more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Thales says water is the first principle (which is why he declared the earth is on water); perhaps he concluded this from seeing that all food is moist.
Gist of Idea
Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist
Source
report of Thales (fragments/reports [c.585 BCE], A12) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 983b12
Book Ref
'The First Philosophers', ed/tr. Waterfield,Robin [OUP 2000], p.12
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 22745 | Pherecydes said the first principle and element is earth [Pherecydes, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 1497 | For Anaximenes nature is air, which takes different forms by rarefaction and condensation [Anaximenes, by Simplicius] |
| 614 | Heraclitus said sometimes everything becomes fire [Heraclitus, by Aristotle] |
| 550 | Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| 21383 | The ultimate constituents of reality are the homoeomeries [Anaxagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 484 | Everything is ultimately a variation of one underlying thing [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 488 | Air is divine, because it is in and around everything, and arranges everything [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 13224 | There couldn't be just one element, which was both water and air at the same time [Aristotle] |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| 6421 | Newton's four fundamentals are: space, time, matter and force [Newton, by Russell] |