The main source concerning the details of Thales's life and career is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius, in his third-century-AD work Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers. While it is all we have, Diogenes … See more

Early Greeks, and other civilizations before them, often invoked idiosyncratic explanations of natural phenomena with reference to the will of anthropomorphic gods and heroes. Instead, Thales aimed to explain nat… See more

Diogenes Laërtius quotes Apollodorus as saying that Thales died at the age of 78 during the 58th Olympiad (548–545 BC) and attributes his death to heat stroke and thirst while watching the games.
As the first … See more

1. ^ This use of hearsay and a lack of citing original sources leads some historians, like Dicks and Werner Jaeger, to view the whole idea of pre-Socratic philosophy as a construct from a later age, "fashioned during the t… See more

• Allman, George Johnston (1911). "Thales of Miletus" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 721.
• Boyer, C.B. (1989). A History of Mathematic… See more