Thales synonyms

Now as to this there is quite a remarkable unanimity in the testimony of the ancients, and the evidence is of the strongest kind, ascending to Herodotus, and, according to the account of Diogenes Laertius, even to Xenophanes, who was an Ionian, and not much later than Thales.

Let us now consider the importance of the work of Thales.

Writings which bore his name were extant in antiquity; but as Aristotle, when he speaks of Thales's doctrine, always depends upon tradition, there can be little doubt that they were forgeries.

From Aristotle we learn (I) that Thales found in water the origin of things; (2) that he conceived the earth to float upon a sea of the elemental fluid; (3) that he supposed all things to be full of gods; (4) that in virtue of the attraction exercised by the magnet he attributed to it a soul.

Aristotle's suggestion that Thales was led to his fundamental dogma by observation of the part which moisture plays in the production and the maintenance of life, and Simplicius's, that the impressibility and the binding power of water were perhaps also in his thoughts, are by admission purely conjectural..