Thales - All Is Water

By merely looking at Thales' cosmological thesis that "all is water", one is apt to believe that he was a foolish man, unworthy of his reputation as a great philosopher and mathematician. However, as Bertrand Russell once said, "Philosophy begins with Thales" (Russell, 1972). In this paper, I will examine his empirical observations and conclusions to show the logical approach from which he derived his thesis. In doing so, I will prove that despite definitive answers from modern science that refute his thesis, Thales' dictum that was conceived almost three thousand years ago is still relevant and sensible today.

Thales of Miletus was part of the Presocratic philosophers, a group who shared similar intellectual outlooks, a dedication to argument and critical inquiry, combined with a view about the nature of justification (Cohen, Curd & Reeve, 2005). They believed the natural world and universe could be explained by referring to nature itself, without reference to the supernatural or religion. At his time, superstitions prevailed and accepted authority gave "the truth". Instead of crediting everything to the supernatural, the Presocratics pushed the boundaries in terms of progressive and innovative thoughts. In doing so, they paved the way for modern science and philosophy, which also attempts to explain phenomena without reference to the supernatural. Thales was the first to study physical philosophy. His primary interest was the physis problem, a question about the most basic substance of the world. The Presocratic philosophers believed that the physis was a basic substance that everything was made of. Thales focused on water as the solution to the physis problem, and in the following paragraphs, I will prove the sensibility of his dictum.

Thales was a material monist - that is, he believed there was a single material in the world that everything is born from and composed of. He believed that "the basic stuff of the universe was one thing, water...everything is really water in one form or another or that everything comes from water" (Cohen, Curd & Reeve, 2005). He may have unknowingly been the founding father of physics, as his claim that water remains but its qualities change is analogous to the law of conservation. The conservation law states that a particular property of a physical system does not change as the system changes - just as water does not change as the world changes. His thesis is also consistent with the law of conservation of energy, which states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains the same. Since all things are made of water, nothing is created or destroyed because they are just changed into another form of water. Thales was amongst the first thinkers to base his thesis on inquiry and rational reasoning. He was truly a pioneer in terms of original thinking, and paved the way for other Presocratic philosophers, such as Anaximander and Anaximenes.

Thales was analytical in his method towards solving the physis problem and did not exclusively use physics to support his thesis. He also observed three major things in biology in an attempt to understand the universe. Firstly, he noted that all life depends on water. It was and still is evident that all plants and animals on Earth need water to thrive and survive. Secondly, he observed that seeds, the source of life for plants, were moist. Thirdly, based on the relationship he noticed between the ethereal bodies and the oceans, he noted that heat (in the form of the moon and the sun) was made from moisture. Based on these observations, it was apparent that biologically, water is the source of life. He took this one step further and proclaimed that this was also the case for the entire universe (ABU, 2008). Thales conclusion makes sense as if you noted that everything needed water to live, you would arrive at the conclusion that water must be in everything, or else it would not be so necessary for life.

Primitive chemistry was also used to build and support Thales' thesis. It is evident that things in the universe exist in all three states, so in order for the underlying substance to make up everything in the universe, it must be present in all three states as well. Water is one of the few (and possibly the only) substance(s) that humans back then were able to see in each of its three phases: gas, liquid and solid. It is very unlikely Thales knew that all substances exist in three states, as extreme conditions (which could not have been mimicked back then) must be present