Thales of Miletus is a name known to everyone. Brief biography of Thales of Miletus

Many ancient discoveries in Greek sciences owe their existence to the greatest thinker and talented person, Thales of Miletus. This article briefly contains the main Interesting Facts from the life of a scientist.

Who is Thales of Miletus?

Thales of Miletus is the first known mathematician in history and one of the seven ancient Greek sages according to historical sources. There are several theories about the life of Thales of Miletus.

On the Asia Minor coast there was a town called Miletus. A Phoenician philosopher was born and lived there. He belonged to a noble family. He was a versatile and gifted scientist, interested in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, politics, commerce and many other sciences. Thales was the creator of many philosophical books, but they have not survived to this day. He also understood military issues and was known as a political figure, although he did not officially hold any position.

It was not possible to establish the exact date of his birth, but his life is beginning to be associated with 585 BC. In the indicated year, he predicted a solar eclipse, which is mentioned in various sources.

Major achievements of Thales

Thales revealed to his people scientific knowledge Egyptians and Babylonians, as he traveled a lot. It is known that Thales visited Egypt, where he was able to calculate the height of one of the pyramids, amazing the local pharaoh. Mathematician, one of the sunny days, waited until the length of his staff became equal to the height of the pyramid, after which he measured the length of the shadow of the pyramid.

He also discovered the constellation Ursa Minor for the Greeks, which travelers used as a guide. He created and introduced a calendar in Egyptian style. The year consisted of 12 months of 30 days, with 5 days falling out.

Pay attention to the documentary about Thales:

Teachings of Thales of Miletus

In his opinion, the universe is a liquid-like mass, in the central part of which there is an airy body in the shape of a bowl. He believed that the bowl had an open surface down, and the closed one was the vault of heaven. Stars are divine beings living in the sky. He was always interested in everything that happens between heaven and earth.

Also, the scientist became famous as an engineer. On his recommendation, the river bed was diverted, creating a channel for crossing, where the soldiers passed without even getting their feet wet. In the field of philosophy, Thales is given a special place of honor. The scientist constantly tried to find out and understand what the world actually consists of. He considered water to be the basis of all living things, which was a revolution of the existing universe. And the philosopher imagined the Earth in the form of a ship sailing on the ocean of life. The scientist began to turn many mythological views into philosophical ones.

Thales is considered the founder of mathematics. Thanks to him, such concepts as a geometric theorem and proof appeared. He studied the figures formed in a rectangle inscribed in a circle with diagonals drawn in it. He proved that an angle inscribed in a circle will always be right. There is Thales' theorem.

Thales lived about 80 years. The exact date of his death has not been established.

Biography facts

Thales was of noble family and received in his homeland a good education. The actual Milesian origin of Thales is questioned; they report that his family had Phoenician roots, and that he was an alien in Miletus (this is indicated, for example, by Herodotus, who is the most ancient source of information about the life and activities of Thales).

It is reported that Thales was a trader and traveled widely. For some time he lived in Egypt, in Thebes and Memphis, where he studied with the priests, studied the causes of floods, and demonstrated a method for measuring the height of the pyramids. It is believed that it was he who “brought” geometry from Egypt and introduced it to the Greeks. His activities attracted followers and students who formed the Milesian (Ionian) school, and of which Anaximander and Anaximenes are the best known today.

Tradition portrays Thales not only as a philosopher and scientist, but also as a “subtle diplomat and wise politician”; Thales tried to rally the cities of Ionia into a defensive alliance against Persia. It is reported that Thales was a close friend of the Milesian tyrant Thrasybulus; was associated with the temple of Apollo Didyma, the patron saint of maritime colonization.

Some sources claim that Thales lived alone and avoided state affairs; others - that he was married and had a son, Kibist; still others - that while remaining a bachelor, he adopted his sister’s son.

There are several versions regarding the life of Thales. The most consistent tradition states that he was born between the 35th and 39th Olympiads, and died in the 58th at the age of 78 or 76 years, that is, approx. from to 548 BC e. . Some sources report that Thales was already known in the 7th Olympiad (-749 BC); but in general, the life of Thales is reduced to the period from - to -545 BC. e. , That. Thales could have died between the ages of 76 and 95. It is reported that Thales died while watching gymnastic competitions, from the heat and, most likely, crush. It is believed that there is one exact date associated with his life - 585 BC. e. , when there was a solar eclipse in Miletus, which he predicted (according to modern calculations, the eclipse occurred on May 28, 585 BC, during the war between Lydia and Media).

Information about the life of Thales is scarce and contradictory, often anecdotal.

The above mentioned prediction solar eclipse 585 BC e. - apparently the only indisputable fact from the scientific activity of Thales of Miletus; in any case, it is reported that it was after this event that Thales became famous and famous.

Being a military engineer in the service of King Croesus of Lydia, Thales, in order to facilitate the crossing of the army, diverted the Halys River along a new channel. Not far from the city of Mitel, he designed a dam and a drainage canal and supervised their construction himself. This structure significantly lowered the water level in Halys and made the crossing of troops possible.

Thales proved his business skills by seizing a monopoly on the olive oil trade; however, in the biography of Thales this fact has an episodic and, most likely, “didactic” character.

Thales was a supporter of some kind of unification of the Ionian city states (like a confederation, centered on the island of Chios), as a counteraction to the threat from Lydia, and later Persia. Moreover, Thales, in assessing external dangers, apparently considered the threat from Persia a greater evil than from Lydia; the mentioned episode with the construction of the dam took place during the war of Croesus (king of Lydia) with the Persians. At the same time, Thales opposed the conclusion of an alliance between the Milesians and Croesus, which saved the city after the victory of Cyrus (king of Persia).

Essays

The works of Thales have not survived. Tradition attributes two works to Thales: “On Solstice” ( Περὶ τροπὴς ) and “On the Equinoxes” ( Περὶ ἰσημερίας ); their contents are known only in the transmission of later authors. It is reported that his entire legacy amounted to only 200 poems written in hexameter. However, it is possible that Thales did not write anything at all, and everything known about his teaching comes from secondary sources. According to Thales, nature, both living and inanimate, has a moving principle, which is called by such names as soul and god.

The science

Astronomy

It is believed that Thales "discovered" the constellation Ursa Minor for the Greeks as a guiding tool; Previously, this constellation was used by the Phoenicians.

It is believed that Thales was the first to discover the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator and draw five circles on the celestial sphere: the Arctic circle, the summer tropic, the celestial equator, the winter tropic, and the Antarctic circle. He learned to calculate the times of solstices and equinoxes, and established the inequality of intervals between them.

Thales was the first to point out that the Moon shines by reflected light; that eclipses of the Sun occur when the Moon covers it. Thales was the first to determine the angular size of the Moon and the Sun; he found that the size of the Sun is 1/720th of its circular path, and the size of the Moon is the same part of the lunar path. It can be argued that Thales created " mathematical method"in the study of the movement of celestial bodies.

It is believed that Thales was the first to formulate and prove several geometric theorems, namely:

• vertical angles are equal;
• there is equality of triangles along one side and two adjacent angles;
• the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal;
• diameter divides the circle in half;
• the inscribed angle subtended by the diameter is a right angle.

Thales learned to determine the distance from the shore to the ship, for which he used the likeness of triangles. This method is based on a theorem, later called Thales's theorem: if parallel straight lines intersecting the sides of an angle cut off equal segments on one side, then they cut off equal segments on the other side.

The legend says that Thales, while in Egypt, amazed Pharaoh Amasis by being able to accurately determine the height of the pyramid, waiting for the moment when the length of the shadow of the stick became equal to its height, and then he measured the length of the shadow of the pyramid.

Space structure

Thales believed that everything is born from water; everything arises from water and turns into it. The beginning of the elements, of existing things, is water; the beginning and end of the Universe is water. Everything is formed from water through its solidification/freezing, as well as evaporation; When condensed, water becomes earth; when evaporated, it becomes air. The reason for the formation/movement is spirit ( πνευμα ), “nesting” in water.

According to the remark of Heraclitus the Allegorist: “Wet matter, easily transforming (properly “remolding”) into all kinds of [bodies], takes on a motley variety of forms. The evaporating part of it turns into air, and the finest air ignites in the form of ether. As water precipitates and turns into silt, it turns into soil. Therefore, of the four elements, Thales declared water to be the most causal element.”

Physics

The following statements are attributed to Thales:

That is, Thales argues that the Earth, as dry land, as a body itself, is physically supported by some kind of “support”, which has the properties of water (non-abstract, that is, specifically fluidity, instability, etc.).

Statement 3) is an almost literal indication of physical nature stars, the Sun and the Moon - they consist of [the same] matter[like the Earth], (not from exactly the same material, as Aristotle understands it denotatively); the temperature is very high.

Proposition 4) Thales claims that the Earth is the center around which the circulation of celestial phenomena occurs, etc. It is Thales who is the founder of the geocentric system of the world.

Opinions

Geometry

At present, in the history of mathematics, there is no doubt that the geometric discoveries that were attributed to Thales by his compatriots were in fact simply borrowed from Egyptian science. For Thales’ immediate students (not only unfamiliar with Egyptian science, but generally possessing extremely meager information), every message from their teacher seemed like complete news, previously unknown to anyone and therefore completely belonging to him.

Subsequent Greek scientists, who more than once had to encounter contradictory facts, left them aside due to the characteristic national vanity of the Greeks. The natural consequences of this “silencing of the truth” on the part of Greek scientists were often observed contradictions and anachronisms. Thus, the “discovery” of the property of an angle inscribed in a semicircle, attributed to Thales by Pamphilius and Diogenes Laertius, is considered by Apollodorus the logistician to belong to Pythagoras.

The desire of Greek writers and scientists to exalt the glory of their scientists is clearly manifested in the tradition of determining the height of a pyramid by the length of its shadow. According to Hieronymus of Rhodes, preserved in a reference to them by Diogenes Laertius, Thales, to solve this problem, measured the length of the shadow of the pyramid at the moment when the length of the shadow of the observer himself became equal to his height.

Plutarch of Chaeronea presents the matter in a different light. According to his story, Thales determined the height of the pyramid by placing a vertical pole at the end point of the shadow cast by it and showing, with the help of the two triangles thus formed, that the shadow of the pyramid relates to the shadow of the pole, as the pyramid itself relates to the pole. The solution to the problem thus turns out to be based on the doctrine of similarity of triangles.

On the other hand, the evidence of Greek writers has undoubtedly established that the doctrine of proportions was not known in Greece until Pythagoras, who first brought it out from Babylon. Thus, only the version of Jerome of Rhodes can be considered consistent with the truth in view of the simplicity and elementaryness of the method of solving the problem indicated in it.

Cosmology

It is believed that Thales laid the theoretical foundations of a doctrine called “hylozoism”. The statement is based mainly on the comments of Aristotle, who clearly indicates that it was the Ionian “physiologists” who were the first to identify matter with the moving principle. (“Apparently, Thales, from what they tell about him, considered the soul capable of setting in motion, for he argued that a magnet has a soul, since it moves iron... Some also claim that the soul is poured out in everything; perhaps Based on this, Thales thought that everything was full of gods."

In addition to the position of the animate nature of matter, in the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe closedness of the universe (everything arises from water and turns into it [again]) Thales adhered to the views that are found in the Ionian thought of his period in general. Namely, the world arises from the beginning and returns to it again periodically. But we do not have specific instructions from Thales himself regarding the ways in which, in his opinion, this world formation is accomplished.

The value of Thales' philosophy lies in the fact that it captures the beginnings of philosophical reflection about the physical world; the difficulty of studying it is that due to the lack of reliable sources, it is easy to attribute to Thales thoughts characteristic of early period Greek philosophy at all. Already Aristotle reports about Thales not on the basis of reading his works, but on indirect information.

Physics

The question arises: how could Thales have such a clear idea of ​​the physics of celestial bodies (and in general of everything else that is formulated in his provisions). Of course, Thales' knowledge of cosmogony, cosmology, theology and physics goes back to mythology and tradition, even to such ancient times, which cannot be recorded. As you know, having traveled around half of the world available at the time, Thales had the opportunity to get acquainted with various interpretations of this possible ancient knowledge.

But Thales translated this knowledge into the “plane of scientific interest,” that is, from a set of properties widespread in myths and similar sources, he derived a group of images that were scientific for his time. We can say that the merit of Thales (and the first natural philosophical school he created) is that he “published” a result suitable for scientific use; identified a certain rational complex of concepts required for logical propositions. This is proven by the development of all subsequent ancient philosophy.

Jokes

Illustrative stories related to the glory and name of Thales.

Notes

Links

• O' Grady P.. Thales of Miletus // Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Made by berdus.

Literature

• Asmus V.F. Ancient philosophy. - M.: Higher School, 1998. - P. 10-13.
• Diogenes Laertius. About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers; lane Gasparov M. L.; ed. volumes Losev A.F. - M.: Mysl, 1986. - P. 61-68.
• Losev A. F. History of ancient aesthetics. Early classic. - M.: Ladomir, 1994. - P. 312-317.
• Lebedev A.V. Thales and Xenophanes (The most ancient fixation of the cosmology of Thales) // Ancient philosophy in the interpretation of bourgeois philosophers. - M., 1981.
• Lebedev A.V. Demiurge in Thales? (Towards the reconstruction of the cosmogony of Thales of Miletus) // Text: semantics and structure. - M., 1983. - P. 51-66.
• Panchenko D. V. Thales: the birth of philosophy and science // Some problems in the history of ancient science: Collection of scientific papers / Rep. ed. A. I. Zaitsev, B. I. Kozlov. - L.: Main Astronomical Observatory, 1989. - P. 16-36.
• Petrova G.I. Were the Pre-Socratics natural philosophers (“Water” by Thales as a “transcendental problem”) // Tomsk Bulletin state university. Philosophy. Sociology. Political science. 2008. No. 1. P. 29-33.
• Tchaikovsky Yu. V. Thales’s science in a historical context // Questions of Philosophy. - 1997. - No. 8. - P. 151-165.
• Fragments of early Greek philosophers. Part 1: From Epic Theocosmogonies to the Rise of Atomism, ed. A. V. Lebedev. - M.: Nauka, 1989. - p. 110-115.
• Tchaikovsky Yu. V. Two Thales - poet and mathematician. // Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology named after. S. I. Vavilova. Annual scientific conference, 2007. - M.: IDEL, 2008. - P.314-315.
• Dicks D. R.. Thales. Classical Quarterly, NS, V. 9, 1959. - p. 294-309.

Eclipse of Thales:

• Couprie D. L.. How Thales was able to ‘predict’ a solar eclipse without the Help of alleged Mesopotamian wisdom. Early Science and Medicine, V. 9, 2004, p. 321-337.
• Mosshammer A. A.. Thales' eclipse. Transactions of the American Philological Association, V. 111, 1974, p. 145.
• Panchenko D.. Thales’s prediction of a solar eclipse. V. 25, 1994, p. 275.
• Stephenson F. R., Fatoohi L. J.. Thales’ prediction of a solar eclipse. Journal for the History of Astronomy, V. 28, 1997, p. 279.

see also

• Everything came from water;
• The earth floats on the water like a tree;
• There is a divine manifestation in everything;
• A magnet has a soul, because capable of moving iron.

As was customary in Ancient Greece, Thales had students. The most famous of them, judging by the mentions of descendants, in particular, Aristotle, was Anaximander (610 - 546 BC). Anaximander (Fig. 5.7) was born in Miletus and was a relative of Thales of Miletus.

fire and fire formed a world vortex, which became the cause of the appearance of all substances and bodies.
In the center of the world vortex there was “cold”, i.e. The earth is surrounded by water and air, and outside is heavenly fire. Under the influence of fire, the upper layers of the gas shell turned into a hard crust, this crust began to swell with vapors from the boiling earth's ocean, then burst, pushing the fire away from our world. Thus, according to Anaximander, the sphere of fixed stars arose, and the stars were holes in the shell through which the steam of the earth’s ocean escaped.
The same treatise provides a theory of the origin of life. Living organisms emerged from water and warm mud “and were born in the moisture enclosed within the muddy shell.”
Anaximander considered the Universe to be a living being that has its own lifespan. The universe dies from time to time and is immediately reborn again “... the death of worlds takes place, and much earlier their birth, and from time immemorial the same thing is repeated in a circle.” And there are no gods, everything in itself, as they say, is the natural order of things and events.
Anaximander created one of the first geocentric models of the cosmos and laid the foundation for the theory of the celestial spheres. In his cosmology, the Earth was represented as a stationary cylinder, on the upper surface of which there is an inhabited world (Ecumene).
At the same time, the Universe was thought to be centrally symmetrical, therefore the Earth, located in the center of the Cosmos, has no reason to move in any direction. Anaximander was thus the first thinker to suggest that the Earth rests freely in the center of the world without support (while his teacher Thales of Miletus believed that the Earth rests on water).
Anaximander also had the first deep guess about the origin of life. Living things, according to Anaximander, originated at the border of sea and land from silt under the influence of heavenly fire.
The first living creatures lived in the sea. Then some of them came onto land and shed their scales, becoming land animals. Man evolved from animals, which does not contradict some modern ideas.

The next Ionian scientist, worthy in all respects, is Anaximenes (585 - 525 BC), who was considered a student of Thales of Miletus and Anaximander.

Anaximenes refused all this. The Earth is not alone in the World; there are also solid bodies besides it. True, either Anaximenes’ own views on this issue were not entirely clear, or the retellers of his ideas were unable to understand them.
According to one of them, he, following Thales, believed that “the Sun, the Moon, and other stars originate and come from the earth.. The Sun is the earth, but only from its rapid movement it also became extremely hot.”
According to other retellings, the Sun, Moon and stars consist of fire, as all other thinkers thought, but “in the space of the luminaries there are also earthy formations that rotate with them.”
Anaximenes also abandoned the idea of ​​the existence of opposites. physical properties. He, for example, did not make a sharp distinction between hot and cold, considering both of these properties to be inherent in the same matter.
The scientist believed that when matter becomes denser, it becomes cold, and when it becomes rarer, it becomes hot. From an everyday point of view, Anaximenes was wrong; solids are often much hotter than air.
Ancient thinkers, including Aristotle, attacked him with criticism. But from the point of view modern science Anaximenes is completely right. Ice colder than water, the steam is hotter than it. Freezing is accompanied by a decrease in temperature, evaporation is accompanied by an increase.
Only the relationship seems to be the opposite: thermal phenomena are caused by the speed of movement of particles (molecules, atoms), a decrease in speed means cooling, accompanied by condensation and crystallization of the substance, an increase in speed leads to the release of thermal energy, melting and evaporation. But Anaximenes could not yet know all this, although his thought was moving in the right direction.
Being a third-generation philosopher, Anaximenes was already able to do without the mythological heritage, using only the ideological heritage of the natural researchers who preceded him.
There are no parallels to his ideas in myths; not a single myth, for example, considered air to be the progenitor of all things. Of course, his scheme for the emergence and existence of the material world was not scientific, experimentally proven. But it was the fruit of a rational understanding of the world around us.

Anaxagoras, according to legend, was born a quarter of a century after the death of Anaximenes, i.e. in 500 BC in the town of Klazomen, located near Miletus, so he was well acquainted with the teachings of the philosophers of the Milesian school.

1. Democritus

Brief biography of Thales of Miletus

Thales is considered the founder of the philosophical school in Miletus. Thales of Miletus (late 7th - first half of the 6th century BC), the first mathematician and physicist in Ionia, was closely associated with Middle Eastern culture. There is even a legend that the philosopher Thales was a Phoenician who settled in Miletus, but perhaps he only had distant Phoenician ancestors. For the first time in Ionia, he predicted the year of the total solar eclipse, which occurred on May 28, 585 BC. In 582 BC. e. Thales of Miletus was hailed as the first of the “seven wise men.” Thales took an active part in politics, advising the Ionian city-states to unite against external enemies: first against Lydia, and then Persia. But they did not heed the advice of the Milesian philosopher. During Lydia's struggle with Persia, Thales, realizing that Persia was dangerous for the Greeks, helped the Lydians as an engineer. He helped Croesus, king of Lydia, cross the Halys River, advising him to dig a drainage canal.

Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus lived to a ripe old age.

In antiquity, prose works were attributed to him: “On Elements”, “On the Solstice”, “On the Equinox”, “Marine Astrology”. These names themselves speak of Thales as a scientist and philosopher who sought the physical beginning of the universe. Unfortunately, only their titles have come down to us from these works.

Thales of Miletus as a scientist

Late ancient tradition is unanimous that Thales acquired all his initial scientific and philosophical knowledge in Asia and Africa, that is, in Babylonia, Phenicia and Egypt. Proclus claims that Thales brought geometry to Hellas from Egypt. Iamblichus says that Thales of Miletus learned his wisdom from the priests of Memphis and Diopolis. According to Aetius, Thales studied philosophy already in Egypt. He arrived in Miletus no longer a young man.

In the ancient tradition, Thales of Miletus is the first astronomer and mathematician. His younger contemporary, Heraclitus, knows Thales not as a philosopher, but only as an astronomer, famous for predicting a solar eclipse. However, like the Babylonians and Egyptians, he did not understand what actually happens in the sky during eclipses. His ideas about heaven were completely wrong. Thales simply relied on the frequency of comments that the priests of Akkad, Sumer, and Egypt discovered.

Thales of Miletus was also credited with the discovery of the annual movement of the Sun against the background of “fixed” stars, the determination of the times of solstices and equinoxes, the understanding that the Moon does not shine (like all philosophers, including historians of philosophy) with its own light, etc. In celestial bodies he saw the ground on fire. Thales divided the celestial sphere into five zones. He introduced a calendar, defining the length of the year at 365 days and dividing it into 12 thirty-day months, which is why five days fell out of the months and were placed at the beginning of the year, as was customary in those days in Egypt.

In the field of geometry, Thales established a number of equalities: vertical angles, triangles with an equal side and equal adjacent angles, angles at the base of an isosceles triangle, separated by the diameter of the parts of the circle. Thales inscribed a right triangle in a circle. The learned priests of Babylonia and Egypt knew this, but for Hellas it was a discovery. However, what was fundamentally new was that Thales began to teach mathematics not only in an empirical, but also in an abstract form.

How the physicist Thales of Miletus tried to understand the cause of the summer floods of the Nile. He mistakenly found it in the oncoming trade wind, which, by impeding the movement of the Nile water, caused its level to rise. The Nile floods as a result of the summer melting of snow in one of its sources and summer rains in the other; these upper reaches were found with enormous sacrifices on the part of enthusiastic travelers only in the last century.

Basic ideas of the philosophy of Thales of Miletus

The earliest information about the philosophy of Thales of Miletus came to us from Aristotle. In Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” it is said: “Of those who were the first to engage in philosophy, the majority considered the beginning of all things to be only the beginnings in the form of matter: that of which all things are composed, from which first they arise and into which they ultimately go, and the essential remains, but changes in its properties; this is what they consider the element and beginning of things. And therefore they believe that nothing arises or perishes, since such an underlying nature is always preserved... The quantity and form for such a beginning are not all indicated in the same way, but Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy, considers it water.” (Aristotle. Metaphysics. Book I. Ch. 3).

The Water of Thales is a philosophical rethinking of the Homeric Ocean, the Sumerian-Akkadian Abzu (Alsu). True, the title of his work “On Principles” admits that Thales rose to the concept of the first principle, otherwise he would not have become a philosopher. Thales, understanding water as a beginning, naively makes the earth float on it - in this form he represents the substantiality of water, it literally resides under everything, everything floats on it.

On the other hand, this is not just water, but “intelligent”, divine water. The world is full of gods (polytheism). However, these gods act in the world of power; they are also souls as sources of self-propulsion of bodies. So, for example, a magnet, according to the philosophy of Thales, has a soul because it attracts iron. Sun and others celestial bodies feed on water vapor. What has been said can be summed up in the words of Diogenes Laertius about Thales: “He considered water to be the beginning of everything, and considered the world to be animate and full of deities.” (Diogenes Laertius. About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers. M., 1979. P. 71. Further – DL. P. 71).

The spontaneous materialism of Thales contained within itself the possibility of a later split. The deity of the cosmos is reason. What we have here is not only the anti-mythological nature of Thales, who put reason, logos, the son of Zeus, who denied his father, in the place of Zeus, but also the possibility of idealism inherent in proto-philosophical teaching.

The ontological monism of Thales' philosophy is connected with its epistemological monism: all knowledge must be reduced to one single basis. Thales said: “Variety of words is not at all an indicator of reasonable opinion.” Here Thales spoke out against mythological and epic verbosity. “Look for one thing wise, choose one thing good, so you will stop the idle talk of talkative people.” This is the motto of the first ancient Western philosopher, his philosophical testament.