Thales of Miletus
The first person known to explain the world without invoking the gods.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 years
- Era
- Iron Age, Holocene
Thales is credited with predicting the solar eclipse of 585 BCE — probably using Babylonian cycle data — and with arguing that everything is ultimately made of water. The specific claim is wrong and unimportant. What matters is its form: a proposal about the nature of things, offered as something to be argued about rather than revealed, and open to being replaced by a better one. His successors immediately did replace it, which is the point.