History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [21]
Thales is said to have travelled in Egypt, and to have thence brought to the Greeks the science of geometry. What the Egyptians knew of geometry was mainly rules of thumb, and there is no reason to believe that Thales arrived at deductive proofs, such as later Greeks discovered. He seems to have discovered how to calculate the distance of a ship at sea from observations taken at two points on land, and how to estimate the height of a pyramid from the length of its shadow. Many other geometrical theorems are attributed to him, but probably wrongly.
He was one of the Seven Wise men of Greece, each of whom was specially noted for one wise saying; his it is a mistake to suppose was 'water is best'.
According to Aristotle, he thought that water is the original substance, out of which all others are formed; and he maintained that the earth rests on water. Aristotle also says of him that he said the magnet has a soul in it, because it moves the iron; further, that all things are full of gods.2
The statement that everything is made of water is to be regarded as a scientific hypothesis, and by no means a foolish one. Twenty years ago, the received view was that everything is made of hydrogen, which is two thirds of water. The Greeks were rash in their hypotheses, but the Milesian school, at least, was prepared to test them empirically. Too little is known of Thales to
make it possible to reconstruct him at all satisfactorily, but of his successors in Miletus much more is known, and it is reasonable to suppose that something of their outlook came from him. His science and his philosophy were both crude, but they were such as to stimulate both thought and observation.
There are many legends about him, but I do not think more is known than the few facts I have mentioned. Some of the stories are pleasant, for instance, the one told by Aristotle in his Politics (1259a): '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 at 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 which he pleased, and made a quantity of money. Thus he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort.'
Anaximander, the second philosopher of the Milesian school, is much more interesting than Thales. His dates are uncertain, but he was said to have been sixty-four years old in 546 B.C., and there is reason to suppose that this is somewhere near the truth. He held that all things come from a single primal substance, but that it is not water, as Thales held, or any other of the substances that we know. It is infinite, eternal and ageless, and 'it encompasses all the worlds'—for he thought our world only one of many. The primal substance is transformed into the various substances with which we are familiar, and these are transformed into each other. As to this, he makes an important and remarkable statement:
'Into that