Thales Of Miletus

Thales of Miletus

Do you know anything about Thales? On what his philosophies are? On what are his beliefs? If how does he lived? And also who helped him to proposed his theory? Thales is known as the first Greek philosopher. One of his famous quote is The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself, which is true because you know yourself but not your purpose. In this analysis, youll know who Thales is. 
Thales was born in the City of Miletus in the seventh century BCE in the area that is known now as the Asia Minor. His father was named as Examyes who was a Carian rather than Semetic. Since by then the Carians have completely assimilated by the Ionians. Ionians were one of the four major tribes that Greeks considered themselves to be divided into during the ancient period; the other three were Dorians, Aeolians and Achaeans. Many believed they were actually of Milesian descent. Thales joined their family business by visiting Egypt and Babylonia in course of trading. Thales was also a mathematician who must have come in contact with the teachers in Egypt and Babylonia because they found him returning to Egypt to study geometry with the Egyptian priests. After that he traveled to Babylonia to study mathematics.  He was also the one who introduced geometry in Greece. Thales was also the first scientist in the history.  He looked for patterns in nature to explain the way the world worked rather than believing that everything happened because one of the Greek gods had commanded it but instead he replaced superstitions with science. Thales was the first person to use deductive logic to find new results in geometry and through requiring proofs of theorems and took mathematics to higher level. Astronomy was used to study the heavens to understand what the gods might be thinking. Thales did not reject the gods. He believed the gods were present in everything. As a result of this all matter had some aspects of life in it. He thought that by understanding the fundamental principles of nature, people would actually get to know and understand their gods better. 
Thales says water is the primary principle. He was described as the founder of the natural philosophy. His philosophy is that  it is the nature, the arche of originating principle; the water. It is inherent in Thales hypothesis that water had the potentiality to change to the myriad things of which the universe is made. It was Aristotles 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. Simple metallurgy had been practised long before Thales  presented his hypothesis, so Thales knew that heat could turn metals to a liquid state. 
From what Thales philosophy about water is acceptable because all of us cant survived without water. We, humans can last for days without food, but without water, we absolutely cant. Same with the plants, animals and insects, they also cant last without water. We all cant. But of course like Thales, I also believed in God, but in his philosophy it just helps us to understand more from where this all starts. One of Thales famous quote is  The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself , it is simply because as time passes by that is also the time when you can discover or have the time to know more about the real you. There are so many ways to know yourself, other people cannot define who you really are. It is difficult in a way that you will only discover yourself in time when you do not expect it to happen. For example a Johari Window it is a way to know more about yourself. There are four quadrants of it, the first is to self where it is what you are portraying publicly or what others sees about your personality, or in short it is the transparent self that what others see you are. Private self pertains to our past that we refuse to share or expose to other, these are memories or experiences that are too personal to share. The third one is the blind self that are unknown to us and other people knows it but are hesitant to discuss it openly to us. The last one is the undiscovered self, it may include the good and bad things that neither we see or is seen by others, this undiscovered self my be one day be discovered by us. It is the most difficult self because you need to know about the real you or your inside attitude.
Therefore I conclude that each everyone of us can have our own understanding about things, but we should have evidences to prove it. Thales established his theory about water as the primary principle by citing examples to it. Now you already know the contributions of Thales, his theory, beliefs, life and specially his philosophy. As for Thales' famous quote, everything is difficult but we just need to do our best and shouldn't give up.