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WHAT WATER IS S14EPHROLJN (2009 ; ): S98 - S10222

The birTh of philosophy in Greece

Greeks gave theoretical support to science and natural events; philosophy (love of wisdom) and science originated from their culture. Philosophy was a peculiar Greek quali-

Natale G. De Santo1, Carmela Bisaccia2, Giancarlo Bilancio1, Mercedes Romano1, Massimo Cirillo1

1 First Division of Nephrology, Second University of Naples, Naples - Italy

2Mazzini Institute, Naples - Italy

The nature of water: Thales’ arkh ē

AbsTrAcT

Thales was born into a noble family of Phoenician ori-gin at the time of the 25th Olympiad (floruit 585 bc; he was 40 in the year of the solar eclipse. He had no tea-chers but had occasion to learn from Egyptian priests. He developed into a scholar and politician very much appreciated by Heraclitus, Herodotus and Democri-tus, and was always considered a man of practical wisdom. He was probably the first to speak about the immortality of the soul. He is listed as the first of many unmarried men who paved the road for philosophy. For Diogenes Laertius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers), he was the instructor of Anaximander. Thales, the man who first discovered how to draw a right-angle triangle in a circle, was the first philosopher of nature (physis). “Philosophy begins with Thales,” pointed out Bertrand Russell in 1961. This honor had been conceded also by Aristotle: “Anaximander, Tha-les’ pupil, founded the Ionian tradition of philosophy.” Many explanations may be given for the importance of water, including its importance for living processes, the economic role of the Nile, the importance of the port for Miletus and the fact that Ocean and Thetys were in Homer’s tradition progenitors of the world.

Key words: Arkhē, Birth of philosophy, Miletus, Preso-cratic philosophers, Thales, Water

tative innovation. With the Greeks, mathematics, geometry and astronomy which had been utilized in Babylon and in Egypt for practical purposes were incorporated into a ge-neral, rational, organic structure (1, 2). Philosophy brought logic to technical and practical disciplines – “a new way of thinking.” Philosophy, which developed along with writing and generated dialectics, transformed practical geometry, astronomy and health care into sciences by giving them a theoretical background. In Greece, all things began in the myths, the mysteries, the Gods, and, as we will see later, water was a significant part of terrestrial life (3, 4). In Ionia, “the school of Miletus started scientific research and the fundamental lines fixed in that very beginning, perpetua-ted through generations and centuries” (5). As pointed out by Hall (6): “It was in Ionia that the new Greek civilization arose: Ionia in whom the old Aegean blood and spirit most survived, taught the new Greece, gave her coined money and letters, art and poetry, and her sailors, forcing the Pho-enicians from before them, carried her new culture to what were then deemed the ends of the earth.”The list of Presocratic philosophers in Table I includes phi-losophers and scientists from the beginning (Orpheus) to Socrates (7). Of course, everyone is aware that there are also listed many of Socrates’ contemporaries and even philosophers who followed him. The book the Presocratic Philosophers (“the first empirical scientists,” “who dealt in physical and social anthropology rather than ethics”) has been considered by Jean Paul Dumont to be “the memory of Western civilisation, rooted in the Mediterranean Sea, and to be precise in Greece. These pages reveal the begin-nings of philosophy and science, that is theology, mathe-matics, astronomy, geography, history and medicine.” According to Giovanni Reale, “with Presocratic philoso-phers, philosophy of nature was born since it took root the problem[...] of the principle, as the reality from which all derived ... where the man has a cosmic dimension. Men did not have a privileged position. They explain and unify” (8). Presocratic philosophy begins with Thales and the other Milesians at Miletus who were principally interested in the question of what is the original material principle out of

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which all things in the universe originate – that is to say, in the arkh ē, arkhai – words which can be translated as source, sources, beginning, origin, principle, cause. Sub-stratum and element were unknown words in those days.

ThAles

Thales (fig. 1) was born into a noble family of Phoenician origin at the time of the 25th Olympiad, and died at the time of the 58th. He flourished around 585 bc. He had no tea-chers but had occasion to learn from Egyptian priests. He developed into a scholar and politician who was very much appreciated by Heraclitus, Herodotus and Democritus, and was always considered a man of practical wisdom. He was probably the first to speak about the immortality of the soul. He is listed as the first of many unmarried men who paved

the road for philosophy. For Diogenes Laertius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers), he was the instructor of Anaximander.Thales, the man who first discovered how to draw a right-angle triangle in a circle, was the first philosopher of nature (physis). He was in his prime about 585 bc. “Philosophy begins with Thales,” pointed out Bertrand Russell in 1961. This honor had been conceded also by Aristotle: “Anaxi-mander, Thales’ pupil, founded the Ionian tradition of phi-losophy.” For Aristotle, Thales was the paradigm case of a shared method of enquiry.

A mAn of prAcTicAl wisdom?

Thales is considered by many scholars to be a man of prac-tical wisdom, and for Diogenes Laërtius, he is not a philo-

TABLE I PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS ACCORDING TO DIEHLS AND KRANTZ (7)

I. The beginnings

A. The most antique cosmological poetry 1. Orpheus, 2. Musaios, 3. Epimenides.

B. Astrological poetry of the sixth century bc 4. Hesiod, 5. Phokos of Samos, 6. Pherecides of Syros. C. The most antique cosmological and gnomic prose 7. Kleostratos, 8. Theagenes of Rhegium, 9. Acusilaus, 10. The Seven Sages.

II. Fragments of philosophers of the sixth and fifth century bc and of their immediate followers

11. Thales, 12. Anaximander, 13. Anaximenes, 14. Pythagoras, 15. Cercops, 16. Petron, 17. Bro(n)tinus, 18. Hippasus, 19. Calliphontes and Democedes, 20. Parm(eni)skos, 21. Xenophanes, 22. Heraclitus, 23. Epicharmus, 24. Halcmaeon, 25. Ikkos, 26. Paron, 27. Ameinias, 28. Parmenides, 29. Zeno, 30. Melissus, 31. Empedocles, 32. Menestor, 33. Xuthus, 34. Boïdas, 35. Trasyalces, 36. Ion of Chios, 37. Damon, 38. Hippon, 39. Phaleas and Hippodamus, 40. Polykleitos, 41. Oinopides, 42. Hippocrates of Chios, Aechylus, 43. Theodorus of Cyrene, 44. Philolaus, 45. Eurytus, 46. Archippus of Tarentum, Lisys and Opsinos, 47. Archytas, 48. Okkelos, 49. Timaeus, 50. Hicetas, 51. Ecphantus, 52. Xenophilos, 53. Diocles, Echecrates, Arion and Polimnastos, 54. Proros, Amiklas and Kleinias, 55. Damon and Phintias, 56. Simos, Myonides and Euphranor, 57. Lycon, 58. The School of Pytahoras, 59. Anaxagoras, 60. Archelaus, 61. Metrodorus of Lampsacus, 62. Kleidemos, 63. Idaeus, 64. Diogenes of Apollonia, 65. Cratylus, 66. Antistenes Heracliteus, 67. Leucip-pus, 68. Democritus, 69. Nessas, 70. Metrodorus of Chios, 71. Diogenes of Smyrna, 72. Anaxarcus, 73. Hecateus of Abdera, 74. Apollodorus, 75. Nausiphanes, 76. Diotimus, 77. Bion of Abdera, 78. Bolos.

III. Antique sophistic

79. Name and concept, 80. Protagoras, 81. Xeniades, 82. Gorgias, 83. Lycophron, 84. Prodicus, 85. Trasymachus, 86. Hippias, 87. Antiphontes the Sophist, 88. Critias, 89. Anonymous Iamblichi, 90. Dual argumentations.

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sopher, but a wise (sophos) man. We know for example that Thales predicted the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 bc, on the sixth year of the war between Lydian and Medians: “The day suddenly became night. This is the loss of daylight which Thales of Miletus predicted to the Ionians, fixing as its term the year in which it actually took place” (Herodotus, Histories). Furthermore, it is reported that he “diverted into a channel part of the water of the river Halys so Croesus’s army could pass through” (Herodotus, Histories). Thales even “predicted in winter that there would be a large crop of olive and made deposits on olive presses in Miletus and Chios. Olive harvesting was in fact exceptional, Thales pressed the olives and made money” (Aristotle, Politics). He could calculate the distance of sea ships (Eudemus in Proclus, Commentary on Euclid), as well as “the size of py-ramids by noting the length of their shadows at the time of the day when the length of a person shadow is equal to the height” (Diogenes Laërtius, Vita Philosophorum). Howe-ver, all previous information was called into question when Plato (Theaetetus) reports that “While gazing at stars he fell into a pothole. A Thracian servant commented that he knew the vents occurring in the sky, not those occurring at his own feet.” He left to posterity many theorems. Some of them were probably unknown to him. Table II gives an incomplete sy-nopsis of some of these.

ThAles wAs A mAn deAlinG wiTh ThinGs As They Are

For Wightman (9), Thales indeed dealt with things as they are; Not with things neatly sorted and cleaned up by che-mists.… The greater part of Earth’s surface is water, water pervades every region of our atmosphere, life as we know, is impossible without water, water is the nearest approach to the alchemist’s dream of a universal solvent. Water di-sappears when fanned by the wind, and falls again from the clouds as rain, ice turns into water as does the snow that falls from the skies, and a whole country surrounded by a barren desert is fertile, rich, and populous because a huge mass of water sweeps it annually (9).Therefore, even in the second part of the last century (10) water appeared to Sir Charles Sherrington as the “great menstruum of life. It makes life possible. It was part of the plot from which our planet engendered life. Every egg-cell is mostly water, and water is its first habitat. Water runs to endless purposes.… In doing of all this, water is a main means” (10).

The Arche

Aristotle, in Metaphysics (983b6, DK 11A12) (7), is very pre-cise concerning Thales and his philosophy: Thales who was the founder of this kind of philosophy, says that water is the first principle (which is why he declared that the earth was on water); he perhaps reached this con-clusion from seeing that everything’s food is moist, and that moisture is the source and pre-requisite for the life of war-mth itself (and the source of anything is the first principle of that thing). So, as I say, it was perhaps this that led him to reach this conclusion, and also the fact that the seeds of all things have a moist nature (and water is the first principle of the moist nature, of moist things). And there are people who think that those in the dim, distant past who first began to reason about the gods, long before our present generation, shared this conception of the underlying nature; for these poets made Ocean and Tethys the parents of creation, and claimed that the gods took their oath upon water the river Styx, as the poets call it. Thales appeared regularly in the list of the Seven Sages. Sometimes he was the first on that list, which changed fre-quently but usually included also Bias of Priene, Solon of Athens, Pittakos from Mytilene, Cleobulus of Lindos, My-son of Chen and Chilon of Sparta. According to Aristotle, Thales was also the first scientist who proposed practical explanations for natural phenomena, not necessarily linked to the Gods, and the founder of a school based on que-

Fig. 1 - Thales of Miletus (floruit 585 bc).

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stions and answers, challenges and amendments. Thales, one of the Seven Sages, spoke of physis, which should be understood as “primary reality, original and fundamental.” His thought influenced philosophers and scientists for the subsequent centuries; his contributions were widely quo-ted and commented upon. Nothing remains of his works. However, we can study and understand Thales and the value of his contributions through Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Cicero, Aëtius, Plutarch and many others. Earth floats on water, and is immobile like a piece of wood. Water is the basic element (arkhē) of all existing things, the principle from which everything is generated, the principle in which all things are dissolved. However, he did not use the word “principle,” although Aristotle attributed to him the origin of the term. It was his pupil Anaximander who introduced it. When Thales affirms that water is a basic element since the nourishment and the seed of all things are humid, he gives a demonstration of his capability to combine obser-vations, experience and reasoning, to be able to derive a general law from the analysis of particular cases. Thales is also appropriately defined as the first philosopher because he built up a general rule through reasoning and did not propose “the truth” as mythologists do. When Thales says that water is the source, he means that All things were once water. All things are still water. Many changes, the same substance.

Why water?

The importance of water for living processes and for re-production is obvious. However, in the background there is also recognition of the importance of the sea for Miletus and for the world of Greek colonies, and of rivers for Egyp-

tian and Mesopotamian civilizations. Also Homer’s mythi-cal tradition had made Ocean and Thetys progenitors of the world. The thesis of water as the principle element of all things is not in contrast with mythical accounts although water is not identified as a divinity. Thales, saw the world like a bulla (bubble) immersed in the primordial sea, with earth floating on the bulla. Water is the fluid element, capable of adapting to any soil. According to Thales it was evident that – by studying the seashells, one could understand the watery origin of earth, particularly at the estuary or delta of the great rivers of those days. Plato, in Timeus, gave credit to Thales in the chapter where one reads of “what we call water.” Aristotle in De Caelo (On Heavens, 294a28-294b1) points out that :Others say that the earth rests on water. This is the oldest account that has been passed down to us today, and they say it was the view of Thales of Miletus, that the earth stays where it is as a result of floating like a piece of wood or so-mething similar (for none of these things is so constituted as to keep its position on air, but they do so on water) as though the same argument did not apply to the water sup-porting the earth just as much as to the earth itself. After all, water is just as incapable of staying suspended in mid-air, and is also so constituted as to keep its position only when it is on something. (DK 11A14) (7).According to Aëtius, Thales and Democritus discovered the cause of quakes in water. From Cicero (De Natura) one learns that “Thales says that water is the principle of all things, however God is the Mind which creates all existing things from water.” According to Plutarch, Tha-les suggested that all things originate in water and all end in water, since all the germs of living organisms have moisture as the principle of life, all of them originate from moisture. In fact all plants take nutrients from water and

TABLE II THALES’ THEOREMS

- A circle is bisected by its diameter (Proclus; his authority was Eudemus)- The angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal- If 2 straight lines intersect, the opposite angles are equal (Proclus)- Any angle inscribed in a semicircle is a right angle. (Diogenes Laërtius, who quoted from Pamphilia, a compiler of the

first century AD)- A triangle is determined if its base and the angles relative to the base are given (Proclus)

Sources of attribution to Thales are given in parentheses.

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produce fruit. In the absence of water they die and even the flames of the sun, of the stars and of the world are nourished through water evaporation. Plutarch, however, did not make his own principle clear; he did not indicate a line of thought; he did not take a po-sition but in the end suggested an infinity which is similar to something changing. It was clear to Seneca that Thales had also identified the reasons for quakes by taking into account irregularities on the surface of oceans (11). To return to the cyclic nature of water in the universe, ac-cording to Thales the sun sucked out water and transfor-med it into water vapor which in part fed fire and in part fell down as rain, which in turn is transformed into earth and subsequently turned into clouds, dewdrops, wells, rivers and springs. And the cycle starts again. Thales’ theories proposed vital as a synonym of watery – water was important for life, without water life could not be perpetuated. Water as the primary element linked the Gods to humans and to plants, but it is also an indepen-dent principle not directly dependent on the Gods. Gods do not give water, it exists per se, a physical natural prin-ciple. With water, Gods continued to live and to operate, to fight among themselves and against men, but water had an independence and explained dewdrops, quakes, rainbows, sea and snow. It was immediately evident that

there was something new about Thales. Even those who were able to identify a role for water in the work of scien-tists preceding him, had to admit that the contribution of Thales surpassed all previous contributions on water. And of course none were willing to go back to the watery elements of Ocean, Tethys and Styx which belonged to mythology. Hegel in the 19th century wrote that according to Thales, “water represents the absolute, the principle, the origin of philosophy.” However, the true novelty in Thales was the scientific method. He was the first to ask, “How is the uni-verse composed?”(12). Thales had no doubt about the composition of the world and answered the question. Wa-ter is the primordial element. Through evaporation it beco-mes solid and gives origin to the earth and to the air. Even fire originates from water vapor.

Conflict of interest statement: None declared.

Address for correspondence:Natale G. De Santo First Division of Nephrology, Second University of NaplesPadiglione 17, NephrologyVia Pansini, 5I-80131 Naples, Italynataleg.desanto@unina2.it

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Reale G, ed. I Presocratici. Prima traduzione integrale con testi 8. originali a fronte delle testimonianze e dei frammenti nella rac-colta di Herman Diels e Water Kranz. Milan: Bompiani; 2006.Wightman WP. Growth of scientific ideas. Edinburgh: Oliver 9. and Boyd; 1950.Sherrington C. Man on his nature. Cambridge: Pelican; 1946. 10. Plutarch. Questiones naturales,11. III 14,66.Picot A. La naissance de la science: 1. Mésopotamie, Egyp-12. te; 2. Grèce présocratique. [La nascita della scienza] [Italian translation]. 2 Vols. Bari: Dedalo Libri; 1993.

Received: 6 October, 2008Accepted: 30 June, 2009

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