THALES AND ARISTOTLE

(Reader, nota bene: this is another reference entry. In case you are interested in its title subject, as a general proposition, rather than in my take on it, read it through. Otherwise, skip it… I am sure that the reader who has read this, will definitely read it through. The fact that an entry with this title has caught your attention is an ample proof that you are not going to skip it. If I am wrong, here is a case of quod fuit demonstrandum, and I am eager to be demonstrated that this is the case…)

Most of our information about Thales comes from Aristotle, therefore this lengthy entry is amply justified, even though much of it is pure stock, later to be reassessed and completely overhauled for the purposes of an original entry. Needless to say, this is for my eyes primarily, but those who wish to read it, are welcome to it.

Considering that Thales is perhaps the least known of all major pre-Socratics, the reader may be surprised by the attention I have given him in this sequence, spreading over two reference, four substantial, plus one insubstantial entries. The reason should be easy to see: after all, being called ”the first philosopher” entitles one to some extra respect, and then, of course, when his most extensive reviewer is Aristotle, such a fact by itself cannot be ignored.

Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge of certain principles and causes. He commenced his investigation of the wisdom of the philosophers who preceded him with Thales, the first philosopher, and described him as the founder of natural philosophy. He recorded: “Thales says that it is water.” It is the nature, the archê, the originating principle. For Thales this nature was a single material substance water. Despite a more advanced terminology, which Aristotle and Plato had created, Aristotle recorded the doctrines of Thales in terms that were available to Thales in the 6^th century BC, made a definite statement, and presented it with confidence. It was only when Aristotle tried to provide the reasons for the opinions that Thales had and for the theories he proposed, that he sometimes displayed caution.

Those who believe that Thales inherited his views from Greek or Near-Eastern sources are wrong. Thales was esteemed in his times as an original thinker, one who broke with tradition, not as one who conveyed existing mythologies. Aristotle unequivocally recorded the Thales hypothesis on the nature of matter, and proffered a number of conjectures based on observation in favor of Thales’s statement. His report provided the testimony that Thales supplanted myth in explanations of the behavior of natural phenomena. Thales did not derive his thesis from either Greek or non-Greek mythological traditions.

He would have been familiar with Homer’s acknowledgements of divine progenitors, but he never attributed organization or control of the cosmos to the gods. Aristotle recognized the similarity between the Thalean doctrine about water and the ancient legend associating water with Oceanus and Tethys, but he reported that Thales had declared water to be the nature of all things. Aristotle also pointed to a similarity to traditional beliefs, not a dependency upon them. Aristotle did not see Thales as a theologian, in the sense in which he designated ‘the old poets’ and others, such as Pherecydes, as ‘mixed theologians.’ Thales’s views were not ancient and primitive. They were new and exciting, the starting point of scientific conjecture about natural phenomena. It was the view for which Aristotle recognized Thales as the founder of natural philosophy.

The problem of the nature of matter and its transformation into the myriad things that make up the universe, engaged the natural philosophers starting with Thales. For his hypothesis to be credible it was essential that he could explain how all things could come into being from water and, in the end, return to the originating material. It is inherent in Thales’s hypotheses that water had the potentiality to change into the innumerable things, of which the universe is made, the botanical, physiological, meteorological and geological states. In Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus relates a cyclic process. The passage starts with “that which we now call water,” and describes a theory which is possibly Thales’s. Thales would have recognized evaporation, and would have been familiar with the traditional views such as the nutritive capacity of mist, and the ancient theories about spontaneous generation, phenomena that he may have observed, just as Aristotle believed he himself had, and about which Diodorus Siculus, Epicurus, Lucretius and Ovid wrote.

When Aristotle reported Thales’s pronouncement that the primary principle is water, he recorded a precise statement: “Thales says that it [the nature of things] is water,” but became tentative when he suggested the reasons which might have justified Thales’s decision: “His supposition may have arisen from observation.” It was Aristotle’s opinion that Thales may have observed that the nurture of all creatures is moist, and that warmth itself is generated from moisture and lives by it; and that from which all things come to be, is their first principle. Then his tone changes towards greater confidence. He says: Besides this, another reason for the supposition would be that the semina of all things have a moist nature. Next Aristotle says: That, from which all things come to be, is their first principle.

It is not known how Thales explained his watery thesis, but Aristotle believed that the reasons he proposed were probably the persuasive factors in Thales’s consideration. Thales gave no role to the Olympian gods. Belief in the generation of earth from water was not proven wrong until 1769, following the experiments of Lavoisier, and the spontaneous generation theory was not disproved until the nineteenth century as a result of the work of Pasteur.

Thales proposed answers to a number of questions about the earth: the question of its support; shape; size; and the cause of earthquakes; the dates of the solstices; the size of the sun and moon.

In De Caelo, Aristotle wrote: “This [opinion that the earth rests on water] is the most ancient explanation which has come down to us, and is attributed to Thales of Miletus.” He explained his theory by adding the analogy that the earth is at rest because it is of the nature of wood and similar substances, which have the capacity to float on water, although not on air. In Metaphysics, Aristotle stated unequivocally that “Thales declared that the earth rests on water.” This concept appears to be at odds with natural expectations, and to Aristotle this presents a difficulty with Thales’s theory. Thales himself must have anticipated his problems with acceptance, because he explained that it floated because of a particular quality, a quality of buoyancy, similar to that of wood. At the busy city-port of Miletus, Thales had unlimited opportunities to observe the arrival and departure of ships with their heavier-than-water cargoes and recognized an analogy to floating logs. He may have envisaged some quality common to ships and earth, a quality of floatiness or buoyancy. Thales may have reasoned that as a modification of water, earth must be the lighter substance and floating islands do exist.

Modern commentators assume that Thales regarded the earth as flat, thin, and circular, but there is no such ancient testimony to support that opinion. On the contrary, Aristotle may have attributed knowledge of the sphericity of the earth to Thales, an opinion, which was later reported by Aëtius and followed by Plutarch. There are several good reasons to accept that Thales envisaged the earth as spherical. Aristotle used these arguments to support his own view. First is the fact that during a solar eclipse, the shadow caused by the interposition of the earth between the sun and the moon is always convex, ergo the earth must be spherical. In other words, if the earth were a flat disk, the shadow cast during an eclipse would be elliptical. Second, Thales, who is acknowledged as an observer of the heavens, would have observed that stars visible in some localities, may not be visible further to the north or south, a phenomenon which could be explained within the understanding of a spherical earth. Third, from the mere observations, the earth has the appearance of being curved. From observations, it appears that the earth is covered by a dome. When seen from a raised site, the sky seems to surround the earth, like a dome, to meet the apparently curved horizon. If observed over the seasons, the sky dome would appear to revolve, with many of the heavenly bodies changing their position in varying degrees, but returning annually to a similar place in the heavens. Through his work in astronomy Thales would almost certainly have become familiar with the night sky and the motion of the heavenly bodies. There is evidence that he gave advice to navigate by Ursa Minor, and was so involved in observation of the stars that he fell into a well. As a result of the observations made over a long period of time, Thales could have realized that the motions of the fixed stars could not be explained within the idea of the observable hemispherical dome. During the determination of the size of the rising sun, and while watching its risings and settings during his work on fixing the solstices, Thales may have realized that a great many natural phenomena could be explained only within the understanding of the earth as a sphere. From the shore, a ship could be seen to be descending gradually below the horizon, the hull disappearing from view first, to be followed by masts and sails. If one had a companion observing from a higher point, the companion would see the ship for a longer period before it disappeared from view.

The question of whether Thales endowed gods with a role in his theories is fundamental to his hypotheses. The relevant text from Aristotle reads: “Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded of his views, seems to suppose that the soul is in a sense the cause of movement, since he says that a stone [magnet, or lodestone] has a soul, because it causes movement to iron…” “Some think that the soul pervades the whole universe, whence, perhaps, came Thales’s view that everything is full of gods.” In reference to the clause in the first passage ‘to judge from what is recorded of his views,’ Snell convincingly argued that Aristotle had before him the actual sentence recording Thales’s views about the lodestone. In the second passage the ‘some,’ to whom Aristotle refers, are Leucippus, Democritus, Diogenes of Apollonia, Heraclitus, and Alcmaeon, the philosophers who came later than Thales. They adopted and adapted the earlier Thales view that soul was the cause of motion, permeating and enlivening the entire cosmos. The order in which Aristotle discussed Thales’s hypothesis obscures the issue.

The source for Aristotle’s report that Thales held all things to be full of gods is unknown, but presumed by some to be Plato. Thales is not mentioned in the relevant lines in Plato, but a popular misconception exists that they refer to a belief of Thales. Plato converted the idea of the soul into a theory that all things are full of gods, and this may have been Aristotle’s source, but the idea of gods is contrary to Thales’s materialism. When Thales defined reality, he chose an element, and not a god. The motive force was not a supernatural being. It was a force within the universe itself. He never invoked a power that was not present in nature, as he believed that he had recognized a force which underpinned the events of nature.

And now, lastly, here is Aristotle’s verbatim version of the olive presses in Miletus, told by him in Politics (1259a), and mentioned by me in an earlier entry:

“He was reproached for his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy is of no use. According to the story, he knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year; so, having a little money, he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he hired for a low price because no one bid against him. When the harvest time came and many were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate he pleased and made a quantity of money. Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, however their ambition is of a different sort.”

…Perhaps, at this point I am obliged to prove that I have not suddenly fallen into the habit of posting such reference entries, to the deplorable detriment of originality. Well, my next entry, to be posted tomorrow, is my proof that this is not going to be the case from now on. So, welcome to my Thales And His Yet Another Namesake, coming next.