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Thales the Measurer
Thales the Measurer offers a comprehensive and iconoclastic account of Thales of Miletus, considering the full extent of our evidence to build a new picture of his intellectual interests and activity. Thales is most commonly associated with the claim that ‘everything is water’, but closer examination of the evidence that we have suggests that he could not have said anything of the sort. His real interests, and his real innovations, lay in challenges of quantitative measurement, especially measurements related to the movement of the sun. In this he had no predecessors – and, for centuries to follow, no real successors either. This book is of interest for scholars in the history of philosophy, science, and life sciences. It is aimed especially at researchers in the field, but is also accessible to students and a more general readership.
226 pages, Hardcover
Published July 1, 2022
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September 5, 2023
Very scholarly book, not one you would expect to find in Goodreads (the numbers of reviews should tell something); I generally love the bios of scientists, but is something quite different. The authors goes to the sources, digging through fragments of documents, attributing or not thoughts to Thales, analysing their context to see if they were plausible or not, etc. The number of notes allows either to skip a lot of very fine details or to dig in. I must say that, it’s not even boring, although this is not a book for the masses, with all due respect.
Displaying 1 of 1 review