A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



mystery; that the scene may not be shifted too sud- 

 denly from the vague, impersonal East to the individ- 

 ualism of Europe. 



All of this, however, must not be taken as casting 

 any doubt upon the existence of Thales as a real per- 

 son. Even the dates of his life 640 to 546 B.C. 

 may be accepted as at least approximately trust- 

 worthy; and the specific discoveries ascribed to him 

 illustrate equally well the stage of development of 

 Greek thought, whether Thales himself or one of his 

 immediate disciples were the discoverer. We have 

 already mentioned the feat which was said to have 

 given Thales his great reputation. That Thales was 

 universally credited with having predicted the famous 

 eclipse is beyond question. That he actually did pre- 

 dict it in any precise sense of the word is open to 

 doubt. At all events, his prediction was not based 

 upon any such precise knowledge as that of the modern 

 astronomer. There is, indeed, only one way in which 

 he could have foretold the eclipse, and that is through 

 knowledge of the regular succession of preceding 

 eclipses. But that knowledge implies access on the 

 part of some one to long series of records of practical 

 observations of the heavens. Such records, as we have 

 seen, existed in Egypt and even more notably in Baby- 

 lonia. That these records were the source of the in- 

 formation which established the reputation of Thales 

 is an unavoidable inference. In other words, the 

 magical prevision of the father of Greek thought was 

 but a reflex of Oriental wisdom. Nevertheless, it suf- 

 ficed to establish Thales as the father of Greek astron- 

 omy. In point of fact, his actual astronomical attain- 



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