), are likewise soft and tender; that metals also melt and become fluid, and are as it were concrete juices of the earth, or rather a kind of mineral waters; that the earth itself is fertilised and revived by showers or irrigation, and that earth and mud seem nothing else than the lees and sediment of water; that air most plainly is but the exhalation and expansion of water; nay, that even fire itself cannot be lighted, nor kept in and fed, except with moisture and by means of moisture. He saw, too, that the fatness which belongs to moisture, and which is the support and life of flame and fire, seems a kind of ripeness and concoction of the water.”

— Francis Bacon (c.1620), De Principiis Atque Originibus (Ѻ)

“Thales felt that there was a vital question to be answered relative to the beginning of things. He looked around him, and the result of his meditation was the conviction that moisture was the beginning. He was impressed with this idea by examining the constitution of the earth. There also he found moisture everywhere. All things he found nourished by moisture; warmth itself he declared to proceed from moisture; the seeds of all things are moist. Water when condensed becomes earth. Thus convinced of the universal presence of water, he declared it to be the beginning of things. Thales would all the more readily adopt this notion from its harmonizing with ancient opinions; such for instance as those expressed in Hesiod’s Theogony, wherein Oceanus and Thetis are regarded as the parents of all such deities as had any relation to nature. ‘He would thus have performed for the popular religion that which modern science has performed for the book of Genesis: explaining what before was enigmatical’ (Constant, 1833). It is this which gives Thales his position in philosophy. Aristotle calls him “father of Greek philosophy” it was he who made the first attempt to establish a physical beginning, without the assistance of myths. He has consequently been accused of atheism [see: implicit atheism] by modern writers.”

— George Lewes (1867), The History of Philosophy: from Thales to Comte, Volume 1 [9]

“Thales taught that the moon borrowed her light from the sun; that lunar eclipses resulted from the moon’s immersion in the earth’s shadow, that the earth was round, and he divided it into five zones; that the equinoctial line was cut obliquely by the ecliptic, and perpendicularly by the meridian; and he foretold a solar eclipse.”

— Henry Bray (1910), The Living Universe [8]

“Thales held that water is all—a statement that a modern mind tends to interpret as a metaphor in order to avoid attributing an obvious absurdity to a founder of philosopher.”

— Eric Zencey (1983), “Entropy as Root Metaphor” [3]

“Thales was the first thinker to try to account for the nature of the world without appealing to the wills and whims of anthropomorphic, Homerian gods. Aristotle mentions him, as does Herodotus [who] credits him with correctly predicting that there would be a solar eclipse in 585 during the battle between the Medes and the Lydians.”

— Philip Stokes (2002), 100 Essential Thinkers [2]

“Of what is it that all things are made?”

— Thales (c.570BC) [14]