Portal:Philosophy of science/Selected biography/3
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Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 BC. – ca. 546 BC.) is often regarded as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, as well as the father of science. Before Thales, the Greeks explained the origin and nature of the world through myths of anthropomorphic gods and heroes. In contrast to these mythological explanations Thales attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world, without reference to the supernatural. He explained earthquakes by imagining that the Earth floats on water, and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves. Thales' most famous belief was his cosmological doctrine, which held that the world originated from water. Aristotle considered this belief roughly equivalent to the later ideas of Anaximenes, who held that everything in the world was composed of air.
