Thales' Life and Times

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According to Aristotle, Thales was the first philosopher to try to understand nature without appealing to something supernatural or metaphysical. In his day, that's all there was: Why did anything happen? Well, it was because of some divine fiat or another. His intellect was too inquisitive for him to believe in any supernatural explanations at all. He realized that everything you see is a fundamental manifestation of three particles - and also makes cause and effect prediction nearly impossible.

In this episode we begin a series on the beginnings of "Western" thought and science. We start with the catastrophy of the Mycenean Collapse, the Greek Dark Ages, and the Archaic Age, then continue with a discussion of Miletus and its most revered citizen, Thales. Thales has left his mark on the planet with his work. As a brilliant sage whose ideas were the beginnings of science, he helped set a trajectory for all future generations of philosophers and scientists.

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