But this is quite illusory. Both the measurement of the distance of ships at sea, and that of the height of the pyramids, which is also ascribed to him,[1] are easy applications of the rule given by Aahmes for finding the seqt.[2] What the tradition really points to is that Thales applied this empirical rule to practical problems which the Egyptians had never faced, and that he was thus the originator of general methods. That is a sufficient title to fame.
7.Thales as a politician. Thales appears once more in Herodotos some time before the fall of the Lydian monarchy. He is said to have urged the Ionian Greeks to unite in a federal state with its capital at Teos.[3] We shall have occasion to notice more that once that the early schools of philosophy by no means held aloof from politics; and, there are many things, for instance the part played by Hekataios in the Ionian revolt, which suggest that the scientific men of Miletos took up a very decided position in the stirring times that followed the death of Thales. It is this political action which has gained the founder of the Milesian school his undisputed place among the Seven Wise Men; and it is owing to his inclusion among those worthies that the numerous anecdotes told of him in later days attached themselves to his name.[4]
8.Uncertain character of the tradition. So far as we know, Thales wrote nothing, and no writer earlier than Aristotle knows anything of him as a scientific man and a philosopher; in the older tradition he
- ↑ The oldest version of this story is given in Diog. i. 27, ὁ δὲ Ἱερώνυμος καὶ ἐκμετρῆσαί φησιν αὐτὸν τὰς πυραμίδας, ἐκ τῆς σκιᾶς παρατηρήσαντα ὅτε ἡμῖν ἰσομεγέθης ἐστίν.. Cf. Pliny, H. Nat. xxxvi. 82, mensuram altitudinis earum deprehendere invenit Thales Milesius umbram metiendo qua hora par esse corpori solet. (Hieronymos of Rhodes was contemporary with Eudemos.) This need imply no more than the reflexion that the shadows of all objects will be equal to the objects at the same hour. Plutarch (Conv. sept. sap. 147 a) gives a more elaborate method, τὴν βακτηρίαν στήσας ἐπὶ τῷ πέρατι τῆς σκιᾶς ἣν ἡ πυραμὶς ἐποίει γενομένων τῇ ἐπαφῇ τῆς ἀκτῖνος δυοῖν τριγώνων, ἔδειξας ὃν ἡ σκιὰ πρὸς τὴν σκιὰν λόγον εἶχε, τὴν πυραμίδα πρὸς τὴν βακτηρίαν ἔχουσαν.
- ↑ See Gow, Short History of Greek Mathematics, § 84.
- ↑ Herod. i. 170 (R. P. 9 d).
- ↑ The story of Thales falling into a well (Plato, Theaet. 174 a) is nothing but a fable teaching the uselessness of σοφία; the anecdote about the "corner" in oil (Ar. Pol. A, 11. 1259 a 6) is intended to inculcate the opposite lesson.
