"Water is the origin of all things."

"They [Milesian Presocratics] postulate as the first reality a single living stuff, indefinite in extent and character, from which the world and all things in it develop spontaneously. Thales called this 'the moist' (to hugron), moisture being the principle of life according to simple observation and primitive common sense...This stuff they call 'divine' by which they probably mean no more than that it is living and everlasting, two characters which it must have if it is to be for them a sufficient explanation of the cosmic process"
- A.H. Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy

Not exactly.
It is known that Thales said that "all things are full of gods".
Maybe you're right if you had expressed yourself like this: "the idols of the city can't sastisfy my desire to explain the reality around me".

Absolutely not.
Thales' water was obviously not H2O and you can't do any correspondence between the poetic expression "water" with a modern physical term.

I don't know, he was not rally conscious of this unity of being, he was trying to express in one element the multiplicity of the world, but this element is still multiple in itself.

You're searching the origin of water then, not the origin of all things.

I'd say water or "the moist" can be translated by "possibility", and when he affirms that water is the origin of all things, he's noticing that actuality of forms or the physical world is a "condensation" or "recipient" of this universal possibility.

In a similar way the Bible tells that "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Yo man Thales was a genius. He knew dat humanity came from fish and stuff that came to land. He wuz a true genius who new that humans was descended from fish and bacteria and shiet. He was a prophet of his time. E wuz a Charles Darwin before the big CD himself

>I'd say water or "the moist" can be translated by "possibility", and when he affirms that water is the origin of all things, he's noticing that actuality of forms or the physical world is a "condensation" or "recipient" of this universal possibility.
I think he DOES mean water. But It's a kind of "primordial water/moisture". He doesn't mean the water you see in the ocean. Water as we know it is a derivative of this "primordial water".

>he was not rally conscious of this unity of being
He didn't have to be. It could have been what he was getting at, but what he didn't realize he was getting at.

The nature of water going by its physical qualities is form which takes the shape of its container, and form which does not appear to have crude multiplicity but many droplets which fuse together when brought together. Moisture is also observable in many areas of origin and growth in life.

"Water is the origin of all things" or "Water is the principle of everything" is a statement claiming something about the (common) origin, and the root quality of everything. He was trying to convey something about the nature of everything.

Unity of being comes later with people like Parmenides. Thales was coming from a totally different perspective.

Yeah, but this "primordial water" actually means something in reality, a real quality of things he discovered by philosophical meditation, and I think this quality can be sharply expressed by "possibility".

Yeah, I'm just saying that he inferred its existence by observing actual water/moisture.

I think it's the other way around. Parmenides was coming from a different perspective here. His unity was different from the "all things are one" I am suggesting is behind Thales' statement.

If you interpret Thales in this way, you will find yourself stuck in a lot of contradictions, but Thales' water was a quality he addressed to things around him, not a concept of being as we know today.

For the ancient greeks, nature was ultimate reality.

>If you interpret Thales in this way, you will find yourself stuck in a lot of contradictions
Such as?

>Thales' water was a quality he addressed to things around him, not a concept of being as we know today
I'm not saying it's a concept of being. Almost the opposite: life is interpreted as fluid here. Its fluidity and common origin connects everything.

He must have somehow partaken of the Spice, thousands of years before humanity's discovery of it. Could he see all? Did he witness the conception, triumph, death, legacy of Muad'Dib? Of all people and peoples?

True dat bruh

Naw man, he wuz even greater den dat. He was da george washington carvuh of his times yo

fluidity as an energy state is the origin of all things