The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy
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loginOpen any history of Western philosophy and you are likely to find atleast a brief mention of Thales of Miletus (640–545/8 BCE). The mention,however brief, is obligatory because Thales is generally honoured as thefirst recognised philosopher in the Western tradition, the first thinker,that is, who quite consciously set aside myth and religion in order toprovide a rational account of the world and man’s place within it. Asanyone with a passing acquaintance with Presocratic thought will tellyou, Thales is usually remembered for breaking new ground in cosmo-logy with his striking conjecture that the ultimate constituent of theuniverse is water. He is also credited with several important geometricaldiscoveries. He was the first to demonstrate that a circle is bisected byits diameter, that in every isosceles triangle the angles at the base areequal, that when two straight lines intersect the angles at the vertexare equal and that a pair of triangles with one equal side and twoequal angles are equal. Historians of Presocratic thought aside, it is safeto say that the earliest of the so-called “Seven Sages” of early Greekthought is remembered for little else. But it is not for these reasons thatThales is recalled here. Our interest in Thales lies rather in a curiousbut revealing anecdote mentioned almost in passing in a Platonicdialogue, an anecdote in which our hero is humiliated by a commonbarmaid.
