Doctrines and Testimonia

Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, wrote nothing that survives directly; his views are known only through later doxographic reports, chiefly Aristotle's Metaphysics, which credits him with proposing water as the arche, the single material principle underlying all things. Later Greek sources credited him with predicting the eclipse associated with the battle between the Medes and Lydians, and with early advances in geometry, but whether he actually predicted it, and what such a prediction could have involved, is disputed. The doxography surrounding Thales marks a distinctive Ionian turn toward explicit cosmological argument in Greek prose, seeking material and structural explanations for the world; the approach was innovative, but it took shape within a wider eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern environment already rich in mathematical, astronomical, medical, and cosmological traditions.