Thales - The Man Who Asked Why. (History of Philosophy Part 3)

Thales of Miletus was one of the so-called ‘Seven Sages of Greece’. He lived in a thriving Ionian port and was known not only as a thinker but as a gifted astronomer, mathematician, and engineer. But what truly makes Thales the origin story of philosophy is not his practical genius or his comic mishaps. It’s the fact that he sought a single natural principle—the archê—from which everything comes and to which everything returns.

And here’s where things get interesting for Christians.

Firstly, Thales believed the world had a single unifying source

Secondly, Thales believed the world was animated by a life‑giving principle

Thirdly, Thales believed the universe was intelligible.

Finally, Thales believed wisdom begins with self‑knowledge

Thales didn’t know where his questions would lead. But he opened the door. And when the Christian later stepped through that door, it brought the answers his world had been reaching for….

Transcript

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Pallas of Letus was one of the so-called Seven Sages of Greece. He lived in a thriving Ionian port and was not only known as a thinker but as a gifted astronomer, a mathematician, and an engineer. The stories about him are legendary. Plato teased him for falling into a well while stargazing. Aristotle tells the tale of Thales predicting a bumper olive harvest and renting all the presses in advance and thereby making a tidy profit. He even later was said to have helped King Croesus' army cross a river by diverting its flow, proof that the first philosopher was probably also some kind of early civil engineer. But what truly makes Thalai's the origin story of philosophy, some would say, is not his practical genius or his comic mishaps, it's the fact that he was the first person to refuse to rely on myth. Instead of saying the ancient gods were quarrelling or that the world rested on a giant turtle, he sought a natural principle, the archie from which everything comes and to which everything returns. From this word, we get the modern word archetype, the original pattern behind all things. Thales was probably the first person we know of who said, let's look for the underlying structure of reality. And here is where things get interesting for Christians. Firstly, Thales believed that the word had a single unifying force. Now he chose water as the archie, the archetype, because it was everywhere in front of him, and he knew it was essential for life, capable of forming earth, and uniquely able to exist in three forms, as a solid, as a liquid, and as a vapor. Was he right? No, but was he onto something? Absolutely. He was groping his way towards the idea that the universe had one origin, one underlying principle, one coherent source. Centuries later the Apostle Paul would say something remarkably similar when speaking of God and Christ, when he wrote, In him all things hold together. Thalys didn't know the Creator, but he sensed creation's unity. Secondly, Thalys believed that the world was animated by a life-giving principle. Aristotle reported that Thalys speculated that magnets had souls because they cause iron to move. Now in modern years that sounds quirky, ridiculous almost, but in context it was a bold attempt to explain motion and change before a language that could describe it through forces like gravity had even emerged. He was reaching for the idea that the world was not a dead inert place or meaningless, but charged with life, animated, and he believed animated by something deeper. Centuries later, Augustine would say something more developed, but in some way similar. He would write in his famous book Confessions, all things are sustained by the presence of God, and as C.S. Lewis would much more recently pretty much say the same thing when he said God is the great fountainhead of energy and beauty. Talai's intuition that the world is alive with an animating principle sounds suspiciously like the first glimmer of what Christians would later call the sustaining mind of God. Thirdly, Talai's firmly believed the universe was intelligible. He predicted an eclipse, he measured pyramids by walking the length of their shadows. He believed nature followed patterns that could be understood. This is the seed of the scientific worldview. And Christian thinkers have long argued that science is possible precisely because the world is naturally ordered by a rational God. As John Calvin so poetically put it, the universe is the theatre of God's glory. Tully's didn't know that, but he thought and behaved as though it were true. And finally, Tully's believed that wisdom begins with self-knowledge. He is credited with the famous maxim, know thyself, a line later Christian thinkers, right from the early desert fathers up to the 18th century and the like of John Owen would pretty much treat as a foundational principle for spiritual growth. Saint Augustine would famously pray, Grant, Lord, that I may know myself and that I may know thee. Thalys, of course, wasn't praying when he said it, but he was pointing in the same direction. In many ways, he was a pagan philosopher who accidentally prepared the ground for a monotheistic worldview that would soon emerge. So, yes, Thalys was a pagan. He was a sort of proto-early scientist, a mathematician, but he began asking the kind of questions that would later find their fullest answers in Christian thought. He believed the world had a single source. Christians would later call that source the creator. He believed the world was animated by life-giving principles. Christians would call that the spirit. He believed the world was intelligible. Christians would call that the wisdom of God, and he also believed that wisdom begins with self-knowledge. Christians would identify that as the source of all spiritual renewal. Talleys probably didn't know where his questions would lead, but he opened the door, and when Christians later stepped through that door, it brought the answers the world had been reaching for. Welcome to today's episode of the Living in Faith Everyday Podcast, a life podcast, and the third in my short series on a history of philosophy. Not to admire the sunset, not to compose a poem, but because he was trying to figure out what the world is made of. Not who made it, not which ancient Greek god was in charge of the waves or what lies underneath them. He was more interested in what lies underneath everything we can see. That man is Thales of Miletus. He is the first person in recorded history to ask the kind of question that launched an entirely new way of thinking. Now he lived around the same time as the Old Testament prophets, at a time when ancient Israel was in captivity, in exile, trying to rebuild and recover its identity. And while those prophets were calling people back to covenant faithfulness, Talaiz was doing something equally radical in his own world, in his own way. He was suggesting that the universe might be understood through reason, observation, and careful thought. Now, in the world that he lived, a world full of pagan myths, a myriad of gods and their legends, Talaiz was the first one to dare to say, Well, hold on a minute, let's think about all this. And that simple shift, a step towards reason, is the reason everything changed. He's remembered for claiming that the basic stuff of the universe is water. Now that may sound like a philosophical equivalent of guessing the answer on a quiz, but the point isn't whether he was right, the point is he was trying to explain the world without resorting to Greek divine soap operas or the cosmic family feuds of their gods. He was looking for natural explanations, a pattern, a principle, a unifying idea behind all things. And that I suppose is why many people say he was the first philosopher. Legend, of course, remembers him as the one who fell into a well while scargazing, which feels in some ways like the most philosophical thing that has ever happened to a philosopher. But beneath the stories is a man who changed the direction of human thought. He opened the door, he asked those questions, the first questions that would set the stage for everything that would come after. Now, in today's episode, I want to step into that world, into the bustling port city of Miletus, and into the early stirrings of scientific curiosity, into the mind of this man, the man who began the long conversation of what we today identify and call philosophy. And as we do, we can see how his questions still echo for us today and how the Christian worldview offers its own rich and compelling answers to the mysteries he was the first to dare to explore. Thallees lived in a world that was changing faster than anyone could quite understand. His home city, Miletus, sat on the eastern edge of the Aegean Sea. It was a bustling Ionian port where Greek sailors, Phoenician traders, Egyptian mathematicians, and Babylonian astronomers all crossed paths. If you wanted a place where ideas could collide, mingle, and spark something new, Miletus seems the perfect setting. It wasn't just one of those quiet villages of shepherds and olive trees, it was an early cosmopolitan, sea-facing, idea-swapping city full of merchants, travellers, and stories from every corner of the ancient world. You can almost imagine Talys walking through the harbour area and hearing ten different languages, watching ships unload goods from Egypt and from the Near East, and thinking there must be a deeper order to all this that is going on. Now historically, he lived around the early 6th century BCE, roughly the same era as Jeremiah. Daniel would have also been living in Babylon, and those in the early part of the exile, which in itself was reshaping Israel's identity and the Persian Empire while it was rising to power. But while Israel wrestled with covenant, judgment, and hope, Talys was wrestling with the structure of the universe. These were two very different types of questions, obviously, yet both were rooted in the human longing to understand reality. Thalys himself was a somewhat shadowy figure. We don't even know his exact date of birth, but we know he predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC, which gives us another rough anchor point. That prediction alone tells us something important about him, being that Thalys wasn't just guessing about the world, he was observing it, studying it, and trusting that the creation had patterns that could be understood. We know he travelled widely, especially to Egypt, where he learned what was called geometry, astronomy, and surveying techniques. The Egyptians had been measuring land and tracking the stars for centuries, and Talis seemed to be absorbed by their methods and then asked, what if we apply that kind of thinking to everything? He is remembered as one of those seven early sages of Greece, a group of early wise men known for their practical insights. The point being he wasn't just a theorist with his head in the clouds, though to be fair, he did famously fall into that well, didn't he? Even the ancients joked about that one. But underneath the anecdotes is a man who lived at the crossroads of culture, ideas and discoveries. He stood at the moment where myth gave way to reason, when people began to believe the world could be understood not just through stories, but through thought. You see, Talleys's world was full of pagan gods, legends and supernatural explanations, yet he dared to ask, what if this universe had a structure? One that wasn't just arbitrary, but one we can actually understand. That question alone was simple, bold, and revolutionary, and indeed marks the beginning of Western philosophy. But it was also a time of political upheaval and cultural exchange. There was great intellectual ferment going on all around him, and in this setting he became the first person we know of to look at the world and try to explain it in a way that didn't depend on myths but simply on observation and reason. His life was the doorway into a new way of thinking. His world is the soil from which philosophy would first grow. So what did Talley's actually believe about the world? Talley's central conviction was that the world had an underlying principle, that beneath all the diversity of nature there was a single basic substance, a principle, an archy that explained everything. This idea, the archy, the first principle, was the foundational stuff of reality, he believed. He said there must be one thing from which everything comes. That single idea, seeking a natural explanation of the world, became the seed of all later, what we would call science as well as philosophy. Now he, of course, as I said, he famously claimed that water was that fundamental substance of the universe, and to us that may sound like a philosophical punt, a guess at the first thing you see, but for Tullies it was not that. It was a thoughtful observational conclusion. Several reasons shaped his thinking. Of course, water was everywhere. He saw seas, rivers, rain, mist, wells. Water was the most visible and dynamic element in the world. He also knew that water gave life to plants. Plants grew when water was added to them. Animals needed water to sustain them. Crops failed without it. Life and water were obviously inseparable in some way. And then thirdly, water it changed its form. It could become vapor, it could become ice when cold, mist clouds even. Thalys must have seen this as evidence that water could transform itself into all sorts of other things. Ancient cosmologists also valued water. Egyptian and Near Eastern creation stories often began with a primordial sea. Thalys may have absorbed these ideas during his travels, then reframed them in a rational, non-mythic way. So whilst everything is water isn't, of course, scientifically correct, it is philosophically brilliant because it was the first attempt to explain the world through a single natural principle rather than some sort of drama of the gods. Talai's importance isn't in the accuracy of his conclusions, because of course they weren't accurate, but in the method that he began to introduce. He did three things no one had done before him in a clear and recorded way. Firstly, he looked for natural explanations. Talley's belief that the world could be understood, and it could be understood by studying the world, not by appealing to myths. This is the shift to the birth of rational inquiry. He believed the universe was orderly and intelligible. If you can predict an eclipse, then you can believe obviously that the cosmos follows patterns. Talley's own prediction in five eighty five BCE wasn't just a party trick. It was a declaration that nature is structured, mathematical, and could be understood. He inspired a lineage of other thinkers, philosophers we call them today, and that's because Talley's ideas really sparked a sort of chain reaction. Very soon after him, Anaximander would expand that search for the first principle. Anaximenes would then refine it. Heracritus and Permenides would argue over what that first principle changed or how it changed its state, whether it was static or permanent or changing, and Pythagoras would introduce mathematics into the mix as a key to understanding that reality. And then of course Plato and Aristotle and the classic Greek philosophers would build their entire philosophical systems on a foundation that Thales had first laid. Every philosopher after him, whether they agreed or disagreed, were in effect responding to the question he first asked when he asked what is the world made of and how does it work? Now we've been pretty much in the world of science and philosophy, haven't we? But what about a Christian understanding? How might we reflect in this? You see, Thalys' instinct that the world is orderly, rational and worth studying resonates deeply with a Christian worldview. Scripture affirms that creation reflects the wisdom and the character of God and that the universe is not chaotic but purposeful. Thalys didn't know the creator, but he trusted that creation made sense, and in that way he stands at the threshold of a truth the Bible later reveals fully, being that the word is intelligible because it was made by an intelligent God. Talys stands at the beginning of Western philosophy, and because he is the first name in that long conversations, later generations treated him with a mixture of admiration, affection, and of course gentle teasing. The absent minded professor ironically finds its archetype in him, the very individual who invented that idea. What survives of his legacy is a blend of serious intellectual influence and the memorable story that reveal how not only how the ancient world understood him, but what he means to us today. And that legacy indeed matters. Talys' most enduring contribution is not his claim that everything is made of water, but his method, his conviction that this created world could be understood and understood through observation and reasoning, and that patterns could be seen. And that single shift set the trajectory for what became known as natural science, because he believed nature followed laws, mathematics, because he used geometry to measure distances in height, astronomy, because he was able to predict movement and indeed that eclipse we talked about, and philosophy because he asked what actually lies underneath, beneath the surface of all these things. Every philosopher after him was in a sense responding to the question that Talys first dared to ask. He is the hinge between mythic storytelling and rational inquiry, the pivot point. He also said the stories we tell ourselves and the question we ask of ourselves matter as well, because they reveal the character of the one who was thinking and speculating. Ancient writers love telling stories about Tales, partly because he was brilliant and partly because he was wonderfully human. Of course, that most famous story of the whale, in which he was out at night, pondering at the stars above, staring in the skies, and he fell into a whale. Now in the original story, a servant girl sees what happens and laughs and said, You want to know what's in the heavens, but you can't see what's at your feet. Now that is an accusation that is still thrown at thinking people today, particularly Christians who are often said to be too heavenly minded to be any earthly good. It's a gentle reminder that even the greatest thinkers sometimes forget to watch where they are going. Then there is that olive press story. Aristotle tells the story of Thalys and how he was mocked for being poor because he spent so much time thinking, so he decided to use his knowledge of weather patterns to predict a bumper olive harvest. He then rented all the olive presses in advance, and when the harvest came in he made a small fortune. His point? Not that philosophers could or should make money, they had much better things to do, he still said. But that he could if he want, and that philosophy could be leveraged to social and personal advantage than there is his prediction of a solar eclipse. Whether he truly predicted it or simply understood the underlying pattern behind it is debated. But the story shows how ancient people saw him as a man who believed the heavens were orderly and not chaotic. These stories, you see, aren't just anecdotes, they're windows into how the ancient world understood not just him but the birth of rational thought. Talys was indeed brilliant, curious, occasionally distracted, probably yes, but still deeply committed to understanding the world. But we must confess Talys was not a believer in any way that we can understand. Talys was a pagan, but he did do something remarkable because he began asking the kind of questions that many would say would later find their fullest answers. In Christ. Thales himself probably didn't know where his questions would lead. But he opened the door, and when the Christian story later stepped through that door, it brought the answers the world had been searching for. So come back again. But next time we leave Thales down his well and step out towards and into the life of the aforementioned Anaximander. We'll say goodbye to Tales the engineer, the astronomer, the entrepreneur, the accidental well diver, and the man who somehow managed to stumble into several ideas that Christians would later recognize in far fuller form. Let's not forget, he believed the world had a single source. Christians would later say yes, and his name is Jesus Christ our Lord. He believed the universe was animated by a life-giving principles, and Christians would say yes, and we would speak of that as the Spirit of God who sustains all things. He also believed the world was intelligible, and Christians would say yes indeed, and that wisdom took on flesh, and he believed that knowing yourself was the beginning of wisdom. And Augustine and the like would later pray, as many have prayed ever since, let me know thyself that I may know thee. Dallees, of course, didn't have the vocabulary of biblical scripture, but he had the instincts of someone who sensed that the world was not chaotic, but was a cosmos, ordered, meaningful, and worth understanding. He opened the door, he lit the first candle, and he asked the first question. But of course, our story of philosophy will not stop with him, because just a few steps down the road behind him, in the same city of Miletus, stands a younger thinker who looked at his teacher's ideas and says, Water, well that's interesting, but what if truth is even bigger than that? If Thallees dipped his toe into the waters of what would become known as philosophy, Anaximander would dive straight in at the deep end. He wasn't content with just something that was visible, tangible, a substance as a source of all things. He wanted something much more mysterious and more fundamental, something that moved a little from finite towards infinite. He was the first philosopher we know of to first propose a cosmic law of balance and the first to suggest that the universe might not have a boundary at all. Where Thalys gave us water, Anaximander gives us the Eperion, the boundless, the limitless, the origin of everything, and the destination of everything, and it's one of the most daring ideas in the ancient world. So in the next episode, we'll step into the mind of this other early sage, another remarkable thinker. We'll explore his world, his ideas, and his strange and beautiful vision of reality, and we'll see how even his boldest speculations still echo themes that Christians would later recognize as the creator, being the one who is infinite and at the same time intimately involved with the world. So come back, I trust, and join me for the next episode where my story of philosophy will continue. The questions in many ways will get deeper, but the conversation will become even more fascinating. Let's walk away from Talley's well and let's walk towards Anaximander's boundless, limitless horizon. Thanks for being with me today.