Quiz: Thales of Miletus

When was Thales of Miletus born?

• About 624 BC, Miletus, on the coast of what is now Turkey.
• Traditionally about 563 BC, Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, a prince of the Shakya clan.
• About 535 BC, Ephesus, on the coast of what is now Turkey.
• About 570 BC, Samos, Greece.

When did Thales of Miletus die?

• About 546 BC. The dates are traditional, not records.
• Traditionally about 483 BC, Kushinagar, India. Some scholars date his life about 480 to 400 BC.
• About 475 BC.
• About 495 BC, Metapontum, in southern Italy.

What is Thales of Miletus known for?

• Naming water as the first principle of all things. Herodotus reports that he predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BC.
• The claim that all things are number, and the theorem about right triangles that carries his name. What is his and what is his followers' cannot be separated.
• The flux doctrine, summed up in later reports as no man steps in the same river twice, and the unity of opposites.
• The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the doctrines of no self and dependent arising, taught for 45 years after his enlightenment at Bodh Gaya.

Which school of thought was Thales of Miletus part of?

• Milesian school, the first of the Presocratic natural philosophers.
• Buddhism, founded on his teaching.
• Pythagoreanism, a blend of mathematics, music, and religious rule.
• Presocratic natural philosophy, in tension with the Eleatics.

True or false: Greek thinker from Miletus, on the coast of modern Turkey, counted as the first philosopher in the Western tradition.

• True
• False