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I’m sure that when Thales came up with the “discovery of nature” many people thought that he was crazy. The average person in 585 B.C. would not have the knowledge about natural laws and the interaction of matter. Instead, they would give they would designate gods to different occurrences, such as wind and fire. In addition they would believe that all “natural phenomena” are “arbitrary acts by god” (Fowler, //Early Greek Science: Thales to Plato).//

I find it very interesting that scientific hypothesizes could be made about phenomena as large as earthquakes without any concrete knowledge on the subject. Thales’ theory that “the world is floating on a vast ocean, and disturbances in that ocean occasionally cause the earth to shake or even crack” is impressive due to the fact that it is based on a layer of water below the earth’s crust, which had never even been studied by that time. Just having the ability to imagine the earth floating on a layer of water is like thinking in a fourth dimension. Thales is not the only person to influence science from the Greek city of Miletus, Anaximander followed in his footsteps about thirty years later. Anaximander’s theory about earthquakes is almost more impressive than Thales’ because he used clouds and wind in his explanation at a time when there was not a large bank of knowledge about meteorology.

Not only did the Greeks develop natural science, but they also developed geometry. Pythagoras, as most everyone knows, theorized that “the sum of the squares of two sides enclosing the right angle is equal to the square of the long side, called the hypotenuse.” There are no arguments when it comes to this theorem because it has been proven true time after time using various methods. In fact, I have used this theorem every day since I have started classes at Rensselaer, whether it be in physics or calculus. Pythagoras was not only a mathematician; he was a philosopher as well. He felt that numbers were the “key to the universe.” If Pythagoras was alive today, I can guarantee that he would be a fan of the television show “Numb3rs.”