October 2014
Beginner to intermediate
222 pages
7h 37m
English
The history of Western philosophy begins with a joke: This is only a slight exaggeration. In the dialogue Theaetetus, Plato puts the following anecdote into the mouth of Socrates:
[T]he jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven that he could not see what was before his feet.1
And Plato adds the observation that this mockery applies to anyone who gets involved in philosophy. Actually, the anecdote has an earlier version. Plato took it from Aesop’s Fables, where the fall is attributed to an anonymous astronomer. But why Thales? ...