Thales

Thales of Miletus (624 – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher fromMiletus in Asia Minor and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. Aristotle reported Thales' hypothesis about the [originating principle] of nature and the nature of matter – that it was a single material substance: water.
According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales." Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. Almost all of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world without reference to mythology. Those philosophers were also influential and eventually Thales' rejection of mythological explanations became an essential idea for the scientific revolution. He was also the first to define general principles and set forth hypotheses, and as a result has been dubbed the "Father of Science," though it is argued that Democritus is actually more deserving of this title.
In mathematics, Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.
== Tossup Questions ==
# This man was the first to measure the height of the Egyptian pyramids by counting the time lapse between noontime and the time the pyramid's shadow was his own height. According to Diogenes Laertius he is the source of the apothegm "know thyself." A trigonometric result named for this man concludes that a triangle is a right triangle if its three end points are on a circle, and that two of them form a diameter. More famously, this predecessor to Anaximenes and Anaximander, was a member of the Seven Sages that is held to be the first to predict a solar eclipse. For 10 points, name this pre-Socratic thinker that suspected water was the first cause of the world.
# This engineer may have devised a technique to divert the Halys River for Croesus of Lydia, and, according to Callimachus, he taught how to navigate by both Ursa Major and Minor. Like Pythagoras, he learned geometry from the Egyptians, and he discovered that a circle is bisected by its diameter, but he is more famous for his work in cosmology, since he was supposedly the first theorize that reality derives from an "arche," or "principal substance," which he thought was moisture or water. FTP, name this philosopher of Miletus who taught Anaximander.