Jean de Dieu Kamiri
Professor Steven
Phil 1301
02/08/2018
Title: Thales vs. Homer
Abstract: Thales is the Greek philosopher, he is the first person to investigate the basic principles, the question of the substance of matter, and he foundered the school of natural philosophy. He is in among seven sages of Greece. He did research almost all areas of knowledge, mathematics, politics, history, science, engineering, and philosophy. He suggested concepts to explain many of the events of nature, the main substance, the support of the earth, and the cause of change. Water was his first principle and he wrote anything many ancient people reports credit him with writings. Homer known as the first Greek poet, he is the one who started write down the …show more content…
The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed. Even if The Iliad itself seems unfamiliar, the story of the siege of Troy, the Trojan War and Paris’ kidnapping of Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, are all familiar characters or scenarios. Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem. The Odyssey picks up after the fall of Troy. Further controversy about authorship springs from the differing styles of the two long narrative poems, indicating they were composed a century apart, while other historians claim only decades –the more formal structure of The Iliad is attributed to a poet at the height of his powers, whereas the more colloquial, novelistic approach in The Odyssey is attributed to an elderly Homer. Homer enriched his descriptive story with liberal use of simile and metaphor, which has inspired a long path of writers behind him. His structuring device was to start in the middle–in Medias res– and then fill in the missing information via remembrances. The two narrative poems pop up throughout modern literature: Homer’s The Odyssey has parallels in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and his tale of Achilles in The Iliad is echoed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Gondolin. Even the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Makes use of The …show more content…
Later generations told many anecdotes about this man, who was reckoned among the seven sages, but it is difficult to verify the reliability of these stories. He may have traveled to Egypt, where many Greeks and Carian’s were welcome as merchants and mercenaries, but on the other hand, it was expected that a wise man made a long voyage to gain knowledge, and this story may have been invented to prove that the sage of Miletus was a wise man indeed. (Similar stories are told about Solon and Pythagoras.) It is not even certain whether Thales is the author of published texts. The three titles that are attributed to him may be later inventions, or three names of one and the same poem: Nautical astronomy, on the solstice, and on the equinox. What seems certain, however, is that Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585, which was remembered (according to the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus note) because the Lydian king Alyattes and the Median leader Cyaxares were fighting a battle on that day. However, it must be noted that "predicting" merely meant that Thales announced that it was possible that an eclipse could take place during a particular new moon, because by then, not even Babylonian astronomers were able to predict this impressive phenomenon more accurately. Still, even establishing a possibility was a great leap forward for Greek science. According to a famous story told by Herodotus of
Professor Steven
Phil 1301
02/08/2018
Title: Thales vs. Homer
Abstract: Thales is the Greek philosopher, he is the first person to investigate the basic principles, the question of the substance of matter, and he foundered the school of natural philosophy. He is in among seven sages of Greece. He did research almost all areas of knowledge, mathematics, politics, history, science, engineering, and philosophy. He suggested concepts to explain many of the events of nature, the main substance, the support of the earth, and the cause of change. Water was his first principle and he wrote anything many ancient people reports credit him with writings. Homer known as the first Greek poet, he is the one who started write down the …show more content…
The stories provide an important insight into early human society, and illustrate, in some aspects, how little has changed. Even if The Iliad itself seems unfamiliar, the story of the siege of Troy, the Trojan War and Paris’ kidnapping of Helen, the world’s most beautiful woman, are all familiar characters or scenarios. Some scholars insist that Homer was personally familiar with the plain of Troy, due to the geographical accuracy in the poem. The Odyssey picks up after the fall of Troy. Further controversy about authorship springs from the differing styles of the two long narrative poems, indicating they were composed a century apart, while other historians claim only decades –the more formal structure of The Iliad is attributed to a poet at the height of his powers, whereas the more colloquial, novelistic approach in The Odyssey is attributed to an elderly Homer. Homer enriched his descriptive story with liberal use of simile and metaphor, which has inspired a long path of writers behind him. His structuring device was to start in the middle–in Medias res– and then fill in the missing information via remembrances. The two narrative poems pop up throughout modern literature: Homer’s The Odyssey has parallels in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and his tale of Achilles in The Iliad is echoed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fall of Gondolin. Even the Coen Brothers’ film O Brother, Where Art Thou? Makes use of The …show more content…
Later generations told many anecdotes about this man, who was reckoned among the seven sages, but it is difficult to verify the reliability of these stories. He may have traveled to Egypt, where many Greeks and Carian’s were welcome as merchants and mercenaries, but on the other hand, it was expected that a wise man made a long voyage to gain knowledge, and this story may have been invented to prove that the sage of Miletus was a wise man indeed. (Similar stories are told about Solon and Pythagoras.) It is not even certain whether Thales is the author of published texts. The three titles that are attributed to him may be later inventions, or three names of one and the same poem: Nautical astronomy, on the solstice, and on the equinox. What seems certain, however, is that Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585, which was remembered (according to the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus note) because the Lydian king Alyattes and the Median leader Cyaxares were fighting a battle on that day. However, it must be noted that "predicting" merely meant that Thales announced that it was possible that an eclipse could take place during a particular new moon, because by then, not even Babylonian astronomers were able to predict this impressive phenomenon more accurately. Still, even establishing a possibility was a great leap forward for Greek science. According to a famous story told by Herodotus of