Transcript: Thales was a philosopher who lived in the 6th century B.C. in Miletus, in what is now Turkey. No written work by Thales survives, but we know that he kept accurate eclipse records and he speculated about astronomy. He decided that the source of all things was one thing, and that thing was water. It may seem naive to try and explain the natural world in terms of the substance water, but it is a sophisticated notion to decide that the diversity of the natural world does indeed stem from one thing, and all things have this source. Thales was a philosopher and a statesman. He is also subject to the first stereotype of scientists that we may see as familiar to us even now. It was written that a servant girl mocked Tales, because he had been walking along at night staring up at the stars and wondering about their nature and he fell into a well, because his head was so up in the stars that he couldn’t pay attention to what was below his feet.