First Division of Nephrology, Second University of Naples, Naples, Italy.
J Nephrol. 2009 Nov-Dec;22 Suppl 14:98-102.
Thales was born into a noble family of Phoenician origin at the time of the 25th Olympiad (floruit 585 bc; he was 40 in the year of the solar eclipse. He had no teachers but had occasion to learn from Egyptian priests. He developed into a scholar and politician very much appreciated by Heraclitus, Herodotus and Democritus, and was always considered a man of practical wisdom. He was probably the first to speak about the immortality of the soul. He is listed as the first of many unmarried men who paved the road for philosophy. For Diogenes Laertius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers), he was the instructor of Anaximander. Thales, the man who first discovered how to draw a right-angle triangle in a circle, was the first philosopher of nature (physis). "Philosophy begins with Thales," pointed out Bertrand Russell in 1961. This honor had been conceded also by Aristotle: "Anaximander, Thales' pupil, founded the Ionian tradition of philosophy." Many explanations may be given for the importance of water, including its importance for living processes, the economic role of the Nile, the importance of the port for Miletus and the fact that Ocean and Thetys were in Homer's tradition progenitors of the world.
泰勒斯出生于 25 届奥林匹克运动会时期（活跃于公元前 585 年；日蚀之年他 40 岁。他没有老师，但有机会向埃及祭司学习。他成为了一位学者和政治家，深受赫拉克利特、希罗多德和德谟克利特的赞赏，并且一直被认为是一位具有实践智慧的人。他可能是第一个谈论灵魂不朽的人。他被列为许多未婚男子中的第一人，为哲学铺平了道路。对于第欧根尼·拉尔修（《杰出哲学家的生平与见解》）来说，他是阿那克西曼德的导师。第一个在圆中画出直角三角形的人泰勒斯，是自然哲学的第一位哲学家。“哲学始于泰勒斯”，伯特兰·罗素在 1961 年指出。亚里士多德也承认了这一点：“阿那克西曼德是泰勒斯的学生，他创立了伊奥尼亚哲学传统。”水的重要性可能有多种解释，包括其对生命过程的重要性、尼罗河的经济作用、米利都港的重要性以及在荷马的传统中，海洋和忒堤斯是世界的祖先。
