THE BIOGRAPH OF PHILOSOPHER

1.     Thales Of Miletus

Thales of Miletus, c. 636-c. 546 BC, was the first known Greek philosopher and scientist. He achieved renown as a military advisor and engineer and is said to have predicted an eclipse of the Sun in 585 BC.

Thales apparently held that the Earth floats in water; all things come to be from water. He manifests the tendencies, characteristic of early Greek philosophy, to treat questions of material composition and question of material origin as the same question and to try to explain natural events by pointing to underlying material element. He evidently chose water as that element due to its important role in the growth and nutrition of living things and in daily life. Thales is traditionally considered the teacher of Anaximander and the first figure in the Milesian School of pre-Socratic Philosophy.

2.     Anaximander

Anaximander of Miletus, c. 610-c. 545 BC, is the erliest Greek thinker about whom much is known. Called it pupil of Thales, he wrote a comprehensive history of the universe. His bold use of nonmythological explanatory hyphotheses radically distinguishes his work from erlier literary cosmologies.

Anaximander challenged Thales’ view that a single element can be the origin of all. He argued that known elements are constantly opposing and changing into one an another, and that therefore something different from these elements must underlie and cause changes.

Anaximander believed that the universe is symetrical, the Earth  remaining stable at the center because it has no reason to move one way rather than another. This was apperently the first argument from sufficient reason. He also drew the first Greek world map and boldly speculated about the marine origins of animal life. He is sometimes called the founder of asrtronomy.

*This biograph we found in Encyclopedia of Knowlwdge (Grolier).